This post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful as we celebrate the third birthday of the project. Each day in July, a new contributor will step up to the mic and answer five questions about OpenStack, cloud, careers and what they do for fun.
Angus received an Electro-Mechanical Engineering degree in Cape Town, South Africa. He then got into Telco Embedded developement. From there he got increasingly involved in Embedded Linux and later moved to Red Hat. At Red Hat he has been a contributor to the Clusting software stack and for the last year and a half been working on Openstack. His twitter handle is @ahsalkeld
1. What are the essentials for someone just getting started with OpenStack? Sites? Books? Conferences? People?
Try and solve a problem. Whether that is an business solution or upstream bug. I find getting to know any software is easier when you have a goal.
2. What was your first commit or contribution and why did you make it?
Together with Steven Dake we started the Heat project. We felt that Openstack had a lot of API to get to grips with and was missing a layer like Amazon’s CloudFormation. Heat has very quickly evolved over time to “grow” it’s own API and soon DSL.
3. What other OpenStack developers deserve a shout out for the work they’re doing in the community? Who are our unsung heroes? Your own?
The other core “Heaters” Steven Hardy, Steven Dake, Steve Baker, Zane Bitter, Clint Bryum and Thomas Herve.
4. Are there any skills that you think are critical for OpenStack developers in the next 5 years? What specialties will be most useful? Valuable?
I think social skills and knowledge of Opensource development is really important, also being open to new ideas. You can always learn a programming language and what is involved in scaling software out.
5. What do you think are the benefits of the open, community-driven approach to development?
It brings together developers and users from a wide background, they all bring something unique to the table. From code reviews to knowledge of different technologies and very different use cases. This makes a quality and flexible project, not to mention fun.
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