OpenStack Governance

When the OpenStack community was formed in July, we outlined a number of key principles centered around a commitment to Openness.  Now you may notice that the word “open” is applied to just about everything these days, right up there with “cloud”, so when you set out to create an “open cloud” it’s important to spell out just what that means.

We defined what “open” means to OpenStack on the wiki in detail, but here are the highlights for reference:

  1. Open Source (not open core) with appropriate license (in our case, Apache 2.0 which is OSI approved, GPLv3 compatible, and DFSG compatible)
  2. Open Design
  3. Open Development
  4. Open Community

One of our key deliverables in keeping with this commitment was to publish a Governance process shortly after the establishment of the community, and to ensure that the process outlined contained active involvement and representation from the community.  The process is now documented in full on the wiki but I will mention a couple of key points here.

  • Elections for the initial four community-elected Community Member seats on the Architecture Board will be held on October 15, 2010.
  • Interested candidates should email Jonathan Bryce ([email protected]) no later than September 30, 2010.

This Architecture Board will determine, among other things, which additional sub-projects may be added in the future.  We’ve received a number of inquiries from people interested starting new efforts as part of the OpenStack community, or in donating existing projects to the cause.  The Governance model gives us a process for making such decisions in the future.

As noted in the document, we have strived to get the Governance model right but undoubtedly we’ll need to continue to evolve the process over time in the midst of such a dynamic industry with a very active community, and we’re committed to doing just that.  Please let us know what you think in your forum of choice (comments below, #openstack on freenode.net, your blog, twitter etc).

The first few weeks of this project have been a whirlwind, with no signs of slowing down!  Next month, we look forward to establishing the boards and achieving a major milestone on the Compute project (initial release, codenamed Austin).  In November (9-12), we are excited to get back together in person for the 2nd Design Conference.

Mark Collier

@sparkycollier

[email protected]

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