Some of you may be aware of OpenSwitch, the Linux Foundation’s open network operating system which describes itself as:

* Linux-based network operating system (NOS) platform
* Open source, vendor-neutral royalty-free model
* Large ecosystem of industry leader support
* Rapid onboarding of new platforms, protocols and applications
* Viable option for open networking switch disaggregation

While I was at HP, I was heavily involved in this project at the time. This was around 2015. We had big intentions with the project, it was fun to see something like this happen. Fast forward to the fall of 2016, and as was written at the time, OpenSwitch moved to a new codebase. But what happened to the original code that made up OpenSwitch?

It may surprise you to learn that a fork of that codebase happened, and the LibreSwitch project was started. (Note the certificate for https://www.libreswitch.org/ has expired, so proceed there with caution.) LibreSwitch is the original code from OpenSwitch, still on github.

I had a discussion on twitter yesterday around this, where one of the original OpenSwitch engineers, Diego Dompe, confirmed LibreSwitch never took off:

The code is still there in case anyone wants to pick it up, play with it, and give it a shot. In the meantime, the new OpenSwitch code is also on github.