OSGi, which initially started out as a Java modularization technology for embedded scenarios, has recently been adopted in a number of application servers, ESBs and other enterprise middleware products. While it has initially been restricted to running within a single JVM instance, the question of how one might go about distributing it to multiple processes becomes asked more and more often.
Recently, an early release draft of a Distributed OSGi requirements and design document has been published, along with a reference implementation as part of Apache CXF. In a new article, Eric Newcomer writes about the current status of distributed OSGi and explains the reasons for standardizing it in the first place, and its significance to the OSGi specification and community.
Check out the article for more information on the current status of Distributed OSGi.