Yes, I think they are getting better (at what rate, I can not measure, but forward progress IMHO). One example; the project/group I work in (https://wiki.opens

Yes, I think they are getting better (at what rate, I can not measure, but forward progress IMHO). One example; the project/group I work in (https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Oslo https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Oslo) basically is a bunch of well-known people in the software community (author of sqlalchemy included, authors of python books, myself...). Libraries I (and others) work on are trying to help solve the tech. debt of the various projects (good practices and all that). So I think this has helped make things better... Obviously progression is relative and certain projects in OpenStack move at different rates (depending on complexity, vendor involvement, or lack of vendor involvement, number and quality of developers doing reviews/commits...). There's always work to be done (and yes I know the operators pain, I work at yahoo! and sit right next to the operators running our OpenStack based clouds, vm and baremetal...); things aren't always easy but then what software really is in the end...