Forum Discussion

KarelHusa's avatar
KarelHusa
Champion Level 1
4 years ago

SoapUI Open Source future

Dear all,

I wonder what is the Smartbear's (and the rest of community) plan for SoapUI OS future.

 

The SoapUI's Github (https://github.com/SmartBear/soapui ) shows there's almost no activity for quite a long time. 

 

Is Smartbear dropping its support for the SoapUI OS?

Do you have any plan to streamline SoapUI OS with ReadyAPI, so that the OS and commercial version could enjoy mutual synergy like some other open source products?

 

Best regards,

Karel 

 

  • AV's avatar
    AV
    4 years ago

    Hello, All! First of all on behalf of R&D team I want to say thank you so much for your interest in SoapUI. This is definitely great tool and we love it so much too. Unfortunately over the past year we definitely didn't spend any efforts supporting it there is an objective reason for that. ReadyAPI & SoapUI share the same development team, which is not so big as we wish. Anyway according to data we see it's extremely popular and millions of people use it.

    I can not guarantee we would release new versions often moving forward, but defitely as soon as we get any small chance to spend with SoapUI we will merge your pull requests and we'll do our best to keep this product alive.

    Definitely this product can not be maintained as ReadyAPI does just because its nature, but always feel free to ask your questions in the community, please also don't hesistate to request new features/bug fixes. If amount of the requests will be significant I'm sure our respectfull community managers will transfer them to company management and dev team will be happy to release new version.

     

    Best regards,

    Ilya Avdeev, ReadyAPI/SoapUI R&D team lead

  • AV's avatar
    AV
    SmartBear Alumni (Retired)
    4 years ago

    Hello, All! First of all on behalf of R&D team I want to say thank you so much for your interest in SoapUI. This is definitely great tool and we love it so much too. Unfortunately over the past year we definitely didn't spend any efforts supporting it there is an objective reason for that. ReadyAPI & SoapUI share the same development team, which is not so big as we wish. Anyway according to data we see it's extremely popular and millions of people use it.

    I can not guarantee we would release new versions often moving forward, but defitely as soon as we get any small chance to spend with SoapUI we will merge your pull requests and we'll do our best to keep this product alive.

    Definitely this product can not be maintained as ReadyAPI does just because its nature, but always feel free to ask your questions in the community, please also don't hesistate to request new features/bug fixes. If amount of the requests will be significant I'm sure our respectfull community managers will transfer them to company management and dev team will be happy to release new version.

     

    Best regards,

    Ilya Avdeev, ReadyAPI/SoapUI R&D team lead

    • KarelHusa's avatar
      KarelHusa
      Champion Level 1
      4 years ago

      AV ,

      thank you for your answer, I appreciate that!

       

      Best regards,

      Karel

       

  • richie's avatar
    richie
    Community Hero
    4 years ago

    Hey KarelHusa,

     

    tbh - I don't really think smartbear actually 'support' SoapUI anyway - i.e.  if you have an issue you cant resolve, you just have to hope there's a kind and knowledgeable soapui/readyapi! user on the forum or stackoverflow that is willing to help - the only customer support available is for the licensed option (readyapi).

     

    i still think its one of the best freeware options for api testing - postan isnt as functionally rich and the automation is clunky, restassured & restsharp requires either 100% java or c#, soatest is licensed, katalon api is free until you need to plug into a ci/cd/ct pipeline, but tools are catching up.  I mean - you cant load in an openAPI (swagger v3), soapui doesnt include an assertion verification point like readyapi! (meaning you cant write BDD tests properly), the event handling is only available in readyapi (even postman includes equivalent functionality in the freeware version!), etc, etc.

     

    some companies will always go freeware no matter what (despite if the licensing costs of pro software would actually save money and increase story point throughput over time), but others will go freeware initially and discover the pro/licensed version is exactly what they need.  hence why i think its a strategic mistake for smartbear to ignore open source soapui, as soapui can be a gateway into licensing with readyapi!.

     

    however, this approach will only continue if soapui is kept reasonably up to date, and as you say - the code updates are few and far between.

    soapui was considered at my last contract, but because it didnt support creating BDDs and loading in an OAS, they went with Katalon api test.  Theyve since bought the licenses for katalon and that wouldve been readyapi licenses if soapui had included the BDD/OAS functionality.

     

    just my opinion!

     

    cheers,

     

    rich  

    • KarelHusa's avatar
      KarelHusa
      Champion Level 1
      4 years ago

      Hi richie,

      I agree with most of your points. Though SoapUI OS is declining, it's still one of the best options for API testing. No doubt SoapUI has been a great success for many year.

       

      However, it's advantage won't take long if the direction does not change -- that's why I am asking Smartbear, who was in the beginning and still is the main supporter/contributor.

       

      Best regards,

      Karel