#1 OpenStack contributor: all of us

It's that time of the year again... As we get to the end of our development cycle, some people look at hard contributions numbers and some companies decide to expose questionable metrics to brag about being #1.

This cycle, it's apparently HP's turn. But you can make numbers say anything... It's true that HP is the largest contributor when you consider the integrated release, the incubated projects and the supporting projects altogether, and we are very happy with HP's involvement in OpenStack. But numbers can always tell a different story if you look at them from a slightly different angle. If you only consider commits to the integrated release (the projects that we will end up releasing as "Juno" in a few weeks), then Red Hat is still #1. If you count code reviews on this same integrated release, then Mirantis leads. If you only consider Documentation, then SUSE leads. It's all pretty balanced and healthy.

Rather than celebrating being #1, we should all celebrate the diversity of our community and our contributors. 132 different organizations were involved. 6% of our code contributions come from individuals who are not affiliated with any company or organization. The Universidade Federal de Campina Grande is #25 in commits to OpenStack projects. B1 systems, a small German consulting firm, is #8, mostly through the work of one person.

Every little bit counts. It doesn't matter who is #1, it matters that we all can contribute, and that we all do contribute. It matters that we keep on making sure everyone can easily contribute. That's what's really important, and I wish we all were celebrating that.