{"id":4873,"date":"2013-07-31T11:15:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T16:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/?p=4873"},"modified":"2013-07-24T10:45:34","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T15:45:34","slug":"open-mic-spotlight-dirk-muller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/open-mic-spotlight-dirk-muller\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Mic Spotlight: Dirk M\u00fcller"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dirk<\/a>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.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Dirk is a Senior Engineer on OpenStack at SUSE, where he gets in touch with all\u00a0aspects of OpenStack.<\/em><\/p>\n

1. What was your first commit or contribution and why did you make it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was roughly half a year ago, when I uploaded the first review\u00a0(https:\/\/review.openstack.org\/#\/c\/19830\/<\/a>) immediately after my CLA\u00a0application\u00a0was approved, and two days after I started on OpenStack. My main\u00a0reason was to test how easy it is to contribute on OpenStack. I learn\u00a0while doing things, so contributing was my way to learn how to\u00a0contribute, and\u00a0I was positively surprised that it was quite easy. And I appreciate\u00a0the hard work of\u00a0that “mysterious” Mr. Jenkins when he gives a +1.<\/p>\n

2. What other OpenStack developers deserve a shout out for the work\u00a0they’re\u00a0doing in the community? Who are our unsung heroes? Your own?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The three areas I had most contact with are those who work on the\u00a0online documentation (which is continuously improving,\u00a0and already tremendously helpful!), the countless volunteers that\u00a0review code changes and almost always suggest a way\u00a0to improve the patch even further and last but not least Stefano (and\u00a0whoever helps him) for the Community Newsletter,\u00a0which is great for busy people like myself to have at least a glimpse\u00a0of understanding on what is going on.\u00a0I can only barely anticipate the amount of work that is put in each of\u00a0those, and who ever contributes to any of\u00a0those is up for my applause.<\/p>\n

3. What’s the most critical feature you think cloud software needs to be\u00a0widely adopted over the next year?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most crucial feature is not a single blueprint, it is everything\u00a0that moves towards\u00a0ease of installation, configuration and consistency in use. OpenStack\u00a0did well in splitting out\u00a0components that are managed in individual projects, but for the full\u00a0feature experience\u00a0all of those components need to be combined again by the Administrator\u00a0(“user”), and when going\u00a0through those steps from the beginning for the first time, there are\u00a0many things that one can\u00a0stumble upon. For example things that are slightly inconsistent\u00a0between the various projects, like\u00a0configuration options doing the same but named differently, or\u00a0defaults being different between\u00a0projects, or the command line of the clients being slightly different.\u00a0A lot of work is going on\u00a0into that already, but in order to really succeed, OpenStack as a\u00a0whole needs to work together on\u00a0that. I believe that consistency doesn’t mean there is a “right way”\u00a0of doing things. Even\u00a0a “wrong way” is still slightly better if it is at least consistent\u00a0between all projects and can\u00a0be changed at one glimpse in one single place.<\/p>\n

4. What do you think are the benefits of the open, community-driven\u00a0approach\u00a0to development?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The main benefit I think is that it puts decisions about code and\u00a0features on the shoulders of those\u00a0who do the work. Those who do not actively review or actively\u00a0contribute code have lesser impact\u00a0on the project’s direction and on individual implementation details.\u00a0That just feels natural and\u00a0motivating and also keeps a healthy level of pragmatism in the\u00a0project. The only downside is that\u00a0one probably only values openness when having experienced the\u00a0downsides of non-openness before, where\u00a0steering happens without being affected by the decision.<\/p>\n

5. What is your favorite productivity hack? Secret trick? Shortcut\u00a0you’re\u00a0slightly embarrassed to admit?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I use F10 as a hotkey in the editor that executes a throw-away\u00a0“doit.sh”, which automates the boring\u00a0steps of building, redeploying and executing the steps needed to\u00a0reproduce the original problem, \u00a0e.g. simply running the one testcase again that I’m aiming for at\u00a0the moment.<\/p>\n

In general the main productivity “hack” that I aim for is that as soon\u00a0as I do something again\u00a0for the 3rd time, I go writing a script or at least a scripted check\u00a0instead, and automate\u00a0that one as well as possible. It requires quite a bit of self-control\u00a0though, but by remembering\u00a0that executing repetitive tasks flawlessly is not a human strength, it\u00a0has always paid off so\u00a0far.<\/p>\n

6. What is the most common misconception you hear about OpenStack?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That is probably the perception that OpenStack is just another way of\u00a0managing virtualisation, without\u00a0realizing the different philosophy behind Cloud solutions in general\u00a0and OpenStack in particular.\u00a0Cloud offers self-service, self-management, usage metering, as well as\u00a0being designed around\u00a0the idea of failure being a feature.<\/p>\n

\u00a07. What is your biggest hope for the OpenStack community in the next 5\u00a0years? What would be really, really amazing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You mean what will be after the “O” release (and I’ll vote that one\u00a0being called “OpenStack release” then, which would make\u00a0Triple-O being Quad-O finally)? Well, my biggest hope is that there is\u00a0a next release with “P” in the name then, which also\u00a0includes platform services. Or we’re already way beyond that and have\u00a0a “S” release?! Let’s together find it out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[474],"tags":[465],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4873"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4877,"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4873\/revisions\/4877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}