Open Stack

On 2017-07-17 11:32:28 +0100 (+0100), Chris Dent wrote:
[...]
> I think it is disingenuous to expect that free and/or open source
> software physics plays a large part in the development of
> OpenStack. Not simply because most of the developers are paid
> (well paid in the grand scheme of things) to be here, nor merely
> because many find they must leave when they no longer have an
> employer who will sponsor their presence, nor because significant
> chunks of the developers do not actively work (although some do)
> on clouds on a day to day basis (so couldn't legitimately be said
> to be scratching an itch), nor because the ability to have
> influence and make change is often highly reliant on being willing
> and able to show up day in and day out (not just on those days
> when you have an itch), nor because many of the people who do have
> some license to choose what they do in this environment choose not
> what they want to but what they feel must be done. It is all of
> those things and more.
[...]

With what I've seen of companies contributing developers to the
project, the end result is not at all dissimilar. Sure the
individual developers themselves may not run OpenStack deployments
(and so lack some personal perspective as a "user" of the software)
but in most cases their employers do run OpenStack or they wouldn't
be here. If you look at a company as being a contributor it's
working on the project to scratch its own itches (and so turn a
profit on some service it wishes to market to its own customers).
The incentives and psychology aren't a dead-on match for those of
unaffiliated individual contributors, but the similarities are still
quite striking an I think a lot of the same contribution model holds
up as long as you adjust your thinking about who (or _what_) the
actual contributor is in each case.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley
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