There’s no gentle way to put this but everyone (and I mean everyone) I’ve talked with thinks that this position should be heard.

OpenStack is bleeding off development resources (Networkworld) and that may be a good thing if the community responds by refocusing.

I spent a fantastic week in Barcelona catching-up with many old and new friends at the OpenStack summit. The community continues to grow and welcome new participants. As one of the “project elders,” I was on the hallway track checking-in on both public and private plans around the project.

One trend was common: companies are scaling back or redirecting resources away from the project. While there are many reasons for this; the negative impact to development and test velocity is very clear.

When a sun goes nova, it blows off excess mass and is left with a dense energetic core. That would be better than going supernova in which the star burns intensely and then dies.

For OpenStack, a similar process would involve clearly redirecting technical efforts to the integrated Core from an increasingly frothy list of “big tent” extensions. This would both help focus resources and improve ecosystem collaboration. I believe OpenStack is facing a choice between going nova (core focus) and supernova (burning out).

I am highly in favor of a strong and diverse ecosystem around OpenStack as demonstrated by my personal investments in OpenStack Interoperability (aka DefCore). However, when I moved out of the OpenStack echo chamber; I heard clearly that users have a much broader desire for interoperability. They need tools that are both hybrid and multi-cloud because their businesses are not limited to single infrastructures.

The community needs to embrace multi-cloud tools because that is the reality for its users.

Building an OpenStack specific ecosystem (as per “big tent”) undermines an essential need for OpenStack users. Now is the time for OpenStack for course correct to a narrower mission that focuses on the integrated functional platform that is already widely adopted. Now is the time for OpenStack live up to its original name and go “Nova.”