4

I am currently deploying an application I want to base on Camel and ActiveMQ. Because of this I decided to go for ServiceMix or Fuse because they include everything I need and the OSGi stuff adds even more value. The application will in the end be run commercially.

I am not sure for which I should go: ServiceMix or Fuse. I have a tendency to go for JBoss Fuse because there seems to be more documentation available and it seems to be updated more frequently (newer ActiveMQ inside etc). But there remain some questions:

  • is JBoss Fuse just ServiceMix + "just" some more modules (like fabric) or is there more inside ?
  • will I be allowed to use Fuse commercially ? I think I didn't understand their concept of "subscriptions" (read: if I need to have one or prolong it after a year)
  • does the documentation for Fuse apply to ServiceMix too ?
  • does ServiceMix really lag behind Fuse as far as versions of included libraries are concerned ? I think both Camel and spring are more current in Fuse.

Thanks for your help

рüффп
  • 5,172
  • 34
  • 67
  • 113
Marged
  • 10,577
  • 10
  • 57
  • 99
  • The title of this questions leads to opionion based answers. A better title would be: What is the difference between Apache ServiceMix and JBoss Fuse. That title indicates facts etc, and not "what you prefer". The latter causes these kind of questions to be closed/on hold, as SO is not he place for these kind of questions. Though Jakes answers is very fact based, so something good came out of this though. – Claus Ibsen Sep 03 '13 at 08:17

1 Answers1

16

JBoss Fuse is a open source (+ commercial support) variant of ServiceMix that adds the Fuse Fabric technology over the base ServiceMix for distributed management of large clusters of ESBs. In practice this means a central place (Fuse Management Console) from which you can manage the installation of your software across a cluster. Fabric also adds a runtime registry that lets your services advertise their availability and be accessed by other services in that cluster without hard-configuring locations.

Both can run ActiveMQ internally, as it is merely a bundle that runs in the underlying Karaf container.

The idea of subscriptions from Red Hat is that if you want to (there's no obligation) you can pay to have production support of your installation (someone to pick up the phone to if things go wrong), or developer support (help with building your apps to run on the platform).

Whether or not you want to run JBoss Fuse or ServiceMix depends on whether you feel you might benefit from the Fabric technology. There are companies out there that provide ServiceMix support.

For full disclosure: I used to work for FuseSource/Red Hat and now consult independently in the technology.

Jakub Korab
  • 4,974
  • 2
  • 24
  • 34
  • Thanks for this good summary. I now see the added value of Fuse. Are you sure about the licence conditions ? I still am not completely sure that I will be allowed to use a productive Fuse without paying anything. This is just one sentence from the Jboss product page that makes me doubt: "... to provide an easy-to-use integration development environment." – Marged Sep 02 '13 at 19:34
  • 2
    You can definitely use Fuse without paying anything. It's all open source. Easy-to-use is all relative, there are a lot of technologies that you need to come to grips with to use either runtime - OSGi, Camel, CXF etc. Once you know what you are trying to achieve, and how to go about it they're both very productive runtimes. There is a set of Eclipse plugins called Fuse IDE which integrates well with either and makes Camel development much easier. If the answer helped, please vote it up or mark the question as answered - it will encourage others to answer further questions from you later. – Jakub Korab Sep 02 '13 at 21:03
  • 2
    I think this is (no more ?) correct. The download page ([link](http://www.jboss.org/products/fuse)) states "These downloads are for development use only" and a post by Claus Ibsen ([link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16739588/is-jboss-fuse-available-under-an-open-source-license)) (I should have found before asking my question ;-)) says that I should use ServiceMix in production because I am not allowed to use Fuse under this scenario. – Marged Sep 07 '13 at 21:43
  • 2
    fabric8 is the community version of JBoss Fuse which can be freely used in production - http://fabric8.io/ - Fabric8 will be run as a OS project and we will do public releases and sync JARs to Maven central etc. For commercial usage then Red Hat offers JBoss Fuse as product. – Claus Ibsen Feb 01 '14 at 08:19