Hi xen-api,
Today Citrix has made a few big announcements. One is that there is a
new version of XenServer available, version 6.2. Another is that this
version of XenServer is available for use completely free -- all the
features of XenServer that used to be available only in the Platinum
edition (or in XCP) are now available without applying a product
license, and without paying Citrix money. And the biggest announcement
that Citrix made is that we are now committed to making XenServer fully
open source.
You are probably aware of Citrix's "interesting" relationship with
open-source software, particularly with the peculiarities of the
relationship between XCP and XenServer. These issues stemmed from the
original way in which XenServer was open sourced. We open sourced most
of the XenServer code base with no intention of forming a development
community around it, but instead to create a new thing, called XCP,
which would function as the vehicle to showcase this newly open sourced
code. It would start out as a de-branded XenServer, but the hopes were
that it would truly become a broader, open source virtualisation
platform for cloud computing. That never really happened, and XCP was
left as a strange twin brother to XenServer, one that Citrix as a
business never really acknowledged the existence of.
We would like to change that. Citrix as a business is happy with how
CloudStack's Apache foundation move has gone, and would like to see a
similar thing happen with XenServer. XenServer Engineering is committed
to making XenServer a proper open source product, and is working right
now to figure out how to change our development model to be more open
source. We are putting BSD or GPL licenses on all but a few of our
source repositories, and we are in the process of setting up public
mirrors to those repositories, along with mailing lists to accept code
contributions.
We aren't planning on XenServer becoming a true open source project
overnight, but we are laying the foundations for this change to happen.
As a result of this move to open source, a number of changes will be
happening to XenServer and XCP:
- XenServer will be completely free to use. We will still charge for
support, but we are no longer restricting any features* in the free
edition. There will also no longer be a need to "activate" the free
edition. Essentially the XenServer you download from Citrix will
function the same as the XCP you downloaded from xen.org. (* The only
thing that can be done with a paid-for XenServer is apply hotfixes via
XenCenter. Hotfixes will still be applicable via the CLI.)
- Notable software that we are open sourcing is our windows PV drivers,
XenCenter, and HA. We will not be open sourcing the v6 license daemon
(links to closed-source binary), our build system code (we're moving
away from our current build system, and we don't have the resources to
support external users) nor any of the closed source third-party driver
tools we ship with XenServer, for which we have no control over.
- XenServer's installer will have an option to install only open source
components. This option will be enabled by default when upgrading from
XCP. The compoenents that won't be installed include closed-source
storage drivers, the v6d licensing daemon, and the HA daemon.
(Unfortunately, we don't own the copyright to the HA daemon code, and
weren't able to get approval from the owner to release the code as GPL
in time for the XenServer 6.2 release. We have since received permission
to release this code as GPLv2, and we will be doing so shortly.)
- The latest version of XenServer will be able to upgrade from XCP 1.6.
If someone upgrades from XCP 1.6 to XenServer 6.2, they will have the
pure-open source configuration. If you do not want this, then we
recommend you do a fresh install.
- We are fixing the components that make up XenServer so that they are
buildable and installable on third-party Linux distros. We started this
effort with project Kronos, and we're picking it up again in response to
CentOS's Xen initiative. We're committing to becoming a proper upstream
software producer from which other Linux distros can package our software.
- We will no longer build a thing called XCP. Because XenServer is free
to use in both the gratis and libre sense, there is no longer a need to
produce a different build of XenServer that is debranded and slightly
hobbled. The complexity of producing XCP over the years has been too
high, and the benefits of doing so from an open source perspective have
disappeared in light of the changes that we're making to both XenServer
itself, and the XenServer development model. I really want to emphasise
here that XCP users will be getting a better deal than they had before.
No more delays to XCP releases, timely hotfixes that can be easily
installed, and a product that's even more open than it was before.
- XCP users who upgrade or switch to using XenServer will have a number
of benefits. XenCenter will work much better with XenServer than it ever
did with XCP. Hotfixes will be applicable as soon as they are created,
without the need to convert them to be applicable on XCP. HA will be
available. And no more waiting for months for a new version of XCP to be
built after a XenServer release.
I'm really excited about these changes to XenServer. I want to really
emphasise that the XCP community will be getting so much more out of the
new XenServer than they did out of XCP, both in terms of features, and
open source software. Please go visit the new XenServer.org [2] website,
and follow the download links to try XenServer 6.2. If you're interested
in the souce code itself, check out the XenServer organisation on Github
[3]. As we announced last week, the Xapi Toolstack code is not at
github.com/xapi-project [4].
Mike
[1]
http://www.xenserver.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79
[2] http://www.xenserver.org
[3] http://github.com/xenserver
[4] http://github.com/xapi-project
PS: I'll personally mail some free Xen Project swag to the first person
who can get XenCenter (https://github.com/xenserver/xenadmin) compiling
on Linux or OSX with mono ;)
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