Although SOA, Open Source Software (OSS) and Globally Distributed Development (GDD) appear to be unprecedented phenomena, it must be remembered that they did not arise from nothing. Before embarking on a new architecture or a new software model or a new method of making and maintaining software, it is wise to consider carefully what SOA, OSS and GDD are, what they represent and where they come from. The promise of homogeneous services was behind the development of Enterprise JavaBeans Java technology, and before that, CORBA. Good SOA is open, standards-based, community-driven, governable, modular and easily available – some of these concepts have been around for a long time. For OSS, it's the same.