A recent posting to the lkml announced that the Open-iSCSI and Linux-iSCSI projects have merged into a single effort. iSCSI stands for the Internet Small Computer Systems Interface, a transport protocol that works on top of TCP and allows the SCSI family of protocols to function over a network instead of only over a local bus. Regarding the recent merging of efforts, the announcement explains:

"After some dialog with the developers on each team, it was decided that although each team started out with independent code and some differences in architecture, it was worth considering the possibility of combining the two efforts into one. Alternatives were considered for the combined architecture of the two projects, including adding an option for a kernel control plane. After discussions, it was decided by consensus that the open-iscsi architecture and code would be the best starting point for the "next gen" linux-iscsi project.

"The advantages of this starting point include open-iscsi's optimized I/O paths that were built from scratch, as well as incorporation of well tested iscsi-sfnet components for the control plane and userspace components. The combined open-iscsi and linux-iscsi teams believe this will result in the highest performing and most stable iSCSI stack for Linux."