The Changing Face of the OpenStack Community

The Business of OpenStack

The business of open source can be dominated by some strong personalities. Many companies are trying to use their first mover advantage to create sustainable business models. The reality is that statistically many will fail, as a second to market strategy combined with early experimentation with R&D allows a diversification of monetization vehicles, while maintaining cash flow. (e.g. most of these small guys are fighting for a small pie, and I believe are likely to at minimum receive buyout offers, and depending on the cash flow may be likely to accept them). This fact of a maturing market may cause people to miss what I believe is the secret sauce of the Open Source community.

The Beautiful Truth of Open Source

What may be a bit harder to see, there is alignment between the R&D organizations of Vendors, Operators and Integrators. There is this beautiful truth that emerges when you are dealing with some of the smartest people in the industry, who don’t really care about gear with a certain logo being pushed. Their real goal is to combine as a community to drive experimentation and innovation in a shared domain.

For me, Open Source communities are a place I don’t have to deal with vendor alignment. Where I can state my beliefs, thoughts and experiments and have them analyzed by people much smarter then me. The intellectual (and for me emotional) support of being part of something bigger, with mostly altruistic goals of improving the cutting edge of technology is one of the things that keeps me sane.

How the Project is Being Influenced

Of course, over the past couple years the OpenStack community has transformed. When I first got engaged with the community in late 2011/early 2012) It was a community where across the board I could feel safe and frankly anonymous. I could be a small fish in a big pond learning and growing from everyone around me. I was surrounded by people with beards, tattoo’s and t-shirts who in their spare time made software products that rivaled the best commercial R&D groups in the world.

Over the past year however, it has become the battleground for vendors to establish a common reference to support the same strategies used in IETF for the past decade. The politics and business models that are an every day experience in IETF, have changed my experience in OpenStack from a place where I felt like I identified completely with a community of like minded individuals, to a place where those same individuals exist (and I gravitate towards them to continue to drive forward technology as a community), but the larger message and tone is becoming dominated by business interests. It is a necessary and expected evolution of the project, however it introduces all sorts of drama into something that I have grown to love.

Changing Face of the Community

This changing balance of power, from innovators to corporations (and in some cases the innovators themselves have changed) is affecting my experience in the community. In some cases, such as the ability to monetize the R&D investments of my day job, this is a good thing. This shift allows me to put even more resources into really amazing transformative community education projects like OpenStack Training, as well as expand development resources that have OpenSource contributions as part of their 9-5 jobs.

In other cases, this larger shift from innovation to monetization has driven me mad. The various corporations can be expected act in their self interest, in some cases battling against each other and catching those of us with beards (and most of the time not in suits) in the middle. I do believe that there is a strong middle ground. Where we as a community, that is inclusive of Operator, Integrator, Educator and Vendor can all work together in a sane way. I do believe we can preserve and protect this beautiful community we have built. My personal belief is that we need to help Operators and Educators(Researchers in EDU) to integrate into the community and be able to stand as an independent voice of reason.

My Hope

I hope that we as a community work together to provide balance to the force. To protect and accelerate the is innovation forge that is centered around OpenStack, but also extends to all sorts of adjacent platforms and projects. I think we can do it, hell. I think we must do it. And while I’m not always the most popular person for voicing my opinions, my goals are simple to accelerate the pace of innovation in the new norm, where Vendor, Integrator, Educator and Operator all share the burden and benefits of invention. As a community working together, I think we can get there.