Open Stack

Greetings Stackers!

I'm announcing my candidacy for the Technical Comitee Elections.

Those of you who have been around OpenStack for a while know me, as I was one of the original developers involved since the inception of OpenStack back in 2010, when I worked for Rackspace's Cloud Server team. I was a contributor and core reviewer for Nova until a job change at Rackspace removed me from direct OpenStack development around the Essex release. I was still peripherally involved, though, as my work as a Developer Advocate involved creating the first Python SDK for OpenStack [0], which gave me a great education on how frustrating inconsistent APIs can be! In order to help improve the experience of developers building apps with OpenStack, I wholeheartedly support the efforts of the API Working Group to reduce this problem in the future.

[0] https://github.com/rackspace/pyrax

Fast-forward to last September, when I joined IBM with one mandate: work full-time on OpenStack by contributing as much as possible to upstream OpenStack, and becoming involved in the community. Since then I've re-immersed myself in Nova, focusing mainly on the effort to clean up the Scheduler interfaces. So I believe that this history gives me a unique perspective on OpenStack development: where it came from, and where it needs to go to move forward.

I mentioned improving the experience of developers working *with* OpenStack; I'd also like to improve the experience of developers working *on* OpenStack. To that end, I agree wholeheartedly with Thierry's call to "step out of the way" [1]. There is a lot of energy across the many projects, and the TC should do everything it can to help make that energy effective without stifling it. I spoke about the potential for OpenStack to "change the world" in an interview I gave for Rackspace last year [2], and the last thing I would want to see is someone with an idea get discouraged because there were too many hoops to jump through to make it happen on OpenStack.

[1] http://ttx.re/stepping-out-of-the-way.html
[2] https://youtu.be/0QRkzMW3OdA?t=115

One place, though, where I think the TC can inject itself is to help alleviate the lack of core reviewers, particularly in Nova, which I discussed in [3]. Having so few cores for the number of patches being created is simply not sustainable, and just wishing for things to get better isn't cutting it. And I do consider it a technical problem, since the main barrier isn't lack of interested people; it's that it's currently too difficult for most people to learn enough about all the various parts of the project necessary to achieve core status.

[3] http://blog.leafe.com/the-core-deficiency

I sort of wish that there was the questionnaire format like we had in the last TC election, so I could be sure to give everyone a clear view on where I see things on different issues. If you have any such concerns, please feel free to respond to this email (and to those of the other candidates!), and I will be happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for your consideration,

-- Ed Leafe





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