Red Hat's OpenShift Origin to become more transparent

Red Hat has announced that it is reorienting the OpenShift Origin project to make it transparent to developers wanting to contribute to it. OpenShift Origin, released as open source in May 2012, is the community edition of Red Hat's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), OpenShift Online and OpenShift Enterprise. Although the Origin project is looking to emulate Red Hat's work with the Fedora Linux community, it hasn't been widely perceived as a community project in the same way. Red Hat is therefore making a number of changes that it hopes will boost the Origin project's open source community vitality.

Firstly, the project's code has been moved to GitHub.com, but more importantly, future changes to Origin will be made through the git pull request queue, where they will be reviewed by Red Hat "subject matter experts". To support that process, a full continuous integration system, running on OpenShift itself, has been set up, giving developers a clear view into how the PaaS code is being integrated and tested.

These technical changes are being matched with a more externalised process of enhancement and feature development; proposed changes will appear as PEP files in an openshift-pep repository. The project is also expanding its roster of mailing lists, forums and IRC channels by adding an OpenShift Developer's Google Group, which should also provide some insight into community activity.

The project will also be opening up its Trello storyboards (though when The H tried to access them they were apparently still private). Finally, co-locating with the OpenStack Design Summit in Portland, Oregon, on 14 April, Red Hat will be hosting an OpenShift Origin Community Day. A full list of resources for interacting with the OpenShift Origin community is also available.

(djwm)