Open Stack

On 14/12/16 18:18, Michał Jastrzębski wrote:
> I agree that meeting notes are crucial to this type of meeting.I just
> say that gerrit PoC/demo is valid form of 'notes' if meeting was about
> some implementional detail, which I assume is the case for this type of
> meetings.
>
> Do we agree that as hoc hangout meetings are acceptable form of
> cooperation if invitation is own and notes are published?

It's not possible to have 100% open design. When I'm sitting alone at my 
desk thinking, that's kind of like a videoconference of one. Nobody else 
can be inside my head (much to y'all's relief, I'm sure). But open 
design means that everything I come up with there is subject to review, 
and possibly reversal, by the community. As such, it makes sense to keep 
the community updated as regularly as possible. It may seem like that's 
slowing down your work, but it actually speeds up the project as a whole 
because there's less work to be thrown out when the consensus comes down 
another way.

IMHO the same rules apply when there's more than one person involved. 
It's fine to discuss, but not to think that you can make a decision for 
the community without the involvement of the rest of the community. 
What's really annoying is when some group gets together in private to 
discuss Problem X, and then comes back to the community to announce that 
"we need to implement Solution Y". That's not open design. Open design 
means laying out Problem X, Solution Y, alternative Solution Z, and the 
reasoning behind preferring one over the other, and then letting the 
community at large have their say (perhaps even proposing completely 
different solutions) before reaching a consensus.

If the outcome of a private discussion is simply a Gerrit patch 
implementing Solution Y then that feels dangerously close to the 
undesirable case to me unless it's accompanied by extensive commentary.

A post to the mailing list with the extra details is one way of handling 
it. You have to trade off the extra cost of doing that against the 
benefit of a high-bandwidth burst of (effectively private) 
communication. If it's still worth it then that's OK. But if you try to 
have your cake and eat it then you risk compromising the openness of 
your design process.

> So if one of potential attendees cannot join for that reason, again I
> would consider this to be reason enough to move meeting back to irc.
> IRC is and keep being our default communication channel.

I'm glad you see it that way too. However, we also need to be mindful of 
the fact that some people, especially newcomers, may not feel able to 
speak up and demand that an out-of-band meeting of cores not take place. 
Particularly if this becomes a routine occurrence.

The next 'generation' of core reviewers will acquire their knowledge 
largely from discussions between the current cores. It's important to 
the long-term health of the project not to cut them off from those 
discussions, even at some cost to the short-term velocity.

cheers,
Zane.