[openstack-dev] Avoiding regression in project governance

Russell Bryant rbryant at redhat.com
Tue Mar 10 18:42:18 UTC 2015


On 03/10/2015 02:00 PM, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Russell Bryant wrote:
>> [...]
>> We now have several new project proposals.  However, I propose not
>> approving any new projects until we have a tagging system that is at
>> least far enough along to represent the set of criteria that we used to
>> apply to all OpenStack projects (with exception for ones we want to
>> consciously drop).  Otherwise, I think it's a significant setback to our
>> project governance as we have yet to provide any useful way to navigate
>> the growing set of projects.
>>
>> The resulting set of tags doesn't have to be focused on replicating our
>> previous set of criteria.  The focus must be on what information is
>> needed by various groups of consumers and tags are a mechanism to
>> implement that.  In any case, we're far from that point because today we
>> have nothing.
> 
> I agree that we need tags to represent the various facets of what was in
> the integrated release concept.
> 
> I'm not sure we should block accepting new project teams until all tags
> are defined, though. That sounds like a way to stall forever. So could
> you be more specific ? Is there a clear set of tags you'd like to see
> defined before we add new project teams ?

I'd like to have enough tags that I don't feel like we're communicating
drastically less about the state of OpenStack projects.  Approving now
means we'll have a big pool of projects with absolutely no attempt to
communicate anything useful about the difference between Nova, Swift,
and the newest experiment.  I'd rather feel like we've replaced one
thing with something that's improvement.  Today feels like we've
replaced something with close to nothing, which seems like the worst
time to open the gates for new projects.

As to specific tags, I refer back to this:

http://governance.openstack.org/reference/incubation-integration-requirements.html

We worked pretty hard to come up with useful things for projects to aim
for.  In fact, we considered it a minimum.  Let's make sure we capture
the things we still value, which I believe is most of it.

>> I can't think of any good reason to rush into approving projects in the
>> short term.  If we're not able to work out this rich tagging system in a
>> reasonable amount of time, then maybe the whole approach is broken and
>> we need to rethink the whole approach.
> 
> The current plan for the Vancouver Design Summit is to only give space
> to "OpenStack" projects (while non-OpenStack projects may get space in
> "ecosystem" sessions outside of the Design Summit). So it's only fair
> for those projects to file for recognition before that happens.

I hear you.  That's a real problem that must be dealt with.  I don't
think it's justification for governance change, though.  If nothing
else, the TC could just make a list of the projects we're willing to
give space to given our collective view of their momentum in the
community.  We're elected to make decisions with a broad view like that
after all.

-- 
Russell Bryant



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