blog post entry for upcoming operator repo migration to upstream grafana

docs/blog/operator-migration-to-upstream-grafana.md

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+---
+author: "Hubert Stefańksi"
+date: 2023-11-21
+title: "Moving Upstream"
+linkTitle: "Grafana-Operator Moving Upstream"
+description: "An announcement of an upcoming migration to upstream grafana repositories"
+---
+
+Exciting times coming up!
+
+The community folks over at upstream Grafana, have reached out and asked if we’d be open to migrating
+the Grafana-Operator to their https://github.com/grafana organization! We said "YES!"
+
+## Why?
+
+Ever since we moved away from our initial `Integr8ly` home, (where Peter first created the operator) we have focused on
+growing the community and improving the user experience as best we could, we believe that moving to upstream Grafana is
+the next logical step.
+
+With this, we hope that the operator gets some more “validity” (for the lack of a better word). With which, we hope new
+users and developers will be more likely to engage. Especially given its presence in the official `Grafana`
+organization.
+
+It’s not a secret that the current maintainer team isn’t as active as it could be (believe, us, we want to do more).
+But... the grafana-operator is a true side-gig for us, 3/4 of our current active maintainers don't work with Kubernetes
+day-to-day. We acknowledge that this is one of the major factors limiting development right now. Where some feature
+requests have been open for months at a time, with no one being able to implement them. With our limited time we tend to
+focus on fixing bugs and small quality-of-life improvements, however, we know that this is not enough and that the
+operator has much greater potential. After all, we only support a few core features, out of numerous possible ones in
+Grafana.
+
+So, the choice is pretty clear for us, considering the slow development speed, and our limited capacity but also wanting
+the operator to grow, in all aspects, community, featureset etc., we believe this to be a step in the right direction
+for everyone involved.
+
+## What does it mean for me(as a grafana-operator user)?
+
+Technically, not much will change, the grafana-operator will still be the grafana-operator you’ve gotten to know, love
+and have pulled millions of times (we see the stats 😁).
+
+We don’t plan on a new API version with this repo migration, at least not in the upcoming quarters, we’re really happy
+with how flexible our API is now, so we don’t really have a reason to change anything.
+
+We also don’t expect existing deployments to be affected in any capacity, and if for any reason that would happen, we'll
+be there to help out!
+
+## What about the maintainers?
+
+All current Grafana-Operator maintainers are planning on sticking around and continuing on with our involvement in the
+project, after all, this is a massive leap for the operator, and we’re all happy to be part of it!
+
+In all likelihood, new maintainers from the upstream Grafana community might join, so all-in-all, the maintainers might
+be more responsive to issues and pull requests!
+
+## Licensing?
+
+We know that news like this often fill developers with dread over commercialization and sudden license changes. Don't
+worry - the license will stay exactly the same!
+
+## What WILL change?
+
+Metadata mostly, we’ll likely switch a few key-values in our manifests to better reflect the actual state of the
+operator (i.e ownership, repository addresses, maintenance contacts etc)
+In general, house-keeping stuff that doesn't really affect users.
+
+The primary change will be the repo address on Github, we'll migrate
+the https://github.com/grafana-operator/grafana-operator to https://github.com/grafana.
+Github automatically redirects migrated addresses, so there's nothing to be concerned about on that end.
+Future OCI URI's will reflect this change, while existing artifacts will still have the same URI, they will be copied
+over to our new home with the caveat, that digests will change.
+
+The documentation URL will also change, however, we will set up a redirect from it's current location, so it's likely
+you won't even notice it moved!
+
+Perhaps, the biggest change to you, as a contributor to the grafana-operator, would be a new requirement to sign the
+[Grafana CLA](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/developers/cla/), But worry not, this CLA is based on the
+Apache Software Foundation CLA, which should put those of us whom are concerned about signing agreements, at ease.
+
+We might end up moving a few other things around, like creating a new channel on the upstream Grafana slack, however,
+you'll definitely hear about any other changes before they happen! So, stay tuned!
+
+## Summary
+
+Thanks to everyone that supported us over the past 4 years, the project has really grown beyond expectation. From a
+niche operator created for a very specific project, to a pretty sizeable community and a project that is now used by
+many major companies throughout the world, some of whom you wouldn't expect, as they don't announce it publicly, but
+contact us for support!
+
+We've got our hopes set high for this migration, and we hope you do too, let's take the operator to the next level!
+
+Thanks ~ Grafana Operator Maintainers