# openservicemesh/osm

Open Service Mesh (OSM) is a lightweight, extensible, cloud native service mesh that allows users to uniformly manage, secure, and get out-of-the-box observability features for highly dynamic microservice environments.

Repository: https://github.com/openservicemesh/osm
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/osm
Homepage: https://openservicemesh.io/
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: service-mesh, kubernetes
Archived: true
Last push: 2023-07-11T19:34:09+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2455, "days_push": 1149, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2551, forks 269 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:00.530174+00:00)

## What it is
Open Service Mesh (OSM) is a lightweight, extensible cloud native service mesh for Kubernetes that injects Envoy proxy sidecars next to application instances and runs an Envoy xDS-based control plane configured via SMI APIs. It provides uniform traffic management, mTLS-secured service-to-service communication, fine-grained access control, and out-of-the-box observability for dynamic microservice environments.

## Use cases
- manage a service mesh on kubernetes
- secure service-to-service traffic with mtls
- shift traffic between deployment versions
- define fine-grained access control policies for microservices
- get metrics and observability for kubernetes services
- inject envoy sidecars automatically into pods
- integrate external certificate management with a service mesh

## When to choose
- you are already running OSM and need to maintain an existing deployment
- you need a simple SMI-compliant mesh for a legacy Kubernetes environment

## When to avoid
- starting a new service mesh project - OSM is officially archived by the CNCF with no further development
- you need long-term support or security patches
- you want an actively maintained alternative like Istio, Linkerd, or Cilium service mesh

## Facets
- artifact type: infra-config
- maturity: abandoned
- function: microservices, networking, security, monitoring, api-gateway
- domain: microservices, cloud-computing, networking, security
- platform: go, cloud, self-hosted
- tags: service-mesh, envoy, smi, mtls, sidecar-proxy, cncf, archived, traffic-management, observability, containers, devops, kubernetes, docker

## Member repositories
- openservicemesh/osm (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:00.530174+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:23:55.895723+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/openservicemesh/osm (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:00.530174+00:00, sha d1077df9029c)
  - homepage: https://openservicemesh.io/ (fetched 2026-08-29T10:06:32.996841+00:00, sha 1c33cb2b0d87)
  - site_page: https://docs.openservicemesh.io (fetched 2026-08-29T10:06:33.006112+00:00, sha 76020bbcf5ee)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.