
Goodbye, OpenStack - swills
http://gigofham.com/archives/47
======
harlowja
So I've been in the OpenStack community for a while [3+ years]
([http://stackalytics.com/?metric=commits](http://stackalytics.com/?metric=commits)
yes that's me down there in the pie chart); and I'd like to answer any
questions anyone has...

Yes the OpenStack community isn't perfect (but I've heard the same thing about
other communities, so meh).

Something I've found interesting to read over:

\- [https://lwn.net/Articles/647524/](https://lwn.net/Articles/647524/)

Overall, no the community isn't perfect, yes there are issues, yes it burns
some people out, but software isn't rainbows and butterflies after all.

~~~
geofft
> Overall, no the community isn't perfect, yes there are issues, yes it burns
> some people out, but software isn't rainbows and butterflies after all.

Are people trying to make things better? If so, how?

Software isn't rainbows and butterflies, but it shouldn't be endless floods
and caterpillars, either.

~~~
harlowja
Yes, I think they are getting better (at what rate, I can not measure, but
forward progress IMHO).

One example; the project/group I work in
([https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Oslo](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Oslo))
basically is a bunch of well-known people in the software community (author of
sqlalchemy included, authors of python books, myself...). Libraries I (and
others) work on are trying to help solve the tech. debt of the various
projects (good practices and all that). So I think this has helped make things
better...

Obviously progression is relative and certain projects in OpenStack move at
different rates (depending on complexity, vendor involvement, or lack of
vendor involvement, number and quality of developers doing
reviews/commits...).

There's always work to be done (and yes I know the operators pain, I work at
yahoo! and sit right next to the operators running our OpenStack based clouds,
vm and baremetal...); things aren't always easy but then what software really
is in the end...

------
alien_robot
OpenStack isn't perfect, for sure. Huge community, big corporate players, huge
code base. I do feel the barrier to entry into the community is very high;
using the stack is not a small undertaking, particularly in a production
capacity. The APIs are mess, but I have high hopes that the new OpenStack SDK
will bring some ease of use to the stack that boto has done for AWS.

Overall, even though I feel like a reasonably competent coder with a lot of
experience as a user, I don't feel like I could ever contribute to the project
in a meaningful way - and I don't think I want to.

Working at an Openstack cofounder, I do have a lot of code deployed into an
OpenStack cloud, and have written a lot of automation around the stack and
APIs. I still have high hopes for the platform.

------
geerlingguy
As someone who's only been on the outside of OpenStack's community, but
interested and learning about it a little here and there, could someone give a
brief overview of major players and why it seems a number of individuals
involved in the OpenStack community have burned out?

Is it really as bad as this post suggests? Many technologies become heavily
burdened by too much (non-development) investment and companies doing a land
grab on a hot new product; is that the case here?

~~~
kordless
_Observation:_ The OpenStack board is controlled by board seats which are
mostly held by people employed with large publicly traded companies. At one
point I calculated these companies to have a combined market cap of ~US$1/2
trillion.

 _Blaming Statement:_ Make no mistake, the companies who control OpenStack are
"in it to win it". That's probably not good for innovation or optimization.

 _Reality:_ Everything above is a moot point because Docker. Or more
specifically, everything above is a moot point because LXC containers.
Containers are a better solution layer for developers than instances.
Instances are still a good solution layer for providers, but those guys are
few and far between, and their margins are thin. No clue what that means for
OpenStack, but it can't be good.

 _Disclaimer:_ I've helped ~25K people install OpenStack with my scripts. I'm
biased and am spending most of my time now with containerization technologies.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Everything above is a moot point because Docker._

OpenStack does more than containerise.

Docker Inc. are racing up the stack to catch juicy value, but so is everyone
else.

Red Hat, Pivotal[0] and IBM are already at the top of the stack with OpenShift
and Cloud Foundry, so it's getting crowded.

But in the middle there's an awful lot of mechanism required to run an IaaS
and OpenStack is the only serious opensource contender around.

[0] disclaimer: I work in Pivotal Labs.

~~~
bhaisaab
'the only serious opensource contender around', have you heard of Apache
CloudStack? It has seen some serious usage:
[http://cloudstack.apache.org/users.html](http://cloudstack.apache.org/users.html)

~~~
jacques_chester
I haven't, thanks for the tip.

------
openstack_guru1
I don't understand why this is on the front page. Take a look at his
contributions:
[http://stackalytics.com/report/users/carlp](http://stackalytics.com/report/users/carlp)
[http://stackalytics.com/report/users/carl.perry@dreamhost.co...](http://stackalytics.com/report/users/carl.perry@dreamhost.com)

I've met Carl Perry several times at a couple of OpenStack summits and mid-
cycle operator's meetups. He's a nice guy, and seems like he's pretty smart,
but he's got an opinion about everything and likes to hear himself talk. The
last time we were in the same room was when we were in the same working group.
I don't remember what our topic was, but all I remember was Carl completely
derailing any kind of discussion we had in the room.

I've been part of the OpenStack community for about two years (working for an
OpenStack operator) and I've had nothing but good experiences. Developers that
I've met seemed genuinely interested in hearing our pain points and other
operators are interested in sharing their experiences running OpenStack and
learning from our experiences.

It's really not that hard to contribute to OpenStack, you just have to play by
the community rules, learn to listen a little, and don't piss people off with
arrogance. Oh, and about the price of attending a conference, $600 for a full
access pass. Is that a lot?

~~~
slyall
What a nice project, comes across as something from the government..

"Anonymous sources in the Administration say the author was a junior staff
member with no access to classified material who was fired due to poor
performance"

------
indykish
Yeah when too many players with overlapping vested interests join in, it will
be a disaster. Can you believe VMWare is part of the board Ha ! Ha!

Why not move to other opensource projects like opennebula.org ? By the way I
work for Megam - [https://www.megam.io](https://www.megam.io) another
opensource PaaS project
[https://github.com/megamsys](https://github.com/megamsys). Let me know if you
are interested in any of those.

~~~
harlowja
That other big opensource project (the one called linux) I think would
disagree with you, its management style might be different (more of a
hierarchy with linus at the top) but saying 'when too many players with
overlapping vested interests join in, it will be a disaster' seems
disingenuous IMHO.

------
Nerdfest
Know what outweighs all of those problems and makes it worth it over even the
medium term? It's open. You don't get tied to a provider who has your business
at their mercy.

------
tw04
This reads to me like "massive software project is massive and I can't
influence it in the ways I want to".

Much like your ability to influence "Windows" is quite limited, your ability
to influence "Openstack" is limited. Pick a neighborhood and you'll likely be
successful if you're doing a good job. Pick a continent and you might as well
ask the Sun nicely to stop giving off radiation.

