Open Stack

On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 14:14 +0200, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> > For a long time I've use the LKML 'subsystem maintainers' model as the
> > reference point for ideas. In a more LKML like model, each virt team
> > (or other subsystem team) would have their own separate GIT repo with
> > a complete Nova codebase, where they did they day to day code submissions,
> > reviews and merges. Periodically the primary subsystem maintainer would
> > submit a large pull / merge requests to the overall Nova maintainer.
> > The $1,000,000 question in such a model is what kind of code review
> > happens during the big pull requests to integrate subsystem trees. 
> 
> Please note that the Kernel subsystem model is actually a trust tree
> based on 20 years of trust building. OpenStack is only 4 years old, so
> it's difficult to apply the same model as-is.

That's true but not entirely accurate.  The kernel maintainership is a
trust tree, but not every person in that tree has been in the position
for 20 years.  We have one or two who have (Dave Miller, net maintainer,
for instance), but we have some newcomers: Sarah Sharp has only been on
USB3.0 for a year.  People pass in and out of the maintainer tree all
the time.

In many ways, the Open Stack core model is also a trust tree (you elect
people to the core and support their nominations because you trust them
to do the required job).  It's not a 1 for 1 conversion, but it should
be possible to derive the trust you need from the model you already
have, should you wish to make OpenStack function more like the Linux
Kernel.

Essentially Daniel's proposal boils down to making the trust boundaries
align with separated community interests to get more scaling in the
model.  This is very similar to the way the kernel operates: most
maintainers only have expertise in their own areas.  We have a few
people with broad reach, like Andrew and Linus, but by and large most
people settle down in a much smaller area.  However, you don't have to
follow the kernel model to get this to happen, you just have to identify
the natural interest boundaries of the contributors and align around
them (provided they have enough mass to form their own community).

James