Open Stack

On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 2:34 PM, David F Flanders
<flanders at openstack.org> wrote:
> Hi Chris, [Aside: I was very impressed by your work on the app catalogue and
> think your expertise in this WG would be valuable.]

Thanks!

> Welcome, welcome, I've recently joined the app-eco-wg so figuring out stuff
> myself[1].  Below is what I've learned.
>
> The question I'm hoping you (and the rest of the [user-committee]s can
> comment upon:
>
> Whom do you think should be the target (priority) AppDev audiences for
> consuming APIs?
> Or in other words, how can the AppEco-WG help recruit different user
> audiences (tribes) to utilise the APIs?
>
> Thus far the list of tribes I've been working on, whom will need to
> understand how to interface with the APIs includes:
>
> SDK Developers <-- for me the "my 1st cloud app" guide (and forthcoming
> training) should help model how SDK developers provide guidance for their
> SDKs,
> Container application developers, i.e. docker, rkt, kuryr, open container
> spec, etc.
> Lightweight O/S, i.e. Core OS, CentOS, LXD, etc.
> Virtualisation, i.e. VMWare, LXD, etc.
> Orchestration/Configuration, i.e. Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Salt, etc.
> PaaS platforms, i.e. Mesos, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, etc.
> OpenStack App-Dev projects, a la Murano, Solum, Magnum
> Scientific-WG, i.e. how will HPC/HTC users want to utilise the APIs
> Mobile / IoT developers / {other subset collections of SDKs to meet varying
> vertical app dev needs}
> ??? WHO ELSE ???
>
> Accordingly, my two questions for the above list are:
>
> i.) what appDev tribes are missing from the above?
> ii.) what should be the priority of the list above?
>
> And (for bonus points):
>
> iii.) how can app-eco-wg facilitate support for the AppDev tribes we want to
> engage (including the work we are already doing)?

This is a great round-up of the tribes involved in this space, I can't
think honestly of any other ways to slice this up.

As for how to get more developers to add their apps to the app
catalog, the real question is *are* there apps being developed
specifically for OpenStack clouds?  If you look at the AWS Marketplace
[1] (which I think is the closest analog) it looks more like a list of
consultants that would be happy to deploy and manage application X.
The OpenStack App Catalog has some of the same stuff (for instance the
Bitnami images), but I don't feel like there's a really clear answer
right now.

I don't want to sound overly negative here but I think it might help
to be clear that OpenStack offers an IaaS, and an app developer
looking for a marketplace to share her work is more likely to be
looking for a PaaS.  The rapid growth of content in docker hub[2] is a
good example of what can happen when you give people some tools to
package an app and easily share it with others.  We're working on
solving the "easily share" component (a legitimate API with
authentication,  signed uploads, etc.).  But I don't have an immediate
great answer for the rest :)

[1]: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/
[2]: https://hub.docker.com/explore/

-Christopher