OpenOSPFD was developed by Esben Nørby and Claudio Jeker, for the OpenBSD project. It is a companion daemon of OpenBGPD. The software was developed as an alternative to packages such as Quagga, a routing software suite which is licensed under the GPL. OpenOSPFD is developed on OpenBSD, and ports exist for FreeBSD and NetBSD.
The design goals of OpenOSPF include being secure (non-exploitable), reliable, lean and easy to use. The configuration language is intended to be both powerful and easy enough for most users.