OW2 is an independent non-profit international consortium dedicated to developing open-source software code infrastructure for middleware information systems.

OW2 federates IT vendors and users, universities, and research centers from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, representing IT professionals.

Upon gaining code contributors, growing, and meeting rigorous requirements, a project can apply for "mature" status.

If a project stops evolving and updating, it can then be moved to the third lifecycle stage, "Archive," where it is no longer active but can use OW2's infrastructure services.

In 2008, only a year after its founding, OW2 began hosting its projects via Concurrent Versions System (CVS) and Apache Subversion (SVN) using GForge.