OpenEBS: Lessons We Learned from Open Source
OpenEBS is a data storage fabric for Kubernetes, enabling Kubernetes containers to access storage anywhere in the cluster, and automatically providing resilience such as self-healing storage, replicated volumes, cloning and snapshots.
Without OpenEBS, containers are limited to local node storage only or storage located outside the cluster. Because of its usefulness, between 500,000 and 1 million people use OpenEBS every day to manage storage across their Kubernetes clusters.
DataCore Software acquired the company behind OpenEBS in 2021. Our experience with OpenEBS, which started as a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) sandbox project and after four years ended with our project being archived by CNCF, provides valuable lessons for any corporation getting started with open source.
Lesson 1: Understand the Purpose Behind Open Source
Unless you’re a large company with unlimited resources, most mid-size companies measure their investments by return on investment (ROI) — initiatives that provide a tangible payback. This forms a natural tension with open source: Do you rush to monetize it? Do you acknowledge you’re investing in a community that has a longer-term benefit, with less measurable ROI? For us, we didn’t know. This was our first time.
OpenEBS was a CNCF project, with about 350 contributors, but 90% of the code was written by DataCore developers — a storage fabric is based on orchestrating data stored on physical blocks on a disk. It is low-level rocket science, and each component takes years to develop. To maintain momentum, you need a dedicated team to build these low-level components. It is not easy to source expertise and time commitment from the community.
DataCore has 20 engineers working full-time on the OpenEBS project, contributing 90% of the code. What do we do? Do we rush to monetize it? Is investing in the Kubernetes community enough? How do we measure the benefit? For us, we didn’t know.
Lesson 2: Be True to Who You Are
Some people believe all software should be free. Some people believe all software should be paid for. Maybe the answer is in the middle — open source and proprietary software should have a place together in tomorrow’s companies. Individuals and companies should have a choice. For us, our truth, our purpose is to be the driving force behind OpenEBS, ensuring this popular Kubernetes data storage project is lightning fast, fully featured, enterprise-grade and always free. At the same time, we provide a commercial option for companies that need support and enterprise integrations.
This sounds simple, but it took us years to understand this purpose. One of the challenges with open source is that “commercialization” is a dirty word. One of the challenges with proprietary software is that “open source” is a dirty phrase. As a community, we need to get past this.
Lesson 3: Life after Archival
The OpenEBS project was archived by CNCF. (You can read about it here.) What’s not clear for many people is what happens after this. For us, we still have 20 people working on the project; we’re still answering questions on Slack channels and GitHub; people are still using OpenEBS and contributing code. The biggest difference is that CNCF’s project life cycle provides a future, a guarantee that projects will continue. When people using an open source project invest years of their lives and base their own software on an open source project, they are depending on it and need to know it will continue. A CNCF sandbox, incubating or graduated project provides this certainty. An archived project does not.
Make Changes and Try Again
As a project, we have a duty to every person who contributed code to OpenEBS, every person who based their own software on OpenEBS, every person who believed in us. As a project, we acknowledge that we wrote great code, but didn’t run a good CNCF-complaint project. Both are essential.
Open source gives people the freedom to innovate, to try new things and to accept new ideas from anywhere and anyone in the world. Our project was archived. In the spirit of community, in service to the hundreds of thousands of people that use OpenEBS, we are going to try again.
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