The term “Open source”, in software industry, refers to the software whose source code is freely available and can be modified and redistributed with few restrictions under a license that meets the Open source definition. These open source software has established tremendous impact in the market and challenged the dominance of pre-established software. These software are developed by open source communities consisting of contributors from all over the world and share a strong sense of commitment. Open source communities focuses on understanding the individual role along with documenting the software development methodology. There are many such communities like Apache Software Foundation, Jboss Inc, Sourceforge, opensymphony etc providing the open source software. For instance… the Apache Software Foundation provides support for the Apache community of open-source software projects. Similarly OpenSymphony is another Open Source project dedicated to provide enterprise class JEE components. Similarly JBoss, a global leader in open source middleware software focuses to transform the Enterprises  to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Apache Software Foundation

Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is a non-profit organization providing support for Apache community of open source software projects, to provide legal protection to the contributors and to prevent its brand name from being misused by any other organization. ASF is a decentralized community of developers. A self-selected team of technical experts who are active contributors to the project manages each project. Some of the famous Apache Projects are HTTP Server, Tomcat, Ant, Logging, Maven, MyFaces, Struts, Velocity etc.

OpenSymphony

OpenSymphony is an Open Source project providing enterprise class JEE components aiming to stress simplicity, integration, pluggability and specification compliance. Some of its projects are WebWork, Quartz, XWork etc.

SourceForge

SourceForge.net, operated by Sourceforge, Inc., is one of the largest open Source software development web site and provides a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. SourceForge.net provides a large repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet. It provides free hosting of open source software development projects. Currently it has reached to the 161,181 registered projects and 1,715,108 registered users.

Eclipse Foundation

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member-supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse projects. Eclipse Project was originally created by IBM in 2001 and was supported by a consortium of software vendors. Eclipse Foundation was created in 2004 as an independent not-for-profit corporation to provide support and organize the Eclipse community, to allow a vendor neutral and open, transparent community to be established around Eclipse. Now Eclipse community is the group of large number of individuals and organizations in the software industry.

JBoss

JBoss provides a place for the development of open source projects by open community by providing the resources, core development and support services. JBoss projects focus on the development of Java Enterprise Middleware. Some projects focus on providing one type of service like JBoss Messaging, JBoss Cache and Hibernate and other projects provide standards-compliant, component frameworks like JBoss AS, JBoss Web and JBoss Portal.