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As started in other comments, TrueNAS is staying open source, only the build system is going closed source because some company was ripping them off and removing license. But the OS system itself can't go closed source because of the gpl license.
So no need to move away if you like it.
This probably doesn't apply to TrueNAS, but technically, it's possible to close a GPL project. You'd need the permission of every last contributor to relicense their code, or they'd have to rewrite all the code they can't get relicensed (e.g., someone said no or already died), or they could do it if they never accepted any pull requests because they would then be the sole copyright holder and have the freedom to relicense at their whim.
I can't vouch for TrueNAS, but most open source projects accept pull requests because free labor, whether they're corporate projects or not, so I'd assume they can't freely relicense without a hell of a headache, so yeah, it's probably staying open for the foreseeable future.
They would likely have to rewrite the linux kernel right? I've never heard of a single project being granted taking the kernel private. If they were going to do that they would find it easier to rebase back on FreeBSD. They just switched to linux and invested a ton into the switch. The switch already cost them a bunch of users and dissent, the current narrative is causing more.
There will be forks of all the current code either way.
I would be more worried about the cheap Chinese hardware people are using that utilizes the linux kernel and other code that doesn't contribute back to the project or release their code.
Yeah, no, they couldn't do it to the kernel. But that's not really the interesting part of their product. It's all the software that they as a company hold the copyright to. If they solely hold copyright on all their own code or if they have permission to relicense from their contributors, they can take any or all of their products closed source, and when I say "their products" I specifically mean the things they as a company produce, which they built on top of open source projects that they don't control.
Agreed. But anything that is released as open source will still exist even if they move to closed source. So another group can take that code and continue to develop it as a new project.
True, but unless that new group is willing to step up and invest in physical device production to directly compete, I don't think it's going to be the same. The type of people buying a dedicated NAS with a custom OS are looking for as close to a plug and play solution ad they can get. They're less inclined to reinstall the OS on their new NAS, and the market is probably going to favor the now proprietary version TrueNAS sells, especially if they take steps to make it difficult to replace the OS on their devices.
I believe this doesn't apply to the Linux kernel. I mean there is a lot of products that include a Linux kernel and runs proprietary code on top.
I'm not really certain about the legalities, but IIRC it has to do with Linux being licensed under GPLv2 instead of GPLv3(?)
Open media vault
This. OMV is no-nonsense.
Plain, good old Debian. It's not that big of a deal to do all the config in console via SSH. You do it once and you're done, so is the web interface that important?
I said this to someone once and they accused me of being "elitist". The simple fact is when I learned how to do this stuff, there was no such thing as a GUI for any of it. You did it on the CLI, or not at all.
(Almost the exact same experience with git, funnily enough)
I 100% agree though; the bones of the setup of my NAS (admittedly mine is Ubuntu, just because everything else I run is too) was done once 18 months ago, and most has never been touched again. Just software updates every now and then and ignore it the rest of the time.
I don't feel like I've lost any functionality doing things this way, either. I discovered when a disk died that it even uses SES to light the error LED and turn on the annoying beeping noise on the JBOD, and I didn't have to do anything to set that up. I call that a win.
Nothing wrong with wanting a web interface, but for an experienced Linux user, there is no issue going without one.
I'm not exactly an expert, but I'm comfortable enough that I can figure out most things.
I still prefer a GUI option for a lot of things.
Make sure your data pool is well laid out zfs though.
Personally, I use BTRFS in RAID10 config. I don't need crazy performance and my NAS is pretty low power with only 8GB of RAM (use to be 4GB on my previous setup).
zfs is about data integrity rather than performance.
BTRFS has plenty of features for data integrity, auto-correction, scrubbing, snapshots. I haven't studied in details the differences with ZFS, I just went with BTRFS because the setup is fairly simple, it's flexible and it does what I need.
I seem to recall reading that, but I think you have the wrong impression. I'm pretty sure it's just there build system. They have always had two (one private for the paid stuff), and now they are just building everything "in private" not removing any source.
There are many projects that do not have open build systems, and I can understand them eanting to cut costs and simplify infrastructure.
e.g. just because redhat has a private build system and tries to restrict access to their binaries, that does not make them closed-source.
I think what you are referring to is this post https://forums.truenas.com/t/clearing-the-air-on-build-scripts/64357
There are people (likely in Asia) who are using the TrueNAS Build Tools to build versions that are no different other than removing license files and references, changing the name, changing some graphics and then selling the created ISO for profit.
The TrueNAS code is still GPLv3 and because it was that when they started using Linux base and not FreeBSD. The FreeBSD code is released under the BSD license which does allow closing of the source at any time. But here is what the internet had to say:
The BSD license is a permissive license that allows for minimal restrictions on how software can be used, modified, and distributed, including the ability to incorporate it into proprietary software. In contrast, GPLv3 is a copyleft license that requires any derivative works to also be distributed under the same GPLv3 terms, ensuring that the freedoms granted by the license are preserved.
Open Media Vault with OMV Extras
I have it on Proxmox. Works like a charm
Is the ZFS "plugin" reliable and user friendly? That's my only personal trepidation for switching off of TrueNAS. The easy webui for ZFS scheduled maintenance and general configuration are super nice.
Yeah it's pretty straightforward.
I do use a lot of CLI for ZFS because it's pretty easy.
Straight up barebones Linux.
That's likely what I'll end up doing
I've been running straight Ubuntu with ZFS-on-Linux since 18.04, and it has been smooth sailing. If you're running a lot of containerized things it's very convenient to just be able to bind mount ZFS dataset into containers.
Normally I prefer CentOS/RockyLinux, or some other EL distribution, but in this case I really appreciate that Canonical isn't purist enough to ship ZFS as a loadable kernel module that is guaranteed to be in sync with the shipped kernel. And don't have to deal with DKMS.
Alpine Linux might also be interesting.
I think alpine qualifies as barebones Linux, generally.
I (very much an amateur) briefly tried TueNAS scale in the past and didn't like how they did apps. So I switched to Openmediavault, which since then has served me very well.
With a plugin I could easily add my zfs raid and I use their build in docker compose gui to run the few programs I need.
I didn't try out others, but there are more options. CasaOS and yunohost already got mentioned, there is also Cosmos or just running a basic server with e.g Debian and maybe adding Cockpit for some management gui.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| Git | Popular version control system, primarily for code |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NFS | Network File System, a Unix-based file-sharing protocol known for performance and efficiency |
| RAID | Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
| ZFS | Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity |
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 12 acronyms.
[Thread #200 for this comm, first seen 29th Mar 2026, 23:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
For an actual NAS solution, meaning your primary goal is storage, then Rockstor, OpenMediaVault, and TrueNAS are the big open source ones I know of. I believe they can all do ZFS and RAID these days
If you’re looking for a system to host self hosted apps, that can also do ZFS storage, check out Incus Containers on a playing Ubuntu or Debian install, and use LXConsole for the UI side.
I'm running XigmaNAS
I setup a standard Arch install, added BTRFS, NFS, SMB, restic (for offsite backups), etc and haven't looked back.
I installed Cockpit thinking we'd need a GUI, but syncthing just works to mirror our laptops & phones with the NAS, and with multiple versions (by syncthing) I'm happy so far
The only thing that I had issues with was Immich and (major) postgresql updates, but that's stablising now. And, TBH, the worst thing was just having to scrap the DB and just let it rebuild it (for a few days...)
I went with BTRFS because I can "see" it with standard linux tools like gparted, clonezilla, etc. So I can backup and modify the NAS OS itself, not just my data.
Apart from updates, I haven't touched it for years.
Yunohost seems the community pick these days. I also played around with CasaOS and found it very user friendly. Though development on that one seems to have stalled.
Those aren't NASes if I'm not mistaken?
Currently running proxmox and using cockpit to present smb, which is all that I was doing with TrueNAS. Gotta set up a few pieces manually but not really a hassle.
Does cockpit have proper UI for ZFS and NFS? That's the only reasons I'm using TrueNAS currently and I'm a bit annoyed with it generally.
Cockpit does through a separate module called cockpit-zfs but it doesn't quite have feature parity. There are some niche situations where you may need to use cli
Proxmox has a UI for ZFS. But you don't really need it, ZFS is kind of set and forget and setting it up is quite easy via CLI.
I know and I'm considering it, I'm already running Proxmox anyways. The connection between zfs, permissions and NFS is what I like in TrueNAS.
Not for zfs. I mount zfs on proxmox. Why I don’t just run samba on proxmox, I’m not sure. There is some fuckery with permissions to make it work in a container and permissions are unnecessary for my use case.
But you don’t really need a ui for zfs. I ran it for 10 years on TrueNAS and only used it for initial setup.
I know and I'm considering it, I'm already running Proxmox anyways. The connection between zfs, permissions and NFS is what I like in TrueNAS.