Open Stack

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 3:33 PM, Stefano Maffulli <stefano at openstack.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-03-14 at 15:15 -0400, Jim Jagielski wrote:
>> Foundations should exist to service the code and the
>> committer/developer.
>
> I think you're forgetting to put users in the pictures, both existing
> ones and the ones that should/could become users. Code and developers
> developing in vacuum don't go anywhere. Some would argue that putting
> users immediately in the picture was one of the reasons of OpenStack
> success.
>
>> Yeah, I admit I'm biased. But I'd hate to see OpenStack make a
>> mistake. One of the best things it did was to get out from underneath
>> the shackles of RackSpace,
>
> What do you see that Rackspace does that qualifies as 'shackles'? Lets
> be specific here because if something needs to be fixing it's better to
> identify it now and propose solutions.
>

Not does, but *did*.

A true open source community cannot survive if its not on a level
field; any entity "more equal than others" has an undue advantage. And
even if they don't take advantage of it, what happens when they get
bought out by someone? That entity may have no compunction about using
their leveraged position to force things in whatever direction they
want. One does not have to look far to find examples in various FOSS
spaces where this has occurred... and when the open source projects
become prime revenue sources, the incentive to use that advantage
becomes greater and greater, and the ability of the "less equals" to
buck that grows weaker and weaker.

It's not commoditization of open source that creates problems, but
rather the unfair, unbalanced commoditization thereof.