NASA and Web hosting company Rackspace jointly launched a new cloud computing project last year called OpenStack. The goal is to produce a standardized set of open source software components for building out self-hosted elastic cloud computing environments.

OpenStack is attracting a large audience of contributors and adopters, but the project has suffered some minor growing pains since its launch. In a move to address the governance challenges that have arisen over the past year, Rackspace has decided to spin off the OpenStack project and form an independent foundation that will drive the effort forward.

The move will likely come as welcome news to the project's supporters, some of whom have expressed concern over the past year about unilateral decision-making and a lack of transparency in some aspects of OpenStack governance.

Rackspace ratcheted up its commitment to OpenStack earlier this year when it acquired Anso Labs, a company that worked on NASA's Nebula computing platform—parts of which are incorporated into OpenStack. Although the move was a positive reflection of Rackspace's willingness to invest in OpenStack, it was also viewed as a bit of a land grab by other contributors because it gave Rackspace a lot of consolidated influence over the project.

Engineer Rick Clark, who previously worked at Rackspace and is involved with the OpenStack project, outlined some concerns about Rackspace's conduct back in March after he left the company. In his view, Rackspace overstepped its authority by pushing through governance changes without the consent of the project's governance board. This led him to write that "Rackspace is trying to control OpenStack rather than influence it."

Clark thought that some constructive changes could strengthen the project and took the opportunity to call for the formation of an OpenStack foundation. He pointed out that a foundation would solve a number of governance problems and avoid the risk of having a single point of failure.

"Rackspace, please put the code into a non-profit foundation. Putting the code in a foundation similar to the Linux Foundation, is good for everyone," he wrote. "Until the project is a foundation, joining Openstack is akin to giving your project to Rackspace. What happens if Rackspace is under new management, say Oracle, for example? A foundation fixes that."

Rackspace is apparently receptive to that sentiment and similar views that have been voiced by other members of the OpenStack community. The company's decision to transition OpenStack to a foundation could help even out the project's governance model and give participants more confidence that they aren't going to be disenfranchised in the future.

As the project aims to set industry standards, getting buy-in from all the relevant stakeholders is going to be critical to OpenStack's long-term success. That kind of buy-in and industry-wide support can only materialize if the project remains inclusive. Setting up a foundation is a good step in the right direction.

Of course, the foundation will need a good community-driven governance model and will have to be organized in a way that allows it to operate with true independence. To achieve that, Rackspace hopes to get the community involved in the process of establishing the foundation at an early stage.

"Rackspace will be gathering feedback from others in the community on the best structure and processes to adopt as the OpenStack Foundation is established in 2012, starting with a Town Hall session tomorrow during the OpenStack Conference in Boston," wrote Rackspace's Mark Collier in a post on the OpenStack blog. "OpenStack is poised for an even bigger year in 2012, with so much passion from an amazing group of people across the globe and an independent OpenStack foundation. The promise of a vendor-neutral, truly open cloud standard is within reach."

According to the blog post, over 110 companies and organizations are currently involved in OpenStack development—evidence of the project's large growth over the past year. Collier cites Disney, Fidelity, and CERN as adopters.

The promise of standardized cloud computing architecture and real-world interoperability indeed makes the OpenStack project compelling. The impressive roster of companies that are lining up to get involved really speaks to the breadth of its potential. There is much to be gained if the project can work through its current growing pains and continue evolving.

Listing image by Photograph by [rich]