OpenStack Foundation Rebrands as Open Infrastructure Foundation

After considerable anticipation, the OpenStack Foundation revealed today that it will be known as the “Open Infrastructure Foundation,” effective in 2021.

This announcement, made during the organization’s virtual developer conference, wasn’t unexpected. In recent years, the organization broadened its scope by incorporating projects extending beyond the original OpenStack initiative, and it had already rebranded its conference as the “Open Infrastructure Summit.” The trademark for “Open Infrastructure Foundation” was actually filed as early as April.

Image Credits: OpenStack Foundation

Following a period of significant attention, the open-source OpenStack project encountered some challenges in 2016 as the market began to mature. However, the project discovered a strong foothold within the telecommunications industry and remains a highly active open-source endeavor. Reports from OpenStack vendors consistently indicate record-breaking sales figures, despite a decrease in widespread publicity. With the project now stable, the Foundation began to expand its focus, integrating projects such as the widely-used Kata Containers runtime and the Zuul CI/CD platform.

“We are officially making the transition and becoming the Open Infrastructure Foundation,” explained Jonathan Bryce, a long-standing executive president of the OpenStack Foundation. “This is a significant advancement, built upon the achievements of our community, both within projects like OpenStack and as a broader movement focused on providing individuals with choice and control when constructing digital infrastructure. This is a truly compelling mission, and we are acknowledging and preparing for another decade of collaborative effort with our exceptional community.”

In some respects, the organization’s delay in making this change is more noteworthy. According to Mark Collier, the foundation’s COO, the team deliberately waited to ensure a well-executed transition.

“We simply wanted to ensure that we leveraged all the insights gained while fostering the OpenStack community—insights that originated with the straightforward concept of integrating open source into cloud infrastructure. This idea has spurred a far greater amount of open-source development than we initially envisioned. Naturally, OpenStack itself has evolved and diversified beyond our initial expectations,” Collier stated.

Accompanying today’s announcement, the group also confirmed that its board has approved four new members at the Platinum tier, its highest level of membership: Ant Group, the Alibaba affiliate responsible for Alipay, embedded systems expert Wind River, China’s FiberHome (previously a Gold member), and Facebook Connectivity. These companies will officially join the new foundation in January. Platinum membership requires an annual contribution of $350,000 to the foundation, along with at least two full-time employees dedicated to its projects.

“Looking at the companies we have as Platinum members, it represents a diverse range of organizations,” Bryce pointed out. “AT&T, the world’s largest telecommunications provider, alongside Ant Group, the largest payment processor globally and a substantial financial services company, and then Ericsson, focused on telecommunications, Wind River, serving defense and manufacturing. This demonstrates that infrastructure is essential for everyone. By building a community and successfully organizing these communities to develop software with the aim of deploying that software into production, we create substantial value for a wide range of stakeholders: a vendor ecosystem, a strong user base, and a vibrant community of developers who enjoy collaborating with talented individuals worldwide.”

The OpenStack Foundation’s current members fully support this change, and Bryce and Collier alluded to additional new members who are in the process of finalizing their participation.

We can anticipate the new foundation to begin incorporating new projects next year, while the OpenStack project itself continues to progress. The project’s latest bi-annual release, “Victoria,” launched last week, featuring enhanced Kubernetes integrations, improved support for various accelerators, and other advancements. The foundation’s name change will not directly impact the project, but it may benefit from a revitalized and more diverse community that will contribute to projects surrounding it.