"This acquisition marks a significant step forward in our investment in the success of OpenStack," wrote OpenStack's GM Jim Curry Wednesday as he confirmed that Rackspace has acquired Anso Labs, best known for its work with NASA to help build their Nebula cloud platform, the code behind which NASA contributed to the open source community as the basis for OpenStack Compute last summer.

"We believe OpenStack is the right cloud operating system for the industry, and we are committed to the continued evolution of this open platform and to powering our own cloud with OpenStack for many years to come," Curry added.

Since Anso Labs is a participant in the OpenStack project and has already contributed substantially to its success, it further underlines how strongly Rackspace believes the world needs a truly open cloud platform and is committed to helping build it.

Curry was anxious to allay concerns that Rackspace is somehow co-opting the project:

"We also recognize this takes two of the largest contributors to the projects today and puts them under one umbrella. For some people that will create concerns that Rackspace exerts too much control over the project. Our intent is quite the opposite. We launched this project because we felt that as part of a broader community, we could build something better.

Our long-term vision is one in which this open community continues to thrive, with more and more contributions and direction coming from the diverse group of organizations and people joining the project every day. With companies like Cisco, Citrix, Canonical, Dell and over 50 others now participating, our vision of a movement that is open to all and backed by an industry (not any one player) is becoming more real every day."

More than 50 organizations and 1,000 individuals are involved in defining OpenStack's mission and moving it forward, Curry noted. "We believe OpenStack holds great promise for customers and are humbled to be part of a community comprised of such talented people and forward-thinking organizations," he wrote.