Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-14 Thread Thierry Carrez
Andrew Clay Shafer wrote:
 What is OpenStack?
 
 Clearly, OpenStack is many things to many people and organizations.
 
 What does it mean to contribute to OpenStack? What does it mean to
 deploy OpenStack? What does it mean to operate OpenStack?
 
 What do we mean when we say compatible? interoperable? community? branded?
 
 Is OpenStack a framework? a project? a product?
 
 Recent discussions make it clear that we have a lot of different ideas
 about all of these things.

These are important and difficult questions. As you say, OpenStack is
many different things to different people. So far we survived while
avoiding to answer clearly, mostly because we had no good way of coming
up with answers. That ultimately creates tension between participants in
our community when the different models clash.

My hope is that the formation of the Foundation will help providing a
forum for this discussion, and a mechanism to come with clearer answers.
I actually see that as the main mission of the Foundation for the first
year.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)
Release Manager, OpenStack

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Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-14 Thread Andrew Clay Shafer
 These are important and difficult questions. As you say, OpenStack is
 many different things to different people. So far we survived while
 avoiding to answer clearly, mostly because we had no good way of coming
 up with answers. That ultimately creates tension between participants in
 our community when the different models clash.


Yes, these are difficult questions.

I'm don't agree with the assertion that there was no good way of coming up
with answers, but for a variety of reasons, we did not.

You say OpenStack has survived, but I believe we may have compounded and
multiplied the challenges OpenStack faces by collectively neglecting to
resolve this. Without going into all the technical necessity and political
complexity, I would argue we allowed OpenStack fragmentation at the project
level. Without a unified conscience of purpose, the fragmentation only gets
magnified at the point users are interacting with different deployments.

I want to also respond to the idea that OpenStack can be seen like the
Linux kernel. This is a point I made and articulated early in the OpenStack
discussion.

The artifacts of my using that analogy date back to the Fall of 2010:
http://www.slideshare.net/littleidea/open-stack-sdforum/44
http://www.slideshare.net/littleidea/openstack-summit-a-community-of-service-providers/27

I don't believe that the kernel is a perfect analogy, but even if it was
this one sentence 'OpenStack is like the Linux kernel' will not make it so.

Linus Torvalds provides both technical oversight and the kind of conscience
I keep referring to.

What is the OpenStack equivalent of this?
https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/8/495

I suggest everyone read the whole email from Linus at that link.

On some level, this attitude is what prevents a preponderance of the
tension we have recently seen in OpenStack mailing lists. Granted, it
implies other more pointed conflict, but some of that is Linus being Linus.
The very real choice in these types of projects is between resolving open
conflict early and often or sublimated conflicts that tend to erupt with a
vengeance later.


 My hope is that the formation of the Foundation will help providing a
 forum for this discussion, and a mechanism to come with clearer answers.
 I actually see that as the main mission of the Foundation for the first
 year.


I share this hope, but I also don't think we should abdicate all
responsibility for this to the Foundation.

We are all ostensibly individual members of the foundation, if not
corporate members.

OpenStack will be what we collectively make it.

Cheers,
Andrew
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Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-14 Thread Dean Troyer
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 1:06 PM, Andrew Clay Shafer
a...@parvuscaptus.com wrote:
 You say OpenStack has survived, but I believe we may have compounded and
 multiplied the challenges OpenStack faces by collectively neglecting to
 resolve this. Without going into all the technical necessity and political
 complexity, I would argue we allowed OpenStack fragmentation at the project
 level. Without a unified conscience of purpose, the fragmentation only gets
 magnified at the point users are interacting with different deployments.

This fragmentation with projects and goals is a real threat to the
long-term viability of OpenStack as a cloud standard.

 I don't believe that the kernel is a perfect analogy, but even if it was
 this one sentence 'OpenStack is like the Linux kernel' will not make it so.

Honestly, I HATE this analogy.  OpenStack has no BDFL, it has now a
foundation that is governed by Corporate interests that have a history
of working on common standards and tweaking them to add 'value'
('differentiation' I think is the buzzword for that).  The
organization of the foundation is partially designed to prevent any
one or two of these interests from pushing the whole in their
particular direction.  The foundation will have to prove itself
capable of pulling the projects forward. Together.

 What is the OpenStack equivalent of this?
 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/8/495

The problem we have is that people in Linus' position are not created,
they grow and the position, respect and authority is earned.  The TC
may be able to earn some of that over time, but without unifying
leadership it will be tough going.  Hopefully their separation from
the rest of the board can give them a chance to provide the technical
leadership and direction needed even if it stubs a few toes along the
way.

It kills me that the acronym for OpenStack Foundation is OSF.  While I
don't think we can really be the Linux of the cloud any time soon, we
will have to really work to NOT be the UNIX of the cloud...

dt

-- 

Dean Troyer
dtro...@gmail.com

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Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-14 Thread Matt Joyce
+1 to everything dean said.

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 12:58 PM, Dean Troyer dtro...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 1:06 PM, Andrew Clay Shafer
 a...@parvuscaptus.com wrote:
  You say OpenStack has survived, but I believe we may have compounded and
  multiplied the challenges OpenStack faces by collectively neglecting to
  resolve this. Without going into all the technical necessity and
 political
  complexity, I would argue we allowed OpenStack fragmentation at the
 project
  level. Without a unified conscience of purpose, the fragmentation only
 gets
  magnified at the point users are interacting with different deployments.

 This fragmentation with projects and goals is a real threat to the
 long-term viability of OpenStack as a cloud standard.

  I don't believe that the kernel is a perfect analogy, but even if it was
  this one sentence 'OpenStack is like the Linux kernel' will not make it
 so.

 Honestly, I HATE this analogy.  OpenStack has no BDFL, it has now a
 foundation that is governed by Corporate interests that have a history
 of working on common standards and tweaking them to add 'value'
 ('differentiation' I think is the buzzword for that).  The
 organization of the foundation is partially designed to prevent any
 one or two of these interests from pushing the whole in their
 particular direction.  The foundation will have to prove itself
 capable of pulling the projects forward. Together.

  What is the OpenStack equivalent of this?
  https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/8/495

 The problem we have is that people in Linus' position are not created,
 they grow and the position, respect and authority is earned.  The TC
 may be able to earn some of that over time, but without unifying
 leadership it will be tough going.  Hopefully their separation from
 the rest of the board can give them a chance to provide the technical
 leadership and direction needed even if it stubs a few toes along the
 way.

 It kills me that the acronym for OpenStack Foundation is OSF.  While I
 don't think we can really be the Linux of the cloud any time soon, we
 will have to really work to NOT be the UNIX of the cloud...

 dt

 --

 Dean Troyer
 dtro...@gmail.com

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[Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-10 Thread Andrew Clay Shafer
What is OpenStack?

Clearly, OpenStack is many things to many people and organizations.

What does it mean to contribute to OpenStack? What does it mean to deploy
OpenStack? What does it mean to operate OpenStack?

What do we mean when we say compatible? interoperable? community? branded?

Is OpenStack a framework? a project? a product?

Recent discussions make it clear that we have a lot of different ideas
about all of these things.

Our collective and individual responsibilities to each other are also a
point of tension.

There is a marked difference in the perspective of those developing the
projects, those operating the projects as services and the final
consumers/clients of those services.

If OpenStack is going to live up to it's full potential and stated mission,
I believe there needs to be a much stronger collective conscience about how
decisions are made.

I feel we will all benefit by making some things more explicit.

If the expectation is that OpenStack is a framework, which is a word I've
heard people use many times, then does an upgrade path have to exist?

The OpenStack dashboard was essentially rewritten to upgrade to a new
version of Django. Was there any expectation that Django should upgrade
itself for us?

Upgrading an application to use a different versions of Rails, another
framework, often borders on impossible, particularly if the application
happens have some feature with a dependency of a gem that hasn't been kept
in sync with the upstream project.

Is OpenStack more or less complicated than those frameworks? What
responsibility should OpenStack core development have to consider existing
deployments? Frameworks are expected be a foundation to build on. By
definition, changing foundations is not easy. Clearly, OpenStack can be
deployed and operated, but if OpenStack needs to be easier to deploy,
operate and upgrade, and that is a responsibility of OpenStack itself, that
can't be something that get's tacked on at the end. There is no 'ease of
deployment' powder to sprinkle on at the end.

Distributions and tooling can and do obscure the difficultly for the
downstream user, but that also leads to a lot of potential fragmentation.
And is that the right answer? Who can and should answer that?

That OpenStack should be easy to deploy and upgrade is somewhat at odds
with OpenStack supporting every possible combination of hypervisor, storage
and networking option, let alone what the expectation should be with closed
source customizations/integrations.

Which brings up questions of compatibility. API compatibility is
potentially misleading if the semantics and behaviors vary. I've heard
several service provider discuss ideas about how they can be differentiated
in the market, and many of those ideas lead differences in APIs to expose.
Is that wrong? Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly makes a lot of work if
your core business is dependent on maintaining integrations with service
providers. Taken to an extreme these decisions complicate and call into
question any future of federated OpenStack services.

I'm not advocating any choice here.

I just want to point out there are compromises that have to be made. There
are goals and desires for OpenStack that are at odds with each other.

Some of that is a function of the perspective of persona, but a lot is also
from fundamental differences in understanding about where OpenStack is,
where OpenStack needs to be, and how to get there.

If there isn't a core guiding conscience about what we are trying to
accomplish that gets applied across the board, then I worry that the future
of OpenStack ends up with more fragments optimizing for their perspective
and inevitable skirmishes when the perspectives collide.

I see there are many conversations we aren't having, which leads to
surfacing all the unaddressed issues when someone does try to involve the
community in discussions.

OpenStack can't be all things, but we get to decide what it will be.

The question is will we do that explicitly and consciously, or indirectly
and passively.

There is no one person who can address this alone.

I'm hoping this can start a conversation.

Best Regards,
Andrew
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Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-10 Thread Joshua Harlow
So many questions, so hard to reply. Whats the best question to answer here ;)

From: Andrew Clay Shafer a...@parvuscaptus.commailto:a...@parvuscaptus.com
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 14:41:03 -0700
To: openstack 
openstack@lists.launchpad.netmailto:openstack@lists.launchpad.net
Subject: [Openstack] Setting Expectations


What is OpenStack?

Clearly, OpenStack is many things to many people and organizations.

What does it mean to contribute to OpenStack? What does it mean to deploy 
OpenStack? What does it mean to operate OpenStack?

What do we mean when we say compatible? interoperable? community? branded?

Is OpenStack a framework? a project? a product?

Recent discussions make it clear that we have a lot of different ideas about 
all of these things.

Our collective and individual responsibilities to each other are also a point 
of tension.

There is a marked difference in the perspective of those developing the 
projects, those operating the projects as services and the final 
consumers/clients of those services.

If OpenStack is going to live up to it's full potential and stated mission, I 
believe there needs to be a much stronger collective conscience about how 
decisions are made.

I feel we will all benefit by making some things more explicit.

If the expectation is that OpenStack is a framework, which is a word I've heard 
people use many times, then does an upgrade path have to exist?

The OpenStack dashboard was essentially rewritten to upgrade to a new version 
of Django. Was there any expectation that Django should upgrade itself for us?

Upgrading an application to use a different versions of Rails, another 
framework, often borders on impossible, particularly if the application happens 
have some feature with a dependency of a gem that hasn't been kept in sync with 
the upstream project.

Is OpenStack more or less complicated than those frameworks? What 
responsibility should OpenStack core development have to consider existing 
deployments? Frameworks are expected be a foundation to build on. By 
definition, changing foundations is not easy. Clearly, OpenStack can be 
deployed and operated, but if OpenStack needs to be easier to deploy, operate 
and upgrade, and that is a responsibility of OpenStack itself, that can't be 
something that get's tacked on at the end. There is no 'ease of deployment' 
powder to sprinkle on at the end.

Distributions and tooling can and do obscure the difficultly for the downstream 
user, but that also leads to a lot of potential fragmentation. And is that the 
right answer? Who can and should answer that?

That OpenStack should be easy to deploy and upgrade is somewhat at odds with 
OpenStack supporting every possible combination of hypervisor, storage and 
networking option, let alone what the expectation should be with closed source 
customizations/integrations.

Which brings up questions of compatibility. API compatibility is potentially 
misleading if the semantics and behaviors vary. I've heard several service 
provider discuss ideas about how they can be differentiated in the market, and 
many of those ideas lead differences in APIs to expose. Is that wrong? Maybe, 
maybe not, but it certainly makes a lot of work if your core business is 
dependent on maintaining integrations with service providers. Taken to an 
extreme these decisions complicate and call into question any future of 
federated OpenStack services.

I'm not advocating any choice here.

I just want to point out there are compromises that have to be made. There are 
goals and desires for OpenStack that are at odds with each other.

Some of that is a function of the perspective of persona, but a lot is also 
from fundamental differences in understanding about where OpenStack is, where 
OpenStack needs to be, and how to get there.

If there isn't a core guiding conscience about what we are trying to accomplish 
that gets applied across the board, then I worry that the future of OpenStack 
ends up with more fragments optimizing for their perspective and inevitable 
skirmishes when the perspectives collide.

I see there are many conversations we aren't having, which leads to surfacing 
all the unaddressed issues when someone does try to involve the community in 
discussions.

OpenStack can't be all things, but we get to decide what it will be.

The question is will we do that explicitly and consciously, or indirectly and 
passively.

There is no one person who can address this alone.

I'm hoping this can start a conversation.

Best Regards,
Andrew
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Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-10 Thread Nathanael Burton
I personally equate OpenStack to the Linux Kernel. It's the foundation and
core components that, in OpenStack's case, make up an Infrastructure as as
Service (IaaS) system, a cloud kernel.  We should expect the core
components and APIs to be stable with sane deprecation policies, but
OpenStack shouldn't do everything for everyone. It should facilitate and
provide the stable framework or foundation in which to build production
quality, large scale (and small) public and private IaaS systems. In and of
itself I believe OpenStack is not an IaaS distribution, ala Linux
distributions (Debian, Fedora, RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu) which take the Linux
kernel and build all the user-space and complementary services that make up
a manageable, secure, monitored system.

However, that doesn't mean OpenStack ignores the
user/operator/packager/distro side of things.  Where we the developers and
operators of OpenStack see areas to make configuration, management,
development, documentation of OpenStack easier we strive to incorporate
those things back into core.

None of the above is meant as criticism, it's simply how I categorize
OpenStack in the cloudy landscape.

Nate
On Aug 10, 2012 5:47 PM, Andrew Clay Shafer a...@parvuscaptus.com wrote:


 What is OpenStack?

 Clearly, OpenStack is many things to many people and organizations.

 What does it mean to contribute to OpenStack? What does it mean to deploy
 OpenStack? What does it mean to operate OpenStack?

 What do we mean when we say compatible? interoperable? community? branded?

 Is OpenStack a framework? a project? a product?

 Recent discussions make it clear that we have a lot of different ideas
 about all of these things.

 Our collective and individual responsibilities to each other are also a
 point of tension.

 There is a marked difference in the perspective of those developing the
 projects, those operating the projects as services and the final
 consumers/clients of those services.

 If OpenStack is going to live up to it's full potential and stated
 mission, I believe there needs to be a much stronger collective conscience
 about how decisions are made.

 I feel we will all benefit by making some things more explicit.

 If the expectation is that OpenStack is a framework, which is a word I've
 heard people use many times, then does an upgrade path have to exist?

 The OpenStack dashboard was essentially rewritten to upgrade to a new
 version of Django. Was there any expectation that Django should upgrade
 itself for us?

 Upgrading an application to use a different versions of Rails, another
 framework, often borders on impossible, particularly if the application
 happens have some feature with a dependency of a gem that hasn't been kept
 in sync with the upstream project.

 Is OpenStack more or less complicated than those frameworks? What
 responsibility should OpenStack core development have to consider existing
 deployments? Frameworks are expected be a foundation to build on. By
 definition, changing foundations is not easy. Clearly, OpenStack can be
 deployed and operated, but if OpenStack needs to be easier to deploy,
 operate and upgrade, and that is a responsibility of OpenStack itself, that
 can't be something that get's tacked on at the end. There is no 'ease of
 deployment' powder to sprinkle on at the end.

 Distributions and tooling can and do obscure the difficultly for the
 downstream user, but that also leads to a lot of potential fragmentation.
 And is that the right answer? Who can and should answer that?

 That OpenStack should be easy to deploy and upgrade is somewhat at odds
 with OpenStack supporting every possible combination of hypervisor, storage
 and networking option, let alone what the expectation should be with closed
 source customizations/integrations.

 Which brings up questions of compatibility. API compatibility is
 potentially misleading if the semantics and behaviors vary. I've heard
 several service provider discuss ideas about how they can be differentiated
 in the market, and many of those ideas lead differences in APIs to expose.
 Is that wrong? Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly makes a lot of work if
 your core business is dependent on maintaining integrations with service
 providers. Taken to an extreme these decisions complicate and call into
 question any future of federated OpenStack services.

 I'm not advocating any choice here.

 I just want to point out there are compromises that have to be made. There
 are goals and desires for OpenStack that are at odds with each other.

 Some of that is a function of the perspective of persona, but a lot is
 also from fundamental differences in understanding about where OpenStack
 is, where OpenStack needs to be, and how to get there.

 If there isn't a core guiding conscience about what we are trying to
 accomplish that gets applied across the board, then I worry that the future
 of OpenStack ends up with more fragments optimizing for their perspective
 and inevitable 

Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-10 Thread Eric Windisch


On Aug 10, 2012, at 20:49, Nathanael Burton nathanael.i.bur...@gmail.com 
wrote:

 I personally equate OpenStack to the Linux Kernel. It's the foundation and 
 core components that, in OpenStack's case, make up an Infrastructure as as 
 Service (IaaS) system, a cloud kernel.  We should expect the core 
 components and APIs to be stable with sane deprecation policies, but 
 OpenStack shouldn't do everything for everyone. It should facilitate and 
 provide the stable framework or foundation in which to build production 
 quality, large scale (and small) public and private IaaS systems. In and of 
 itself I believe OpenStack is not an IaaS distribution, ala Linux 
 distributions (Debian, Fedora, RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu) which take the Linux 
 kernel and build all the user-space and complementary services that make up a 
 manageable, secure, monitored system.
 

An even better example might be Apache. They have their own foundation and have 
a number of services that get installed to machines, but they don't have a 
distribution or any clear deployment solutions.  Some of their applications 
such as the httpd are just core pieces that get installed to a single system 
and multiple services on multiple machines don't communicate, but others are 
horizontally scaling solutions with inter-process communication, such as 
Hadoop.  Whatever the case, they're still not building a distribution.

OpenStack in some ways appears to be the kernel on which applications run, but 
its applications are just applications. If the question is where the foundation 
draws the line at acceptance of projects, it is an interesting one... as long 
as there is a foundation, you can't really use Linux as any sort of example.  
Instead, if you want to draw parallels to operating systems, you'll have to 
look more closely to the BSD systems.

With BSD, they've coupled the kernels and the distributions. I do not think 
this is a model that OpenStack should follow, but I do see a tendency of some 
toward this. Instead, I believe the community and the foundation should move 
into the direction of Apache.

If someone wants to create their own independent distribution, they should, but 
it shouldn't be part of the project or blessed by the foundation. Instead, they 
would follow the steps of Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo; not the steps taken by 
FreeBSD. The community already has a number of emerging proprietary and/or 
corporate-sponsored distributions, it would not do the community a favor for 
the foundation to create its own. 

Regards,
Eric Windisch
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Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-10 Thread Frans Thamura
Openstack is like linux kernel for cloud

Anyone welcome to.create distro on it like ubuntu tolinux... and yea ubunti
cloud to openstack
On Aug 11, 2012 8:46 AM, Eric Windisch e...@cloudscaling.com wrote:



 On Aug 10, 2012, at 20:49, Nathanael Burton nathanael.i.bur...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I personally equate OpenStack to the Linux Kernel. It's the foundation and
 core components that, in OpenStack's case, make up an Infrastructure as as
 Service (IaaS) system, a cloud kernel.  We should expect the core
 components and APIs to be stable with sane deprecation policies, but
 OpenStack shouldn't do everything for everyone. It should facilitate and
 provide the stable framework or foundation in which to build production
 quality, large scale (and small) public and private IaaS systems. In and of
 itself I believe OpenStack is not an IaaS distribution, ala Linux
 distributions (Debian, Fedora, RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu) which take the Linux
 kernel and build all the user-space and complementary services that make up
 a manageable, secure, monitored system.


 An even better example might be Apache. They have their own foundation and
 have a number of services that get installed to machines, but they don't
 have a distribution or any clear deployment solutions.  Some of their
 applications such as the httpd are just core pieces that get installed to a
 single system and multiple services on multiple machines don't communicate,
 but others are horizontally scaling solutions with inter-process
 communication, such as Hadoop.  Whatever the case, they're still not
 building a distribution.

 OpenStack in some ways appears to be the kernel on which applications run,
 but its applications are just applications. If the question is where the
 foundation draws the line at acceptance of projects, it is an interesting
 one... as long as there is a foundation, you can't really use Linux as any
 sort of example.  Instead, if you want to draw parallels to operating
 systems, you'll have to look more closely to the BSD systems.

 With BSD, they've coupled the kernels and the distributions. I do not
 think this is a model that OpenStack should follow, but I do see a tendency
 of some toward this. Instead, I believe the community and the foundation
 should move into the direction of Apache.

 If someone wants to create their own independent distribution, they
 should, but it shouldn't be part of the project or blessed by the
 foundation. Instead, they would follow the steps of Slackware, Debian, and
 Gentoo; not the steps taken by FreeBSD. The community already has a number
 of emerging proprietary and/or corporate-sponsored distributions, it would
 not do the community a favor for the foundation to create its own.

 Regards,
 Eric Windisch
 (sent from my iPad)

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Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-10 Thread George Reese
First, thanks to Andrew for starting this thread. I think it's an important 
discussion.

Second, the problem with the analogies made so far is, IMHO, at the API level 
and what it does to the ecosystem.

Let's take, for example, Apache HTTP Client stuff. 3.1 and 4.x are wildly 
different object models. But that's OK for the Apache model in a way that isn't 
for OpenStack.

When I decided to move Dasein Cloud to the new stuff, it was on my time frame, 
not Apache's.

With OpenStack, the deprecation of APIs is hugely problematic because the 
ecosystem is live dependent on the APIs. If I roll out a new version into a 
infrastructure with rich tool support and that version has API inconsistencies, 
I immediately and irrevocably break critical operational tools. With the Apache 
stuff, there's no external visibility into the HTTPclient APIs. It's just my 
code that I can compile and test pre-deployment.

It's a problem for any tool with a public facing RESTful API.

That's why I believe in never deprecating except in extreme circumstances. The 
most successful cloud API out there, the EC2 API, never breaks existing tools. 
NEVER.

Seriously, never.

-George
 
On Aug 10, 2012, at 9:33 PM, Frans Thamura fr...@meruvian.org wrote:

 Openstack is like linux kernel for cloud
 
 Anyone welcome to.create distro on it like ubuntu tolinux... and yea ubunti 
 cloud to openstack
 
 On Aug 11, 2012 8:46 AM, Eric Windisch e...@cloudscaling.com wrote:
 
 
 On Aug 10, 2012, at 20:49, Nathanael Burton nathanael.i.bur...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 I personally equate OpenStack to the Linux Kernel. It's the foundation and 
 core components that, in OpenStack's case, make up an Infrastructure as as 
 Service (IaaS) system, a cloud kernel.  We should expect the core 
 components and APIs to be stable with sane deprecation policies, but 
 OpenStack shouldn't do everything for everyone. It should facilitate and 
 provide the stable framework or foundation in which to build production 
 quality, large scale (and small) public and private IaaS systems. In and of 
 itself I believe OpenStack is not an IaaS distribution, ala Linux 
 distributions (Debian, Fedora, RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu) which take the Linux 
 kernel and build all the user-space and complementary services that make up 
 a manageable, secure, monitored system.
 
 
 An even better example might be Apache. They have their own foundation and 
 have a number of services that get installed to machines, but they don't have 
 a distribution or any clear deployment solutions.  Some of their applications 
 such as the httpd are just core pieces that get installed to a single system 
 and multiple services on multiple machines don't communicate, but others are 
 horizontally scaling solutions with inter-process communication, such as 
 Hadoop.  Whatever the case, they're still not building a distribution.
 
 OpenStack in some ways appears to be the kernel on which applications run, 
 but its applications are just applications. If the question is where the 
 foundation draws the line at acceptance of projects, it is an interesting 
 one... as long as there is a foundation, you can't really use Linux as any 
 sort of example.  Instead, if you want to draw parallels to operating 
 systems, you'll have to look more closely to the BSD systems.
 
 With BSD, they've coupled the kernels and the distributions. I do not think 
 this is a model that OpenStack should follow, but I do see a tendency of some 
 toward this. Instead, I believe the community and the foundation should move 
 into the direction of Apache.
 
 If someone wants to create their own independent distribution, they should, 
 but it shouldn't be part of the project or blessed by the foundation. 
 Instead, they would follow the steps of Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo; not 
 the steps taken by FreeBSD. The community already has a number of emerging 
 proprietary and/or corporate-sponsored distributions, it would not do the 
 community a favor for the foundation to create its own. 
 
 Regards,
 Eric Windisch
 (sent from my iPad)
 
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Re: [Openstack] Setting Expectations

2012-08-10 Thread Eric Windisch


On Friday, August 10, 2012 at 22:53 PM, George Reese wrote:

 First, thanks to Andrew for starting this thread. I think it's an important 
 discussion.
  
 Second, the problem with the analogies made so far is, IMHO, at the API level 
 and what it does to the ecosystem.
  
 Let's take, for example, Apache HTTP Client stuff. 3.1 and 4.x are wildly 
 different object models. But that's OK for the Apache model in a way that 
 isn't for OpenStack.
Aren't you making the wrong comparison here?  This might apply to the OS API 
client libraries, or euca2ools (which is NOT an OpenStack project), but this 
comparison does not apply to the OpenStack services or EC2 endpoint 
compatibility.  Instead, the comparison of EC2 endpoint compatibility should be 
made to Apache's HTTP endpoint, their httpd.

A better question is: Has the Apache httpd broken HTTP compatibility in any 
significant way? Besides, perhaps, from allowing you to configure it in a 
broken manner?

In fact, this might be a good comparison, because Apache's httpd doesn't HAVE 
to be deployed in a standards-compliant way, although tools (i.e. browsers) and 
operators have figured out how to make this work, and to a large degree, people 
are able to successfully load webpages served by the Apache httpd.

In a similar way, OpenStack Nova installations may vary greatly in their 
behavior. They don't HAVE to be deployed in a standards-complaint way (whatever 
that means); Yet, hopefully, people will be able to successfully launch 
instances served by OpenStack Nova with a common set of tools.

I'm often advocating compatible clouds over advanced client API wrappers (such 
as Dasein), but the reality is that it needs to happen on both ends. The cloud 
server software needs to enable a compatible and standards-compliant service 
endpoint, enforced or not… and the client API libraries need to be flexible 
enough to handle a variety of services that might not be 100% identical.  Just 
like the HTTP servers and client libraries that we have today.

Regards,
Eric Windisch




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