OpenStack – an open source software project

OpenStack is an open source software project which has a huge number of contributors from a wide range of organizations. OpenStack was originally created by NASA and Rackspace. Rackspace is still a significant contributor to OpenStack, but these days, contributions to the project comes from a wide array of companies, including the traditional open source contributors (Red Hat, IBM, and HP) as well as companies that are dedicated entirely to OpenStack (Mirantis and CloudBase). Contributions come in the form of drivers for particular pieces of infrastructure (that is, Cinder block storage drivers or Neutron SDN drivers), bug fixes, or new features in the core projects.

OpenStack is governed by a foundation. Membership in the foundation is free and open to anyone who wishes to join. There are currently thousands of members in the foundation. Leadership on technical issues is provided by a 13-member technical committee, which is generally elected by the inpidual members. Strategic and financial issues are decided by a board of directors, which include members appointed by corporate sponsors and elected by the inpidual members.

For more information on joining or contributing to the OpenStack Foundation, refer to: http://www.openstack.org/foundation.

OpenStack is written in the Python programming language and is usually deployed on the Linux operating system. The source code is readily available on the internet and commits are welcome from the community at large. Before code is committed to the project, it has to pass through a series of gates, which includes unit testing and code review.