Towards a Stronger OpenNebula Community

I am a bit confused about the ‘migrators’ part. Does this for instance mean we cannot run onedb upgrade to do the database migrations?

Hello.

I’m a little bit concerned by this opencore switch.

We distribute OpenNebula in turn-key solution for french schools and all
this make me think that we couldn’t distribute OpenNebula anymore. Our
Ubuntu derivative is publicly available and we need the migrators for
our users but they are not libre anymore.

I’m sad that you are in a situation where you need to make that choice
but this seems to us that it’s the end of this wonderful story :frowning:

Regards.

That’s how I understand it. Why else would they delete all existing migration scripts from the GitHub repo?

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Dennis Felsch via OpenNebula Community opennebula@discoursemail.com
writes:

That’s how I understand it. Why else they would delete all existing migration scripts from the GitHub repo?

So, it seems I understood correctly.

This will make OpenNebula out of the list of recommended software for
the french government[1].

Footnotes:
[1] in french Le socle interministériel de logiciels libres est un ensemble de logiciels libres préconisés par l'État français depuis 2013.

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Hi @howels, and welcome to the Community Forum.

For the OpenNebula Community Edition, there has been no change in terms of licensing. The Apache License 2.0 applies to the source code, packages, and package sources of Major/Minor/Maintenance releases of OpenNebula CE. For more details, please visit: Release Policy · OpenNebula/one Wiki · GitHub

What is now for internal use only⁠—as it used to be not that long ago⁠—is the GitHub repo where the OpenNebula Team stores the package templates. Still, if you have any special needs for creating those Docker images, just send me a PM and I’ll see how we can help :slight_smile:

Hi Daniel!

That sounds quite “non-commercial” to me, so the easiest thing to do in your case would be simply to submit this on-line form asking for the migrators, and one of my colleagues will review the application once OpenNebula 5.12 is out, and contact you: https://opennebula.io/get-migration/

As for the “opencore switch”, don’t worry because the Community Edition is a full-featured version of OpenNebula, released under Apache License 2.0. What the Enterprise Edition brings along are additional bug fixes developed by OpenNebula Systems and software patches with minor enhancements. At the end of each maintenance cycle, we contribute those additions back to the Community Edition, so that EE and CE are in sync for each new Major/Minor release :wink:

Hi @roedie,

If you think your case qualifies as a “non-commercial deployment”, please submit this on-line form once OpenNebula 5.12 is out: https://opennebula.io/get-migration/

Companies with commercial deployments in a production environment (i.e. that somehow make money with OpenNebula), and with no significant contributions to the Community, are expected to support the project at least financially by purchasing an OpenNebula Subscription.

Of course, as the OpenNebula Community Edition is released under Apache License 2.0, anyone can always keep using an specific version of OpenNebula CE for as long as they want, with no restrictions apart from those defined by the license itself.

Gosh, I thought I asked a simple Yes/No question, turns out that’s not the case… But, when I feed this text through my BS filter it gives 98% certainty on ‘No’.

So, to get this straight. No, you cannot upgrade Opennebula CE unless:

  1. You reverse engineer the upgrade process yourself
  2. Fit is some special rules
  3. Have a subscription, in which case you can run Enterprise!

I can remember being at the tech days at Bit in Ede and Opennebula conf in Berlin where you guys where all ‘Opensource and Free Software is the way to go!’. That spirit sure died somewhere.

I do understand you need to make money, but somehow the way it is brought, with a lot of text and fuzz, annoys me.

Alberto P. Martí via OpenNebula Community opennebula@discoursemail.com
writes:

Hello.

That sounds quite “non-commercial” to me, so the easiest thing to do
in your case would be simply to submit this on-line form asking for
the migrators
, and one of my colleagues will review the application
once OpenNebula 5.12 is out, and contact you:
https://opennebula.io/get-migration/

Sorry, I was not very clear: if we get the migrators, we will package
them in our Ubuntu derivatives and they will be publicly available to
everyone in our Git repositories and Deb packages repository.

As for the “opencore switch”, don’t worry because the Community Edition is a full-featured version of OpenNebula, released under Apache License 2.0. What the Enterprise Edition brings along are additional bug fixes developed by OpenNebula Systems and software patches with minor enhancements. At the end of each maintenance cycle, we contribute those additions back to the Community Edition, so that EE and CE are in sync for each new Major/Minor release :wink:

I read the release-policy and I’m glad that the community edition is
full-featured.

So, if I understand correctly the release cycle diagram:

  • Major release X.0 is releases at the same time for community
    and commercial editions

  • Minor release X.Y is released at the same time for community and
    commercial editions

  • Maintenance release of community edition X.Y.0.Z is released just
    before commercial edition X.Y.Z+1 is released.

Am I right?

Regards.

Hi Daniel,

Maintenance releases for the CE and the EE follow independent schedules (we’ll modify our wiki to reflect this a bit better), but yes, apart from that detail, all the rest regarding Major/Minor releases is correct.

Hi @roedie,

I’m sorry you feel that way, and apologies for not being able to provide a binary answer to your original question. We’ve tried to ensure that these measures have a minimum impact on users with non-commercial deployments, so that’s why there are a number of exceptions that apply to some specific cases.

As for our commitment to Free (as in free speech) and Open Source Software, I would like to confirm that it remains intact, and that’s why the new OpenNebula CE will be a full-featured version of OpenNebula, released under Apache License 2.0. But, as you probably know, producing high-quality open source sofware is not free (as in free beer), so it seems just fair to expect those organizations with commercial deployments that benefit from the work we do as an open source community, to somehow support the project in an active, constructive and sustainable way—a bit like this, I guess…

I had a related question. In enterprise subscription, do you have to define a hypervisor license per node during the purchase? In my current setup we are using both LXD and KVM on the same node which is a bit hacky but works, does it change in 5.12? What about other hypervisors like Firecracker?

Hi @Alexander_Litvak,

We will contact you by email to know more about your particular needs and provide you with more information.

Thanks!

in case you guys didn’t spot it, this is where you definitely made the wrong turn.

Dear Alberto & all…
there’s a lot of “open core” products I used, both commercially supported in the $$$$$$ range and without support.
not a single project had ever made the choice to limit upgrades/migrations. (and the others don’t have such fragile database “schema” and working backup/restore mechanisms). I’ll probably not be affected much, but I’m also affected by if there’s more or less users, more or less industry footprint etc… But really, in very simple terms: this is a bad decision, especially since you’re somehow not able to just offer a ‘cheap’ d/l subscription like other projects do.
the offering feels unrefined to me, it needs to make people want to have it, not to force them.

please find a solution that ensures you stay recognized as a usable OSS project i.e. in France - such recommendation lists are effective (in OSS and commercial terms) beyond dreams.

please don’t forget you can ask your community for advice before making product decisions that “strengthen the community” aka wipe you off a whole national gov market instead.

5 Likes

Unbelievable! My deployment is totally non-commercial, but I won’t beg for migrators licensed under some proprietary license. This contradicts with my understanding of free software. You really shouldn’t build your business model around the obstruction of upgrade paths.

Some time ago, I found a problem with the fsck tool and fixed it. If I had access to the proprietary migrators and found a bug in them, would I be then not allowed to post my fix here on the forums because of this license crap? Rhethoric question, of course…

Can anybody with access to the non-free migrators to 5.12 please tell whether they contain more fixes than the last available ones on Github? I’m referring to these two files.

1 Like

I think as well that you took the wrong route. It should always be possible to upgrade to another version.

We do use Open Nebula commercially. But we have less than 50 VMs running on it and at the moment we don’t make money with this infrastructure. We wanted to have it first running for a year or two to see if it fits our needs and then we would scale up. And I am not willing to pay a lot of money in this first year to see if it fits our needs. (I already invest many hours.)

If you would have an offer where I only need to pay 100 or 200 dollars for a small scale infrastructure then it would be something different. But right now you created a mess that doesn’t make the community stronger.

Thanks for your feedback, Florian. We’ve taken this decision precisely to avoid an “open core” model, and given that migrators will be available for non-commercial deployments, we think that this minimizes quite a lot the impact of these changes on regular users, while ensuring that corporate users that actively support OpenNebula get the benefits that they deserve for their contribution to the sustainability of the project.

As for the French SILL ( Socle Interministériel de Logiciels Libres), it is our understanding that, given that OpenNebula CE is released under Apache License 2.0, there is no fundamental conflict with their policy of inclusion on the list: https://disic.github.io/sill/index.html#orge3a69d7

Hi Wilma. Sorry if these changes go against your personal understanding of free software. Again, given that OpenNebula CE is released under Apache License 2.0, it is our understanding that those corporate users with commercial deployments that don’t support the project (i.e via OpenNebula Subscription or with some significant contribution to the OpenNebula Community), will always have their four essential freedoms intact.

Our commitment to the universal principles of Free Software implies that (among other things) anyone can keep using an specific version of OpenNebula for as long as they want, or undertake the development or maintenance actions they decide on their version of OpenNebula, with no restrictions at all (apart from those imposed by the Apache License 2.0 itself).

Hi Raffael. In your case, as you are running a PoC, I’d strongly recommend that you contact us through https://opennebula.io/get-migration/ so that my colleagues can look into your circumstances and provide you with some specific advice.

So if I’m understanding correctly there is no more CE migrator.
You can’t go from 5.10 to 5.12?
The only way is to explain what you do with Open Nebula to get access(if non commercial)?

If that’s true then this is really sad.

What you are doing here is a cheap lawyers’ trick. You remove an essential piece of a free software, put it under restrictions and keep repeating: “But the rest of it remains free”. Technically, you’re right. Morally, it is more than questionable.

Furthermore, you’re breaking a promise here. You promoted this software once with “long term stability and performance through a single integrated patching and updating process” (Source).

Who knows, next month you might remove all KVM support or Sunstone and make it only accessible under your proprietary license. And still you can claim, the rest of OpenNebula was still free software. And the corresponding blog post’s title would be “Strengthening the community even more”. Do we have any guarantees that this will not happen?

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Hi @branislav_k. If you are interested in the 5.10 > 5.12 migrators, just fill in this form confirming yours is a non-commercial deployment, and that’s pretty much all you need to do: https://opennebula.io/get-migration/

Hi @wilma_hermann. What you are describing is an “open core” approach, which is precisely the model we’re trying to avoid.

As I said before, OpenNebula CE is a full-featured version of OpenNebula, released under Apache License 2.0. Access to migrators for commercial deployments (which is something that is not required to run the software, or to exercise the rest of rights granted by the Apache License) will only be available for those corporate users that contribute to the project in an active way.

It is our understanding that the long-term sustainability of open source as a whole requires corporate users to seriously consider this as part of their social responsibility. If yours is a non-commercial deployment, please submit the aforementioned form to get access to the CE migrators.

Try harder, it has not worked so far!

No, it’s not! OpenNebula 5.10.x contained the feature to upgrade an installation of a previous version. OpenNebula CE 5.12.0 lacks this feature. How can something be full-featured if a feature is missing?

It is required to run the software against an existing database! If my database contains entries from a previous version, OpenNebula CE 5.12.0 refuses to start. If access to the migrators is not a requirement, then - obviously - wiping my database is a requirement to run the software. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?

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