Re: [Xen-API] Announcing new version of "XCP"

[Graham Frank <jakiao@xxxxxxxxx>]

This has to be the best news I've woken up to in a few years. Congrats
on XS6.2 and for the direction Citrix is taking!
-Graham

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 9:41 AM, Mike McClurg <mike.mcclurg@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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&amp;view=article&amp;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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