Open Stack

Doug Hellmann wrote:
> Excerpts from Jay Pipes's message of 2018-09-17 17:07:43 -0400:
>> On 09/17/2018 04:50 PM, Doug Hellmann wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> I don't remember the history quite the way Jay does, either. I
>>> remember us trying to base the decision more about what the team
>>> was doing than how the code looked or whether the implementation
>>> met anyone's idea of "good". That's why we retained the requirement
>>> that the project "aligns with the OpenStack Mission".
>>
>> Hmm. I very specifically remember the incubation and graduation review
>> of Zaqar and the fact that over a couple cycles of TC elections, the
>> "advice" given by the TC about specific technical implementation details
>> changed, often arbitrarily, depending on who was on the TC and what day
>> of the week it was. In fact, I pretty vividly remember this arbitrary
>> nature of the architectural review being one of the primary reasons we
>> switched to a purely objective set of criteria.
> 
> I remember talking about objectivity, but I also remember that we
> stopped reviewing aspects of a project like it's architecture or
> implementation details to avoid having the case you describe recur.
> I remember that because I had a hard time coming around to that
> point of view, at first.
> 
> You're correct, however, that the resolution we adopted as the first
> step toward the big tent change
> (https://governance.openstack.org/tc/resolutions/20141202-project-structure-reform-spec.html#recognize-all-our-community-is-a-part-of-openstack)
> does talk about making decisions based on team practices and projects
> fitting the mission as being objective requirements. And the patch
> that implemented the first part of the big tent change
> (https://review.openstack.org/#/c/145740/14) also talks about
> objectivity.
> 
> It's interesting that we took different things away from the same
> discussion. :-)
> 
> In any case, I think we've learned there is still quite a bit of
> subjectivity in the question about whether a project fits the
> mission.

Right. Back then our goal was definitely to remove the most subjective 
requirements. We removed judgment on whether the project was a good 
idea, or whether the technical architecture was sound, or whether the 
project was "mature" enough. We only kept two criteria: alignment with 
the OpenStack culture, and alignment with the OpenStack mission.

Those are not purely objective criteria though. We had cases where we 
had to do a leap of faith whether the project really aligns with the 
OpenStack culture. And we had projects that were in a grey area even 
with our very vague mission statement. The Adjutant discussion, in the 
end, was about whether it would significantly hurt interoperability, and 
therefore be detrimental to the OpenStack mission rather than helping it.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)