VyOS Networks Blog

Hello, Community!

Happy Friday!

The VyOS 1.3.0-epa2 release is underway and we’d like to say thanks to everyone who contributes and makes that possible, by working together with us and by funding the project through purchasing our services.

Big thank you!

In this post, we'll talk about old and new benefits for those who support us and some changes to the subscriptions we are about to make

Benefits for contributors

It never hurts to say that again: VyOS is a community-driven project, and all active members of the community are a crucial part of its success. 

We look forward to seeing more contributors as our project grows, and we want to reward active community members. So, a quick reminder: being an active member of the VyOS community brings you tangible benefits. Contributor status gives you free access to prebuilt images, cloud images, certifications, significant discounts for training and events, and more.

You can also include the contributor badge in your CV to show potential employers that you have experience working in a distributed software development project. Since we issue proper, verifiable Credly badges, potential employers can easily verify them. However, we can also provide recommendation letters for active contributors if employers require them—we understand how hard it can be to get recommendations, especially for those who just begin their IT industry career, and we are happy to help.

We also would like to remind you that we value all contributions, not just code. Documentation is very important, and we are grateful for every pull request in vyos-documentation. Testing rolling release and release candidate images is also important, and so it supporting people on the forums and chats, writing and giving talks about VyOS, and promoting the project. If you are already contributing, feel free to apply for a subscription.

The rule of thumb is: if you have three non-trivial contributions in a year, you get a year of free access to our pre-built LTS images. What counts as a non-trivial contribution is hard to define, but we think common sense applies here: thee separate patches to fix a single-letter typo are definitely an attempt to game the system, while the fixes for simple but real bugs, extensive proofreading of the documentation, or three informative posts about VyOS are definitely valid contributions that deserve a reward. A single major contribution can also be worthy of a reward, like a big feature or a talk at a major conference. Contributors who stay active for a long time can also earn lifetime subscriptions, at our discretion.

Benefits for long-time customers

Our project also wouldn’t be possible without customers who fund its development by purchasing subscriptions and deploy VyOS routers from cloud marketplaces. We value all our customers and our goal is to build long-term, trusted relationships with them rather than just make a quick profit. If you’ve been a customer for a while, you already know that we do not raise prices for existing subscriptions and don’t phase out old subscriptions when we make pricing updates.

Soon it will be time for a new pricing update, to reflect the increased value that the 1.3.0 LTS will bring to customers, and to adjust for inflation and the general economic situation. As usual, those changes will only affect new customers, so if your company is not a customer yet, you may want to purchase a subscription now to take advantage of the old pricing. The “no price increases for existing customers” rule applies to all customers no matter how long they have been with us.

However, we also want to reward our most loyal customers who have been with us for 2-3 years already—those who believed in the project when many people were saying that it’s not viable.

Everyone who purchased a Professional subscription more than two years ago will receive access to prebuilt images for Hyper-V, XenServer, KVM, and VMware (preserving any additional platforms).

Everyone who purchased Corporate subscriptions more than two years ago will receive a 20-40% discount on Cloud Packs (depending on whether they purchased the subscription two or three years ago) and early access to container images with VyOS 1.3 and support for the same.  Those companies who have subscriptions for 2+ years may request free of charge VyOS training for engineers (just submit a ticket at support.vyos.io)

Updated terms for free subscriptions 

We also would like to talk about our free access subscriptions for non-profits, educational institutions, and first responders. Our goal is to make advanced networking capabilities accessible for everyone who needs them—that is why we introduced those free subscriptions.

However, on our part, that's a pure goodwill act. More people using VyOS don't automatically make the project more successful unless they actively participate, even if just by spreading awareness of the project. Let's put it bluntly: we think we are entitled to a reciprocate act of goodwill from recipients of those free subscriptions, many of whom are pretty big and successful organizations that could pay for those subscriptions or significantly help VyOS gain recognition and reputation.

We don't want to take away the opportunity to get a free subscription from those organizations, but we also want them to help us move the project forward in response. Thus, from now on, all recipients of those free subscriptions will be required to provide us with a case study within one year to be eligible for renewal

Thank you, All for building open-source networking with us!