On the future of Play Framework
TL;DR - We are working to form a community-led organization that would take responsibility for the future development of Play Framework outside of Lightbend.
Ever since I started Lightbend (formerly known as Typesafe) with Martin Odersky, now more than 10 years ago, Open Source Software (OSS) has been at the heart of what we do. It is fair to say that Lightbend would not exist without the transforming power of OSS and the amazing communities around our products Scala, Akka, Play, and more.
Building software in the open, putting your work out there for everyone to see and judge can be scary, at least initially, but can also be so rewarding. OSS is the perfect environment to try out crazy ideas, to try to reach a bit higher, and to be able to do it with peers that share the same passion and joy for programming, curiosity, creativity, and urge for change, regardless of background, gender, citizenship, ethnicity, political values, or whatever. When it works it’s magic. I am personally so grateful for OSS and what it has enabled me to do, learn, and experience, and the long-lasting friendships it has helped me build.
Lightbend started around a vision to build the best possible OSS development platform and tools for the emerging Cloud (multicore and distributed systems), specifically targeting microservices, web applications, and streaming data systems. On this quest, which started with Akka and Scala, we added the Play Web Framework, which—being built on top of Akka with a strong async and non-blocking story—was a great and natural addition to the stack.
