From the 'Core Projects' files:

In the beginning of the open source OpenStack cloud effort there were two projects - NASA's Nova (aka Nebula) and Rackspace's Swift.

Since then OpenStack has added Cinder, Keystone, Horizon and Quantum as core projects, each enhancing the overall platform with storage, identity, management and networking features.

There are a pile of 'other' projects that exist on the periphery of OpenStack now, including Ceilometer, Heat and Red Dwarf that could expand OpenStack further. The debate about what belong in the 'core' project is one that I spoke to Jonathan Bryce, Exec Director of the OpenStack Foundation, about in October.

Now it looks like the whole way that OpenStack handles project tiers is set to change. There is a proposal that is likely to be discussed in the next Board meeting of the OpenStack Foundation that will introduce an entirely new concept to the way projects are organized.

Today the three tiers of project are : Core, Incubated and Community. Those three tiers could soon disappear.

"The new concept that could be introduced is the idea of an integrated project," OpenStack Board member and co-founder of Mirantis, Boris Renski told me. "It means that a project is part of an integrated release."

In that model, there is a stable release of the specific project that comes out on the official OpenStack platform release date, along with all the other projects. Going a level deeper, within the integrated project list, there will be a few projects that will graduate into a new category of Core projects.

Renski expects that projects like Ceilometer and Heat will not make it into Core. The existing core projects of Nova, Quantum and Cinder are likely to be part of the new Integrated Core category.

Personally I think it's an idea that makes a whole lot of sense. In a way, it reminds me of the Eclipse Release train model, where the 'core' project is the Eclipse IDE itself which is then accompanied by 70 or more projects that call all benefit from the same infrastructure.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.