The parade of name changes likely stemmed from the “Free” in FreeNAS Pro, which was the original name for what became the iXsystems-developed business version. Being available only when you bought the company’s hardware, some might have interpreted the moniker as a bit disingenuous. That explains the lofty title of TrueNAS.<\/p>\n

But why TrueNAS CORE rather than FreeNAS, which is still free? First, there’s the whole kissing cousin NAS operating systems that sounded like competitors. Then, there’s the aforementioned convergence of the development into one project. Also, according to iXsystems, there is a perception among some that anything free has to be inferior.<\/p>\n

From my own experience, I can tell you that despite the fact that much of the world runs on free operating systems (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) or variants thereof (Android, macOS, etc.) some business types just aren’t comfortable with the word “free”. Unless of course it’s leveraging that free stuff under their own branding.<\/p>\n

You probably noticed that CORE is all caps. It’s an acronym, of course. In this case, Community supported, Open Source, Rapid development, and Early availability. Descriptive, and of course, all-CAPS jumps out on the page.<\/p>\n