How OpenStack became the big dogs' game – and why it's still for you

If you did have any doubts, recent events should have assuaged them, the division between the public and private cloud is here – and widening. In what might seem to be the industry’s quickest act of consolidation and M&A in less than five years, almost all the originators of OpenStack and the early entrants are gone – snapped …

[Anonymous Coward]

Wanted: benevolent dictator

I am of the opinion that OpenStack is doomed to irrelevance (in Trevor Potts' memorable phrase, "the domain of people who keep their pee in jars"). Giant size OSS projects are not, contrary to popular belief, the collective output of hundreds of people contributing code in a wholly democratic process. Rather, there is someone at the top who has the earned respect, technical chops and savvy to set the direction and make decisions. Linus. De Raadt. Behlendorf. Everything after that is labor, some of which is volunteered and some of which is under the aegis of a sponsor like IBM and RedHat (who throw bodies at, say, contributing to the kernel).

We need someone like that. If you don't believe me, go to a dev track at the next O/S summit and see if a decision on anything can get made.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wanted: benevolent dictator

Great in theory, poor idea in execution.

First, Linus was a chief architect who could credibly take charge. There is no such person in OpenStack.

Josh McKenty could have been this person but anyone who talks with him for more than 10 minutes can't stand him. If he was as big as his ego, then it could have worked.

There are no personalities in place to be a dictator which I agree is needed. However, the OpenStack board could do a much better job of recruiting really good PTL's who are not vendor (or anti-vendor) driven but are motivated by the mission and objective of OpenStack. Most of the PTL's have ether been too weak or driven by bias that alienates the ecosystem. They need PTL's who understand prject management and hold their teams to timelines and execution. It's tough to do within OpenStack but the board has to insist on focus on the vision and execution through the PTL's.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wanted: benevolent dictator

Linus was a college student that created the Linux kernel from scratch and people just jumped on board.