open writing ! -collaborative authoring on apache’s first open-source cloud computing project

Radhika PC 12/1/12

Open Writing For Apache CloudStack

Credits

• Apache CloudStack Contributors

• Jessica Tomechak

• Ram Chinta

• Archana Maheshwari

• Deepti Dohare

Agenda

•What is Apache CloudStack?

•The Apache Way™

•Apache CloudStack TechPubs

•What is Apache CloudStack?

•The Apache Way™

•Apache CloudStack TechPubs

CloudStack: Key Highlights

A proven Infrastructure As a Service (IAAS) Cloud Platform

Hypervisor Agnostic Scalable Architecture

Apache CloudStack: Architecture

Any Servers Any Storage Any Networking

Open Source Xen Hypervisor

Amazon Proprietary Orchestration Software

AWS API (EC2, S3, …)

Amazon eCommerce Platform

vSphere XenServer KVM

Apache CloudStack

Portal and End User Experience

Cloud API

CloudStack: Trodden Path

• Developed since 2008 by Cloud.com

• Citrix acquired Cloud.com in 2011

• Donated to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) in April 2012, where it is now an Incubator project

• First ASFCS 4.0.0-Incubator released in November 2012

• Powering some of the world’s largest clouds today

•What is Apache CloudStack?

•The Apache Way™

•Apache CloudStack Techubs

Apache Contributor to Committer

Process to

Become an

Incubation

Project

Process to

Become a Top-

Level Apache

Project

The Apache Way

• Pure meritocracy

• Earn the merit

• Peer to peer

• Open communication

• Decision is made by voting

• Low barrier to contribution

•What is Apache CloudStack?

•The Apache Way

•Apache CloudStack TechPubs

At work..

A Citrix CloudPlatform Writer

If not at work..

An Apache CloudStack Contributor

Traditional Writing Open-Source Writing

Authoring Authoring Contributor Features

Peer Reviews Peer Reviews + Contributor Doc Reviews in Open

Status/Process Updates Non-Voice IRC Chat + Wikis

Meetings Meetings + Meetups+ Mailing List

Learning Learning—Wider Boundary

Defect Fixing Fixing Defects on Contributor Features

Hack Weeks

Fun Time with Social Media

Wearing Two Hats

Two Sides of the Same Coin..

What drives you..

..Passion is the word

…Visibility

….Opportunities

What deters you..

.. if you are not doing what you really love to do

…if you are thin-skinned

….if you are insecure

….if you are not open

Proprietary to Open: Where We Were

• Two Resources and three months !

• Three Proprietary releases and one Open-Source release!

• ~ 500 pages of documentation in Microsoft Word !

Unstructured to Modular Source: Non-

Automation

Modular source

Converted to DocBook XML—manually ! Updated old sections

Copy edited

Improved doc design and modularity

Publishing with Publican

• Easy to set up

• Applies brands to “skin" content

• Uses conditional tags

• Generates a variety of output formats

• Generates .po files for translators

Publican: Example Configuration File

xml_lang: en-US

type: Book

docname: Installation_Guide

brand: cloudstack

chunk_first: 1

chunk_section_depth: 1

condition: install

Output type

Publican looks for an XML file with this name

and uses that as the main book file

The product logo, CSS styles, copyright text,

navigation button images etc. are set in the

brand

Chunk settings control when Publican starts a

new HTML output file

Conditional text marked with any other label

will be excluded from the output

Mechanics

The Apache Documentation Process

• Functional Spec discussions on cloudstack-dev@incubator.apache.org

• Sign up for a feature

• Documentation Reviews through Apache Review Board—https://reviews.apache.org/

• Defects are filed at https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CLOUDSTACK

Apache Review Board

24

Submit a Patch

Review

Comments?

Ship it!

No

Yes

Documentation Reviews

Demo

Join the Community….

• Check us out @ ᵒ cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Index ᵒ http://cloudstack.org

• IRC: #cloudstack on irc.freenode.net

• Forums: http://cloudstack.org/forum/

• Subscribe to Mailing Lists @ cloudstack-dev@incubator.apache.org cloudstack-users@incubator.apache.org

• Join Apache CloudStack Bangalore Meetup Group http://www.meetup.com/CloudStack-Bangalore-Group/

• Join Apache CloudStack Facebook Group @https://www.facebook.com/groups/cloudstack/

Q & A