The Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) board has voted to broaden into areas including management and orchestration (MANO), setting up the open source project to design a full reference implementation for network functions virtualization (NFV).

This doesn't mean OPNFV is working on MANO right this instant. The decision announced this afternoon just means the project's scope now includes all of NFV. Until now, OPNFV was limited to virtualized network functions (VNFs) and accompanying lower-layer management.

“This means that OPNFV projects can expand, as needed, and the community is free to incubate and propose projects on additional topics, including MANO,” writes OPNFV Director Heather Kirksey, in a blog post today.

OPNFV was founded in September 2014 to build a reference implementation for NFV, the goal being to let carriers deploy the technology more quickly. To avoid the irony of a slow start, the OPNFV board recommended that the project limit its scope.

That constraint applied to the Arno code release in June and will also apply to OPNFV's second code release, Brahmaputra, due out in February.

But some OPNFV insiders recently told SDxCentral they're concerned about the possibility of MANO within OPNFV, in particular, veering off in multiple directions without OPNFV's input. OPNFV's constraints have served their purpose, but other projects aren't bound by them.

One example would be Hewlett Packard Enterprise's OpenNFV, part of the company's effort to create a complete NFV reference architecture. It is indeed similar to OPNFV's efforts, says Werner Schaefer, HPE’s vice president of NFV.

HPE does support OPNFV — its CTO of NFV, Prodip Sen, is the OPNFV's chairman — but it's also barreling ahead with its own work.

“We support the Linux Foundation in putting OPNFV out there,” Schaefer says, but he suggests that OPNFV’s code isn’t really ready for prime time, saying it “doesn’t lend itself to running a $30 billion company.”

While OPNFV's announcement today is about NFV's upper layers, HPE is showing progress at the lower layers. Just today, the company launched its OPNFV Solution Portal, providing communications service providers with a catalogue of virtual network functions (VNFs).

Linda Hardesty contributed to this report.