On Thu, 2017-10-12 at 12:51 -0400, Zane Bitter wrote: > So my question to the TC candidates (and incumbent TC members, or > anyone else, if they want to answer) is: what does the hypothetical > OpenStack user that is top-of-mind in your head look like? Who are > _you_ building OpenStack for?
There's a fundamental misconception in the way you just asked the question: in any open source project the question "who am I building this for?" and "who is my target end user?" aren't necessarily the same. The honest answer to "who am I building this open source project for?" should always be "me". There's nothing magical about this: all open source/free software projects are driven by developer enthusiasm. If the reason you're in the project isn't something inside yourself (like fascination with some aspect of the code or need to use it personally) then you're unlikely to be a good contributor. The principle is actually universal: having been an engineering manager in industry I know that if someone is only in the project for the paycheque then I need to replace them ASAP with someone who's actually fascinated by some aspect of the project because the productivity of the latter will be way higher. It's the most annoying aspect of Engineering Project Management: engineers aren't fungible resources, they have enthusiasms that have to be engaged. There's a corollary to this that allows you to test the health of your project: "If I weren't being paid to do this, would I still do it?". The majority answer for a healthy project should be "yes". There's no industrial counterpart here because if they don't pay you, you don't get access to the code base. The question of who is the end user is usually either "me" because you have a use for the project or more likely "I don't know" because you care mostly about the engineering aspects. That's not to say that some contributors can't get fascinated by user problems because it does happen; however, it's not usually the majority. User base tends to come about because of goal alignment: once a project has a reasonable number of committers, feature addition becomes more a matter of negotiation, but these negotiations tend to produce better code and a set of common goals (the aligned goals of the contributors). Industrial contributors are attracted if some of the project goals align reasonably with business goals and it looks like contribution from the industry partner could achieve further alignment. One of the key goals of Industry is to get paid by consumers, so the Industrial contributors tend to bring along the users (Again Industry does this by canvassing end user requirements and seeing what the alignment with the project is and whether it could be improved. They don't do this for "community" they do it because they make more money if the alignment is better). By the way, this pragmatic goal alignment without necessarily sharing any philosophical belief in "code freedom" is the main difference between open source and free software. That's not to say every successful open source/free software project has to have a large user base. The Linux Desktop would be a classic example here: excluding mobile, it's a complete failure in terms of world domination of user base. However, in terms of "built by geeks for geeks" it's very much alive and healthy ... just look at the OS running on laptops at any Linux conference, for instance. James __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
