Chef Software has announced its decision to discontinue the Open Core business model, where only the basic components of the system are freely distributed, while advanced features are provided as part of a commercial product.
All components of the Chef configuration management system, including the Chef Automate management console, infrastructure management tools, Chef InSpec security management module, and Chef Habitat delivery automation and orchestration system, will now be fully available under the Apache 2.0 open license without a division into open and closed parts. All previously closed modules will be opened. The product will evolve in a publicly accessible repository. The development, decision-making, and design processes are planned to be as transparent as possible.
It is noted that the decision was made after extensive study of various commercialization models of open source software and the organization of interaction within communities. Chef developers believe that full code openness will best balance community expectations and the company’s business interests. Rather than splitting the product into open and proprietary parts, Chef Software will now be able to fully direct its resources to the development of a single open product, collaborating with enthusiasts and companies interested in the project.
To meet the needs of enterprises based on open source, a commercial distribution known as the Chef Enterprise Automation Stack will be formed, distinguished by additional testing and stabilization, 24×7 technical support, adaptation for use in systems requiring higher reliability, and a rapid delivery channel for updates. Overall, Chef Software's new business model closely resembles those of Red Hat, in which a commercial distribution is offered, but all software is developed as open projects available under free licenses.
It is important to note that the configuration management system Chef is written in Ruby and Erlang languages, and offers a domain-specific language for creating instructions ("recipes"). Chef can be used for centralized configuration changes and automation of application management (installation, updating, removal, startup) in server farms of various sizes and cloud infrastructures. It supports the automation of deployment provisioning. new servers in cloud environments such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud, OpenStack, and Microsoft Azure. Solutions based on Chef are used by companies like Facebook, Amazon, and HP. Chef management nodes can be deployed on distributions based on RHEL and Ubuntu. It supports management of all popular Linux distributions, macOS, FreeBSD, AIX, Solaris, and Windows.
Source: opennet.ru
