Even in the largest enterprises, like our former employer, most development teams aren’t ready to grok services/bundles. There is still a lot of confusion and bitterness around failed SOA attempts, so OSGi, being another “services” technology, is going to be a hard sell. Backend technologies in general are hard sell right now. The pendulum has swung to the client side.

Diversification is always a good thing, but drinking from the ExtJS fire hose is killing enough of my braincells right now. Once our application reaches the point that something like OSGi/Spring DM makes since, I’ll definitely be taking a look at it.

I also agree that RIA is very interesting. I’ve recently become a Flex fan, myself. But I’m also impressed with Silverlight and like the stuff that Ext-JS, Prototype, and jQuery add to JavaScript.

But while technologies in the RIA space are interesting and may be a good investment, they are hardly the only thing worth investing your skills in. There’s much more to application development than a “pretty face”.

I also disagree with Tim’s assessment that OSGi is either 5 years ahead of its time or DOA. On the contrary, I think we’re approaching a time where OSGi is really going to shine. As has been pointed out in recent days on other blogs, there are still some unanswered questions about OSGi, but there are far more questions that have already been answered.

Unfortunately, there are far too many developers who disregard what *is* possible with OSGi and what benefits that it *does* already provide. I’m not sure why, except that perhaps OSGi doesn’t have a sexy name or perhaps because too many associate it with other more complex component frameworks from days gone by.

In any event, there are plenty of things that a developer can invest themselves in. I absolutely do recommend that if user-interface matters interest you that you should invest some time getting to know the RIA technologies Tim listed. But even Tim should agree that it’s good to diversify your skill portfolio–Didn’t you have an interest in Jini/JavaSpaces at one time, Tim?

If you can get me a copy of the book, I’ll be happy to take a look

I’m not sure OSGi is a solution looking for a problem. I’d say that it’s just done a *horrible* job selling itself. I think books like Craig’s can help. I think companies like SpringSource will *really* help.

Reads Craig’s book. If you don’t work the examples you can get through it in a weekend. You’ll be ready to refactor the OrangeLeap webapp into OSGi modules. When that happens, you know who to call.