Open Stack

On 11/15/2013 05:06 AM, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Wow, lots of different opinions! let's try to summarize:
> 
> Arguments in favor of splitting openstack-dev / stackforge-dev
> * People can easily filter out all non-openstack discussions
> * Traffic would drop by about 25%
> * Removes confusion as to which projects are actually "in openstack"
> 
> Arguments in favor of keeping it the same
> * Provides a cross-pollination forum where external projects can learn
> * More chaos creates more innovation
> 
> Personally I was fine with having everyone in the same "burgeoning city"
> (to quote the lyrical Clint) until we recently crossed the bar of making
> that city painful for a lot of people. Especially the people who work on
> serving the needs of all OpenStack projects (think release management,
> doc, QA, infra) and who have to pay some level of attention to every thread.
> 
> Yes, those people can filter out all stackforge discussions into a
> separate folder: identify all the corresponding prefixes and setting
> filters for them (and praying that they would all just use the right
> suffixes). But rather than forcing everyone to go through that setup,
> why not set up a list and make it more convenient for everyone to apply
> different (or similar !) reading rules to the two different groups.
> 
> Because they ARE two different groups. One is "OpenStack" and must get
> the extra attention of all the people working on horizontal functions
> (that is what incubation is about, carefully controlling access to extra
> common resources). The other is "not yet OpenStack", free-for-all. The
> latter group clearly benefits from being on the same list: they get
> extra attention from all those smart OpenStack people, and their
> marketing can benefit from the very blurry line between openstack and
> not-yet-openstack we maintain on the list.

I don't think this applies at the mailing list level. If someone wants
attention from the infra team, for instance, I certainly hope they don't
think they're going to get it by mentioning the need inside of a mailing
list thread and hoping we'll see it.

Mailing lists are for conversation and discussion. I see absolutely no
reason to segregate some of those conversations as "real" and others as
not. In fact, our original hard insistence that projects started off in
the corner until they magically one day became openstack is what got us
into the mess we've gone through originally with keystone (which needed
a complete from-scratch rewrite) and now with neutron. Both of those
came about before we had more inclusive ways of projects growing themselves.

tl;dr Separation has been tried before, and it simple does not work.

> In summary, I certainly see the benefits of a single list for stackforge
> developers (and why people working on a limited number of vertical
> projects don't really mind either way...). But I fear that we maintain
> those benefits at the expense of the sanity of the horizontal programs
> in openstack, and therefore lower the quality of OpenStack as a result.
> 
> PS: I don't think we can reach consensus on that one -- we might need to
> push it to the TC to make a final call.
>