Welcoming OpenStack Community Members to the PSF

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) held elections for nominated members in July and among the new members announced a couple of weeks ago are ten leaders from within the OpenStack community.

  • Nick Barcet
  • James Blair
  • Thierry Carrez
  • Anne Gentle
  • Vish Ishaya
  • Christopher MacGown
  • Joshua McKenty
  • Mark McLoughlin
  • Monty Taylor
  • Dean Troyer

Congratulations to all of the newly elected members, and welcome to the PSF!

About the Python Software Foundation

The mission of the PSF is to promote the Python programming language and the community that uses it. There are several aspects to fulfilling that mission.

The Python Software Foundation holds the intellectual property rights behind the Python programming language and the trademarks associated with Python. It manages the open source licensing for Python version 2.1 and later.

In addition to managing that intellectual property, the PSF also runs the North American PyCon conference each year and supports other Python conferences around the world. The PSF also funds Python related development with a grants program and by funding special projects.

The Foundation holds periodic elections to select new members from a pool of candidates nominated by existing members. Nominees are proposed for PSF membership based on their history of contributions to Python and the Python community. For more information about membership in the Python Software Foundation, refer to the FAQ.

About OpenStack

Started as a collaboration between Rackspace and NASA in 2010, OpenStack is an open source virtualization management system written in Python. Its purpose is to allow anyone to create a “cloud computing” environment (for now, the project’s focus is on IaaS, “infrastructure as a service”). As of this writing there were more than 5,500 people and 190 companies involved in the development of OpenStack.

Governance of the project has recently shifted from Rackspace, Inc. to the new OpenStack Foundation. Elections for the OSF board of directors were just held, and the results are being certified. Any contributor or interested party may join the OSF for free and participate in future board elections. The “project technical lead” (PTL) for each subproject is selected by active contributors. Nominations for PTLs for the “Grizzly” release cycle are being accepted now.

Updated 7 Sept 2012 – Updated to reflect the fact that OpenStack was a joint project between Rackspace and NASA.