Just to clarify some misconceptions on this thread. TrueNAS is open source. SCALE is just as open source as CORE ever was, arguably more so since we re-licensed it to GPLv3 and LGPLv3, to prevent it from being closed at some later date.
With the inclusion of Linux Containers (I.E. Jails) support in 25.04 in the spring, SCALE will now be considered a super-set of legacy CORE functionality.
Hold on a second?! Any thought about the community edition the thread is about?
Letâs not get into a GPLv3 discussion, please!
Good to have a timeline for this.
Kind of a moot conversation to have right now IMHO. Software is fully open source and has been forever, however itâs a low single digit number of commits by community members every year towards the development of the project. Hard to take seriously any proposal of a âcommunity governanceâ version of software when there is almost zero direct community involvement in the development of said software up until this point. Talk is cheap and we love our forum discussions, we really do. But that talk turning into actual pull requests with significant code is far and few between.
Agree but weâre not signing contracts. And/but if weâd address a few simple details maybe that ball could roll. For example: If someone pushed something up next week would it get looked (glanced) at or ignored? Could theâânext releaseââISO be built/hosted by you? Would you want to retain control of the repo or would you want that out of your control? âŚJust basic questions. nothing solid. I donât think there would be serious community backing but itâs worth an ask/thought.
The software is open source but the project isnât âopenâ in the fundamental way people mean when they talk about âopenâ projects - steering and discussion is closed. Many people donât bother doing drive-by pull requests because most projects donât like receiving drive-by pull requests: âChef, you should add some salt to the soupâ. Others donât bother because they donât feel very connected to the results.
This isnât a negative criticism of iX at all, but I think itâs easy to be âtoo closeâ to your own baby. Itâs not surprising that the project doesnât receive much outside contribution, because itâs your project.
Iâm not suggesting you should change anything. Most open source projects never receive ANY outside contributions.
If somebody wants a community edition they should do the fork and take stewardship and build the relationship with iX (whatever it is) and build a community and enjoy the challenges of being in charge. 
To me this seems kinda like âiX does all the work and doesnât let community govern the development, letâs change that. iX will still do all the work but this time the community will tell them what to doâ 
Between the OG Redmine, then Jira and now the âFeature Requestsâ forum, iX has always taken community feedback and added various things in at the requests of users. So Iâm confused by this statement in its entirety.
Can you provide an example of an operating system with a non-negligible adoption rate that does what you think you are saying?
There have been talks about it in the past, and the answer has always been similar: the community apparently does not have the time, the intention, or the ability to replace iX. At least yet.
So, what are you really asking? If anyone here wants to take the project off of iXâs shoulders? Topic has been talked again and again (I can recall at least 3 different threads with various names in the past 6 months).
But hey, I guess it could be a side effect of ditching the old forum.
I doubt that without a serious project/team behind those questions iX will be able to give you concrete answer to such questions, because they are not really basic imho.
Thatâs BS (sorry). iX can answer basic questions about what theyâd be willing to âsupportâ. People can contribute docs, for example and an updated release can be built easy enough. Now arch issues, I agree. For example, if the proposal to âreplace iocage with Bastille/CBSD/etc.â comes down the pipe I think a CE would want input from iX engineers. However, iX also âsellsâ this so theyâd block any and all arch proposals. So, they should at least discuss what theyâd be comfortable with from a CE stance. Them not talking would only force a hard fork.
The future request forum is only for SCALE, not CORE.
If there was ever monetary value associated with the feedback. I doubt they would support any real CE. System arch questions/issues are never public.
You seem to have a lack of understanding about what the âfreeâ versions of CORE and SCALE are: basically BETAs for enterprise customers.
Now, the enterprise customers for the CORE version want, apparently, only stability⌠the WebUI Shell cannot be fixed (hence its removal btw) levels of stability.
Now why would iX, who has made abudantly clear that is not interested in continuing the development of its FreeBSD market in favour of expansion to the Linux market, allow random people to continue working (beyond CVEs) on BETA releases for a market they are not willing to continue actively competing in?
Do we want CORE to continue staying up to date, maybe not only with FreeBSD but OpenZFS features as well? Well, someone gotta put in the whole effort required, and to do so a branch is inevitable; then, if this operation gains traction and brings significant success, I guess iX could merge. But I highly doubt it.
From my understanding CORE 13.3 will bring no money to iX, and they developed it as a final act for its community⌠now, this might be beacuse they realized they f-up with the hole management of SCALE, because SCALE is not there yet, or because they keep their community in regards to some extent⌠could be any combination of the above, or maybe Iâm completely off mark.
Hey @kris, is it possible for you to shed some light about your reasons for developing 13.3? Or maybe you already did and I do not remember.
Hope the situation is more clear
Is that âLinux Containersâ as in âLXCâ (taking over from systemd-nspawn), or as âsystem containersâ in the general sense of âjailsâ (and possibly still with nspawn)?
Just wondering whether a decision has been made follwing teh recent closure of two related Feature Request threads.
Right, so why wouldnât they discuss a CE? They are not selling CORE to enterprise customers and it is only for the community. So if Ricky changes the makefile to âbuild against 14.1â, or âadds a few mdoc filesâ, or âadds bastilleâ, whatâs stopping them from hitting make and hosting the ISO marked ALPHA on their server (there is very little overhead, their build infrastructure is already in place). Any sort of CE effort needs to first have a sign-in and actual âdescriptionsâ and âcriteriaâ (Actual definitions for: Project, Scope, Budget) defined.
EG:
Proposal: A community effort to improve the longevity of TN Core.
BRIEF
Ultimate goal of compiling TN Core against FreeBSD 14.1.
DESCRIPTION
This project will require knowledge in `makefile`.
All code alterations will be documented.
TIMELINE
Actual changes will not take long (1 week).
Testing (2 months).
FAILSAFE
If after 2 months of testing XYZ, ABC, have not been resolved or found
satisfactory. Code shall be reverted, and issue abandoned.
We need members for the following areas.
Boss (Decision Maker):
Lieutenant (Package Assembly):
Assassin (Documentation editor);
Soldier (Coder / Documentation creation):
EDIT:
My point is whatâs wrong with a simple discussion and/or attempt (whom does it hurt)?
TrueNAS Enterprise will stay on TrueNAS 13.0
TrueNAS 13.3 will not be available for Enterprise system upgrades. Enterprise users need a battle-tested system and donât leverage the Jails or VM compatibility. Staying on 13.0-U6 is the safer and well-supported path for mission-critical storage needs.
TrueNAS Enterprise customers will always be fully supported for the duration of their support contract regardless of their software version. TrueNAS 13.0 will continue to be supported, and hotfixes will be provided for critical bugs or security issues. Staying on 13.0-U6 is often the easy and wise decision for production systems.
The question for the faithful CORE users is whether the enterprise customers will ask hard and loud enough for a TrueNAS Enterprise 14.x to update their 13.0-U6 systems.
Where do you read that they are âsellingâ core to enterprise users? I read that as, EUâs are staying on 13.0. I donât think iX would recommend the use of a community edition to EUâs. I would also not expect EUâs to ask for 14.x (I hope they do, butâŚ).
iXsystems sells a FreeBSD-based version of TrueNAS Enterprise. Thatâs CORE by another name, just like the Linux-based of TrueNAS Enterprise is SCALE by another name.
Neither free version would exist if there were no commercial Enterprise version.
okay. I know that. And they are not selling core any longer (they are now âsellingâ scale to enterprise users) correct? Is that how you read it? âŚthese are the basic questions I wish kris would answer quick so an honest proposal can be started. Iâll even propose a simple addition for some man page additions to get the ball rolling.
I think you overestimate âcommunity developmentâ.
Just look at GlusterFS. Red Hat stopped developing it and it died. The oh so powerful open source community did nothing. Nobody took over.
Itâs always so much talk about how members of community will develop the software and then nothing.
So who do you propose will develop this community edition you speak of?
Are you asking me or the OP?