=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1541/OSS4MDE_2015_paper_1
|storemode=property
|title=CLARITY: Open-Sourcing the Model-Based Systems Engineering Solution Capella
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1541/OSS4MDE_2015_paper_1.pdf
|volume=Vol-1541
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/models/BoudjennahCELP15
}}
==CLARITY: Open-Sourcing the Model-Based Systems Engineering Solution Capella==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1541/OSS4MDE_2015_paper_1.pdf
CLARITY: Open-Sourcing the Model-Based
Systems Engineering Solution Capella
C. Boudjennah1 , B. Combemale2 , D. Exertier3 , S. Lacrampe1 , and
M.A Peraldi-Frati4
1
Obeo, France, {firstname.lastname}@obeo.fr
2
INRIA and University of Rennes, France benoit.combemale@irisa.fr
3
Thales, France daniel.exertier@thalesgroup.com
4
University Nice Sophia Antipolis-I3S-INRIA, France map@unice.fr
Abstract. The central concern of the CLARITY project is to support
open innovation for Model-Based Systems Engineering by structuring an
ecosystem of major actors of the domain and providing an open-source
environment, Capella, and its underlying methodology, Arcadia. In
this experience report, we relate the Capella story from the initial de-
velopment by Thales down to the open-sourcing strategy. The rationale
for adopting the open-source model is detailed with commercial, com-
petitive and strategic arguments. The global roadmap of Capella is
then presented. One year after the start of the CLARITY project, a first
feedback is shared.
1 Introduction
The CLARITY5 project aims at developing and structuring an international
ecosystem to support open innovation in the domain of model-based systems
engineering (MBSE). The main objective is to propose major breakthroughs
with regard to the common practices in the domain of MBSE. The vision is in
line with the INCOSE recommendations by taking up the challenge of providing
an integrated and model-oriented vision for complex systems modeling.
The starting point of CLARITY is to deliver the MBSE solution Capella
as an open-source project within the Eclipse Industry Working Group Polarsys6 .
Capella is a Thales initiative that has been initially developed in house, and
deployed in various Business Units since several years, taking the advantage of-
fered by multiple and diversified projects within the Thales Group. Capella is
a key solution for complex systems design providing major technological break-
throughs for MBSE, methodological support and guidance for systems engineers
through the underlying integrated methodology Arcadia.
To support the open-sourcing of Capella, the CLARITY project investi-
gates customization capabilities for Capella as well as specific extensions such
5
CLARITY is a project funded by the call embedded systems and connected objects
of the French future investment program. Cf. http://www.clarity-se.org
6
Cf. https://www.polarsys.org/capella
as the integration of viewpoints to tackle domain specific system requirements,
including functional and non-functional ones (e.g. performance, safety, cost, test,
simulation). Connection of viewpoints with existing engineer specific tools in
these domains is also promoted. Moreover, the CLARITY project aims at com-
plementing the ecosystem with a community that brings together major actors of
the entire engineering value chain (industrials, integrators, technology providers
and consultants, academia) for open innovation in MBSE within Capella.
In this paper, we first present the initial motivations for open-sourcing Capella
(Section 2). Then, we detail the approach implemented by the CLARITY project
to support the open-sourcing of Capella, and to create an underlying ecosystem
that foster the open innovation in that domain (Section 3). Finally, we conclude
and discuss preliminary lessons learned in Section 4.
2 Motivations
Model Driven Engineering (MDE) has been identified as key to develop ever
more complex systems at ever more constrained costs. MDE provides means:
– to formalize and tool up system and software architectural design, leading
to strong productivity gains;
– to improve design consistency and quality;
– to early evaluate architectures;
– to share a common engineering reference, integrating multiple disciplines and
allowing actual co-engineering;
– to leverage on engineering know-how and expertise, and reuse it;
– to ease collaborative engineering with clients, co-contractors and sub-contractors.
As the state-of-the-art engineering tool vendors did not provide the appropri-
ate offer, Thales decided in 2007 to develop its own MDE method, i.e. Arcadia
[4], and a dedicated MBSE solution, i.e. Melody Advance [3], together with an
accompanying Group-wide deployment, training and coaching organization [2].
Thales has succeeded in implementing a deep cultural change based on highly in-
novative and first-in-class solutions. In the meantime, the success in the endeavor
of rolling-out these new engineering approaches has been thoroughly monitored
by a progressively maturing Make/Team/Buy strategy.
Ultimately, Thales decided to publish Arcadia and to open-source Melody
Advance under the name of Capella, clearly choosing a Team strategy and
implementing an open innovation scheme. As Arcadia and Capella represent
a major investment and provide high value for Thales, one can wonder why such
a strategic move has been chosen. The rationale is in fact driven by very concrete
and opportunistic concerns:
– For sharing the engineering environment within large multi-partners projects:
there is an increasing need for sub/co-contracting and third parties see it as
a risk to benefit from an advanced but proprietary engineering environment
in terms of long term availability and support.
– For preserving the investment: Arcadia and Capella were developed due
to the fact that such solutions did not exist on the market and, because they
fill a gap, there is a risk that concurrent solutions emerge on the market,
not necessarily filling well Thales operational needs, that would become a
standard. This would then require from additional migration and adoption
costs to comply with the new standard. Open sourcing the Thales advanced
and mature solution, and ensuring its adoption by a large community, will
help in making it the de facto standard.
– For sharing costs and risks : there is also an obvious gain in terms of sharing
maintenance and evolution costs once the open-source solution is adopted by
a large community. Although Capella is well ahead in the MBSE market, it
still requires additional investments for preserving this advance with new ca-
pabilities both functional (e.g., additional specialty engineering extensions
and/or environments integration, enhanced architecture alternatives man-
agement, integration within ALM and PLM solutions) and non-functional
(e.g., cloud deployment capabilities, engineer activity pattern detection and
support, further performance and customizability improvements). For some
of these improvements, a critical mass is needed. By sharing its solutions,
Thales will benefit from added value brought from the community and thus
gain additional returns from its initial internal investment.
– For leveraging Thales competitive advantage: sharing maintenance and evo-
lution costs allows Thales to better focus its investments on additional ca-
pabilities that are kept in-house (e.g., smart productivity tools, quality in-
surance tools, know-how and expertise capitalization), thus preserving some
competitive advantage with Capella;
– . . . And because it is the right time: it is now well established that industrial
needs for systems and architecture engineering are shared, that model-based
engineering is a major lever for engineering improvement and transformation,
that the market does not provide the right answer and that the open-source
environment is ready to provide the right framework with PolarSys. So it is
the right time for open-sourcing Capella.
This clearly targets the establishment of an open innovation dynamics, as
shown in Fig. 1. This involves all actors in the whole engineering value chain,
contributing together in synergy.
End-user organization, by confronting Arcadia and Capella to other busi-
ness domains, help maturing, consolidate and complement the method and the
tools, bringing additional value that Thales can benefit from, as well as addi-
tional activity to the other open innovation stakeholders. As a direct result from
this strategy, collaborations can expand further with clients and partners that
need to ensure engineering continuity for developing complex systems.
Open source foundations and communities provide the right framework and
mindset for de facto standardization, while engineering communities, by gaining
a rich and mature solution that fills a long lasting gap, help further adoption
through communication, dissemination and promotion.
Fig. 1. The Arcadia and Capella open innovation scheme
Service and technology providers, gaining expertise and building offers on top
of Arcadia and Capella, provide to end-user organizations, including Thales,
a pool of expertise that is made available for new project needs.
Arcadia and Capella modules delivered in universities and engineering
schools shape young engineers with a background that directly benefit to end-
user organizations, including Thales, if they are recruited on operational projects,
as well as spread Arcadia and Capella knowledge in other industries, favoring
their adoption and standardization.
Arcadia and Capella, by establishing new open standards in MBSE en-
vironments made available to research communities, procure new research fields
and favor further advanced capabilities that will pave their future.
3 Implementation
3.1 Preliminary Activities
Open-sourcing Melody Advance in the Eclipse project named Capella started
with several preparatory activities:
1. The most important one was to define the most appropriate business model.
Indeed, even if there are some theoretical open-source models which are, still
today, innovative ones; finding the proper one for the targeted market (here,
MBSE) and actors was not an easy task.
2. The second step was to convince the top management to follow the path
written by this new business model.
3. Then, the framework allowing to implement the open innovation strategy for
MBSE had to be created. Capella was already partly based on open-source
technologies hosted in the Eclipse Foundation, but Eclipse was not the proper
host to support Capella. Therefore, an important work has been done in
order to ease the Polarsys Working Group (WG) creation (Thales and Obeo
both founders of this WG). This genesis has been performed within the
ITEA2 project OPEES7 .
4. The components included within Melody Advance had to be open-sourced
as well in order to have a 100% open-source workbench. For instance, it
has been done for EGF8 , Kitalpha9 and Sirius10 . Sirius was sold by
Obeo through a commercial product called Obeo Designer (which was
the company’s core business), therefore, open-sourcing Sirius had a major
impact on the Obeo business model as well.
5. An appropriate environment to open-source Melody Advance and to ini-
tiate its ecosystem had to be found. This environment was the collaborative
project CLARITY and its associated consortium gathering industrial part-
ners, technology providers and consulting/services companies who could sup-
port Melody Advance/Capella deployments.
3.2 Cost Estimation
At the initial stage of the process, there was intensive work to estimate the cost of
open-sourcing Melody Advance into Capella. Cost estimation started with
lots of meetings between Obeo and Thales to clarify: the impacts on the build
process of the workbench (and on the future evolution), the scope, etc.
Moreover, Melody Advance represented a 100 person-year effort and more
than 1 million of lines of code. Open-sourcing a software of this magnitude also
means renaming its packages, so it is obvious that the refactoring represented a
huge effort. Using its former experiences related to software components open-
sourcing, Obeo was able to estimate the cost starting from code related metrics
(number of plugins, classes, comments...) but some other elements also had to
be taken into account, such as intellectual property and dependencies, migration
to open-source of other technological components on which Melody Advance
depended on (e.g., Sirius and Kitalpha, the Melody Advance technical
foundation and development environment).
3.3 Governance Definition
Governance is a long term task which is managed today within the project
CLARITY in order to take fair decisions for all the consortium members. Prior
7
Cf. http://www.opees.org
8
Cf. https://eclipse.org/egf
9
Cf. http://polarsys.org/kitalpha
10
Cf. https://eclipse.org/sirius
to this, a first governance organization was setup within the Eclipse Foundation
and the Polarsys WG frameworks through :
– the definition of Capella leaders and commiters;
– the definition of a Polarsys solution.
Therefore technical governance was a day-to-day activity for Capella lead-
ers and commiters while the more strategic topics were discussed within the
Polarsys steering committee.
Community management and animation is also critical: indeed, open-sourcing
a technology is not enough to gather people around it and create a supportive
community. Hence:
– Capella stakeholders really wanted that the early adopters were carefully
taken care of;
– An important work of communication and training have been done, and is
still currently done (e.g., 2015 INCOSE Symposium, Eclipse Con 2015).
3.4 Schedule
Open-sourcing Melody Advance into Capella started in January, 2014, even
if Obeo spent only a small effort mainly to prepare its activities at the beginning
and really started to work actively on this topic in September, 2014. Weekly
meetings between both partners have been quickly institutionalized in order to
keep having the same understanding of what has to be done during the whole
process.
The activities has been split into several batches, namely Infrastructure and
initial builds, Upgrading Sirius version to 0.9, Melody rebranding, IP submission
preparation, Upgrading Sirius version to 1.0 and Project Monitoring and Control.
Each batch were followed by a validation phase. Thales could also integrate
maintenance activities performed on the code of Melody Advance anytime,
and performed a validation phase each time it was done.
To give an overview of the overall process, here are given the important dates
of the open-sourcing effort :
– 2014-07-30: Submission of the proposal.
– 2014-09-10: Project proposal has been approved and the Capella project has been
created.
– 2014-10-06: Initial CQ contribution of Capella for Intellectual Property review.
– 2014-10-12: Capella dissemination means (Support Forum and Wiki) are born.
– 2014-11-20: Capella technical infrastructure (Hudson, Code repository) is setup.
– 2014-12-08: Capella ”pre-release” build 0.8RC is available.
– 2015-01-30: Capella IP review has been approved.
– 2015-02-13: Capella 0.8.1 Release Review has been submitted.
– 2015-03-20: Capella 0.8.1 IP Log has been submitted.
– 2015-04-02: Capella 0.8.1 Release Review has been approved.
– 2015-04-06: Capella 0.8.1 is available for download.
– 2015-06-05: Capella 0.8.2 Release Review has been submitted
– 2015-06-04: Infrastructure has been enhanced with the use of SonarQube and Po-
larSys Maturity Assessment.
– 2015-06-30: Capella 0.8.2 has been released.
4 Conclusion
This paper reports the origin and the current state of the CLARITY project
which targets the creation of an international ecosystem for MBSE and the es-
tablishment of an open innovation dynamics model of development schema for
Capella and the associated methodology Arcadia. The political and commer-
cial choices of Thales for investing in such a strategic project are presented as
well as the details on the open-sourcing implementation process of Capella.
The CLARITY project is the appropriate environment to federate the actors of
the consortium, all involved in the engineering value chain, contributing together
to the maturation, the consolidation and the completion of the methodology and
the tool solution.
This paper do not present the open source project and its respective orga-
nization (see, e.g., [1]). Instead, we focus in this paper on the objective of the
CLARITY project to open source an already existing in-house project, ans to
create the associated ecosystem for open innovation.
At this stage of the project, partners provide an important work in devel-
opment, communication and training to gather people around the solution. A
particular attention is paid by all Capella stakeholders on early adopters which
provide their industrial needs, present the solution to different business domains
and give feedback on the solution.
Another ongoing strategic activity in the project is the investment of partners
in the working tasks for preserving the technological advance of Capella. This
include specific extensions such as the integration of viewpoints to tackle do-
main specific system requirements, both functional/non-functional. Extensions
through viewpoints and integration of existing engineering specific tools in these
domains is also covered by the project.
After only a few months, the published Arcadia and the open-sourced
Capella start to be known by a larger community. The ecosystem, initialy
limited to the CLARITY project consortium, starts to expand, validating the
defined open innovation strategy.
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