Hi Sebastien, Thanks for your thoughts! I for one am being optimistic about this change.
I'm also not worried about containers, I think you've spent too much time among hammers and now everything looks like a nail. :-) There is a massive load of stuff that at the moment needs (data centre) virtualisation and Cloudstack is in a better shape than ever to take care of that. So long Citrix and thanks for all the fish! Hello Accelerite! My 2 pence, Lucian -- Sent from the Delta quadrant using Borg technology! Nux! www.nux.ro ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Sebastien Goasguen" <run...@gmail.com> > To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org, us...@cloudstack.apache.org, > market...@cloudstack.apache.org, > priv...@cloudstack.apache.org > Sent: Tuesday, 12 January, 2016 16:20:44 > Subject: Thoughts on Citrix announcement yesterday > Hi everyone (cross-posting), > > Yesterday Citrix announced that it sold its CloudPlatform business to > Accelerite > from Persistent Systems [1] > > As you know CloudPlatform is Citrix’s commercial distribution of Apache > CloudStack. I wanted to share a few thoughts on what this means for > CloudStack. > > One of the core tenet of the Apache Software Foundation is non-affiliation to > companies, as such all of us on these lists participate and contribute to > CloudStack as individuals. While the majority of us who are contributing daily > to CloudStack are actually doing it as part of our day jobs we still voice our > opinions as individuals and companies do not (and should not) have influence > on > what we do. This is one of the things that makes ASF great. This is also one > of > the reasons why the ASF and us as a project will not comment on this > announcement. It is Citrix’s business, not ours. > > That said, Citrix gave CloudStack to the ASF back in 2012 and contributed > heavily in the early days to its development and maintenance. We should be > thankful to Citrix for donating this software and helping the community grow. > Giving it to the ASF was also the move that allows us to keep on going like > “business” as usual. We as a project do not depend on Citrix. Hence Citrix > selling its CloudPlatform business does not change our day to day. > > Over the years it is fair to say that Citrix involvement through the many > individuals participating on these lists as diminished, with the vast majority > of the work now carried on by others. If we were to do a ASF “faux-pas” and > actually check affiliation of the folks that are doing most of the development > and release work, we would see other companies than Citrix. Companies offering > CloudStack services but also and mostly CloudStack users, a few doing it as a > hobby and most because their company uses it. This is open source at its core, > folks using a software, loving it, loving their peers, and contributing back > for the benefit of everyone. > > It is impossible for me to say what Accelerite will do, I have had no contact > with them so far and did not know this sale was coming. Neither do I know what > will happen to all the fine Citrix engineers that were still working on > CloudStack. Whatever they do, I wish them the best and thank them for the > dedication to our project over the years. Early indication from the press > release seems to indicate that Accelerite will engage with us. If they do, we > will welcome them like any contributors to an ASF project. With openness, > transparency and respect (the Apache way). > > I do want to mention that I think this may be an opportunity for CloudStack. > Observers might think that our project is dead because of Citrix selling its > business, but they would be mis-informed about the nature of ASF projects. I > actually believe the contrary and think this will be a time where more users > and potentially companies will engage more actively. They will see that the > route to a successful Cloud is through engaging and becoming part of our > community. They will also finally stop thinking that CloudStack is a Citrix > product and that might be the kicker that brings them on board. > > Finally, being a technical guy, I like to focus on technical things. We have > done some great strides over the past 8 months, we have stabilized CloudStack > and are now releasing faster than ever, we have dockerized, we have > pluginized, > we have had several events... In september we will go to Brazil for CCC. > Brazil > is seeing a huge growth in CloudStack adoption. > > We still have a ton to do, from removing technical debt, fixing security > issues, > improving packaging, making CloudStack ever more easier to develop and use. > This has not changed. We have some very important discussions going on around > LTS and GitHub hosting. If anything I think the container movement is a bigger > threat to our project than Citrix’s announcement. As companies start to > embrace > the container ecosystem and building containerized applications, what happens > to CloudStack ? How does CloudStack work in a container world ? The same > question are valid for OpenStack by the way, I just don’t buy into the Magnum > effort, but I digress :) > > So thank you Citrix, we hope to welcome Accelerite and let’s keep on Stacking, > > [1] > https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2016/01/11/a-new-home-accelerite-to-acquire-cloudplatform/ > > -Sebastien > VP Apache CloudStack
