ReleaseEmail

Hello OpenStack Developers,

I want to thank everyone in the community for patiently waiting while we work on getting our governance approved. We need to move ahead in preparation for the release in October. To facilitate that, I will be acting as a Benevolent Dictator until we have other processes in place.

The Austin release has a compressed schedule so it will have a very narrow scope. Our goal for this release is to create a deployable in proof of concept, a great for a platform to build on.

The schedule as posted on http://wiki.openstack.org/Release:


 * July 13        Design Summit
 * July 19        Launchpad and Archive open
 * September 30   Feature Freeze
 * October 14     Final Freeze
 * October 21     Austin Release

Some of the key features include:
 * OpenStack(Rackspace) restful API support: in progress - code committed
 * Xen Hypervisor support: in progress - code committed
 * Rackspace Image support: in progress - code written
 * Improved scheduler: in progress - code written
 * Code Cleanup: in progress - code committed
 * Debian packaging: in progress - code committed

This is by no means a complete list of features that may make it into the Austin release. Look for a blog post with greater detail in the next few days.

The final decision about a whether or not a particular feature will make it in to the release will be made at feature freeze, if a feature is not ready, will not build, or if there are concerns about design, and at final freeze, if a feature, although complete does not successfully pass integration or load tests.

Some of these features have blueprints and specifications written. All features will need blueprints and specifications by September 3rd to be considered for inclusion. Set me Rick Clark (dendrobates on Launchpad) a the approve and I will review them and approve them for Austin, if appropriate. If you have any questions about blueprints or specifications or how to use them please contact me or Jay Pipes.

A good example of a blueprint and its related spec is: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/image-stores

We will hold our first OpenStack release meeting on Friday August 27th 17:00UTC/12:00CDT on #openstack-meeting on IRC (freenode). Use this link to find your local time: http://goo.gl/Lbgi. The release meeting will recur weekly. Come prepared to discuss the status of any development you are doing or would like to do during this release cycle.

We will be working to add clarity to the development process over the next couple of weeks. We will also be asking for volunteers to help as we scramble to create, discuss and document all the development processes and policies. We grew quickly and didn't get the ramp up time that most projects get, which is a great problem to have. I am sure we will overcome all of the initial growing pains and I want to thank everyone for all the code you have been submitting.

Rick Clark (dendrobates) OpenStack project lead