Following up on discussions that we had at the last Xen summit, we’re submitting a Xen subproject proposal, regarding XCP-ng project (https://xcp-ng.org). Feel free to give your feedback!
Regards,
Olivier Lambert and XCP-ng team
# XCP-ng proposal
## The Project
XCP-ng is a turn-key virtualization platform based on the Xen Hypervisor, using existing Xen Project tools (XAPI). It's built from Xenserver source, improved and maintained by both passionate individuals and companies. The result is a completely free and Open Source solution available for everyone.
Thanks to a very successful Kickstarter campaign as well as backing from various companies, the project doesn't require any further funds and isn't seeking monetary contributions.
We believe forming a Xen sub-project within the Linux Foundation has the potential to bring further companies and contributors into the Xen Project as a whole, as well as demonstrate our dedication to open source. XCP-ng has already displayed its ability to draw new users into the Xen virtualization ecosystem. For new users, utilizing Xen from scratch can be daunting. XCP-ng offers a way to solve this problem by drawing end-users more closely into the Xen Project and providing an easy route for prospective Xen users to get started with Xen. This is an area where Xen has been trailing KVM for a long time. Hosting XCP-ng within the Xen Project provides a route to level the playing field. It would also enable the Xen Project to leverage XCP-ng success stories for the benefit of the Xen Project as a whole.
## The Mission
Our goal is to continue development of XCP-ng while building a large community of contributors to XCP-ng. We also expect an increase of contributions to XAPI as well as the Xen Project. Through large community involvement and contributions we have already turned XCP-ng into a stable hypervisor platform that is used in small and large enterprise deployments.
## Upstream first, fully Open Source
Vates and XCP-ng have started to work with a number of academic organizations with the aim to fund and develop feature improvements and new features that benefit the whole Xen Project ecosystem (including the Hypervisor and XAPI). We follow an upstream first philosophy, which is possible because of the fast release cycle of XCP-ng and expect to become a long-term contributor to XAPI and the Hypervisor project.
Besides contributions, we believe that an XCP-ng which is part of the Xen Project will deliver other benefits:
* Bring passionate and verbal XCP-ng users closer to the Xen Project
* Bring more publicity to the Xen Project: currently we have the XCP-ng blog, newsletter and success stories, which we are willing to share with the Xen Project
With an incredibly active forum, IRC, and github, we are always looking for more contributors to the project. We also believe in giving back to the open source community via contributions to upstream projects, and we believe becoming a Xen Project member will help in our ability to do so. To further our dedication to open source, Vates SAS, the company with the most active contributions to XCP-ng currently, is in the process of becoming a Linux Foundation member.
## How we differ from existing platforms
Our vision is to maintain XCP-ng as a complete easy-to-use hypervisor solution similar to existing full-stack solutions. Where we differ is our dedication to the open source mindset. We have no licensing system or license restrictions, all pieces of the platform are free to use. Simultaneously, we encourage community involvement and have merged many community contributions already.
## Infrastructure
The infrastructure will be primarily managed by Vates, with multiple companies in partnership (mainly hosting companies owning DC real estate). Access and resources can be given for people interested in becoming maintainers.
We would also like to expand the very active XCP-ng forum to also cover Xen and XAPI, providing a modern user friendly interface for users to discuss the hypervisor and related parts with dedicated sections. This will help to centralize much Xen & XAPI discussion in a place that is easier for casual users to find than a mailing list.
## Security
XCP-ng has a dedicated email for security feedback (security@xxxxxxxxxx) and is already a member of the Xen pre-disclosure mailing list.
## License
XCP-ng can be considered as a specialized Linux distribution, so there are multiple packages inside it. However, most of its packages are licensed in GPLv2.
## Contributors / Roles
Project lead: Olivier Lambert (Vates SAS)
* Github org: https://github.com/xcp-ng/
* Main website: https://xcp-ng.org
Extra notes:
* we already contributed to Xen hypervisor (see https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2019-02/msg01602.html ) and we plan to do more in the future
* we already contributed to XAPI (see https://github.com/xapi-project/xen-api-libs-transitional/commit/3f881066a1bdd4b52275e49edb57fba0d47c2dc9 )
* we added new features (ZoL support, zstd compression…)
* we contributed to various other projects (eg: ZFS on Linux https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/8866)
* we are committed to invest money and time in R&D for XCP-ng (see https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2018/12/19/xcp-ng-research-initiative/ )
* our dev process is fully documented and open: https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/wiki/Development-process-tour
* we have dev diaries explaining to everyone what we are working on, in details: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/1036/dev-diaries-1-analyzing-storage-perf-smapiv3
