On 2020-01-18 04:14:28 +0530 (+0530), Adam Peacock wrote:
How we view OpenStack within our community here is usually vastly different than the majority of enterprises and how they view it. Side note: My biggest gripe with OpenStack leadership is actually that everything is viewed from the lens of a developer which, I feel, is contributing to the plateau/decline in its adoption. That is but that's a topic for another day.
I don't know whether you consider me part of OpenStack leadership, but if it helps, my background is ~30 years as a Unix/Linux sysadmin, data center engineer, security analyst and network architect. I don't have any formal education in software development (or even a University degree). This is the lens with which I view OpenStack.
Most organizations ( as I've seen anyway) view OpenStack as a product that is compared to other cloud products like vCloud Director/similar. And after 8 years architecting clouds with it, I see it the same way. So I'm not exactly inclined to split hairs with how it is characterized.
I used vCloud Director for years, and I don't recall getting it for free nor being provided with access to its source outside an NDA. There also wasn't any way to reach out to the developers for it without a paid service contract (or really even with one most of the time). Sounds like VMware has become a bit more progressive recently? ;)
Bottom line though, ensuring that non-developers are able to easily able to get their questions answered will, in my personal opinion, either promote OpenStack or promote the conception that it requires a team of developers to understand and run which kills any serious consideration in the boardroom. [...]
I wholeheartedly agree with this, and it's basically the point I've been trying to make as well. We need to welcome users and let them ask questions wherever we're all having conversations. Free/libre open source software thrives or withers based on the strength of its user base, not on its technical superiority or novelty. If we don't take every opportunity to accommodate users who engage with us, we're going to have fewer and fewer users... until the day comes when we have none at all. Also as the hype subsides, companies aren't going to throw developer hours at OpenStack just because it looks good in advertisements. We're going to need to learn how to shore up our ranks of developers and maintainers from the only other source available to us: our users. -- Jeremy Stanley