Open Stack

-----Original Message-----
From: Michał Jastrzębski <inc007 at gmail.com>
Reply: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) <openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>
Date: December 15, 2016 at 14:58:48
To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) <openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>
Subject:  Re: [openstack-dev] [kolla][tc] Video Meetings - input requested

> Ok, let me reverse this discussion. We think hangouts are exclusive,
> and irc is not? I've seen multiple times when people were waaay into
> discussion, lines of text swarming the screen, somebody from outside
> speaks up, entirely reasonable and on topic thing, but is ignored
> because other actors in discussion were busy smashing keyboard to
> defend their mind? This person was unwillingly excluded from
> conversation and might feel bad enough to not speak up again. I've
> seen this happened. It happened to me on more than one occasion. That
> speak up thing might not be so easily ignored if actually spoken up in
> hangouts.

Michał, IRC has many faults. No communication medium is correct. What we're trying to discuss is not "all the ways in which OpenStack's agreed upon communication channels are wrong". Please, let's stay on topic.

> My point is, every communication channel has it's way to exclude
> people. Some people are intimidated to even speak up in public. Some
> people don't have money to travel to design summit. Saying that "we
> include everyone" is utopia. Best we can do is to try hard to be
> inclusive.

No one is saying "we include everyone". What we're saying is "we choose the best communication channels for the largest percentage of the community". Further, Kolla is choosing communication channels that aren't.

> I think having rules like "no ad hoc hangout meetings" will be
> extremely hurtful to communities. I am strong believer that different
> problems works better with different solutions, and that's true for
> communication too. Sometimes hot brainstorm-style ad hoc discussion is
> exactly what project need. Sometimes we need long, stretched
> discussion on ML, where everyone can speak up their mind in length.
>  
> Kolla community have always put inclusiveness as one of it's main
> values to uphold, that is reflected in our diversity in both core team
> and general community stats.
>  
> I did some digging and I think I know which particular hangout
> sprouted this whole discussion, so let me give you some context:
>  
> 1. This hangout ended 2 week long ongoing disagreement that we
> couldn't resolve on irc or spec. It took 1hr of us actually talking to
> each other to finally come to conclusion.
> 2. Most of kolla-k8s active team was there discussing
> 3. Besides kolla-k8s team we also had kubernetes community members who
> are much more used to this type of discussion (not irc, so some could
> argue that *this* was inclusive way to work between two opensource
> communities, finding common toolset to communicate).
> 4. Part of why we did it in such an unplanned manned (therefore some
> people interested weren't present at the time) is that this k8s
> community members happened to join us at that time and we wanted to
> make most of it.
> 5. At the end it helped us greatly to move past problems that stalled
> our development for weeks.
>  
> I will defend this thing as something what we needed at the time.
> Sometimes heated up video discussion helps to resolve
> misunderstandings which otherwise could grow up and become conflicts
> in community, which would be much worse.
>  
> So please, let's not put artificial rules regarding our communication
> just to be "inclusive". If there is a will to be inclusive, we can be
> regardless of tool, if there is none, no tool will help. I will
> advocate to allow whichever way community decides to work to that
> community and focus on building culture of inclusiveness.

These aren't artificial. Several members of the community (within and without Kolla) have come forth to tell you how unwelcoming these meetings are and how they are actively exclusive.

Instead of listening to your colleagues providing you with genuine feedback, you're defending your teams exclusive actions and refusing to acknowledge that there's room for improvement on the Kolla project.

> If we have correct mindset, that's all that matters and I, for one, am
> strong believer that Kolla community has been built on top of this
> mindset, and we keep doing good job on following it.

"If we have correct mindset" sounds to me like "If our intentions are good". I've said it before and I'll say it again - Intentions do not magically fix anything. Kolla didn't intend to exclude colleagues via these video conferences, but they did. Regardless of whether they intended to or not, the Kolla team is being told that was the *actual effect*. That means that Kolla *did* exclude people. Continuing to hold these meetings, means that whatever Kolla's intentions were doesn't matter because they have shown that "landing code" (or "velocity", or whatever you want to call it) is far more important than including the people who have chosen to tell us about their experiences.

No one is saying "Michał is evil" or "Michał is a bad person" or "Kolla is a contributor-hostile project". What we're saying is - Kolla did some things that excluded collaborators. Kolla has received feedback about those things. And Kolla should work to address that feedback. Unfortunately, all that's happened is that Kolla is defending its practices and stating rather adamantly that it intends to continue these exclusionary practices. Whatever the Kolla team's intentions going forward, they now know very well the harmful effects their actions may have on their colleagues.

--  
Ian Cordasco