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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

[HELP: HOW IS OPENSWITCH LICENSED?]

HP has launched [openswitch.net] the OpenSwitch open source network operating system (NOS) with supporters [openswitch.net] Accton Technology Corporation, Arista, Broadcom, Intel, VMWare, and Qosmos. Binaries are available now and source code will be available soon. The Platform reports [theplatform.net]:

The open networking movement just got a little bit more open. While a number of network operating systems already exist that are based on the Linux kernel and that include a number of open source add-ons that provide the functionality of closed, proprietary network operating systems, thus far there has not been one that is fully open source and that also has commercial support. Today, that changes as Hewlett-Packard, which has a fairly large datacenter switch business, launches OpenSwitch, a new Linux-based and open source network operating system that is inspired by its own Comware and ProVision stacks for switches that have their heritage in 3Com and HP devices, respectively.

[...] "We have done a lot of work over the past 18 months to build a full-fledged, modular, modern Linux-based operating system, but we are putting it out there and we are not going to have exclusive rights to it," Carroll explains, saying that the OpenSwitch community will have a board that guides its development. "It is a flexible foundation for developers in the open switch community to create high-quality network enhancements specifically for the datacenter environment for themselves specifically or to be provided as a service."

Not to be outdone, Facebook and Big Switch Networks have [theplatform.net] launched their own NOS [opennetlinux.org]. It is licensed under the Eclipse Public License [eclipse.org]:

Hot on the heels of Hewlett-Packard announcing its OpenSwitch open source switch operating system, Big Switch Networks, a provider of software-defined networking tools based on the OpenFlow protocol, and Facebook, one of the world's largest hyperscalers and an adamant proponent of open networking, have crafted their own open source network operating system.

The two are demonstrating the pairing of OpenNetLinux from Big Switch and FBOSS from Facebook, which together comprise a basic switch operating system that can – and probably will – compete with HP's OpenSwitch as well as alternatives from Cumulus Networks, Pluribus Networks, Pica8, and others. This competition across various NOS stacks, both on the technical merits and the relative openness of their software, is healthy for the nascent open networking space.

[...] It remains to be seen, says Sherwood, how the HP OpenSwitch effort and OpenNetLinux can or will coexist or cooperate. The Big Switch team is going to comb through the OpenSwitch code to see what is in there, but on first glance, Sherwood thinks that HP has taken a basic Linux kernel as its bottom half of the NOS and put a "very interesting" top half on it, much as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon have done with their homegrown software.

Original Submission