Open Stack

On 05/02/16 10:59, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Even before OpenStack had a name, our "Four Opens" principles were 
> created to define how we would operate as a community. The first open, 
> "Open Source", added the following precision: "We do not produce 'open 
> core' software". What does this mean in 2016 ?
>
> Back in 2010 when OpenStack was started, this was a key difference with 
> the other open source cloud platform (Eucalyptus) which was following an 
> Open Core strategy with a crippled community edition and an "enterprise 
> version". OpenStack was then the property of a single entity 
> (Rackspace), so giving strong signals that we would never follow such a 
> strategy was essential to form a real community.
>
> Fast-forward today, the open source project is driven by a non-profit 
> independent Foundation, which could not even do an "enterprise edition" 
> if it wanted to. However, member companies build "enterprise products" 
> on top of the Apache-licensed upstream project. And we have drivers that 
> expose functionality in proprietary components. So what does it mean to 
> "not do open core" in 2016 ? What is acceptable and what's not ? It is 
> time for us to refresh this.
>
> My personal take on that is that we can draw a line in the sand for what 
> is acceptable as an official project in the upstream OpenStack open 
> source effort. It should have a fully-functional, production-grade open 
> source implementation. If you need proprietary software or a commercial 
> entity to fully use the functionality of a project or getting serious 
> about it, then it should not be accepted in OpenStack as an official 
> project. It can still live as a non-official project and even be hosted 
> under OpenStack infrastructure, but it should not be part of 
> "OpenStack". That is how I would interpret "no open core" in OpenStack 2016.
>
> Of course, the devil is in the details, especially around what I mean by 
> "fully-functional" and "production-grade". Is it just an API/stability 
> thing, or does performance/scalability come into account ? There will 
> always be some subjectivity there, but I think it's a good place to start.
>
> Comments ?
>

This sounds right to me.

It looks like there may soon be a group of projects wanting to move from
Neutron stadium governance to OpenStack big tent governance, and I
presume this criterion should apply to those too.

    Neil