[omniORB] omniORB development plan

[Sai-Lai Lo]

This seems to be a good time to talk about the development plan for the
next 12 months or so.

1. We have just released 2.8.0. The 2.8 branch will enter maintainance
   mode, only bug fixes and no new features will be added to the branch.

2. In the next week or so, we will start doing pre-release for 3.0. This
   version comes with the POA (plus all the features in 2.8.0). There is a
   lot of new code in this branch. The plan is to give it a few months to
   iron out the few remaining wrinkles. If you are going to start a new
   project, I would strongly encourage you to begin with 3.0. This will
   help with our testing effort.

3. There is also a 2.9 branch in development. This is a development of 2.8
   with the latest GIOP support. The added functionality includes
   bidirectional GIOP, interoperates with firewall proxies, SSL and
   interceptors. It will be merged into 3.0 when it is ready.

4. Soon we will start doing pre-release for omniORBpy- the python binding
   for omniORB. For the uninitiated, python is a great scripting
   language. The python language binding for CORBA has just been adopted 
   (99-09-02.pdf). CORBA and python works together very well. The two makes
   a very good combination for prototyping and RAD.

What else? We are interested in moving beyond the plumbing to auto-code
generation tool that makes CORBA programming a much easier task. Stay
tuned...

Sai-Lai

-- 
Sai-Lai Lo                                   S.Lo@uk.research.att.com
AT&T Laboratories Cambridge           WWW:   http://www.uk.research.att.com 
24a Trumpington Street                Tel:   +44 1223 343000
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