Open Stack

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:55 AM, Flavio Percoco <flavio at redhat.com> wrote:
> [...]
>
> ## Keep discussions open
>
> I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some
> discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe
> there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions.
> HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private
> discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private
> discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you
> went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's
> good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I
> don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and
> that you had enough consensus.
>

Completely agree with what you've said here. I think there's a place for
private conversation (eg. discussing a security issue that corresponds
to a CVE, giving folks honest feedback without public shaming, quickly
pinging someone, etc.) but when it comes to discussions that have a
bearing on a project (albeit however minimal) we need to ensure that all
of those happen in the open, so that any interested parties are able to
participate. Personally, I have not seen any examples of private talks
which have led to making decisions in the absence of community
discussion, but if this is happening -- we need to put a definitive stop
to it.


> [...]
>
> ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel
>
> I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is
> hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I
> don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong
> to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions
> happen.
>
> If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of
> most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the
> mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting
> with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something
> that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing
> list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in
> your discussion.  *THAT'S A GOOD THING*
>
> Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list.
> We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take
> advantage of it?
>

We should absolutely take advantage of all forms of communication, and
all the tools that we have at our disposal so that we can foster more
open and clear communication. However, I do realize that different
strokes work for different folks. While many might find it more
effective to communicate over email, others find IRC, or even a
VOIP call a better way of ironing out differences. I don't think that
makes any one method of communication better than others. While
I personally believe that every discussion or design conversation that
happens on IRC does not need to be taken to the mailing list, there's
absolutely nothing that should prohibit anyone in the community from
taking a discussion from IRC (or anywhere else) to the mailing list at
_any_ time.


> ## Cores are *NOT* special
>
> At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message
> changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became
> a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know
> that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password
> protected, irc channels for core reviewers.
> [...]

Completely agree with you about cores not being super-heroes. On the
latter point though, I'd consider that there's certainly a reasonable
subset of conversations that are okay to have in private (like security
related issues, and some other examples already cited above). However,
if the existence of machinery which makes having such conversations
convenient (hangout, private IRC, face-to-face in a closed room,
whatever) seems to have a detrimental effect on the spirit of openness
in our community, then I would err on the side of caution and dismantle
that machinery rather than let our commitment to openness come under
fire.


> [...]
>
> All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for
> the openness of our community and encourage everyone to make that a
> must have thing in each sub-community. You don't need to be
> core-reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community
> as open as possible.
>
> Cheers,
> Flavio

Thanks for putting this together Flavio -- a timely reminder to strive
towards keeping our community open and inclusive. It's much appreciated!
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