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A beautiful post, sir. Thank you for everything!

On 09/03/16 22:15, Flavio Percoco wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> I'm not going to run for Glance's PTL position for the Newton timeframe.
>
> There are many motivations behind this choice. Some of them I'm willing to
> discuss in private if people are interested but I'll go as far as saying
> there
> are personal and professional reasons for me to not run again.
>
> As I've always done in my past cycles as PTL, I'd like to take some time to
> summarize what's happened in the past cycle not only for the new PTL to
> know
> what's coming up but for the community to know how things went.
>
> Before I even start, I'd like to thank everyone in the Glance community.
> I truly
> believe this was a great cycle for the project and the community has gotten
> stronger. None of this would have been possible without the help of all
> of you
> and for that, I'm deeply in debt with you all. It does not just take an
> employer
> to get someone to contribute to a project. Being paid, for those who
> are, to do
> Open Source is not enough. It takes passion, motivation and a lot of
> patience to
> analyze a technology, think out of the box and look for ways it can be
> improved
> either by fixing bugs or by implementing new features. The amount of
> time and
> dedication this process requires is probably worth way more than what we
> get
> back from it.
>
> Now, with all that being said, here's Glance Mitaka for all of you:
>
> Completed Features
> ==================
>
> I think I've mentioned this already but I'm proud of it so I'll say it
> again.
> The prioritization and scheduling of Glance Mitaka went so well that we
> managed
> to release M-3 without any feature freeze exception (FFE) request. This
> doesn't
> mean all the features were implemented. In fact, at least 4 were pushed
> back to
> Newton. However, the team communicated, reviewed, sprinted and coded in
> such a
> way that we were able to re-organize the schedule to avoid wasting time on
> things we new weren't going to make it. This required transparency and hard
> decisions but that's part of the job, right?
>
> * [0] CIM Namespace Metadata
> * [1] Support download from and upload to Cinder volumes
> * [2] Glance db purge utility
> * [3] Deprecate Glance v3 API
> * [4] Implement trusts for Glance
> * [5] Migrate the HTTP Store to Use Requests
> * [6] Glance Image Signing and Verification
> * [7] Supporting OVF Single Disk Image Upload
> * [8] Prevention of Unauthorized errors during upload/download in Swift
> driver
> * [9] Add filters using an ‘in’ operator
>
> [0]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/cim-namespace-metadata-definitions.html
>
> [1]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/cinder-store-upload-download.html
>
> [2]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/database-purge.html
>
> [3]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/deprecate-v3-api.html
>
> [4]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/glance-trusts.html
>
> [5]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/http-store-on-requests.html
>
> [6]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/image-signing-and-verification-support.html
>
> [7]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/ovf-lite.html
>
> [8]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/prevention-of-401-in-swift-driver.html
>
> [9]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/specs/mitaka/implemented/v2-add-filters-with-in-operator.html
>
>
> If the above doesn't sound impressive to you, let me fill you in with
> some extra
> info about Glance's community.
>
> Community
> =========
>
> Glance's community currently has 12 core members, 3 of which joined during
> Mitaka and 2 of those 3 members joined at the end of the cycle. That
> means the
> team ran on 9 reviewers for most of the cycle except that out of those
> 9, 1 left
> the team and joined later in the cycle and 3 folks weren't super active
> this
> cycle. That left the team with 5 constant reviewers throughout the cycle.
>
> Now, the above is *NOT* to say that the success of the cycle is thanks
> to those
> 5 constant reviewers. On the contrary, it's to say that we've managed to
> build a
> community capable of working together with other non-core reviewers.
> This was a
> key thing for this cycle.
>
> I don't think it's a secret to anyone that, at the beginning of the
> cycle, the
> community was fragile and somewhat split. There were different opinions
> on what
> Glance should (or shouldn't) look like, what new features Glance should (or
> shouldn't) have and where the project should be headed in the next 6
> months.
>
> The team sat down, the team talked and the team agreed on what the project
> should be and that's what the team did in the Mitaka cycle. Sharing one
> message
> with the rest of the OpenStack community (and especially new Glance
> contributors) was a key for the community to become stronger.
>
> What changed? What did the community do differently?
>
> Priorities and Goals
> --------------------
>
> Mitaka was the first cycle that Glance strictly followed a list of
> priorities
> [0]. Funny enough, 2 of those priorities didn't make it in Mitaka but
> we'll get
> to that in a bit.
>
> The list of priorities didn't do it all by itself. The list of
> priorities gave
> us a target, a goal. It helped us to remain focused. It kept us on track.
> However, it did way more than that. The list of priorities allowed us for:
>
> * Sending a clear message of what the community has agreed on and where the
>   community is headed
> * Selecting a narrow list of features that we would be able to work on and
>   review throughout the cycle
> * Scheduling and splitting reviews to accommodate the priorities
>
> Of those points, I believe the second one is the one that really did it
> for us.
> We kept the set of new features small so that we could focus on what was
> important. We had more proposals than we approved and we rejected the
> rest based
> on our priorities. This is something I'd like to see happening again in
> Glance
> and I'd like to encourage the next PTL to do the same and be *strict*
> about it.
>
> [0]
> http://specs.openstack.org/openstack/glance-specs/priorities/mitaka-priorities.html
>
>
> Reduce the review backlog
> -------------------------
>
> We abandoned patches [0]! We removed from the review queue all the
> patches that,
> for 2 or more months, had been in merge conflict, had had -1/-2 from
> cores or
> had had -1 from jenkins (hope I'm not missing something here). We did
> that and
> we made the backlog shorter, we kept in the review list what was really
> relevant
> at that moment.
>
> Something important about the above is that we didn't abandon patches
> that had
> stalled for lack of reviews. We prioritized those, we bumped those to
> the top of
> our review list and we provided the reviews those patches deserved. Some
> of them
> landed, some didn't but the important bit is that those patches were
> reviewed.
> Glance's current backlog (verified patches, Workflow 0 and no -2s) is
> less than
> 90 patches across all projects (likely way less than that but I just did
> a rough
> count) and the most important thing is that *ALL* these patches have
> received
> reviews in 2016. Now, if you don't think this is great, you should have
> seen our
> backlog before.
>
> Now, there's no point in cleaning up the review queue if we're going to
> let it
> fill up again. Right? This is where the community awesomeness comes to
> light. We
> created a review dashboard[1], which some folks used to organize their
> reviews. I
> found it super useful, I used it to prioritize my reviews and help other
> folks
> to prioritize theirs. When you're given an organized list of reviews
> rather than
> just a list of random reviews, it's *way* easier for you to know what to
> review.
> That right there is the key. To know what to review. I believe, in
> Mitaka, the
> team knew what to focus on and the team also knew someone in the
> community was
> ready to provide a fresher, cleaner, list of reviews they could focus
> on. Some
> folks would prefer to go and make up a list themselves, others will
> prefer to
> have one ready. Either way, having a clear story of where the focus
> should go is
> the key to help reviews move faster. Remove the noise, it distracts from
> people
> from what's really important.
>
> [0] http://stackalytics.com/?user_id=glancebot@mailinator.com
> [1] http://bit.ly/glance-dashboard
>
> Review Days
> -----------
>
> Not really a new thing. This has happened before and we just kept doing
> it. The
> difference, perhaps, is that we increased the number of review days in the
> cycle. We tried to do at least 1 review day per milestone and we're now
> doing a
> Review Monday until the end of the cycle to get as many bug fixes as
> possible in
> before the release. RC1 is looking good already!
>
> So, if you'd ask me, I believe what changed was the community. The
> community got
> together, polished some things, and focused on what's important *the
> project*.
> If you read between lines, the above shows one constant pattern, the
> community
> matured and it found what its placed in the OpenStack community.
>
> Single Team
> -----------
>
> The Glance team is now back to being a single reviewing machine rather than
> several, isolated, teams with specific tasks, which sometimes ended up
> duplicated. The Glance Driver's team has been merged into the Glance
> Core team
> and the Glare team (Artifacts) is not using the Fast Track anymore.
>
> Having smaller teams has resulted in a very useful thing to do for other
> projects. Depending on the size of the project, it'd be possible to map
> tasks to
> smaller teams and then reduce them once the job is done ;).
> Unfortunately, given
> Glance's team size, this ended up adding *more* things to do to members
> of those
> smaller teams that were also part of the other teams as well.
>
> One reason to mention this is because we'll have the temptation to do
> this again
> in the future but, as it's been proven thus far, Glance's community is
> not big
> enough to make such splits worth it and those end up causing more harm
> to the
> community than good.
>
> Spec Freeze
> -----------
>
> The team incorporated a spec freeze in this cycle. The dates that were
> picked
> were not the most ideal ones but the freeze helped a lot to bring back
> focus on
> code reviews and coding. This freeze put a timeline on folks to get their
> proposals ready, hence forcing them to have enough time to implement such
> proposals. Having open milestones distracts the community from the
> schedule.
> Announcing such milestones in advance and providing constant reminders
> helped
> with making sure folks were prepared and ready to react.
>
>
> Was it all rainbows?
> ====================
>
> No, it was not. There were and there are *many* things we need to work
> on and
> improve. For instance, 2 of the priorities didn't make it this cycle.
> One of
> them (Nova's adoption of Glance's v2) simply requires a bit of more work
> and it
> specifically requires a better alignment with the Nova community's
> priorities.
> In other words, Nova needs to make this a priority for them.
>
> The second priority that missed the deadline is the refactor of the
> image import
> workflow. Some of you might be thinking "Guys, you had 1 job, *ONE* job
> and it
> was to discuss and implement that refactor". Well, turns out that such
> refactor
> has an impact on *every* cloud and it's not something the team can
> afford to
> change a third time (yes, this is the second time the image import
> workflow is
> refactored). I'm actually happy it didn't make it in Mitaka because that
> gave
> the team more time to evaluate the proposal that had been discussed at the
> summit, the issues around it and the different alternatives.
> Nonetheless, I am a
> bit sad about how things evolved with this proposal because at the very
> beginning of the cycle we were a bit naive in our planning of this work.
> That is
> to say, that we should've probably known from the beginning that we
> wouldn't
> have had the time to implement this spec and that it would have taken us
> the
> whole cycle to discuss it. The problem is not that we didn't know it to
> begin
> with but the fact that we weren't able to communicate that to the
> community from
> the beginning. I don't think this is a big deal, though. We realized
> soon enough
> that we shouldn't rush this and that dedicating the cycle to discuss
> this spec
> was more better than rushing it and then have a poor implementation of it.
>
> We also experimented with a new process for lite specs and it was not a
> huge
> success. This impacted some of the lite specs that had been proposed but
> we did
> our best to come out of that situation without impacting other's people
> work. In
> fact, that situation not just highlighted the issues we had with the
> process but
> the team responsible for it (the glance-drivers team), which ended up being
> merged into the glance core team (as I mentioned in the previous
> section). This
> process is being refactored and you can learn a bit more about it in this
> review[0].
>
> There's one more thing I wish we would have dedicated more time on. That's
> tempest. Unfortunately, given the time available, size of the team and the
> priorities we had, tempest did not receive as much love as we'd have
> loved to.
> There are several tempest tests that need to be cleaned up a bit,
> especially on
> the V2 side.
>
> [0] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/282516/
>
> To the Glance Community
> =======================
>
> All the credits for the above goes to you! As a PTL I don't think I can
> take
> *any* credit for what I consider a successful cycle brought by the
> community
> itself. I instead recognize that it was all possible because the community
> decided to go back to being awesome. I'm a believer that the PTL's role
> is all
> about enabling the community to be awesome. Planning, prioritization,
> scheduling, etc. it all serves a single goal, which is to allow the
> community
> for doing what they know best and focus on that.
>
> I've enjoyed every single of my stages in this community. Rushing through
> reviews, coding like crazy, ranting like crazy, leading the community
> and back
> to reviewing like crazy. These years as a member of Glance's community have
> taught me a lot about this project and how critical it is for the rest
> of the
> community. As I always say, it's one of those projects that can take
> your whole
> cloud down without you even noticing but I do hope you notice it.
>
> Glance is often referred to as a simple project (true), as a small project
> (kinda true) and sometimes as not super cool (false). I'd like to remind
> you
> that not only Glance is a "cool" project to work on but it's also super
> critical
> for OpenStack. As I remind you this, I'd like to urge you to help the
> project
> stay on track across the cycles. Glance (as every other projects)
> depends on the
> ability of its community to dictate what's best for it.
>
> Glance's interoperability has been compromised and there's a plan to help
> bringing it back. Let's get that done. Glance's v1 is not considered
> secure and
> it must be deprecated. Let's do that as well. Glance's stability and
> security
> has shown some weaknesses. Let's not ignore that. Working on new
> features is
> always sexy. Working on the new cool stuff that other projects are doing
> might
> seem like a must do task. I'd argue and say there's a time for
> everything and,
> while Glance shares OpenStack's priorities, there are times where the
> project
> needs to take a step back, put itself together again and start again. I
> don't
> believe Glance has left that self-healing period and I'd like to urge
> the whole
> community to keep this in mind.
>
> To the new PTL
> ==============
>
> Listen! Listen to the things the OpenStack community has to say. Listen
> to the
> things external folks have to say. Most importantly, listen to what the
> Glance
> community has to say. Glance is not a playground for making random
> decisions. If
> you listen to what the community has to say, it'll be easy enough to
> know what
> to do and what the next steps are. However, you should be ready for
> making hard
> decisions and you need to have the courage to do so. During the last
> elections,
> I wrote a post[0] about what being a PTL means and I'd like to encourage
> you to
> read it, even if you've done so already.
>
> If you look at the goals we set for Glance during Mitaka and the results we
> achieved, you'll soon notice what the priorities for the next cycle
> should be.
> The community will help shaping those priorities but the baseline is there
> already.
>
> A great cycle is not measured on how many features the community is able to
> implement. Therefore, I encourage you to not fall under the temptation of
> approving as many specs as possible. It is *perfectly fine* to say no to
> specs
> because they conflict with the project's priorities. The more specs the
> team
> approves, the more code there will be, the more people the project will
> need to
> complete the feature (code wise and review wise). Keep the release
> small, keep
> it concise, keep it focused. It's extremely important to communicate the
> intent
> of the release to the rest of the community. Do not forget Glance *is* a
> critical piece of every cloud.
>
> Glance's community is not formed by the core team. It's formed by every
> person
> willing to dedicate time to the project either on reviews or code. Work
> with
> them, encourage them. They *are* helping the project. Some folks simply
> don't
> want to do reviews, that's fine. They are still helping with code and
> bug fixes.
> Recognize that and make sure they feel part of the community because
> they are.
> Expanding the core team is great as long as you can ensure folks in the
> team are
> aligned with the team's priorities. Welcome new members and do it
> gradually.
>
> One more thing, learn to delegate. During my time as a PTL, I relied on
> other
> members as much as possible for keeping up with some tasks. For
> instance, Erno
> Kuvaja helped immensely with releases and stable maintenance, Nikhil
> Komawar
> kept the team updated about the cross-project initiatives, Stuart Mclaren,
> Hemanth Makkapati and Brian Rosmaita worked with the vulnerability team on
> security issues, etc. Thanks to all of them for their immense help and I
> do hope
> you'll keep up at what you're doing :). In other words, burnout is real
> and you
> gotta take care of yourself too. Work with the community, there's no
> need to
> take everything on your shoulders as you might end up dropping some
> balls. When
> folks don't show up on reviews and they don't share their opinions, do
> not give
> those as granted. Find them and ask for it.
>
> And please, I beg you, let's get rid of v1!
>
> [0] http://blog.flaper87.com/post/something-about-being-a-ptl/
>
> Thanks for reading this long email (or to at least have bothered to skip
> till
> the end of it ;)
> Flavio
>
> P.S: I've posted this in my blog too:
> http://blog.flaper87.com/post/glance-mitaka-passing-the-torch
> /
>
>
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