[dkarapetyan]

Google open source projects in general are just shitty. The reason is that they don't open source the whole thing and the code ends up being full of assumptions that don't hold because you are either not running things at google scale or are missing certain key bits of the "secret sauce".

In any event google compute is a terrible user experience compared to the likes of AWS and other cloud providers. Heck, even the shittiest VPS providers tend to be better than google compute. So open sourcing their "secret sauce" as the article puts is still missing key bits so I don't know how many people actually fall for the good will part.

[cmcluck]

disclaimer: i am a founder of the Kubernetes project and did the article with Cade at Wired. i also was product lead for compute engine back in the day fwiw :).

I am not sure which projects you have looked at from Google in terms of Open Source, but in the case of Kubernetes we have worked pretty hard to engage a community outside of Google and work with the community to make sure that Kubernetes is solid. One of the things that I like about the it is that many of the top contributors don't work at Google. People like Red Hat have worked very closely with us to make sure that (1) Kubernetes works well on traditional infrastructure (2) that it is a comprehensive system that meets enterprise needs, (3) that the usability is solid. People like Mirantis are working to integrate Kubernetes into the OpenStack ecosystem. The project started as a Google thing, but is bigger than a single company now.

Another thing worth noting: building a hosted commercial product (Google Container Engine) in the open by relying exclusively on the Kubernetes code base has helped us ensure that what we have built is explicitly not locked into Google's infrastructure, that the experience is good (since our community has built much of the experience), and that the product solves a genuinely broad set of problems.

Also consider that many of our early production users don't run on Google. Many do, but many also run on AWS or on private clouds.

-- craig

[jacques_chester]

I'd be interested to see whether Google follow's Pivotal's lead and donates its IP to an independent foundation, as happened with Cloud Foundry.

Disclaimer: I work for Pivotal, in Pivotal Labs.

[thockingoog]

What key bits do you think are missing from Kubernetes?

I'm sorry you seem to have had a bad experience with GCE, but please know that Kubernetes runs on several other clouds, too, with no crippleware or anything. It is 100% open.

[viklas]

And 100% on-track for awesome.

Yes, sometimes development/testing for new kubernetes features 'feels' like it's focussed-first on GCE functionality (before other platforms) and earlier on, it had some hooks that weren't great (like GCE-only external load balancers and storage). But hey, it's not even v1.0 yet - and all those things are either fixed or being worked on already.

And as a non-GCE user, you aren't a second-class citizen. It works everywhere.

We've deployed successfully in AWS, vagrant and bare-metal (in the garage), so far. All with 'one-command' automated deployment and re-use of our pod & service specs throughout.

Roadmap/Architecture-wise, it would be good to see a more 'pluggable' approach for 3rd party integration (more like an Open Stack model), but again, we're still pre-v1.0...

Also, I think the google-folk here are being very 'reasonable' in their replies. Your comment was mis-directed & ill-informed. Go do some reading or watch Kelsey Hightower's presentation from a couple of months ago:

http://chariotsolutions.com/screencast/philly-ete-2015-16-ke...

[gyre007]

This is in no defence to Google, albeit it might seem so, but why isn't Amazon or other big cloud providers opening their stuff ? It's all SDKs and agents.

Google have dedicated developers who are hacking on a lot of open source projects - not just Kubernetes - which takes significant amount of time.

After all - this is for all open source users out there - it's all Open Source - you don't have to use it.