Subject: Conclusion of KAME

From: JINMEI Tatuya / 神明達哉<[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 13:14:49 +0900

Dear all,

This is an important announcement from the KAME project.  I'm JINMEI,
Tatuya, sending this message on behalf of the project.

It is our pleasure to announce that the KAME project has achieved its
project mission, which was to establish the IPv6 platform technology
and to deploy the IPv6 technology to the industry.  We have
observed that the missions of the KAME project, which were to provide
an open reference implementation of the IPv6 protocol, have been achieved
and so have decided that we can conclude the project.  The KAME project will
complete its work on the IPv6 reference implementation around the end
of March 2006.

We will conclude the project and then move on to other work in related
areas through the following two activities.

(1) Complete merging the KAME's IPv6 protocol stack into BSD operating
    systems source code suite, in order for the core IPv6 protocol
    stack to be maintained in each BSD community thereafter.
(2) KAME members are going to focus on the next R&D items associated
    with IPv6 technology, while enhancing the collaboration and
    cooperation with the WIDE project members at large and some other
    related R&D organizations.
    The WIDE project, along with the members of the KAME project, has
    focused on some specific important areas including advanced core
    functions or applications associated with IPv6 technology.  In
    other words, the WIDE project is going to reinforce the
    IPv6-related activities, rather than just to continue our effort
    on IPv6, according to the success and the conclusion of KAME
    project activity.
    (see also the official announcement from WIDE at
	http://www.wide.ad.jp/news/press/20051107-KAME-e.html)

The WIDE project established the KAME project in 1998.  The primary
mission and the goal was to develop and to deploy the reference code
of IPv6/IPsec and other advanced protocols related with the IPv6
system, in order to enable the deployment of the IPv6 technology.

The majority of our implementation has been already merged into 4
major BSD operating systems (BSDi/FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD) and we
believe the implementation is now quite stable, and has been
integrated into many commercial products.  This means that KAME's
major task, which is to provide a reference implementation both to
academia and to industry, has been achieved.

Through various discussions with IETF members and others, we have
reached a conclusion that there are no major issues in the basic
functionality of our IPv6 code base.  In fact, the IETF is now 
discussing how to make the core protocols advance to the full 
standard.  Also, we can observe many
IPv6 products other than BSD systems, including various kinds of
commercial products/services, in the commercial market.

We have observed:
  1. The KAME project has achieved its development and deployment
     goal associated with the IPv6 core protocol stack/functions
  2. The IPv6 core protocol specifications have matured and are now
     stable.
  3. Products and services using the IPv6 technology have been widely
     developed and deployed.

Given the above observations, we have realized that we can (and
should) conclude the KAME project activity, in order to let the
industry realize that IPv6 is stable enough for commercial development
and deployment.

To conclude the KAME project, we will focus on integrating all
remaining KAME functionality into the *BSD operating systems.  We hope
to complete this effort by the end of March 2006.

Some advanced features currently developed and distributed by the KAME
project are not ready to be merged into BSD systems yet.  Those
include SCTP/DCCP, Mobile IPv6, NEMO, and IKEv2.  We do not plan to
incorporate them by the end of March 2006.  Instead, the research and
development activities on these features will continue via other
working groups in the WIDE project.

The following is a summary of the related groups:

- SCTP/DCCP
   WIDE SCTP WG (http://member.wide.ad.jp/wg/sctp)
- Mobile IPv6/NEMO
   WIDE Nautilus6 project (http://www.nautilus6.org/)
- IKEv2
   WIDE ipsec WG (http://www.wide.ad.jp/project/wg/ipsec.html)
- DHCPv6
   A new development activity is planned
- pim6sd/pim6dd
   A new development activity is planned

Other IPv6-related activates will also continue.

- IPv6 code for Linux
   The USAGI project (http://www.linux-ipv6.org/)
- IPv6 testing and evaluation
   The TAHI project (http://www.tahi.org/)

Likewise, the mailing list "snap-users" will remain and the current
core members of the KAME project will support questions/comments, if
any, as much as possible.

We hereby thank those who helped us.  Without their help, our goal
would have not been achieved.  We believe the IPv6 will be deployed
more universally in the near future.

May IPv6 be with you...
---
The KAME project (http://www.kame.net/)
The WIDE project (http://www.wide.ad.jp/)

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