Apache Camel is a library that implements enterprise integration patterns (EIP). Although it can use Spring as its IOC infrastructure, it is not even dependent on Spring, so it is completely platform independent. This is a "just" library. This way you can run it in any JVM environment, for example. simple jvm, servlet, ejb, osgi. This does not bring any benefits (or overhead) to a container such as Mule. This, in my opinion, is a cleaner separation of problems in this area.
Mule can also be embedded in different environments, but I think that Mule has both advantages and disadvantages of linking its EIP library with their container. When you deploy Mule inside a servlet or ejb environment, do you really want to carry all this Mule container baggage? I'm not a Mule expert, and I think you can probably spend relatively modest efforts and eliminate some of the redundant features. (Note that this is not a bad feature in all cases, it is simply redundant if you run the built-in in another container.)
Apache ServiceMix is an OSGI container that Camel uses to implement EIP as the foundation of ESB. Although ServiceMix historically began with its roots in JBI, it moved away from JBI and evolved into (IMO) a beautiful layered architecture that combines the best-in-class Apache CXF, Camel, and ActiveMQ in an OSGI container. The primary meaning here is not the ServiceMix service and its JBI support, but the basic OSGI container standard is associated with trusted Apache vehicles such as CXF for web services and ActiveMQ for JMS. OSGI is a mature standard that offers a container that accesses the same types of "DLLs" that Microsoft pursued before the advent of .NET. Although neither .NET nor OSGI solves the substantial complexity of the underlying problem, they at least provide a means to solve it. OSGI has other advantages, but from the point of view of choosing a product, the main container based on standards, and its essential function, which Mule (and Java in general) does not address, is dependency management.
Some important things to consider when comparing Mule with Apache communities. The mule is like Redhat in the sense that although it is an open source license, in my opinion it is not an open community. Anyone can participate in Apache, while MuleSoft owns the Mule community and the final roadmap. Secondly, although the Mule community is probably quite active, I think the Apache community is much larger (and, naturally, because it is not a closed community). Both approaches have both pros and cons. One of the benefits of the Apache approach is the availability of several providers for ESB based on Camel, CXF, ActiveMQ and OSGI. For example, Talend offers ESBs for the same core technologies without the ServiceMix JBI history. This has both pros and cons in the Apache community, but the real point is to emphasize the difference between Apache and Mule. You will not find multidisciplinary suppliers in the Mula community. Thus, the IMO Apache ESB, such as Talend or ServiceMix, is a wider and more comprehensive and ultimately competitive community than a closed community such as Mule.
Ed ost