Open Stack

> The problem underlying commons neglect is not that there are too few
> people involved in the project, it's that there's too small a
> proportion of those people who have the interest or time to help
> maintain the commons. If anything, it gets worse the larger the
> community becomes. Lots of people go to the beach, but not many
> people take a trash bag with them and pick up garbage when they see
> it. The more popular the beach, the harder it becomes to keep it
> clean.
>
>
I've been working on OpenStack, off and on, for almost 9 years. (I'm US
based; fwiw). What I've found in my career is that it's incredibly hard to
get an OpenStack jobs with enough freedom to help with the commons. Many
jobs before my current one wanted a solid line to be drawn between the
exact patches you were working on and how it benefited the company you
worked for. This made it difficult to work on anything but high-impact bugs
and features, aside from the time I used, sometimes under the radar, to
review code and keep things flowing.

With the commons; it's incredibly difficult to draw those lines. That means
that these contributors, working for a company that only has interest in
supporting OpenStack in ways that have a direct, measurable impact on their
product, are consuming from the commons but are not contributing back.

I don't know what the solution is; but the above represents the reality for
a large number of OpenStack contributors. If you're one of them, please
know I appreciate your contributions, and contributing where you can. If
you're not; maybe spend a few more minutes thinking about and contributing
to the commons since not everyone can.

-
Jay Faulkner
TC Member
Ironic PTL
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