Since the acquisition of Chef by Progress there has been a lot of opportunity for us to intentionally make decisions around the amazing products that Chef provides. The same products that all members of the Chef Community (past, present, internal andexternal) have had a big part in shaping and building. In the many conversations I’ve had since the acquisition, the thing I’ve heard most often is a concern about Progress’ commitment to the Chef Community and to open source.
We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Chef’s community is one of its key strengths, and we really value the relationships and interactions we have with our community. Progress believes in the importance of this community and sees the contributor model that Chef built as an ideal model for any open source project. It provides value to the entire DevOps and DevSecOps ecosystem, and Progress is happy to continue to support that. Respecting the strengths of the companies that Progress acquires is important and building on those strengths is how any organization grows and prospers.
In the coming weeks and months we will expand our communication efforts and continue to solicit feedback from the community. Our immediate outreach plans include launching a webinar series like the Chef Infra Quickfire series, introducing regular webinars with our product managers starting in March, and continuing things like the weekly community meetings where developers provide team updates to the external community at large (you can watch it live in #community-meetings in our Community Slack, or catch the summary notes on our forums). Please be on the lookout for announcements from us regarding these!
Another way we are continuing to support the community involves strengthening our engineering teams. The Chef engineering team going forward consists of a combination of existing Progress employees, Chef employees who came to Progress in the acquisition, and new hires that bring with them the unique skills that we require to build on Chef’s legacy and fulfill our commitments to customers and the community. Overall, we are expanding the engineering team globally with additional headcount to ensure we are effectively serving our customers and collaborating with our community to continue to build, deliver and support great software. These moves ensure that the community will see no reduction in our focus or resources over the long term.
We’re also in the very early planning stages of ChefConf 2021, this year’s edition of our annual conference. Right now we’re aiming for early September and are planning a digital event. If it’s safe to do so by then, we may add in local meetups or watch groups around ChefConf, but safety will be more important than anything when deciding those things.
For now, if you have questions or ideas for how we can improve, don’t hesitate to let me know!