OpenStack Foundation Aims to Define the Core Open-Source Cloud

The OpenStack Foundation was officially launched in September 2012 in a bid to provide an open governance model for OpenStack. OpenStack is an open-source cloud platform originally started by Rackspace and NASA in 2010 that has since become a much bigger effort with widespread industry participation.

Allan Clark, currently serves as the chairman of the board for the OpenStack Foundation. In an exclusive video interview with eWEEK, Clark explains what the board is currently doing as it pushes the open-source cloud platform forward.

Clark is no stranger to the world of open-source boards. He also serves on the board of directors at the Linux Foundation and is the director of industry initiatives, emerging standards and open source at SUSE.

The OpenStack Foundation has a large and lively board, with 24 people on it. Clark said that having a larger board means that it does take more time to get through issues. He added that the large board is also a good thing as it means there is a lot of diversity and viewpoints.

Among the big items on the docket for the OpenStack Foundation now is an effort to define itself and what its core projects are all about. A number of different projects make up OpenStack today, including Nova Compute, Swift Storage, Neutron Networking and the Horizon Dashboard.

Clark said that the foundation is now coming up with a rationale to define why a given project should be considered a core project.

“We’re finding that it’s a harder question than we thought when we first started the discussion,” Clark said.

Simply saying up front that a few projects are “core,” could stifle innovation, Clark warned.

“We have members that are very focused on stability, and then we have developers that want to innovate,” Clark said. “So how do we keep that stability and still allow for innovation.”

The OpenStack project is scheduled to release its next major platform milestone, known as Havana, Oct. 17.

Watch the full video interview with Allan Clark below:

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.