Wikipedia
OpenStack is a free and open-source software platform for cloud computing, mostly deployed as an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). The software platform consists of interrelated components that control hardware pools of processing, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center. Users either manage it through a web-based dashboard, through command-line tools, or through a RESTful API. OpenStack.org released it under the terms of the Apache License.
OpenStack began in 2010 as a joint project of Rackspace Hosting and NASA. , it is managed by the OpenStack Foundation, a non-profit corporate entity established in September 2012 to promote OpenStack software and its community. More than 500 companies have joined the project.
The OpenStack community collaborates around a six-month, time-based release cycle with frequent development milestones. During the planning phase of each release, the community gathers for an OpenStack Design Summit to facilitate developer working sessions and to assemble plans.
Recent OpenStack Summits have taken place in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2015, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in May 2015, and Paris, France, in November 2014. The summit in May 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia, drew 4,500 attendees — a 50% increase from the Hong Kong, China, summit six months earlier.
An OpenStack Summit took place in Austin, Texas, on 25–29 April 2016, and will be followed by one in Barcelona, Spain, on 25–28 October 2016.