Tech Titans Pledge Support for OpenStack Foundation

openstack-cloud

Nineteen leading technology companies signed on to become Platinum or Gold members of the OpenStack Foundation, an independent body committed to the development and propagation of OpenStack, an open source cloud operating system, the group has announced. The formation of the foundation was unveiled in October.

AT&T, Canonical, HP, IBM, Nebula, Rackspace, Red Hat, and SUSE will join the foundation as Platinum Members, while Cisco, ClearPath Networks, Cloudscaling, Dell, DreamHost, ITRI, Mirantis, Morphlabs, NetApp, Piston Cloud Computing and Yahoo! will participate as Gold Members, based on the principles outlined in the published mission and framework.

'The Correct Next Step'

"The OpenStack Foundation is the next step in OpenStack's journey as the fastest growing project in open source history," said Randy Bias, co-founder & CTO, Cloudscaling. "Rackspace has been a tremendous steward of the project, and in this role they have guided OpenStack toward greater success. Rackspace and the entire OpenStack community know that the formation of the OpenStack Foundation is the correct next step to move the mantle of leadership to the community itself. We are thrilled to see the Foundation come to life."

To date, the annual operating budget of OpenStack has been between $4 to $5 million, paid for by Rackspace, according to the foundation wiki. Now, members will be financing the project. Platinum Members will fund the foundation at a level of $500,000 per year (paid annually) with a three-year commitment and Gold Members will provide an amount equal to total company revenue times .025%, with a minimum of $50k and a maximum of $200k, according to the wiki. Also, corporate sponsors can be on board for $25,000 per year and startups can sponsor at a level of $10,000 per year. Visit the Foundation wiki for more details on the OpenStack Foundation's Mission and Governance.

166 Companies Now Contributing

In July 2010, managed hosting and cloud provider Rackspace, along with NASA and about 20 other companies, launched OpenStack, with the original goal of building an open source cloud operating system. The OpenStack community has expanded exponentially around the world, with 2,685 individuals and 166 companies involved in the open source public and private cloud OS projects. Just last week, the latest version, Essex, was released, adding new features to the OS.

“In less than two years, we’ve had five software releases from hundreds of contributors from more than 50 companies, and the cloud operating system has grown from two core projects to five core projects across compute, storage and networking,” said Jonathan Bryce, OpenStack Project Policy Board and co-founder, Rackspace Cloud. “The formation of a foundation is about preserving and accelerating what's working and moving the community building activities to a neutral long-term home with a broad base of support.”

Also, Citrix made news last week when it pulled out of OpenStack community to pursue its own open-sourced cloud software, titled CloudStack, which will be offered under the Apache Software Foundation.

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