The OpenStack Foundation promotes the global development, distribution and adoption of open infrastructure with more than 82,000 community members from 187 countries around the world. The OpenStack Foundation was founded in September 2012 to provide an independent home for the OpenStack cloud operating system, which has since become one of the largest and most diverse open source projects in history.
The goal of the OpenStack Foundation is to serve developers, users, and the entire open infrastructure ecosystem by providing a set of shared resources to build community, facilitate collaboration and support integration of open source technologies. Primary activities include organizing large-scale test infrastructure, community management, and bringing together more than 20,000 open infrastructure enthusiasts each year at global events including the OpenStack Summit.
In December 2017, the OpenStack Foundation began incubating new Strategic Focus Areas, starting with Container Infrastructure, CI/CD and Edge Computing. The Strategic Focus Areas include include new pilot projects and communities, the first of which are Kata Containers, Zuul and the Edge Computing Group. If you are interested in building an open infrastructure project at the OpenStack Foundation, contact [email protected].
The Foundation wouldn't be possible without a strong ecosystem of companies that have contributed in many different ways. To learn more about our Platinum Members, Gold Members and Corporate Sponsors, check out the supporter recognition page. If your company is interested in becoming a supporter, read more about it here.
Individual membership of the OpenStack Foundation is free for anyone with an interest in open infrastructure. Individual Members are expected to participate in the community through technical contributions or community building efforts, and vote in an annual election for the Board of Directors.
什么是 OpenStack？
OpenStack 是一系列开源工具（或开源项目）的组合，主要使用池化虚拟资源来构建和管理私有云及公共云。其中的六个项目主要负责处理核心云计算服务，包括计算、网络、存储、身份和镜像服务。还有另外十多个可选项目，用户可把它们捆绑打包，用来创建独特、可部署的云架构。
试想一下，在 虚拟化环境中，诸如存储、CPU 和 RAM 等资源都是从诸多供应商特定的项目中提取出来，然后由虚拟机监控程序进行拆分并按需进行分配。OpenStack 使用一组一致的应用编程接口（API），进一步将这些虚拟资源提取为离散池，用于辅助标准云计算工具，供管理员和用户直接交互使用。
OpenStack 的工作原理
OpenStack 实际上由一系列叫作脚本的命令组成。这些脚本会被捆绑到名为项目的软件包中，这些软件包则用于传递创建云环境的任务。为了创建这些环境，OpenStack 还会使用 2 种其他类型的软件：
虚拟化软件，用于创建从硬件中抽象出来的虚拟资源层
基础操作系统（OS），用于执行 OpenStack 脚本发出的命令
你可以这样理解：OpenStack 本身不会虚拟化资源，但会使用虚拟化资源来构建云。OpenStack 也不执行命令，但会将命令转发到基础 OS。OpenStack、虚拟化软件和基础操作系统，这 3 种技术必须协同工作。正是由于这种相互依赖性，所以许多人才会使用 Linux® 来部署 OpenStack 云，也因此，RackSpace 和 NASA 才会将 OpenStack 作为开源软件来发布。