Open Stack

On 3 September 2014 21:57, Joe Gordon <joe.gordon0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 9:08 AM, Mark McLoughlin <markmc at redhat.com> wrote:
>> Hey
>>
>> The libvirt version_cap debacle continues to come up in conversation and
>> one perception of the whole thing appears to be:
>>
>>   A controversial patch was "ninjaed" by three Red Hat nova-cores and
>>   then the same individuals piled on with -2s when a revert was proposed
>>   to allow further discussion.
>>
>> I hope it's clear to everyone why that's a pretty painful thing to hear.
>> However, I do see that I didn't behave perfectly here. I apologize for
>> that.
>>
>> In order to understand where this perception came from, I've gone back
>> over the discussions spread across gerrit and the mailing list in order
>> to piece together a precise timeline. I've appended that below.
>>
>> Some conclusions I draw from that tedious exercise:
>
> Thank you for going through and doing this.

+1

>>  - Some people came at this from the perspective that we already have
>>    a firm, unwritten policy that all code must have functional written
>>    tests. Others see that "test all the things" is interpreted as a
>>    worthy aspiration, but is only one of a number of nuanced factors
>>    that needs to be taken into account when considering the addition of
>>    a new feature.
>
> Confusion over our testing policy sounds like the crux of one of the issues
> here. Having so many unwritten policies has led to confusion in the past
> which is why I started
> http://docs.openstack.org/developer/nova/devref/policies.html, hopefully by
> writing these things down in the future this sort of confusion will arise
> less often.
>
> Until this whole debacle I didn't even know there was a dissenting opinion
> on what our testing policy is. In every conversation I have seen up until
> this point, the question was always how to raise the bar on testing.  I
> don't expect us to be able to get to the bottom of this issue in a ML
> thread, but hopefully we can begin the testing policy conversation here so
> that we may be able to make a breakthrough and the summit.

+1

I certainly feel that we need a test policy we are all happy to
enforce. I am sure we can resolve this. I have some ideas, but I feel
like we should meet in person to discuss this one. I am really bad at
trying to discuss this kind of thing in text form.

> While I cannot speak for anyone else, I did grumble a bit at the mid-cycle
> about the behavior on Dan's first devref patch,
> https://review.openstack.org/#/c/103923/. This was the first time I saw 3
> '-2's on a single patch revision. To me 1 or 2 '-2's gives the perception of
> 'hold on there, lets discuss this more first,' but 3 '-2's is just piling on
> and is very confrontational in nature. I was taken aback by this behavior
> and still don't know what to say or even if my reaction is justified.

People were angry, this highlighted that disagreement.
That lead to us trying to resolving the immediate point of conflict.
It would be worse if there had been no communication.

>> To take an even further step back - successful communities like ours
>> require a huge amount of trust between the participants. Trust requires
>> communication and empathy. If communication breaks down and the pressure
>> we're all under erodes our empathy for each others' positions, then
>> situations can easily get horribly out of control.
>>
>> This isn't a pleasant situation and we should all strive for better.

+1

I think we have now identified where we don't agree.

Looking forward to resolving this, in person, at the summit.

Thanks,
John