The OpenStack Blog Everything in & around OpenStack in written words.

This post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful. Each week, a new contributor will step up to the mic and answer five questions about OpenStack, cloud, careers and what they do for fun. 

Wang Pan is a Senior Software Engineer for the private cloud at NetEase.com, working primarily on Nova (including cpu qos, libvirt driver for kvm, cloud monitor similar to ceilometer, EBS similar to cinder, etc.). You can follow him on Twitter at @Aspirer2004.

1. What is your go-to beverage or snack while coding?

Boiled water is the best beverage when coding.

2. What behavior has helped get you the furthest as a developer?

Copy and paste the experts’ codes as much as possible.

3. What do you think is the coolest thing that’s happened with OpenStack over the past three years?

Supported qemu-guest-agent in Nova, because that is my code. 🙂 Thanks to all reviewers!

4. Be honest – are you more likely to know your project collaborators by their IRC nic or their actual name?

I prefer their actual name.

5. How many OpenStack t-shirts do you own, and which is your favorite?

I own only two, and I need more to pick a favorite.

This post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful. Each week, a new contributor will step up to the mic and answer five questions about OpenStack, cloud, careers and what they do for fun. 

Zhang Hua joined the OpenStack community in 2012 as a contributor from IBM. He loves coding and digging into the details of various computer technologies. You can follow him on Twitter at @zhhuabj and read his blog here. 

1. Define what “open source” means to you.

I like the open source spirit. I love working in a culture where the engineers can decide how to design and implement great products. I also enjoy the opportunity to learn from world-class engineers.

2. How did you first get involved in OpenStack? 

I joined the OpenStack community in February of 2012. I am the first contributor from IBM China’s Systems and Technology Lab, and was one of the early guys from IBM global. I love Linux technology, and my manager thought I would be an appropriate engineer to join OpenStack at that time. Looking back over the past two years, I feel very lucky to be nominated by IBM to join the Openstack journey. I read more than 24 books about networks and linux during this time, and became an expert. I also better understand the spirit of open source: top engineers develop the best platforms based on technology truths.

3. If you couldn’t be a developer, what would your dream job be?

If I couldn’t be a developer, I would become a researcher. I believe that disruptive theory is more important than practice in terms of technology improvement and society development. I would pursue investigation, prototyping and disruption to improve depth in some promising domains.

4. Why did you decide to go into computer engineering?

My undergraduate major is in Electronic Information Engineering. Although I didn’t understand computers well at that time, I was always envious of others who could set up their personal website using HTML technology — although now, it seems so simple. This sparked the interest that drove me to choose Computer Engineering for graduate school in 2004.

5. How did you learn to code ? Are you self-taught or did you learn in college? On-the-job?

I’ve always felt that I was a little different from most people. For example, I don’t like to read blogs or study word phrases, but instead adapt systematic studying by reading a lot of books. I don’t prefer e-books, but enjoy reading paperback books. I always begin to code after I have figured everything out systematically. I always know exactly what I’m doing when I code.

This post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful. Each week, a new contributor will step up to the mic and answer five questions about OpenStack, cloud, careers and what they do for fun. 

Sean is a developer at Comcast working on OpenStack. He is 26 years old, and lives in South Philadelphia with his partner, Caroline. You can follow him on Twitter @sc68cal.

1. What are the essentials for someone just getting started with OpenStack? Sites? Books? Conferences? People?

Devstack. The fact that you can clone a git repository, execute a shell script, and get a fully built OpenStack install on your personal machine to start hacking makes a huge difference.

2. What was your first commit or contribution and why did you make it?

My first contribution of substance was to add better hooks into the Security Group API events in Nova-Network. I was working on a way to take Security Group API calls from OpenStack for something like allowing port 80 open for a web server, to also have those requests propagate into other internal systems inside Comcast. This way, firewalls upstream would honor the request to allow port 80 through.

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? 

For me personally, the community around Neutron has been a big help. People like Aaron Rosen, Nachi Ueno, Mark McClain, and Kyle Mestery have helped me whenever I’ve gotten stuck or had a question.

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’d say the most important skill is an open mind. OpenStack has a huge userbase, and thousands of different use-cases. You need to remember that not everyone is going to be using OpenStack the way you do, and that’s OK! The community and the codebase is flexible enough that everyone should be able to get what they want out of it. It doesn’t have to be a winner-take-all proposition.

5. What do you think are the benefits of the open, community-driven approach to development?

More things can get done in shorter periods of time. Just look at the amount of features that each release of OpenStack has added. It’s incredible.