Open Stack

Hi everyone,

TL;DR:
Incubation is getting harder, why not ask efforts to apply for a new
program first to get the visibility they need to grow.

Long version:

Last cycle we introduced the concept of "Programs" to replace the
concept of "Official projects" which was no longer working that well for
us. This was recognizing the work of existing teams, organized around a
common mission, as an integral part of "delivering OpenStack".
Contributors to programs become ATCs, so they get to vote in Technical
Committee (TC) elections. In return, those teams place themselves under
the authority of the TC.

This created an interesting corner case. Projects applying for
incubation would actually request two concurrent things: be considered a
new "Program", and give "incubated" status to a code repository under
that program.

Over the last months we significantly raised the bar for accepting new
projects in incubation, learning from past integration and QA mistakes.
The end result is that a number of promising projects applied for
incubation but got rejected on maturity, team size, team diversity, or
current integration level grounds.

At that point I called for some specific label, like "Emerging
Technology" that the TC could grant to promising projects that just need
more visibility, more collaboration, more crystallization before they
can make good candidates to be made part of our integrated releases.

However, at the last TC meeting it became apparent we could leverage
"Programs" to achieve the same result. Promising efforts would first get
their mission, scope and existing results blessed and recognized as
something we'd really like to see in OpenStack one day. Then when they
are ready, they could have one of their deliveries apply for incubation
if that makes sense.

The consequences would be that the effort would place itself under the
authority of the TC. Their contributors would be ATCs and would vote in
TC elections, even if their deliveries never make it to incubation. They
would get (some) space at Design Summits. So it's not "free", we still
need to be pretty conservative about accepting them, but it's probably
manageable.

I'm still weighing the consequences, but I think it's globally nicer
than introducing another status. As long as the TC feels free to revoke
Programs that do not deliver the expected results (or that no longer
make sense in the new world order) I think this approach would be fine.

Comments, thoughts ?

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)