I’m thrilled to share that OpsMill is becoming the steward of the Nornir project.
Over the last eight years, Nornir has become foundational for a lot of infrastructure teams. It gave people a Python-native way to orchestrate infrastructure operations and build automation workflows without introducing a whole new way of working. It earned that place. It’s well designed, dependable, and loved by the people who use it every day.
Part of that is because Nornir never tried to be clever. It stays out of the way and lets engineers solve problems using tools they already know.
For teams using Nornir, that’s exactly why it became the default choice.
Carrying that legacy forward is a real honor.
Most importantly, we want to be clear about one thing from the beginning: Nornir will remain open source and community driven. Our role is to help ensure the project stays healthy, well maintained, and continues to evolve alongside the needs of the community.
Why Nornir Matters More Than Ever
Infrastructure automation is entering a new phase.
Over the last year, one thing has become impossible to ignore: every conversation in our industry eventually turns to AI and autonomous agents. While much of the attention is focused on making those systems smarter, we believe the bigger challenge is building the foundations they depend on.
Every autonomous system needs reliable context to make decisions and a dependable way to carry those decisions out. That means trusted infrastructure data, clear operational boundaries, and an execution layer that is predictable, observable, and purpose-built for infrastructure operations. Today, many of those capabilities are embedded within larger platforms instead of existing as reusable building blocks.
That’s the ecosystem we want to help build. At OpsMill, we’ve been investing in those foundations for years. Becoming the steward of Nornir allows us to strengthen another essential part of that ecosystem: a proven, Python-native execution framework that has earned the trust of the infrastructure community.
We’ll share more about our plans in the coming months.
Our Commitment to the Nornir Community
Our goal is simple: keep Nornir open, healthy, and community-driven while providing the support and investment the project deserves.
In the short term, our focus is modernization.
Over the years, the community has generated many thoughtful ideas about where Nornir could go next. We want to help revive some of that work, give it momentum, and create a path forward.
We won’t be publishing a detailed roadmap today, and that’s intentional. We’d much rather build that roadmap with the community than sit in a room and define it ourselves.
What we bring is long-term commitment, dedicated resources, and a genuine desire to help the project continue to grow.
Building on David Barroso’s Foundation
None of this would exist without David Barroso, the software developer who created Nornir in 2017.
It’s difficult to overstate David’s impact on modern network automation. David created Nornir and gave the community something rare: a framework that stays out of the way. No new DSL to learn, no magic to fight against—just Python.
Before that, he created NAPALM, which fundamentally shaped how an entire generation of network automation engineers approached multi-vendor automation. Much of today’s network automation ecosystem builds on ideas that David introduced over the last decade.
As David focuses on new projects, we’re pleased that he’ll remain connected to OpsMill as a Technical Advisor. While David won’t be involved in the day-to-day stewardship of the project, having access to his perspective and judgment is something we value greatly.
More than anything, we want to thank David for everything he’s built. Nornir has become what it is today because of his vision and the community that grew around it, and we’re grateful for the trust he’s placing in us to carry that work forward.
Why OpsMill
OpsMill’s connection to Nornir goes back many years. Many members of our team have been active in the Nornir community throughout its history, including:
- Patrick Ogenstad, the second employee at OpsMill and one of Nornir’s long-time maintainers alongside David Barroso and Kirk Byers.
- Wim Van Deun, contributor and maintainer of multiple Nornir plugins.
- And, many others across OpsMill who know the codebase, understand the ecosystem, and have firsthand experience with the operational challenges Nornir was built to solve
Supporting open source is also deeply embedded in OpsMill’s culture. Over the years, we’ve consistently advocated for sustainable open source and for the importance of well-maintained community projects across our industry.
Open source projects like Nornir succeed because communities invest their time, ideas, and trust over many years. We’re grateful to become part of that stewardship. We don’t see ourselves as taking ownership of Nornir, we see ourselves as taking responsibility for helping ensure it continues to thrive for years to come.
Reach Out to Us
You can find us in the historical #nornir channel in the Network to Code Slack community, or in the #nornir channel on our Discord server. Alternately, reach out to us directly.
If you’re a user, contributor, or plugin developer in the Nornir ecosystem, we want to hear from you. What’s working? What’s missing? What would make the biggest difference in your day-to-day work?
One question we expect to hear is whether there will be a commercial, enterprise-grade support offering for Nornir. If your organization would benefit from that kind of support, we’d love to talk and understand what your requirements look like in practice.
We’re both excited and honored to take on this responsibility, and we’re looking forward to working with the Nornir community in the years ahead.
— Damien
