Open Stack

Hi everyone,

The OpenStack Technical Committee, representation of the technical
contributors to the project, is currently composed of 13 members, the 8
"core" projects PTLs and 5 directly-elected members.

We are considering adding more projects in the integrated release in the
future, but adding more PTLs with guaranteed TC seats doesn't really
scale, quickly leading to committee bloat (personally I think 13 is the
maximum workable number). There is even resistance to accepting new
projects due to the fear of inefficiency in the TC, and fear of dilution
of key TC members influence. That shouldn't be what drives our decisions
on graduating from incubation.

We should solve that before we consider the addition of new projects,
and before we run the next TC elections. There are a number of ways to
address that, and some of them were expressed at a recent TC meeting:

1/ Keep the same setup, but refrain from adding new projects

2/ Keep the same setup, but only have some PTLs have guaranteed seats
(special-case some ("inner core") projects)

3/ Limit the TC to 13 members, and have them all directly-elected (the
most significant PTLs will get elected anyway)

4/ Limit the TC to 13 members, have them all directly-elected, *and*
guarantee that a minimum of 8 PTLs end up in the committee

Thoughts ? Other potential solutions ?

Personally, I think (1) is not a solution: we shouldn't limit what is
part of the integrated release based on fear of committee bloat or
influence dilution. (2) doesn't sound very fair (who gets to define
which project should be special-cased) and doesn't prevent bloat (it
only slows it down).

I like (3) but I agree that there is a risk in Condorcet that people
having horizontal functions will get overrepresented, and we'd end up
with less PTLs (vertical functions) than we'd like. So I think (4) is a
good middle ground: prevents bloat, accommodates further growth in a
relatively-fair way while ensuring we get PTLs in the final committee.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)
Chair, OpenStack Technical Committee