What is "osgi"

The OSGi Alliance, formerly known as the Open Services Gateway initiative, is an open standards organization founded in March 1999 that originally specified and continues to maintain the OSGi standard.

The OSGi specification describes a modular system and a service platform for the Java programming language that implements a complete and dynamic component model, something that does not exist in standalone Java/ VM environments. Applications or components, coming in the form of bundles for deployment, can be remotely installed, started, stopped, updated, and uninstalled without requiring a reboot; management of Java packages/ classes is specified in great detail. Application life cycle management is implemented via APIs that allow for remote downloading of management policies. The service registry allows bundles to detect the addition of new services, or the removal of services, and adapt accordingly.

The OSGi specifications have evolved beyond the original focus of service gateways, and are now used in applications ranging from mobile phones to the open-source Eclipse IDE. Other application areas include automobiles, industrial automation, building automation, PDAs, grid computing, entertainment, fleet management and application servers.