OpenStack Foundation Investigating Election ‘Violation’ Controversy
Guidance and stewardship of OpenStack, the open source cloud platform project, is shifting from Rackspace Hosting, as the community works to get the guiding OpenStack Foundation off the ground. But over the weekend, a controversy emerged when Shanley Kane (Better known as @shanley on Twitter), an individual member of the OpenStack Foundation, withdrew her candidacy for the foundation’s Board of Directors, allegedly under pressure from corporate members.
The nominations for the OpenStack Board of Directors opened on July 25th, with Kane – who works as Basho’s Director of Product Management in her day job – finding out that she was a candidate soon after. Shortly after that, Kane took to her Twitter to describe some alleged correspondence from an executive at one of OpenStack’s corporate member companies. The Tweets are gone, it should be noted, but they were apparently archived on GitHub by one of Kane’s colleagues for posterity.
“A few hours after finding out I was nominated for the #openstack board of directors to be elected by the Individual Members last night… I was contacted by an executive at one of the #openstack corporate member companies who asked ‘why the fuck I was running’… And proceeded to suggest I should publicly discuss my conflicts of interest (my employer also makes an object storage product). Before ‘a certain someone points that out.'”
“After I suggested that this was threatening and abusive and all discussions should take place on the public mailing list… I received a ‘legalese’ email stating that, as a company, the corporate partner he represented would not be able to nominate me implying that the corporate entity somehow had the right to, as a corporate member, influence the Individual Members election. I don’t find mention of such corporate partner ability in the Bylaws. It was also stated that if I would reveal my company’s plans, the decision could be revisited. Due to the threatening and unpleasant nature of this interaction I am removing my nomination for the #openstack board. I am gravely concerned about attempts of corporate members to interfere in the Individual Members election.”
Kane, for her part, hasn’t said much about it publicly since those Tweets got deleted – other than to reaffirm that she was up for the position as an individual, not part of Basho, and her comments on the matter are the same. She’s also lamented the tempest in a teapot that her comments have caused in the open source world (the Twitter storm raged all weekend), with the community divided, rallying to support Kane, decrying her for withdrawing her candidacy for the OpenStack board, or else taking this as proof positive that the OpenStack Foundation is doomed to big-vendor domination before it even really starts.
For their part, high-profile members of the OpenStack Foundation are investigating Kane’s allegations.
“We’ve learned that someone may have violated the basic principles that hold this community together by trying to affect the nominations for the Individual Member elections. This is not what our community stands for, and we do not want to let the actions of one or a few tarnish the reputation of the thousands of individuals who are working to make OpenStack a great place to develop open source software. We are so determined to uphold our values that every member–individual or corporate–agrees to a code of conduct that prohibits abusive behavior and attempts to manipulate our elections,” wrote Rackspace Cloud founder Jonathan Bryce wrote to the OpenStack mailing list on Sunday morning.
Lawyers are apparently making the rounds at the member companies, reminding them that unduly attempting to influence elections is strictly against OpenStack Foundation bylaws, and that the foundation’s independent counsel is overseeing elections, reports IT World.
Putting the technology aside for right now, what’s absolutely critical at this point for OpenStack is, well, openness. As an individual, it’s perfectly understandable that Kane is exercising her right to not discuss the matter now that it’s under official investigation. At press time, Kane hadn’t replied to a request for comment, but the story will be updated should she get in touch.
But if the IT world at large is to have any faith in OpenStack’s promises of vendor neutrality, of openness to developers large and small, and of generally delivering on the promises of the open cloud, it’s absolutely vital that the discussion itself remains accessible and visible, not just on the mailing list, but to the general cloud-consuming public, as the OpenStack Foundation finds its feet and tries to build a reputation of integrity and trustworthiness.
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