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About the OpenStack Foundation

Community, culture, staff, capabilities & reach

OpenStack Foundation Vision

Supporting open infrastructure communities

New Project Guidelines

Policies, guidelines & best practices for hosting a project

Contents

Next Steps

Appendix

Timeline, stakeholders

Project setup considerations

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Three trends with OpenStack and the market

The ‘Big tent’ approach recognized that our community is larger than the original OpenStack cloud software, but unfortunately also caused confusion and diluted the meaning of OpenStack
The increasing number of open source projects is positive for the industry, but many individual technologies are difficult to use together. Our users are already taking a holistic approach, integrating multiple open source technologies, and they actively discuss that in OpenStack channels and events
The form factors for compute, networking and storage are expanding outside the datacenter, and OpenStack users are already leading the community this direction

There’s an opportunity to focus on solving problems by integrating the right technology stack. In doing this, we can more clearly communicate what is OpenStack and the different use cases. We can provide the collaborative, working space for anyone operating open infrastructure.

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What is the OpenStack Foundation?

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The Home of Open Infrastructure

A global, diverse community of open infrastructure developers, users & enthusiasts
Builders of open source infrastructure tools, world-class CI and integration testing
The place for collaboration, learning & problem solving for infrastructure operators and users, online and at events around the world...where work gets done!
The largest footprint of open source cloud deployments around the world

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Community & ecosystem

FOUNDATION MEMBERS

COMPANIES

81,000

COUNTRIES

187

670

COMPUTE CORES IN PRODUCTION

6,000,000

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Engaged users span industries

_RETAIL_&_E-COMMERCE

_{FINANCIAL SERVICES}

_TELECOM

_{ACADEMIC/RESEARCH}

_{ENERGY & TRANSPORTATION}

_{MANUFACTURING}

_MEDIA_&_{ENTERTAINMENT}

See more at

openstack.org/users

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Corporate Members

_PLATINUM_MEMBERS

_GOLD_MEMBERS

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Cross-community collaboration

The OpenStack community works hard to collaborate with adjacent communities and integrate technologies important to our users

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OpenStack Foundation Vision

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OpenStack the software platform integrates compute, storage and networking technologies, giving you programmatic access under one set of APIs

But infrastructure is bigger than OpenStack: no one technology or open source project can do it all, and users are combining multiple technologies at different layers of the stack

More value is unlocked for users when the focus is integration and operation of open source technologies across use cases and verticals

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Integration engine for datacenter cloud

Integration engine for full stack open infrastructure technologies across verticals and technologies

Integration engine for knowledge & collaboration

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Potential to expand projects managed by the OpenStack Foundation & provide larger forum for user collaboration

“Big Tent” was an effort to recognize more innovation and projects within the community, but we learned that not every project fits into OpenStack cloud software itself
There’s an opportunity to support new projects--relevant to open infrastructure--under their own brand identity and technical governance
Projects could be aligned under strategic focus areas, such as:

Datacenter cloud infrastructure (existing OpenStack)
CI/CD systems
Edge computing infrastructure
Container & Serverless infrastructure
AI & Machine Learning infrastructure

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OpenStack Foundation Approach

Our goal is not to be the biggest Foundation or pull in the most sponsorship dollars. We believe in collaboration, we love our community and we are invested in each project’s success. We want to:

Create the most value for users and the technology ecosystem
Run lean and build sustainable, collaborative communities
Organize the most valuable events and activities around the world
Share the key principles, best practices and lessons learned from the OpenStack development process, and test & development infrastructure with emerging projects
Ultimately, spread adoption of open source software and infrastructure

And we like to have a good time with OpenStack!

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Community building & governance

Build on best practices & learnings to establish independent technical and user-driven governance
Attract a broad and diverse base of contributors to accelerate project development and adoption

Complementary technology

Ability to leverage shared development and test infrastructure
Shared knowledge and proven development processes at scale

Largest, engaged user community for open infrastructure

User community provides testing and feedback loop to improve software, define use cases
Make connections with users who are thinking strategically about open source involvement

Why host a project at the OpenStack Foundation?

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Global reach to grow adoption

We reach 20,000 people at 30+ OpenStack events around the world each year, including the global OpenStack Summits and regional OpenStack Days
We have established a strong volunteer network who organize hundreds of meetups and OpenStack Days events; they are interested in supporting more open infrastructure projects
We host a publication called Superuser Magazine, which attracts 30,000-40,000 unique visitors per month, and topics range from cloud strategy to technical how-to’s and user profiles
We have established PR/AR �channels in US, Europe & Asia,�and can support global �marketing efforts
We have established strong �social media channels and �OpenStack.org, which reach�millions of people each year

Why host a project at the OpenStack Foundation?

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New Project Guidelines & Policies

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‘Four Opens’: Cornerstone of our Culture

OpenStack Foundation culture is built on open source principles, which we believe are paramount to building vibrant, sustainable and truly collaborative communities:

Open Source - Open Source, not open core
Open Design - Public discussion and meetings to plan roadmap; focus on user input and direction
Open Development - All development activities (code repositories, reviews…) happen publicly with the ability for anyone to participate throughout the development process
Open Community - Representative governance, collaborative culture, level playing field

https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/opens.html

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Is my project a fit for the OpenStack Foundation?

Ask your team:

Is our project relevant to the open infrastructure space?
Do we have contributors from at least 3 different organizations currently participating or interested in participating in the development efforts?
Do we value independent governance, diversity, and a breadth of contributions?
Do we want to collaborate in the open, get input from users, and work across open source projects and communities for the greater good?

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Important policies, or the ‘non-negotiables’

IP Management

Foundation owns and manages all trademarks
Foundation owns key web domains
Open source, not open core
CLA, DCO or appropriate contributor agreements in place

Governance

Technical decisions made by technical people representative of the contributors, on the merits of the proposal
Governance should be representative and diverse, and should provide opportunities for new leaders to rise up
Public documentation of governance, development process, and how to contribute
Projects must adhere to the OpenStack Foundation Code of Conduct

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Important policies, cont.

Communications

Communications channels publicly archived and available on the internet

IRC is preferred, but there’s potential to support pre-existing channels
No private channels or mailing-lists; everyone should be able to access everything

Prefer asynchronous communications. Meetings should be recorded (text or video) and publicly available on the internet, organized in a way that’s easy to reference

Technology

Prefer open source tools
Automated testing pipeline in place (potential to leverage OpenStack Foundation infrastructure)
Publicly available and open code repositories

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The ‘negotiables,’ potential to bring your own

Project name (needs to pass legal trademark search)
Development language (Python is our heritage, but we’re not limited to Python)
Technical governance structure, including core reviewers and project leadership, as long as it adheres to the four opens and guidelines
OpenStack Foundation-hosted git/Gerrit systems is recommended, but if the project already exists on Github or other publicly-accessible repos that is an option
Shared libraries
Release cadence

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Proposed structure/process

OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors & Leadership Team (TC/UC/Staff) define “strategic focus areas” for new projects
OpenStack Foundation Staff vets and recruits new project proposals based on strategic, technical & cultural fit
New “strategic focus areas” may form Technical Committees, User Committees and governance processes according to the Four Opens
Individual project teams have a “leader,” who is representative of the project contributors

OpenStack Foundation

Board of Directors / Joint Leadership Team

OpenStack Technical Committee

Project

“Foo” Technical Committee

“Bar” Technical Committee

“Bang” Technical Committee