Open Stack

Jay Pipes wrote:
> [...]
> I've also argued in the past that all distro- or vendor-specific 
> deployment tools (Fuel, Triple-O, etc [3]) should live outside of 
> OpenStack because these projects are more products and the relentless 
> drive of vendor product management (rightfully) pushes the scope of 
> these applications to gobble up more and more feature space that may or 
> may not have anything to do with the core OpenStack mission (and have 
> more to do with those companies' product roadmap).

I totally agree on the need to distinguish between 
OpenStack-the-main-product (the set of user-facing API services that one 
assembles to build an infrastructure provider) and the tooling that 
helps deploy it. The map[1] that was produced last year draws that line 
by placing deployment and lifecycle management tooling into a separate 
bucket.

I'm not sure of the value of preventing those interested in openly 
collaborating around packaging solutions from doing it as a part of 
OpenStack-the-community. As long as there is potential for open 
collaboration I think we should encourage it, as long as we make it 
clear where the "main product" (that deployment tooling helps deploying) is.

> On the other hand, my statement that the OpenStack Foundation having 4 
> different focus areas leads to a lack of, well, focus, is a general 
> statement on the OpenStack *Foundation* simultaneously expanding its 
> sphere of influence while at the same time losing sight of OpenStack 
> itself

I understand that fear -- however it's not really a zero-sum game. In 
all of those "focus areas", OpenStack is a piece of the puzzle, so it's 
still very central to everything we do.

> -- and thus the push to create an Open Infrastructure Foundation 
> that would be able to compete with the larger mission of the Linux 
> Foundation.

As I explained in a talk in Vancouver[2], the strategic evolution of the 
Foundation is more the result of a number of parallel discussions 
happening in 2017 that pointed toward a similar need for a change: 
moving the discussions from being product-oriented to being 
goal-oriented, and no longer be stuck in a "everything we produce must 
be called OpenStack" box. It's more the result of our community's 
evolving needs than the need to "compete".

[1] http://openstack.org/openstack-map
[2] 
https://www.openstack.org/summit/vancouver-2018/summit-schedule/events/20968/beyond-datacenter-cloud-the-future-of-the-openstack-foundation

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)