[openstack-dev] [all] Proposal: Architecture Working Group

Amrith Kumar amrith at tesora.com
Wed Jun 22 18:57:18 UTC 2016


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Clint Byrum [mailto:clint at fewbar.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 2:25 PM
> To: openstack-dev <openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>
> Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [all] Proposal: Architecture Working Group
> 
> Excerpts from Amrith Kumar's message of 2016-06-22 13:15:03 +0000:
> > Clint,
> >
> > In your original email, you proposed "So, with that, I'd like to propose
> the creation of an Architecture Working Group. This group's charge would
> not be design by committee, but a place for architects to share their
> designs and gain support across projects to move forward with and ratify
> architectural decisions."
> >
> > I like parts of this, and parts of this trouble me. But, I volunteered
> to be part of this activity because I have a real problem that this group
> could help me solve and I bet there are others who have this problem as
> well.
> >
> > As you say, there are often problems, questions, and challenges of an
> architectural nature, that have a scope larger than a single project. I
> would like there to be a forum whose primary focus is to provide an avenue
> where these can be discussed. I would like it to be a place less noisy
> than "take it to the ML" and be a place where one could pose these
> questions and potentially discuss solutions that other projects have
> adopted.
> >
> > The part I'm uncomfortable is the implied decision making authority of
> "ratifying architectural decisions". To ratify implies the ability to make
> official, the ability to "approve and sanction formally" and I ask whence
> came this power and authority?
> >
> > Who currently has this power and authority, and is that individual or
> group delegating it to this working group?
> >
> 
> When I say ratify there, what I mean is that this group would have regular
> members who work on the group. To ratify something, a majority of them
> would at least agree that this was something worth the group's time, and
> that the group should publish their architecture decisions publicly. The
> membership, I think, should be voluntary, and the only requirement be
> that members regularly participate in discussions and voting.
> 
> Formality is a useful tool here, which is the reason I chose the word
> 'ratify'. It asks that those who want to propose new ideas do so in an
> efficient manner that doesn't make noise on the mailing list and force
> everyone to come up with an opinion on the spot or forever lose the
> idea. We get a log of proposals, objections, and reasoning, to go along
> with our log of successes and failures in taking the proposals to reality.
> 
> But the only power this group wields is over itself. Of course,
> collaboration with the project teams is _critical_ for the success
> of these proposals. And if we succeed in improving some projects, but
> others resist, then it's up to those projects that have been improved
> to support us pushing forward or not.
> 
> This isn't all that different than the way Oslo specs and OpenStack
> specs work now. It's just that we'll have a group that organizes the
> efforts and keeps pressure on them.
> 

[amrith] May I then request that you use a word other than 'ratify'. You will understand my root of my concern in the link below.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ratify

What you are describing is more like "bless" or "endorse" and not "ratify" :)

> > While this ML thread is very interesting, it is also beginning to
> fragment and I would like to propose a spec in Gerrit with a draft charter
> for this working group and a review there.
> >
> 
> You're spot on Amrith. I've been noodling on a mission statement and
> was going to bring it up at next week's TC meeting, but we don't have to
> wait for that. Let's draft a charter now. Any suggestions on where that
> should be submitted? openstack-specs I suppose? Governance?
> 

[amrith] I will help with that. I have no idea where it should be proposed but I do know that there's no TC meeting next week. I will be sure to bend several of the TC members ears about this in Ann Arbor though :)

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