A new main release of the OpenDaylight (ODL) SDN controller —the 4th up to date— named Beryllium, was officially announced yesterday.
OpenDaylight is a huge project. Since the creation of the consortium —in April 2013— four main versions of the controller have seen the «daylight» : Hydrogen (0.1) was first launched in February 2014; Helium (0.2) came out that same year, in late September; Lithium (0.3) was released nine months later, in June 2015; and right now it’s time for Beryllium (0.4) —late February 2016.
In addition, if we take notice of the factual —rather than planned— eight-month-cycle, the next main version —Boron (0.5)— could appear around October this year.
Taking all this into account, it may seem that a lot of work has been done so far by the vendor-led community, and certainly it’s been, and also very fast! They’ve generated over 2.5 million lines of code in less than 3 years. This is QUICK. By comparison to other open source SDN controller projects, statistics compiled by portal OpenHUB.net have Floodlight at 100k lines of code in about 4 years, Ryu at 116k lines of code in also 4 years, and ONOS at 440k lines of code in about a year.
These statistics certify that the OpenDaylight community is pushing really hard to get things done, perhaps in the pursue of obtaining as soon as possible a reliable, functional and full-featured platform that will erect itself as the de facto / reference SDN controller at the eyes of the entire open-source community.
Others saw this project as an attempt by the industry vendors to gain control over the leading open-source controller platform —by creating it—, further ensuring that this platform is compatible with their vision and products, and meanwhile keep developing apart their own proprietary and improved solutions.
Indeed the self-defined «community-led and industry-supported open source platform to advance SDN & NFV» is mainly developed through contributions by its industry members —up to now this is a fact— And probably the whole thing is only being carried out because of some strategic interests by these vendors —see Big Switch vs Cisco.
Anyway, the big thing is that OpenDaylight is real, is out there, is useful, is growing —lots of new features and new protocols are added on each release—, and the open-source community has now a consolidated open-source SDN framework, that is backed by the approval & support of the industry, which, to me, points to nothing but contributing to the advance of SDN/NFV.
Could-be-different, could-be-better, others-exist …but it’s ok.