This is disappointing, time to migrate from yet another was-open-source-now-only-technically-open-source software.
At work the trend is only adopt open source on a paid plan, adopting or relying on open source otherwise is just waiting for the rug to be pulled. Essentially treat open source as closed source.
Oftentimes the alternative is migrating to one dying or unstable zero-funding open source project to the next.
Which path you go down depends on a lot of factors of that particular piece of software.
Can I trust FreeCORE to be a stable, secure project that hangs on to my NAS data if it’s an unfunded fork? Or would it be better to give up some openness for something like TrueNAS SCALE?
When it comes to stuff like Proxmox and TrueNAS I think a lot of what keeps those good products for homelab use is the fact that they have commercial customers paying for the development. I can count on TrueNAS being around and getting updates because they have a proven revenue stream.
That said, it’s a balance, because sometimes that commercialization becomes a rug pull. A lot of the viability of those projects for homelab use revolves around the companies that put those products out recognizing that they have a customer base that will not pay and accepting that fact without deciding to try to squeeze out every last person who just might pay by compromising the free edition.
I like the way Proxmox and OpnSense handle this: you get the community patch channels which are “not for production use” which scares the corporate businesses into paying but has zero negative impact for home users.
To be clear I’m also not saying FreeCORE specifically is a fly-by-night project or unstable or anything. I’m genuinely unfamiliar with it. I’m just saying, sometimes projects like that end up not being the right choice for certain use cases.
[−]Brian_K_White · 2026-08-30 Sun 04:18 UTC ·
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Regardless the estimated quality of the new thing, there is a point and a value in penalizing the old thing when it fails to adhere to principles.
One must have principles onesself to see this as imortant though.
A lot of people use words like "practical" or "pragmatic" to avoid inconvenience.
I've already been using zVault for a year which is a fork of the last truenas core, but it never got any further updates and it's about to become impossible to run up to date software in jails on the old host. The pkg repos that support the host version are about to go eol and the binaries will be gone. So I've already gone through the "what if this doesn't go anywhere?"
My point: It's a pain but I won't relieve that pain by running trunas scale.
I'd rather try switching to xigmanas or dump the whole concept of the front end and just run plain freebsd and learn a few commands to manage storage and file services directly and a maybe a seperate dedicated jail manager like bastille. At least that way I can never be stuck in this position again where I can't update my own software because someone else stopped updating their software.
I totally understand why you’ve made those choices. It just might be worth questioning how much of your own time these principles are worth.
This entire time you’ve been swapping between NAS distros fiddling with your NAS box my TrueNAS SCALE installation has required approximately zero of my time and has never lost the ability to be updated.
To me, the NAS aspect of my homelab is the least interesting and is something I just want to install once and forget about.
Did they violate some principles of the open source ethos? I guess so; they deprecated build scripts, but the source code of the product is still available and GPLv3. The practical impact to the end user is effectively zero. I’m not even sure I would personally need the source code to be available when it comes to a NAS solution — I did consider unraid as a potential alternative before settling on TrueNAS.
Knowing a little about the maintainers and their model, this isn’t a private-equity cash grab or Mr Monopoly twirling his moustache; it’s a business trying to stay sustainable in open source. There are no billionaires here: they staff developers who contribute to projects like OpenZFS, and developers who build enterprise features that fund all of it. Their business is being challenged by “global” shops taking advantage of the platforms openness - and this isn’t the virtuous or even legally tenable type of competition. It’s “violating terms and not legally accessible” competition, and they are taking measures. It sucks for everyone.
If TrueNAS/iX whatever turns around and sells to Bending Spoons, then I’ll of course owe you a beer. Until then, their leadership is just trying keep the project alive - and funding other open source efforts at the same time.
Maybe AI fucks all of this up, who knows ….
[−]applfanboysbgon · 2026-08-30 Sun 03:16 UTC ·
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Why is it not enough to give you all of their code for free? Why do they also have obligations and expectations beyond that? The entitlement never ends!
> At work the trend is only adopt open source on a paid plan, adopting or relying on open source otherwise is just waiting for the rug to be pulled.
"Won't do free labour for our commercial enterprise to profit off of forever" is a rug pull now? It's incredible that you can type these words with a straight face.
[−]president_zippy · 2026-08-30 Sun 03:43 UTC ·
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You didn't deserve to be downvoted to hell and back. People deserve to be paid for their work, and without copyright law only mega-cap companies would ever be able to capture enough value from their work to survive.
People act like you're saying Disney should be able to hold a copyright on Mickey Mouse for over 100 years.
Calling it a "rug pull" when the creator of an open source project decides to stop giving away future work for free is a delusional level of self-entitlement.
(1) The previous releases are still open source. If you don't like it, fork the last free release and maintain it yourself.
(2) People deserve whatever the market is willing to pay for their work. See above.
Frankly, if D. Richard Hipp decided to stop giving away future versions of SQLite for free, I would be the first person to congratulate him for finally having the courage to put his foot down and say "my fellow committers and I deserve at least a few million dollars for 20 years of work making something that billions of machines rely upon."
Open-source is an inherently radical anti-capitalist philosophy. In your eyes everyone "deserves" what the market is willing to pay, but open-source developers would rather donate their time and energy to create or contribute to something that is freely accessible to anyone and everyone. Also, believe it or not, but some people are not motivated by money, and actually derive value from the process of creating software.
The issue with rug-pulls like this is that they are deceptively masquerading with this philosophy as a calculated business strategy to adopt users. Then in this case they start using deceptive tactics like removing build files so they can continue appearing to be fully open source, even though they are violating the spirit of that term. Finally, they drop the facade when it is deemed valuable enough. Even if you are a strict capitalist, there is nothing virtuous or meritocratic about these kinds of business strategies, they rely on tricky, concealed intentions, and rightfully deserve criticism.
I'll also add that there is nothing "courageous" about deciding to extract more value from your labor at the expense of public accessibility. True courage is found in acts of selfless sacrifice.
> Open-source is an inherently radical anti-capitalist philosophy.
No it isn't. Open source isn't inherently political in any way. Maybe that's what it's about to you, but I open source things because I want to give to others out of a general sense of wishing to build up the whole community. I don't have anything against capitalism.
First off, in some sense everything is political. Next, I am not claiming that you can't be supporter of open source while also holding a wide array of associated political views. My point is that the concept of open source fundamentally rejects the ideal capitalist conception of the world as a bunch of purely rational self-interested agents seeking to optimize wealth and economic output. Willingly performing labor for its own sake, for the benefit of others, with no expectation of return value, is obviously not capitalist behavior.
I effectively agree with you, but your last comment is interesting in the usage of the word "courage". My understanding of D. Richard Hipp's state of being is that he feels fairly financially compensated (via support contracts), and more so, emotionally compensated by knowing that his work adds value to other people's lives and having value in that.
Money's a good thing to have, but having purpose in life is incredibly valuable too.
[−]Brian_K_White · 2026-08-30 Sun 04:32 UTC ·
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They do not give all of the code. If you have an object, and don't have everything needed to reproduce the object, then you have not been given the source to the object.
And with BSD licenced code this is their right.
And it's my and anyone else's right to observe all of this and criticize it.
[−]applfanboysbgon · 2026-08-30 Sun 05:03 UTC ·
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Likewise, it is my right to criticise you for exercising your right to criticise them. Nobody said you aren't allowed to, but just as anyone is allowed to whine about not being given enough free stuff, I'm allowed to call out that they're acting like an entitled child in public. Just because you can legally do something doesn't mean that it is socially acceptable to do so.
[−]ThePowerOfFuet · 2026-08-30 Sun 06:53 UTC ·
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They chose to base their enterprise on the work of others, only to pull the ladder up behind them.
Fuck that noise. They are the ones breaking the social contract, not the folks criticizing them for it.
> They chose to base their enterprise on the work of others, only to pull the ladder up behind them.
This is literally why BSD exists in the first place. To allow companies compete freedom with the code, including freedom to not release changes.
I hate to break it to you: basically every commercial storage vendor on the planet bases their appliances on either BSD or Linux and not a single one is sharing their proprietary code with you. There’s nothing shameful about it, they built a company to make money.
> This is literally why BSD exists in the first place. To allow companies compete freedom with the code, including freedom to not release changes.
I would phrase it slightly differently. BSD licensing exists to allow everyone complete freedom with the code, not just businesses. It is a gift to the commons without restriction on who may use it or for what, which is why I love BSD (and other permissive licenses).
They're allowed to stop publishing new work whenever they want to. That's part of the free, open-source software game, wherein: We're all free to provide as much as we wish, and also free to consume as much as we want. Nobody necessarily owes anyone else anything and it's really very beautiful in these ways. This is enabled in large part due to the very low cost of distributing copies of intangible software (which can be very close to zero).
But when money gets involved, then things become different. Contracts can be had. Support requirements can be determined. If a contract requires 5 years of support, then it can be reasonably expected for support to continue for at least 5 years.
It's OK to want that, and to never use software that doesn't involve money. It's also OK for an author/company/org to not want that, and to never agree to those terms.
These are different goals, but one party doing it one way doesn't detract from another party doing it some other way. It's all OK.
> "Won't do free labour for our commercial enterprise to profit off of forever" is a rug pull now? It's incredible that you can type these words with a straight face.
I explicitly stated in my comment that we pay for open source (via vendor support). That is not the issue.
It is now a common business strategy to commercialise an open source project. FreeNAS was commercialised as TrueNAS, which is now having some of the source pulled.
TrueNAS doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s built on source projects.
[−]applfanboysbgon · 2026-08-30 Sun 05:29 UTC ·
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> I explicitly stated in my comment that we pay for open source (via vendor support). That is not the issue.
Your statements clearly took issue with the fact that your company has to pay open-source devs whose work it uses for reliability. You presented the options as "pay them, or else get rugpulled", and then went on to say "how did we end up in this state of affairs [where we must pay to not get rugpulled]". There is no possible way to interpret your comment other than lamenting the "state of affairs".
> TrueNAS doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s built on source projects.
As long as it isn't violating the license of those projects, they still don't owe anyone anything. If it is violating the license, complain about it on those terms. But your complaint was about open-source in general, not specifically only this project.
But, at this point, AI makes code cheap enough that I would just fork the open source software and maintain it, instead of paying for a third party. Heck, even with saas, I may clone internally.
[−]globular-toast · 2026-08-30 Sun 08:31 UTC ·
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You want to vibe code your own NAS and filesystem software? AI makes code cheap, it doesn't make true understanding and expertise cheap.
> The “Corresponding Source” for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities.
[0] https://forums.truenas.com/t/clearing-the-air-on-build-scrip...
At work the trend is only adopt open source on a paid plan, adopting or relying on open source otherwise is just waiting for the rug to be pulled. Essentially treat open source as closed source.
How did we end up with this state of affairs?
Which path you go down depends on a lot of factors of that particular piece of software.
Can I trust FreeCORE to be a stable, secure project that hangs on to my NAS data if it’s an unfunded fork? Or would it be better to give up some openness for something like TrueNAS SCALE?
When it comes to stuff like Proxmox and TrueNAS I think a lot of what keeps those good products for homelab use is the fact that they have commercial customers paying for the development. I can count on TrueNAS being around and getting updates because they have a proven revenue stream.
That said, it’s a balance, because sometimes that commercialization becomes a rug pull. A lot of the viability of those projects for homelab use revolves around the companies that put those products out recognizing that they have a customer base that will not pay and accepting that fact without deciding to try to squeeze out every last person who just might pay by compromising the free edition.
I like the way Proxmox and OpnSense handle this: you get the community patch channels which are “not for production use” which scares the corporate businesses into paying but has zero negative impact for home users.
To be clear I’m also not saying FreeCORE specifically is a fly-by-night project or unstable or anything. I’m genuinely unfamiliar with it. I’m just saying, sometimes projects like that end up not being the right choice for certain use cases.
One must have principles onesself to see this as imortant though.
A lot of people use words like "practical" or "pragmatic" to avoid inconvenience.
I've already been using zVault for a year which is a fork of the last truenas core, but it never got any further updates and it's about to become impossible to run up to date software in jails on the old host. The pkg repos that support the host version are about to go eol and the binaries will be gone. So I've already gone through the "what if this doesn't go anywhere?"
My point: It's a pain but I won't relieve that pain by running trunas scale.
I'd rather try switching to xigmanas or dump the whole concept of the front end and just run plain freebsd and learn a few commands to manage storage and file services directly and a maybe a seperate dedicated jail manager like bastille. At least that way I can never be stuck in this position again where I can't update my own software because someone else stopped updating their software.
This entire time you’ve been swapping between NAS distros fiddling with your NAS box my TrueNAS SCALE installation has required approximately zero of my time and has never lost the ability to be updated.
To me, the NAS aspect of my homelab is the least interesting and is something I just want to install once and forget about.
Did they violate some principles of the open source ethos? I guess so; they deprecated build scripts, but the source code of the product is still available and GPLv3. The practical impact to the end user is effectively zero. I’m not even sure I would personally need the source code to be available when it comes to a NAS solution — I did consider unraid as a potential alternative before settling on TrueNAS.
If TrueNAS/iX whatever turns around and sells to Bending Spoons, then I’ll of course owe you a beer. Until then, their leadership is just trying keep the project alive - and funding other open source efforts at the same time.
Maybe AI fucks all of this up, who knows ….
> At work the trend is only adopt open source on a paid plan, adopting or relying on open source otherwise is just waiting for the rug to be pulled.
"Won't do free labour for our commercial enterprise to profit off of forever" is a rug pull now? It's incredible that you can type these words with a straight face.
People act like you're saying Disney should be able to hold a copyright on Mickey Mouse for over 100 years.
Calling it a "rug pull" when the creator of an open source project decides to stop giving away future work for free is a delusional level of self-entitlement.
(1) The previous releases are still open source. If you don't like it, fork the last free release and maintain it yourself.
(2) People deserve whatever the market is willing to pay for their work. See above.
Frankly, if D. Richard Hipp decided to stop giving away future versions of SQLite for free, I would be the first person to congratulate him for finally having the courage to put his foot down and say "my fellow committers and I deserve at least a few million dollars for 20 years of work making something that billions of machines rely upon."
The issue with rug-pulls like this is that they are deceptively masquerading with this philosophy as a calculated business strategy to adopt users. Then in this case they start using deceptive tactics like removing build files so they can continue appearing to be fully open source, even though they are violating the spirit of that term. Finally, they drop the facade when it is deemed valuable enough. Even if you are a strict capitalist, there is nothing virtuous or meritocratic about these kinds of business strategies, they rely on tricky, concealed intentions, and rightfully deserve criticism.
I'll also add that there is nothing "courageous" about deciding to extract more value from your labor at the expense of public accessibility. True courage is found in acts of selfless sacrifice.
No it isn't. Open source isn't inherently political in any way. Maybe that's what it's about to you, but I open source things because I want to give to others out of a general sense of wishing to build up the whole community. I don't have anything against capitalism.
Money's a good thing to have, but having purpose in life is incredibly valuable too.
And with BSD licenced code this is their right.
And it's my and anyone else's right to observe all of this and criticize it.
Fuck that noise. They are the ones breaking the social contract, not the folks criticizing them for it.
Shameful of you.
This is literally why BSD exists in the first place. To allow companies compete freedom with the code, including freedom to not release changes.
I hate to break it to you: basically every commercial storage vendor on the planet bases their appliances on either BSD or Linux and not a single one is sharing their proprietary code with you. There’s nothing shameful about it, they built a company to make money.
I would phrase it slightly differently. BSD licensing exists to allow everyone complete freedom with the code, not just businesses. It is a gift to the commons without restriction on who may use it or for what, which is why I love BSD (and other permissive licenses).
They're allowed to stop publishing new work whenever they want to. That's part of the free, open-source software game, wherein: We're all free to provide as much as we wish, and also free to consume as much as we want. Nobody necessarily owes anyone else anything and it's really very beautiful in these ways. This is enabled in large part due to the very low cost of distributing copies of intangible software (which can be very close to zero).
But when money gets involved, then things become different. Contracts can be had. Support requirements can be determined. If a contract requires 5 years of support, then it can be reasonably expected for support to continue for at least 5 years.
It's OK to want that, and to never use software that doesn't involve money. It's also OK for an author/company/org to not want that, and to never agree to those terms.
These are different goals, but one party doing it one way doesn't detract from another party doing it some other way. It's all OK.
I explicitly stated in my comment that we pay for open source (via vendor support). That is not the issue.
It is now a common business strategy to commercialise an open source project. FreeNAS was commercialised as TrueNAS, which is now having some of the source pulled.
TrueNAS doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s built on source projects.
Your statements clearly took issue with the fact that your company has to pay open-source devs whose work it uses for reliability. You presented the options as "pay them, or else get rugpulled", and then went on to say "how did we end up in this state of affairs [where we must pay to not get rugpulled]". There is no possible way to interpret your comment other than lamenting the "state of affairs".
> TrueNAS doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s built on source projects.
As long as it isn't violating the license of those projects, they still don't owe anyone anything. If it is violating the license, complain about it on those terms. But your complaint was about open-source in general, not specifically only this project.
But, at this point, AI makes code cheap enough that I would just fork the open source software and maintain it, instead of paying for a third party. Heck, even with saas, I may clone internally.
The entire reason to use it is because it's trained on huge amounts of expertise.
It's like those SOHO router vendors that release incomprehensible tarballs of their GPL components; lotsa luck building it.
If I'm paying for closed-source ZFS, I'll go with the real thing and buy a Solaris license.
I think scale is also BSD licensed (atleast the gui and middleware)
> The “Corresponding Source” for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities.