Open Stack

Zane Bitter wrote:
> [...]
> 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?

It'a a good question, and a topic I raised a couple years ago.

Back then we had (and we arguably still have) a critical mass of
medium-sized private clouds, which makes most contributions gravitate to
that middle area of the potential usage spectrum.

But for the success of OpenStack we need the two extremes to be served:
the "giant public cloud" use case (because we all need that giant public
cloud to burst infinite capacity to in hybrid scenarios), but also the
"lab deployment" use case because that's a great on-boarding tool.
Currently it's still too complex to use OpenStack in those two ends of
the use case spectrum.

How do we solve that ? We can't rely on natural open collaboration
dynamics ("show up and be the change you want to see in the world") --
that one will continue to feed the medium use case. We can continue to
wait for proponents of the "small deployment" or the "massive public
cloud" to suddenly invest hundreds of FTEs to cover their use case. Or
we can be aware of the local maximum trap, go a bit out of our ways to
serve both ends of the spectrum, and realize that it puts us in a lot
better place.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)