- Sanjiva Weerawarana is the founder, chairman and CEO of WSO2, an open-source middleware company, and creator of the Ballerina programming language. He is also an advisory board member of the company 24/7 Techies, a visiting professor and lecturer at the University of Moratuwa and a board alumnus of the Open Source Initiative.
- Weerawarana is also known for his academic contributions, having served as a professor of computer science at several universities, published numerous research papers in the field of distributed computing and web services and participated in some notable research publications.
- His technical insight and innovation have driven WSO2’s success in the enterprise software market and provided reliable solutions and technical support to customers worldwide.
Sanjiva Weerawarana is a CEO, software developer and open-source software evangelist and is known for his work on Web Services standards including WSDL, BPEL, and WS-Addressing.
Sanjiva Weerawarana: in-depth contributions to software engineering
Sanjiva Weerawarana is the founder, chairman and CEO of WSO2, an open-source middleware company, and creator of the Ballerina programming language. He is also an advisory board member of the company 24/7 Techies, a visiting professor and lecturer at the University of Moratuwa and a board alumnus of the Open Source Initiative.
Weerawarana attended Kent State University, majoring in applied mathematics and computer science, before completing a PhD at Purdue University. After graduation, He has played a key role in promoting open standards and interoperability in the software industry, advocating for the use of technologies like SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and WSDL (Web Services Description Language).
Weerawarana joined IBM Research working in Hawthorne, New York, until he left to found the startup WSO2 in 2005. As an IBM researcher and a founder of the Web services platform, He led the creation of IBM SOAP4J, which later became the original Apache.
Weerawarana has worked in many computing science foundations. He has been involved with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), set up the Lanka Software Foundation as an elected member, and was involved with the Sahana FOSS Disaster Management System and several other projects.
Weerawarana is also known for his academic contributions, having served as a professor of computer science at several universities and published numerous research papers in the field of distributed computing and web services.
He participated in some notable research publications as well including Colombo: Lightweight middleware for service-oriented computing and Web Services Platform Architecture. He currently lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Sanjiva Weerawarana is a notable figure in the world of software engineering, particularly renowned for his contributions to open-source software development and his involvement with the Apache Software Foundation.
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Apache Software Foundation for an open-source community
Weerawarana co-founded the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) in 1999, which is a non-profit organisation dedicated to the development of open-source software projects. The ASF provides a collaborative environment for software developers to work together on various projects, adhering to the principles of transparency, meritocracy, and community-driven development.
Under Weerawarana’s leadership, the ASF has grown to become one of the most influential organisations in the open-source community, overseeing the development of numerous widely-used software projects. Some of the most notable Apache projects include the Apache HTTP Server, Apache Tomcat, Apache Kafka, Apache Hadoop, and many others.
Weerawarana himself has been involved in various Apache projects over the years, contributing his expertise in areas such as web services, middleware, and distributed computing.
ASF is meritocratic, which means that membership in the Foundation is only awarded to volunteers who have made positive contributions to Apache projects. ASF is considered a second-generation open-source organisation because it provides commercial support without the risk of platform lock-in.
The ASF aims to provide legal protection for volunteers working on Apache projects and to prevent the “Apache” brand name from being used by other organisations without permission. ASF also hosts several ApacheCon conferences each year to highlight Apache projects and related technologies.
Sanjiva Weerawarana’s contributions to the Apache Software Foundation and the broader open-source community have had a significant impact on the development of software technology, fostering innovation, collaboration, and the widespread adoption of open standards.
WSO2: open-source software and cloud services
WSO2 is an open-source technology provider founded by Sanjiva Weerawarana, Paul Fremantle, and Davanum Srinivas in August 2005 and was backed by Intel Capital, Toba Capital, and Pacific Controls in its initial. The company delivers software and cloud solutions that provide foundational technologies for application development and identity and access management (IAM).
Historically, WSO2 has had strong ties to the Apache community, with a significant portion of its products based on or contributing to the Apache product stack. Similarly, many of WSO2’s senior leaders have contributed to the Apache project.
Like Weerawarana, Fremantle was one of the authors of IBM’s Web Services Invocation Framework and the Web Services Gateway. An Apache member since the original Apache SOAP project, Fremantle oversaw the donation of WSIF and WSDL4J to Apache and led IBM’s involvement in the Axis C/C++ project.
WSO2 can be seen as an open-source API management platform that provides a complete set of solutions for designing and publishing APIs, creating and managing developer communities, and securing and routing API traffic in a scalable way. In addition, it integrates with the WSO2 analytics platform to provide off-the-shelf reports and alerts to keep users informed about API behaviour.
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In addition, there is WSO2 IoT, an open-source IoT device management system that can manage mobile devices such as Android, IOS, and IoT devices such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino. These features make WSO2 a powerful tool that can help enterprises improve management capabilities and reduce workload.
Sanjiva Weerawarana is a veteran technologist and entrepreneur with extensive influence and leadership in the enterprise software space. His technical insight and innovation have driven WSO2’s success in the enterprise software market and provided reliable solutions and technical support to customers worldwide.
