Concerns Linger About Corporate Involvement In OpenStack Foundation

Summary: OpenStack has amassed widespread support as the leading open source cloud platform stack. But some wonder if participation of new Gold members could undermine OpenStack's adoption in the enterprise sector.

The official debut of the independent OpenStack Foundation was welcomed by most as a big step forward to establishing an open cloud but the inclusion of two big league proprietary vendors, namely VMware and Cisco, has raised a few eyebrows.

As the OpenStack Foundation prepares to launch its most advanced open source cloud platform code-named “Folsom” within weeks, the organization held a coming-out day to celebrate its official independence, its ability to attract more than 180 companies and an excess of $10 million in funding and the acceptance of last-minute bigwig members Intel, NEC and VMware.    

Today, the foundation announced that it would hire 10 to 12 full-time employees and would have a 24-member Board of Directors as well as a Technical Steering Committee whose combined purpose would be to maintain and grow OpenStack as an independent organization beholden to no one vendor or group of vendors.  This approach was pioneered by and approved by OpenStack’s original developers and sponsors, Rackspace and NASA (whose key developers founded Nebula), both which continue to participate in OpenStack as Platinum members...