VyOS Networks Blog

Hello Community!

You may remember that we were to set up a non-profit VyOS Foundation and that we started that process already back then. The progress wasn't very fast, but now pieces of that puzzle are finally falling in place.

A few companies already confirmed their intention to join the foundation, including Arsys, Flow Swiss, Stratus Networks, and ZTelco, and we are talking to more prospective members.

VyOS Foundation

Many open-source software projects are controlled by foundations comprised of multiple independent members, and for a good reason.

If a single commercial company owns the source code, copyrights, and trademarks, there's a risk that another company may hijack the project identity in a hostile takeover.

Well, there's also a risk that the owners change their minds and decide to make the project proprietary: that happened with Observium and multiple other projects. We promise that we are not changing our minds, and we also intentionally don't have any contributor agreements that would give us unlimited rights to your contributions, but a risk of a hostile takeover is always there.

Additionally, corporate and individual users should be able to directly participate in the project governance to ensure their needs are recognized and fulfilled, which is crucial for long-term project success.

The third goal is to make it easier for companies in different countries to purchase VyOS services, and for VyOS experts in those countries to earn money using their skills. Let's face it, the world is far from borderless, and buying from a company in a different country is often much harder than making a deal domestically.

So the plan is to set up a VyOS Foundation non-profit that will own the trademarks and copyright to the source code written by developers on a payroll (but not copyright to code written by community contributors, of course—that will always remain with its authors!).

Setting up a foundation isn't trivial by itself because many governments are suspicious of non-profits (sadly, for a good reason—they are abused for tax evasion and other schemes quite often). We also needed to choose the jurisdiction carefully to ensure that the foundation will serve its members best in the long run.

Now it's happening: we are in process of registering a foundation in Switzerland.

The foundation needs members other than ourselves, of course. Now we already have a few companies on board: Arsys, Flow Swiss,  Stratus Networks, and ZTelco, and we are having talks with more prospective members now.

Corporate members will receive substantial benefits, including access to all VyOS LTS release flavors and future software developed by the foundation, the right to use VyOS logos and trademarks for their products and services, and voting power in the board and the technical steering committee, and some more additional perks.

If your company wants to join, let us know!

Individual membership details are to be worked out, but we assure you that community contributors to the project will be on the steering committee and there will be a process for nomination and election.

Last but not least, Yuriy Andamasov is in the USA right now (in San Diego, CA, specifically), until December the 23d, so if you represent an American company and want to talk about corporate membership in VyOS Foundation or have other interests in VyOS Project, feel free to send him an email if you want to arrange a meeting.

Local VyOS companies

The plan to have VyOS services handled by local companies in different countries is also in progress now. The idea is that those companies should be owned and staffed by local VyOS experts. Now there's a VyOS company in Australia thanks to Ben Babich! We are also having talks with long-time VyOS contributors in Japan to form a company there, so stay tuned for updates. This is all in addition to already existing VyOS companies in the USA and Europe.  More companies will be formed VyOS grows and lots of more countries local economies will benefit from our activity.

VyOS 1.3.0 release?

There haven't been VyOS 1.3.0 release posts in a while. There was a lot of work though: community members were reporting bugs and we've been fixing them. That's not counting backporting features, reviewing pull requests sent by community members, and testing the latest builds on our own production routers.

Now that our routers have been running the 1.3.0-epa3 for a while, there's a decision to release the stable 1.3.0 before the end of the year, most likely on a neat-looking date: December the 21st.

Stay tuned!

P.S. Remember, no one likes buggy routers, so we'll rather delay the release than make it hit the public with some nasty bugs in it, so if we find a blocker, we will fix it before releasing. But we hope that we don't and everything will go as planned.