On February 8, 2013, a software defined networking site reported an industry coalition forming around SDN. The goal of the coalition was not known at the time, with most information consisting of rumors and insider discussions. On April 8, 2013, The Linux Foundation announced the founding of the OpenDaylight Project as a community-led and industry-supported open source framework to accelerate adoption, foster new innovation and create a more open and transparent approach to Software-Defined Networking and Network Functions Virtualization. The project's founding members were Arista Networks, Big Switch Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Ericsson, HP, IBM, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Nuage Networks, PLUMgrid, Red Hat and VMware. Reaction to the goals of open architecture and administration by the Linux Foundation have been mostly positive. While initial criticism centered on concerns that this group could be used by incumbent technology vendors to stifle innovation, most of the companies signed up as members do not actually sell incumbent networking technology. Of the original Platinum members, Ericsson, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, VMware, Red Hat, and Citrix would not be considered "incumbent" technology providers in the networking segment. Only Lumina, Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise would typically fall into that category. By 2015, user companies had begun participating in upstream development, and by the Boron release in September 2016, half of new projects were proposed by user organizations, including Comcast, Intel, AT&T and Telefónica. At the time of the Carbon release in May 2017, the Project estimated that over 1 Billion subscribers were accessing OpenDaylight-based networks, in addition to use within large enterprises.
Technology
OpenDaylight supports technology such as OpenFlow. The first code from the OpenDaylight project, named Hydrogen, was released in February 2014. A source code repository includes contributed source code initially seeded from Big Switch Networks, Cisco and NEC. There are now over 1000 cumulative contributors from a variety of organizations as well as unassociated individuals. There is a dedicated OpenDaylight wiki, and several mailing lists are available. These resources are aimed at developers wishing to contribute to the project, as well as others interested in learning about specific sub-projects. The software is written in Java.
Releases
The following lists the different OpenDaylight releases:
Release Name
Release Date
Hydrogen
February 2014
Helium
October 2014
Lithium
June 2015
Beryllium
February 2016
Boron
November 2016
Carbon
June 2017
Nitrogen
September 2017
Oxygen
March 2018
Fluorine
August 2018
Neon
March 2019
Sodium
September 2019
Magnesium
March 2020
Members
Originally there were three tiers of membership for OpenDaylight: Platinum, Gold and Silver, with varying levels of commitment. Each Platinum member must contribute 10 developers to the project while Gold members must contribute 3 developers. As of January, 2018, OpenDaylight became a project within the LF Networking Fund, which consolidated membership across multiple projects into a common governance structure. Most OpenDaylight members became members of the new LF Networking fund.
