OpenStack Ironic and the MLH Fellowship with CID

In this episode of the GROSS Out Podcast, host Tabitha DiDomenico talks with CID, a software engineer and maintainer on the OpenStack Ironic project at G-Research. CID explains what OpenStack Ironic does — provisioning and managing bare metal (physical) servers the same way you'd manage a cloud instance — covering the full server lifecycle from enrollment and cleaning to firmware updates and deployment.

CID also share his journey from ALX (African Leadership X), the MLH Fellowship to full-time open source maintainer of OpenStack Ironic and how it changed his life.

The conversation covers:

What OpenStack Ironic is and the problem it solves for bare metal provisioning

Runbooks, a feature for predefining and scoping automation steps across servers, and the upcoming Version 2 (V2) improvements

Why this release cycle has focused heavily on security advisories and vulnerability backports across four stable release branches

CID's path from the Major League Hacking (MLH) Fellowship and the African Leadership Experience (ALX) software engineering program to becoming a full-time open source maintainer

The realities of open source code review, the anxiety of working in public, and why backward compatibility is one of the most overlooked but critical skills in maintaining large infrastructure projects

CID's advice for anyone facing rejection from a fellowship or open source community

Links

CID's Blog - https://auditorical.com/

OpenStack Ironic - https://opendev.org/openstack/ironic