What is the future of TrueNAS CORE?

[Kris Moore]

You're insane. I used Word and was labeled a weirdo, I'm surprised they didn't find a technicality to keep you from getting your degree. I can't imagine using Open/Libre Office for such a thing.

Seriously... We all know Vim is the only proper tool to author your thesis :)

 

[sremick]

Just my 2C on some of the comments lamenting FreeBSD. I totally understand the sentimental feelings about the OS.

I don't think it's fair to reduce the objections of many in this thread to being "sentimental". Many have already outlined specific ways that they find FreeBSD to be objectively and categorically superior to Linux. And there are plenty of longer detailed comparisons available on the internet.

Stagnation in tech is a killer. In the software & hardware industry, you have to move forward, adapting and innovating while you go, otherwise you get left behind.

It's not FreeBSD which has "stagnated". It is iXsystems' support of TrueNAS CORE which stagnated. The latest version of TrueNAS CORE is based on FreeBSD 13.0 which was released in 2021. And most of the new features, improvements and bug-fixes have only been applied to TrueNAS SCALE with no intention on applying them to TrueNAS CORE.

 

[garm]

You're insane. I used Word and was labeled a weirdo, I'm surprised they didn't find a technicality to keep you from getting your degree. I can't imagine using Open/Libre Office for such a thing.

By then Uppsala University had almost exclusively migrated off Unix to Windows and we where expected to use Word for all technical papers. I wanted to use LateX but got to much pushback from lab partners and professors as they wanted the editable file and not just a pdf print...

A big part of this was that PTC had stopped supporting Solaris by then and to run ProEngineer you needed Windows workstations. Windchill was still possible to deploy on Solaris but no one knew how that worked any more..

 

[Davvo]

@sremick Kris has already explained his opinion on the state of things, multiple times. All in all, if iX is convinced their paying customers want Linux and not FreeBSD it's completely understandable they would opt for developing the former instead of the letter. It's something it has already been discussed in the previous posts, please read them guys and do not just jump at the bottom to state your point: it's very likely that someone else has already done so.​

 

[british]

Like many others, I'm extremely sad to hear this news. Not sure if its been mentioned, but if someone comes up with a fork of Core, why not call it FreeNAS Core, and hand back the freenas.org domain to the project.

If a decent fork does not happen, then I will just run FreeBSD and do it all via command line. Again, very very sad about this news.

 

[Kris Moore]

I don't think it's fair to reduce the objections of many in this thread to being "sentimental". Many have already outlined specific ways that they find FreeBSD to be objectively and categorically superior to Linux. And there are plenty of longer detailed comparisons available on the internet.

I think the wider industry would disagree with that emphatically, just looking at overall usage trends of Linux vs FreeBSD. Linux Containers vs Jails, etc. Something we'll just have to disagree on.

It's not FreeBSD which has "stagnated". It is iXsystems' support of TrueNAS CORE which stagnated. The latest version of TrueNAS CORE is based on FreeBSD 13.0 which was released in 2021. And most of the new features, improvements and bug-fixes have only been applied to TrueNAS SCALE with no intention on applying them to TrueNAS CORE.

Yes and no. TrueNAS 13.3 is coming and its not that far behind FreeBSD. FreeBSD 14.0 doesn't radically move the needle any major way for us either way. Its not like all the sudden hardware vendors are flocking back, driver support is radically better, application support, etc, etc. The ports tree didn't suddenly start being amazing to develop against (considering what we just went through to update to 13.3, we ought to know). But again, we probably just see things from different perspectives here.

 

[victort]

I appreciate the differing opinions on this to be honest. Everyone has their choices they make, and those choices will be met with both support and opposition.

It would be nice if there was a way to combine all the good into one nice package, without all the bad, but there really isn’t.

We will just have to continue through life (like everything else) making the choices that fit our needs, values, and priorities the most.

 

[awasb]

Well, let‘s discuss the licenses then …

 

[derzahla]

By then Uppsala University had almost exclusively migrated off Unix to Windows and we where expected to use Word for all technical papers. I wanted to use LateX but got to much pushback from lab partners and professors as they wanted the editable file and not just a pdf print...

A big part of this was that PTC had stopped supporting Solaris by then and to run ProEngineer you needed Windows workstations. Windchill was still possible to deploy on Solaris but no one knew how that worked any more..

screen name: garm... Went to school in Uppsala so presumably from the Norden region? Could this be the notorious Trickster G Wolf Rex himself or just another fan?

 

[derzahla]

Anyone done any work on a fork yet? Id love to help test.

My thoughts: One of most useful features that TrueNAS adds IMO is that in addition to boot environments, if shit really hits the fan, the config database allows restoring to a fresh install very easily. I would love to see or help with a fork that provided these features on top of an FBSD 14 base but also facilitated customization and extensions where TrueNAS purposely puts up road blocks. Expanding the flexibility of the config database to easily include customization outside the scope of whats currently 'allowed' would sure be nice. That, plus porting over the basic UI middleware in a modular way that allows disabling some of the unneeded/unwanted crippling functionality would be great( Im thinking, for instance, the VM management portion that exposes a very limited set of options and uses validation to blow away any additional features that may be enabled manually in a VM's config).

I've looked into ClonOS and XIgmaNAS but both seemed rather cumbersome for my use cases. If not a fork of TrueNAS, maybe a NAS+ focused NomadBSD type system would be interesting

 

[Kris Moore]

Well, let‘s discuss the licenses then …

Ohh, yes, lets talk license. I love talking license.

The BSD license is great. Its simple, easy to understand, comply with and lets you do anything you want. It also provides zero benefit to any company or project which intends to keep their code-base open source for the duration.

You read that correctly.

If you are a project or company, that intends to mix your code with closed source (or heaven forbid, close existing BSD licensed code) then it is your best friend. This is the real world. We've seen it time and time again with commercial vendors who take BSD, give nothing back and close source their code. I bet most BSD folks here know which companies I'm talking about. I wish people and companies were always altruistic, but alas that is not the world we live in.

For iX, Open Source is in our blood. So GPL vs BSD doesn't particularly scare us nor provide any real benefit either way, except that having more GPL in TrueNAS gives you the user a bit more assurance that you know its not going to get yanked out from under you at some point :)

 

[garm]

Could this be the notorious Trickster G Wolf Rex himself

Naw, first time hearing about Ulver, but I'm probably gonna listen to them now :P I got the name from a Swedish knife brand Fällkniven that have a model called Garm Fighter, so after looking up what Garm was I started using the name while gaming at age 15 and I never found a reason to change it. My Fällkniven S1 has been my primary hunting/survival knife for almost 30 years now and I've used the name about as long :D

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Seriously... We all know Vim is the only proper tool to author your thesis :)

The Unix standard editor is ed(1). There's a book about it.

 

[Kris Moore]

The Unix standard editor is ed(1). There's a book about it.

But, BSD isn't UNIX and we will tolerate no blasphemy against the sacred Vim around here

 

[winnielinnie]

This thread lends credence to this meme.

 

[Etorix]

For iX, Open Source is in our blood. So GPL vs BSD doesn't particularly scare us nor provide any real benefit either way, except that having more GPL in TrueNAS gives you the user a bit more assurance that you know its not going to get yanked out from under you at some point :)

If I read this story correctly, the GPL did not prevent IBM from putting CentOS behind a paywall, essentially killing all projects that relied on it:

Red Hat Goes Full IBM and Says Farewell to CentOS

Red Hat made the decision to effectively end the CentOS project by curtailing future updates and support for CentOS 8 and anything beyond

www.servethehome.com

As long as paying customers can receive the source code on request, the GPL is complied with. They can fork the source internally… but not redistribute it without IBM agreeing. How's that better than taking BSD code and turning it proprietary?

A license is an authorisation to do something; the GPL is mostly about forbidding.
The GPL is not so much a "license" as a virus working hard to make sure that whatever it touches never escapes infection.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

The GPL is not so much a "license" as a virus working hard to make sure that whatever it touches never escapes infection.

Plus, it is the main reason why Linux cannot adopt ZFS in general. Another motivation to avoid GPLed code if I can.

 

[awasb]

Ohh, yes, lets talk license. I love talking license.

The BSD license is great. Its simple, easy to understand, comply with and lets you do anything you want. It also provides zero benefit to any company or project which intends to keep their code-base open source for the duration.

You read that correctly.

[...] I bet most BSD folks here know which companies I'm talking about. [...]

Theo nailed it quite well ...

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

But, BSD isn't UNIX

Sorry, but without any relevant SysVR4 based implementation remaining - ok, there's Illumos - BSD is the closest to "Unix" you can get these days. Linux definitely isn't.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Theo nailed it quite well ...

Right. CDDL vs. GPL. GPL is Stallman's political agenda poured into a license document. He repeatedly said so publicly.

GPL considered harmful.