[omniORB] Shopping for CORBA ORB and reencounter with The Mystery

[Zach Buckner]

The shopping experience:
   
   My requirements were:
   Free, high performance, reliable, C++ bindings.  It had to be easy to
   use and properly packaged (didn't want to spend time fooling with
   Makefiles)
   
   The contestants:
   Mico looked like a hack, had a poor track record, and didn't include
   binaries...
   
   TAO looked most promising, but didn't include binaries... didn't
   compile first few attempts.
   
   OmniORB looked good, appeared to have a solid track record, and
   included binaries for WinNT and Linux.  OmniORB was the choice... one
   month ago.
   
The Mystery
   
   I've spent the afternoon reading info from TAO web site (patterns
   within TAO, etc.) and - at least from the inside - TAO looks
   fantastic.  I began to wonder whether OmniORB was, truly, the best
   candidate.   This, in turn, led to 'why these two great projects don't
   work together?'  OmniORB and TAO appear to have the same goals
   (TAO may be geared toward real-time / high performance, but due to
   their 'dynamic configuration'... it seems that one could shape it to
   any conceivable behavior.)  Wouldn't the combo be > the sum of its
   parts?
   
   Are the problems related to pride (developers want to continue to
   nurse their own puppy), legal hassle (differences in licenses),
   development hassle (face-to-face development via teams / academic
   circles is still better than internet-based development), corporate /
   political (the corporate / academic ties make the projects inflexible
   in this respect), or the competitive spirit?  None of these seem
   insurmountable, and none seem to outweigh the advantages of having a
   combined effort.    I know that I would be more likely to contribute
   to ORB development (which involves a lot of learning overhead for mere
   ORB users like me) if I felt that these projects weren't so volatile.
   
   Can anyone provide an answer?  I assume this is a FAQ in free software
   discussion groups (many free/OS development efforts seem splintered).


-Zach