Thank you all for your questions, comments and suggestions. Let me clarify some aspects of the new policy we put in place earlier this month:
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As already mentioned in the original announcement, it is our understanding that the original concept of open source has to be adapted to the current circumstances because it is profoundly unfair for the community when large corporations adopt a successful open source project without contributing to make the project sustainable in the long term.
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We are not adopting an “open core” model here, because what OpenNebula Enterprise Edition brings along is basically a more tested, hardened, and production-ready version of OpenNebula that incorporates additional bug fixes developed by OpenNebula Systems and software patches with minor enhancements. OpenNebula CE is a full-featured version, and comes with the same functional components and product features, but follows a separate maintenance cycle (with the CE one based on community contributions). For more details, please read our Release Policy.
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The OpenNebula Community Edition is released under Apache License 2.0, and our commitment to the Open Source Definition remains intact. Users of OpenNebula CE retain all the rights that this license has always provided, including the option to use a specific version of the product for as long as they want. Just a reminder: open source licenses protect both users’ and developers’ rights and freedoms.
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Corporate users with an active OpenNebula Subscription will have access to the EE migrator packages, among other benefits that we think they deserve due to their commitment to the project. For more details, and access to an online pricing calculator (which has always been public, btw), visit https://opennebula.io/get-upgrade/. As you can see, our pricing model is simple and clear, and it’s based on two key components: the type of front-end deployment, and the type and number of managed nodes. It is described in our web page and in our Subscription Guide. As it happens, in a few days we’ll be publishing a new series of datasheets showing the savings that OpenNebula provides in comparison with VMware and OpenStack vendors…
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Regarding the upgrade process for the OpenNebula CE, we have indeed announced that migration packages will be available for users with non-commercial deployments or significant contributions to the OpenNebula Community. Translation: companies that make money with OpenNebula, and therefore benefit directly from the work we do as an open source project, are from now on expected to give something back, either via OpenNebula Subscription or with some significant contribution to the code. This sounds just fair to us, although we understand that it puts some pressure on companies that until now assumed Free Software was free (as in free beer), and didn’t see any benefit in engaging with the OpenNebula community.
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Regular users can always get access to the CE migrators via https://opennebula.io/get-migration/ We provide these in good faith, so companies or individuals that, instead of trying to find a way to contribute to the project and its community, decide instead to use or distribute the migrator packages in violation of the OpenNebula Software License Agreement for Non-Commercial Use must know that they would be liable to legal action.
To wrap up: as we announced earlier this year in our traditional Year in Review blog post, the OpenNebula project is in the middle of an exciting turning point. We are incorporating amazing new features to the product, and consolidating its positioning as a powerful enterprise-ready platform for private, hybrid and edge clouds. Through the EU-funded OneEdge project, we are creating a pioneering open source Edge Computing platform, which is playing a key role in our approach towards serverless computing based on a unified orchestration of VMs, system containers and application containers.
The policy change we adopted in early June is intended to deliver more value to regular users and to the increasing number of corporate users and companies that decide to establish an active commitment to the project and engage with its community. Companies with a Corporate Social Responsibility approach towards open source, and in particular towards the OpenNebula project, are the ones that we believe really deserve to benefit from our work. As simple as that.
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PS - Users with non-commercial deployments or with significant contributions to the OpenNebula community, please get your CE migrator packages by submitting this simple online form: https://opennebula.io/get-migration/