Open Stack

Excerpts from Zane Bitter's message of 2018-05-10 16:38:37 -0400:
> On 17/04/18 05:24, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > As you know the Technical Committee (the governance body representing
> > contributors producing OpenStack software) meets with other OpenStack
> > governance bodies (Board of Directors and User Committee) on the Sunday
> > before every Summit, and Vancouver will be no exception.
> > 
> > At the TC retrospective Forum session in Sydney we decided we should
> > more broadly ask our constituency for topics they would like us to cover
> > in that discussion.
> > 
> > Once the current election cycle is over and the new TC chair is picked,
> > we'll come up with a proposed agenda and submit it to the Chairman of
> > the Board for consideration.
> > 
> > So... Is there any specific topic you think we should cover in that
> > meeting ?
> 
> There's one topic I've been thinking about that I think would be 
> valuable to discuss with the Board and the UC. I don't know if we still 
> have time to add stuff to the agenda for Vancouver, but if not then 
> consider this my advance submission for Denver.
> 
> OpenStack was bootstrapped using a very powerful positive feedback loop: 
> in (very) broad-brush terms it started with a minimum viable product; 
> users for whom that was enough to entice them tried it out and offered 
> suggestions; vendors who wanted to sell to those users (as well as the 
> users themselves) implemented the suggestions; both groups joined the 
> Foundation, which marketed OpenStack to folks with similar needs.
> 
> Obviously that is a good thing, but it also comes with the danger of 
> getting trapped in a local maximum. Users for whom the product has not 
> yet met the threshold of minimum viability are generally not going to 
> show up, and their needs are no match for the feedback loop set up with 
> the users who _have_ shown up. (Specifically, we are arguably only just 
> now approaching the minimum viability point for the types of cloud-aware 
> applications that are routinely written against the APIs of the big 3 
> proprietary clouds.)
> 
> How can we avoid (or get out of) the local maximum trap and ensure that 
> OpenStack will meet the needs of all the users we want to serve, not 
> just those whose needs are similar to those of the users we already have?
> 
> Discuss.
> 
> thanks,
> Zane.
> 

This does feel like an excellent topic for one of these strategic
discussion sessions, but I think the agenda is already full for this
particular meeting. Maybe we can discuss it within the TC between now
and Denver so we have a good way to frame the question and discussion at
that meeting?

Doug