Open Stack

First, thanks to Andrew for starting this thread. I think it's an important discussion.

Second, the problem with the analogies made so far is, IMHO, at the API level and what it does to the ecosystem.

Let's take, for example, Apache HTTP Client stuff. 3.1 and 4.x are wildly different object models. But that's OK for the Apache model in a way that isn't for OpenStack.

When I decided to move Dasein Cloud to the new stuff, it was on my time frame, not Apache's.

With OpenStack, the deprecation of APIs is hugely problematic because the ecosystem is "live dependent" on the APIs. If I roll out a new version into a infrastructure with rich tool support and that version has API inconsistencies, I immediately and irrevocably break critical operational tools. With the Apache stuff, there's no external visibility into the HTTPclient APIs. It's just my code that I can compile and test pre-deployment.

It's a problem for any tool with a public facing RESTful API.

That's why I believe in never deprecating except in extreme circumstances. The most successful cloud API out there, the EC2 API, never breaks existing tools. NEVER.

Seriously, never.

-George
 
On Aug 10, 2012, at 9:33 PM, Frans Thamura <frans at meruvian.org> wrote:

> Openstack is like linux kernel for cloud
> 
> Anyone welcome to.create distro on it like ubuntu tolinux... and yea ubunti cloud to openstack
> 
> On Aug 11, 2012 8:46 AM, "Eric Windisch" <eric at cloudscaling.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Aug 10, 2012, at 20:49, Nathanael Burton <nathanael.i.burton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I personally equate OpenStack to the Linux Kernel. It's the foundation and core components that, in OpenStack's case, make up an Infrastructure as as Service (IaaS) system, a "cloud" kernel.  We should expect the core components and APIs to be stable with sane deprecation policies, but OpenStack shouldn't do everything for everyone. It should facilitate and provide the stable framework or foundation in which to build production quality, large scale (and small) public and private IaaS systems. In and of itself I believe OpenStack is not an IaaS distribution, ala Linux distributions (Debian, Fedora, RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu) which take the Linux kernel and build all the user-space and complementary services that make up a manageable, secure, monitored system.
>> 
> 
> An even better example might be Apache. They have their own foundation and have a number of services that get installed to machines, but they don't have a distribution or any clear deployment solutions.  Some of their applications such as the httpd are just core pieces that get installed to a single system and multiple services on multiple machines don't communicate, but others are horizontally scaling solutions with inter-process communication, such as Hadoop.  Whatever the case, they're still not building a distribution.
> 
> OpenStack in some ways appears to be the kernel on which applications run, but its applications are just applications. If the question is where the foundation draws the line at acceptance of projects, it is an interesting one... as long as there is a foundation, you can't really use Linux as any sort of example.  Instead, if you want to draw parallels to operating systems, you'll have to look more closely to the BSD systems.
> 
> With BSD, they've coupled the kernels and the distributions. I do not think this is a model that OpenStack should follow, but I do see a tendency of some toward this. Instead, I believe the community and the foundation should move into the direction of Apache.
> 
> If someone wants to create their own independent distribution, they should, but it shouldn't be part of the project or blessed by the foundation. Instead, they would follow the steps of Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo; not the steps taken by FreeBSD. The community already has a number of emerging proprietary and/or corporate-sponsored distributions, it would not do the community a favor for the foundation to create its own. 
> 
> Regards,
> Eric Windisch
> (sent from my iPad)
> 
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--
George Reese - Chief Technology Officer, enStratus
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enStratus: Enterprise Cloud Management - @enStratus - http://www.enstratus.com
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