Open Stack

Excerpts from Chris Dent's message of 2016-06-21 09:25:44 +0100:
> On Mon, 20 Jun 2016, Doug Wiegley wrote:
> 
> > So, it sounds like you’ve just described the job of the TC. And they
> > have so far refused to define OpenStack, leading to a series of
> > derivative decisions that seem … inconsistent over time.
> 
> Thanks for writing down what I was thinking. I agree that OpenStack
> needs some architectural vision, direction, leadership, call it what
> you will. Every time I've voted for the _Technical_ Committee that
> leadership is what I've wanted my vote to be creating.
> 

I think that's still part of it. The difference is that the TC is using
their expertise to resolve conflict and ratify decisions, while a working
group is creating a source of data and taking actions that hopefully
prevent the conflict from ever arising.

> It may be that an architecture working group can provide some
> guidance that people will find useful. Against the odds I think
> those of us in the API-WG have actually managed to have a positive
> influence. We've not shaken things down to the foundations from
> which a great a glorious future may be born -- a lot of compromises
> have been made and not everybody wants to play along -- but things
> are going in the right direction, for some people, in some projects.
> Maybe a similar thing can happen with architecture.
> 

I definitely saw what was happening with the API-WG and wanted to have a
similar effect on the design process.

> However, I worry deeply that it could become astronauts with finger
> paints. In the API working group at least we have the HTTP RFCs as
> foundational sources of authority to guide us. In something so
> fraught with opinion what are the sources of authority?
> 
> I was pointed at this a while ago
> 
>      https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/BasicDesignTenets
> 
> It's full of lots of great rules that are frequently broken.
> 


This is a great point Chris. I definitely think we need to have some
authority to fall back on. The link above is a great start. I'd like to
invite others to think on that and share their sources of authority for
distributed system design.