Future of Optaplanner vs timefold

[Luka Bradesko]

Given the creation of Timefold work, what is now future plan for the Optaplanner?

Best regards,

Luka

[Geoffrey De Smet]

Hi Luka,

My take on things:

By late 2022, I no longer saw a sustainable future for OptaPlanner’s development within Red Hat.
So to continue OptaPlanner, my life's work, I had no other option than to fork it, as Timefold.

For more information, please read the FAQ here:
  https://timefold.ai/blog/2023/optaplanner-fork/

With kind regards,
Geoffrey De Smet
OptaPlanner creator / Timefold CTO

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[Mark Proctor]

Over the last 12 years, Red Hat invested and built up a fantastic team around OptaPlanner to help it succeed in the market; this team consisted of Core Engineers, Quality Engineers, Documentation, Product Management, Program Management, Marketing, Sales and Solution Architects. I want to thank all those involved who helped make it happen. OptaPlanner is and continues to be a fantastic piece of engineering with 10+ years of maturity and a great community. Red Hat is committed to open source and open collaboration. OptaPlanner (along with Drools, jBPM, Kogito and Dashbuilder) is part of the KIE community of projects that will all be moving to Apache, where we will collaborate with IBM and others who wish to join.
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/KIE+Proposal

I’m very excited about this move, as it will open our communities to a broader range of users and contributors and reinforces our commitment to our communities. Our current focus is on preparing and planning for this move to Apache, so things are quieter than usual during this period.

Regards

Mark

Red Hat Senior Distinguished Engineer  and Chief Architect

[Jonas Erbe]

Hi together, I am a developer in a team which wants to use OptPlanner in their product. For us the fork to timefold and the move to kiegroup is very confusing. We tried to get support from RedHat to build our model (as stated here https://www.optaplanner.org/product/services.html), but RedHat refused our request with the comment that RedHat will not further develop the OptaPlanner. So for us the question is who will further develop the OptaPlanner and from whom can the get Support building our model?

It would be great if you could shed some light on who will provide support for the Optaplanner in future. And will the Optaplanner be further developed in the kiegroup?

Regards

Jonas

[Mark Proctor]

Red Hat is focusing on existing customers and exploring specific use cases rather than generalised support. We are moving OptaPlanner to Apache and supporting it through the community there, so all new support is through the community. Apache's neutral governance creates a unique level playing field for industry collaboration; this will give an opportunity for other organisations to eventually help support and grow OptaPlanner. For example, Pymma (https://pymma-software.com/), a veteran in the business rules space, is available to speak to those looking for commercial support (note my linking here is not an endorsement in any way, just passing on information). I encourage any group interested in these opportunities to contact me, and we can make sure everyone is featured on the community websites when we update them.

Our time right now is focusing on the Apache migration; we have a large number of projects and code to move over. After that, we will engage with the community and start to reach out to organisations who wish to be involved and update our websites with this new information.

Mark