bpfd becomes bpfman

Bpfd is now bpfman! We've renamed the project to better reflect the direction we're taking. We're still the same project, just with a new name.

Why the name change?

We've been using the name bpfd for a while now, but we were not the first to use it. There were projects before us that used the name bpfd, but since most were inactive, originally we didn't see this as an issue.

More recently though the folks at Meta have started using the name systemd-bpfd for their proposed addition to systemd.

In addition, we've been thinking about the future of the project, and particularly about security and whether it's wise to keep something with CAP_BPF capabilities running as a daemon - even if we've been very careful. This is similar to the issues faced by docker which eventually lead to the creation of podman.

This issue led us down the path of redesigning the project to be daemonless. We'll be implementing these changes in the coming months and plan to perform our first release as bpfman in Q1 of 2024.

The 'd' in bpfd stood for daemon, so with our new design and the confusion surrounding the name bpfd we though it was time for a change.

Since we're a BPF manager, we're now bpfman! It's also a nice homage to podman, which we're big fans of.

What does this mean for me?

If you're a developer of bpfman you will need to update your Git remotes to point at our new organization and repository name. Github will redirect these for a while, but we recommend updating your remotes as soon as possible.

If you're a user of bpfd or the bpfd-operator then version 0.3.1 will be the last release under the bpfd name. We will continue to support you as best we can, but we recommend upgrading to bpfman as soon as our first release is available.

What's next?

We've hinted at some of the changes we're planning, and of course, our roadmap is always available in Github. It's worth mentioning that we're also planning to expand our release packages to include RPMs and DEBs, making it even easier to install bpfman on your favorite Linux distribution.

Thanks!

We'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to bpfd over the years. We're excited about the future of bpfman and we hope you are too! Please bear with us as we make this transition, and if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us on Slack. We're in the '#bpfd' channel, but we'll be changing that to '#bpfman' soon.