Happens from time to time that shitloads of money are turned down - but its a rare event:
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Considering we didn’t get a response from the VyOS team, I’m assuming at this point we are not getting another rare event 
Hi @Ralm,
I appreciate your inquiry. Allow me some time to collect the required information internally, and I’ll get back to you promptly.
Thank you for your patience.
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You can follow our blog and will find out like everybody else.
Perhaps a specific blog post with this subject would be nice?
If only VyOS blog answered this question…
Additionally, this forum is public, where “everyone else” can see and find.
You attitude over the course of this thread has been extremely concerning, you started by dodging the question and now becoming straight out rude. Specially concerning considering your role at VyOS…
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Why aren’t you folks demanding that IOS XR and JunOS developers open their code? They have none of their systems open for usage, inspection, or modification. Or from NetGate, for that matter.
I have a feeling that the reasoning of a lot of users (who, coincidentally, are almost never contributors) is that if there’s anything avaialable free of charge, there should be more. The freedom part concerns very few people, only the price.
Well, the VPP addon is an internal project of the company, perfectly compliant with licenses of the projects it uses. There are already more open-source code and more free-to-use options than elsewhere, and how we ensure that we can keep it that way in the long run is doesn’t concern anyone but very few people, so why should people’s wishes to have accelerated networking at no cost concern us?
When the project was struggling to survive under the weight of inherited technical debt years ago, no one but a handful of people did anything to ensure its survival. I wanted to be rude to those people asking why the project was dying while refactoring that stuff nearly alone. It’s good now we have different reasons to be rude. 
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You seem to miss-understand the ask here, but you pretty much just answered it anyway.
Neither I, or no one in this thread ask for anything else other than a clarification.
Due to VyOS having started as Open Source and continuing to use the “we are open source” as a marketing strategy, all we asked was: Is the VPP addon going to also be Open Source or not, a clear Yes or No, answer.
However, both you and Syncer seem to feel so attacked by this, that we are now over 2 months in and no one is able to be direct: “Hey guys, this Addon won’t be open source like everything else we are doing, as we want to make money!”
Also, funny that you pick to branded products, but the reality of it is that your Addon will be based on Open Source code. Cisco, Juniper or even NetGate, never claimed to be an Open Source first entity, hence it’s never expected for them to make anything available, regardless if it be used / tested or to contribute to.
However, VyOS is, or was until now, an Open Source first entity, as such, is more than reasonable for people to wonder and ask, even if not expecting to get anything, just a matter of setting expectations to a community that you have grown from a consensus.
On my opinion, you guys should have these paid “Add-ons” be commercialized by a separate company and not under the VyOS name.
Also, about being rude, don’t forget, “open source” is a community effort and people will move on to a fork or other solutions as fast as they support you now.
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The problem is that there are signs that the history might/will repeat itself:
The fun part is that VyOS isn’t really new: it’s a fork of an older project named Vyatta Core. Vyatta inc. was a US-based startup. I was its user, then a contributor, then an employee, and finally a former employee who left it to make a fork. Originally, Vyatta used an open core model: open-source and freely-available Vyatta Core and Vyatta Subscription Edition with proprietary addons. In its last months before getting acquired by Brocade, Vyatta inc. quietly discontinued the open-source version, deleted the “Hackers” section of the forum with all its content (including a lot of community-made patches they never merged), and finally took down the git repo server with its source code.
VyOS (formely known as Vyatta) users have already been damaged with a bad taste in their mouths when Vyatta went the Brocade (downhill) route.
And I do understand the struggles of being a company based on an open sourced product. Which is why I think (IMHO) that the best way is to have the product open (incl free of use) but what you can charge for is professional support (not uncommon that enterprises wants to hold somebodys hand in case s**t hits the fan and they are willing to pay for that lets say 1 hour, 4 hour or NBD in response time), consulting etc. Similar to how MySQL did it once upon a time (and nowadays MariaDB).
I have invested my own spare time and contributed both with bug reports/feature requests but also commits towards VyOS because there is something with VyOS that I do like when it comes to softwarebased routing and mainly because I think there should be great free options out there that can compete with the expensive options such as Arista, Cisco, Juniper etc.
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Which is why I think (IMHO) that the best way is to have the product open (incl free of use) but what you can charge for is professional support
Your humble opinion is our lived experience: that model nearly killed the project, and moving away from it saved it from certain death and allowed us to keep the “free as in freedom” part.
I wish it wasn’t the case, but alas.
To the point: we’ll make a post when we are ready to announce the VPP addon officially and we’ll include all the details there.
All I can say right now is that no one has plans to make any parts of the VyOS proper closed-source. If we make any closed-source addons or services, the main goal is to prevent having to do that. How to balance the wish to keep as much of our output free as in freedom and the need to have funds to do that until we reach a post-scarcity society is a tricky problem that takes time to work out.
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Hi guys, any updates on VPP support? I am not bothered at the possibility of this becoming a paid add-on, but wondering what the roadmap looks like.
With the stable (non-EPA) release of 1.4 approaching in the near future, any sense of when more info on the VPP addon can be expected?
Also, going along with this - will there by any additional information regarding addon creation for developers? It sounds like the VPP addon regardless of its source availability, pricing, etc. was responsible for some dogfooding and/or evolution of the addon creation process by Sentrium. This potentially opens up areas for outside contributions in the future (VPP-related or otherwise)?
It looks like we do have a blog post now. In short, a bunch of improvements for integration + compatibility, easy installer, and most relevantly the installer is behind a paywall.
Unfortunately no mention about licensing or future plans for source code but open source doesn’t seem likely…
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However this is stated at the bottom of that blog post:
Distribution
The last but probably one of the most important changes in the add-on is that we have made it accessible to all VyOS customers with any paid subscription. If you are a customer, you no longer need to apply for a testing program—simply check the Downloads section in the support portal.
So for “licensing” it seems to at least demand a paid subscription but I assume you were thinking if an additional license cost would apply even for paid customers?
I was more so wondering about the license and source code distribution model. It seems clear that access to the plugin is paywalled behind the subscription. My question is will the VPP addon remain open source like the rest of VyOS, or will it transition to another model (source available, closed source, etc.)? If so, what license will it be under? Since source code licensing and cost / payment are separate issues (a la RHEL).
It is unfortunately quite common for companies / projects to start releasing closed source addons as a way to stay true to the letter of the claim “Our project is fully open source!” while bypassing the spirit of open source to release desirable / next generation features exclusively under a closed-source license. Hoping that this doesn’t happen to our beloved “Open source router and firewall platform” VyOS… Requiring payment to access the addon is great! I hope Sentrium gets some solid revenue from it. But I also hope they stay true to the letter and spirit of open source at their roots.
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I see nothing wrong by them (or someone else) releasing a commercial addon.
Even if I would of course have prefered to have that available for free.
But at the same time they are a commercial company which if they dont get the moneyflow they will go bankrupt and then there will be no more VyOS…
Netgate (company behind PFsense) have done the same with TNSR (TNSR Overview) who they charge $999/year per device installed and TNSR is the Netgate project of utilizing VPP (DPDK).
Most open source projects are backed by a commercial interest to have the project going and still remain open but how they get the money differs not only due to the company but also due to the product itself.
MySQL for example had addons only available for enterprise licensed customers while their core business (to get the moneyflow) was to sell consulting (adding custom features to MySQL) and support.
As discussed in this thread, I feel that the main issue in this case is the compete lack of transparency.
It’s fine to charge for the VPP addon (even though I don’t think makes a lot of sense for home users, but VyOS doesn’t seem to want to provide home user level licenses / plans), but taking advantage of the “we are open source” to market it even though it’s clearly not.
Just some transparency is what people would appreciate regarding these new business models.
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I couldnt agree more. Lack of information is a bit concerning. On the other hand one can never bring out too much info so there will always be complains to get “more info” and “more transparency”.
Also the broken view that home users would be like kbps users while I got 10Gbps in my basement and probably more bandwidth than many “enterprises”. Many commercial companies have realised that having “home users” getting used to a particular product (specially if its a good product) will lead to commercial licenses along the road. Even Broadcom have realised this after their fu*kery with VMware (and brought VMware workstation/player back to private customers for a low or no fee at all).
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About business models, funding etc. - I do understand it’s not a simple issue - but here just suggesting another option. I’ve heard about it at the recent RIPE 88 meeting and I think it may be worth considering, if it hasn’t been considered yet. RIPE NCC Community Projects Fund — RIPE Network Coordination Centre - call for appications open until 31 July 2024. Quote from the description - “The RIPE NCC will provide €250,000 per year to support projects of value to the operation, resilience and sustainability of the Internet, with a focus on tools and services benefiting the technical community in our service region.” - I think VyOS might be a good fit. Just my $.02 before this thread will be unlisted or locked in 3… 2… 1…
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