Update 2016/11/04: Added more suggestions to the list.
Our team is spending some time this week to work on our plans for next year. I put out a call yesterday via Twitter and on Slack for people to share their ideas and requests. Here’s what we heard back so far:
- Definitely a bigger hackathon event at VMworld, maybe with its own day rather than squeezing it at night (1/2). (@do0dzZZ via Twitter)
- Also maybe try a competition based on a challenge to achieve/fix something rather than just random ideas #vmwarecode (2/2). (@do0dzZZ via Twitter)
- Wouldn’t it be awesome if vROrchestrator to have plugins to use different scripting engines besides just Javascript? (Ryan Roland vis Slack)
- Whole Day Hackathon, Capture the Flag event, Scenario based tools (ie solve x y z problems), (@pandom_ via Twitter). A little more detail on this one: “My thoughts are around building automated tools that attack an application. One team defends, one attacks – using tools and what not. I’d have to flesh it out a bit more but the goal is to upload a file or retrieve a file from another teams server.”
- Work with @VMwitacademy and have next generation #code on #vmware technologies (@rrnamb via Twitter)
- Expand the hackathon, combining 2015 and 2016 vmworld hackathon would cover a lot but I might be biased 😉#vmwarecode (@mcclanahan via Twitter)
- I would like to see Project Onyx in real action not just as a fling, embedded with Web Client or H5 Client #vmwarecode (@vOrcunus via Twitter)
- encourage people to start / contribute to open sources projects around #VMware products (@erwanquelin via Twitter)
- vic-engine support for VMware Workstation – how cool wouldn’t that be? (Anders Bergman via comment below)
- Ok, so another “pie in the sky” thought: PowerCLI containers on all relevant VMware appliances (VMCA, vRO, vROps, vRA, etc), and then add a productionalized form of the PowerActions fling into all their web interfaces – direct console as well as saved script repository with RBAC (for selective deployment/entitlement to non-Admin users) (Ryan Roland via Slack)
- Another one, keep that repo alive 😉 https://github.com/vmware/PowerCLI-Example-Scripts (@erwanquelin via Twitter)
- more open sauce around the SDKs (Michael Rice via Slack)
- also if pyvmomi still isnt the same internally vs the opensourcfe one Id like to see them be one in the same (Michael Rice via Slack)
- Unlike other SDKs, VMware SDKs heavily depends on the products. I’d suggest VMware come up with developer licenses for every product. I know most folks here already have access to company’s labs. But to grow the community, it would help. (Steve Jin via Slack)
- Also, hope VMware goes away from private beta practice. Make the beta code and beta forum public and accessible to whoever interested. (Steve Jin via Slack)
- Open Source the Clarity HTML5 web UI framework used by the new vSphere Client and coming vCD interface. So community can benifit (@Hazenet via Twitter)
- Remove API limitations on the free vSphere Hypervisor, so basic API function works, but limit the product on actual features. (@Hazenet via Twitter)
- VMware should have a separate conference for developers – VMware Coders, or something like that. Having some developer related tracks in VMworld is nice, but definitely not enough. For one thing, most of these dev related content is part of partner program thus excluded many already. Also, these programs are always shadowed by the other admin or product related contents. VMware needs a conference for devops with its identity. (Steve Jin via Slack)
- Provide some intro/beginner training material so that us non-developers/vSphere Admins can have start tinkering with API’s (@Th3N1ghtH4wk via Twitter)
- some East Coast events (@jpsider via Twitter)
- Increase viability of configuration management and DSC to replace host profiles/make host profiles like GPOs and extendable (@JodyLWhitlock via Twitter)
- Here are some ideas – the product to be hacked is secret until the start, or, the product is known but the mission or hack is not. The product and hack is known, but you don’t get to decide which product / hack you get only to pick table. Or maybe you don’t get to pick table. (Michael White via comment below)
- I would love to see some kind of program (Maybe similar to JetBrains: https://www.jetbrains.com/buy/opensource/) where VMware donates licenses of it’s products to open source contributors/developers. I recently took over building and managing Vagrant boxes for the Laravel PHP Framework and I’ve already purchased VMware Fusion and I’d love to be able to also test our boxes on Windows which will require that I purchase VMware Desktop. I don’t mind purchasing but I feel like making OSS licenses available would help your company and it’s products gain traction in communities where it may otherwise be missing out on customers. (Joe P. Ferguson via comment below)
What else?
Add your thoughts using hashtag #vmwarecode on Twitter, via Slack (sign up if you haven’t done so already), or simply leave a comment below. Thanks!
