This is the common OpenStack meme for coverage. Each Summit there’s more and more users - “customers” - but it will take a while before OpenStack is suddenly us an “overnight success.”
Looking at it from a different perspective, OpenStack is one of the biggest, new model for open source development: they’re iterating on the concept and mechanics of open source in new and novel ways, deep in bazaar mode vs. Fred Brook’s surgeon model, to mix metaphors and ages.
I think it’s best to think of OpenStack as a continuation of the Eclipse model, that isn’t really too explicit about it: the point of the overall effort is to provide and commoditize all the common components needed to make cloud software. The vendors - be try ISVs, service providers, or SIs - who take those common components make most of “the real” products (not all, of course). If there happens to be a fully functional cloud platform as a result apart from vendors, even better.
What’s incorrect in my comparison is that this doesn’t seem to be the explicit mission of the community. Indeed, I think holding back from a strong mission like that is intentional: and that’s where the OpenStack is more like the ASF. Unlike the ASF, the OpenStack community isn’t opposed to profit and business; those ASF guys seems allergic to it (which maps to their mission perfectly well).
Hence, it’s all sort of new. I don’t really know what “The Model” is yet.
See also Nancy’s piece on the meme.
The great OpenStack conundrum: with 15,000 members, why is adoption lagging?
As an analyst, you often gets asked and paid to provide press release quotes (see some of mine here, though the I haven’t been good at saving all of them). Yes, press releases are still widely done and used. As someone who write-up the tech world happenings, I actually find them handy. Knowing how a vendor talks about themselves is actually important for analyst work, and the good press releases are more like media kits that line up all the relevant facts and links to other sources…and there’s all the bad stuff too, that’s still floating around.
So, as an analyst, how do I do press release quotes?
In general (meaning I don’t always do this) I try not to reference the vendor in my press release quotes. Instead, if I believe it to be the case, I try to follow a format that points out the problem the vendor is solving and then say something along the lines of “there’s clearly market desire for products that address this problem” type of thing. However, if I truly believe that the product/vendor in question is somehow awesome (and, esp. if they have a track record) I’ll reference them directly.
Put another way: I try to make most of my press release quotes into just validating the problem the vendor is working on, and, if real, that there’s market potential there.
(And, yes, if the news, vendor, etc. in particular is BS, I don’t just stand there and say “this BS is awesome!” That can be a tricky situation.)