On 09/24/2014 02:48 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
Excerpts from Robert Collins's message of 2014-09-23 21:14:47 -0700:
No one helped me edit this :)
http://rbtcollins.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/what-poles-for-the-tent/
I hope I haven't zoned out and just channelled someone else here ;)
This sounds like "API's are what matters." You did spend some time
working with Simon Wardley, didn't you? ;)
I think it's a sound argument, but I'd like to banish the term "reference
implementation" from any discussions around what OpenStack, as a project,
delivers. It has too many negative feelings wrapped up in it.
I also want to call attention to how what you describe feels an awful
lot like POSIX to me. Basically offering guarantees of API compatibility,
but then letting vendors run wild around and behind it.
I'm not sure if that is a good thing, or a bad thing. I do, however,
think if we can avoid a massive vendor battle that involves multiple
vendors pushing multiple implementations, we will save our companies a
lot of money, and our users will get what they need sooner.
I like what Rob had to say here, and have expressed similar views.
Having competition between implementations is good for every one (except
for the losers) if that competition takes place in a way that shields
users and the ecosystem from the aftermath of such competition. That is
what standards, defined apis, whetever we want to call it, is all about.
By analogy, competition by electronics companies around who can make the
best performing blu-ray player with the most features is a good thing
for users and that ecosystem. Competition about whether the ecosystem
should use blu-ray or HD DVD, not so much:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_definition_optical_disc_format_war.
This is what I see as the main virtue of the TC blessing things as "the
one OpenStack way to do X". There is also the potential of efficiency if
more people contribute to the same project that is doing X as compared
to multiple projects doing X. But as we have seen, that efficiency is
only realized if X turns out to be "the right thing". There is no
particular reason to think the TC will be great at picking winners.
Blessing apis, though difficult, would have huge benefit and provide
more room for leeway and experimentation. Blessing code, before it has
been proven in the real world, is the worst of all worlds when it turns
out to be wrong.
I believe our scale problems can be addressed by thoughtful
decentralization and I hope we move in that direction, and in terms of
how many pieces of the "run a real cloud" we have in our tent, we may
have shot too high. But some of the recent proposals to move to an
extreme in the other direction would be a mistake IMO. To be important,
and be competitive with non-OpenStack cloud solutions, we need to
provide a critical mass so that most other interesting things can glom
on and form a larger ecosystem.
-David
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