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| 1 | +== OPTE status and open source |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | +The OPTE repo is public because: |
| 4 | + |
| 5 | +1. It has always been our intention to make this open-source. |
| 6 | +
|
| 7 | +2. We figured it's best to err on the side of doing this early instead |
| 8 | + of late. |
| 9 | +
|
| 10 | +However, OPTE is not finished, or even ready. |
| 11 | + |
| 12 | +And so, we thought it was important to explain where we're currently |
| 13 | +at, and manage your expectations. |
| 14 | + |
| 15 | +- We are a small company. |
| 16 | +
|
| 17 | +- Our current goal is to get our first generation products finished |
| 18 | + and in customers' hands. |
| 19 | +
|
| 20 | +- We're writing OPTE in support of that goal, not as its own thing. |
| 21 | + We're all working on the products, and tool development is a side |
| 22 | + effect. That said, OPTE will be more generally useful if you are |
| 23 | + looking for a packet transformation engine to implement network |
| 24 | + functions in an illumos-based environment; it's just the current |
| 25 | + focus is solely on supporting Oxide and the Oxide Rack. |
| 26 | +
|
| 27 | +- OPTE may have dependencies on other Oxide repositories, which |
| 28 | + themselves may be undergoing similar churn. |
| 29 | +
|
| 30 | +- These points together mean that we may not have enough bandwidth to |
| 31 | + review and integrate outside PRs right now. We hope this will change |
| 32 | + in the future. |
| 33 | +
|
| 34 | +You're welcome to send PRs, but we want to set expectations right: if |
| 35 | +we have time, or if the PRs are very small or fix bugs, we may |
| 36 | +integrate them in the near future. But we might also not get to any PR |
| 37 | +for a while, by which time it might no longer be relevant. Also keep |
| 38 | +in mind that some aspects of the code which have obvious flaws or |
| 39 | +TODOs may already be scheduled for change, but there are other more |
| 40 | +pressing matters to attend to first. If you feel compelled to write a |
| 41 | +PR, it would be best to first reach out before starting any work in |
| 42 | +earnest, as there may already been planned changes that would obsolete |
| 43 | +such work. |
| 44 | + |
| 45 | +We've all dealt with those open source projects that feel open in name |
| 46 | +only, and have big patches and history-free source drops appearing |
| 47 | +from behind the walls of some large organization. We don't like that, |
| 48 | +and we're not going to do that. But it will take some time for us to |
| 49 | +scale up -- please bear with us. |
| 50 | + |
| 51 | +Thanks! |
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