Open Stack

>
>Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2017 16:29:52 +0000
>From: Jeremy Stanley <fungi at yuggoth.org>
>To: openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org,
>	user-committee at lists.openstack.org
>Subject: Re: [Openstack-operators] [LCOO] Intro to Large Contributing
>Message-ID: <20170209162952.GQ12827 at yuggoth.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>On 2017-02-09 00:59:52 +0000 (+0000), UKASICK, ANDREW wrote:
>[...]
>> I'm the mysterious "AndyU" who was chatting with you about a year ago 
>> in IRC with questions about how to go about donating hosted cloud 
>> resources for use by the Infra team. It's nice to bump into you again! 
>> ;-) That idea is still stirring btw, but has been much slower moving 
>> than I'd hoped.
>[...]
>
>Always appreciated, and happy to pick that back up if and when you're ready.

I've moved into a different role and I'm no longer driving that effort, but it's still alive and we'll be sure and reach out if/when it gets more traction!

>> I've been having a pretty lengthy conversation with jay Pipes 
>> regarding similar questions. You can catch up on that in the thread 
>> below this one.
>
>I've been following it closely, and tried not to duplicate questions/comments as much as possible.
>
>> LCOO is unlike any other working groups that I'm familiar with in some 
>> significant ways. You zero'd in on one of those in your statements 
>> above about companies joining as opposed to individuals. In that 
>> regard, LCOO is similar to an entity like OSIC.org as opposed to a 
>> traditional working group.
>[...]
>
>This is probably where some of the confusion comes in for me; I expect it's just one of terminology/semantics. The OpenStack User Committee has specifically tied "Active members and contributors to functional teams and/or working groups" to its electorate in their charter, and also defines working groups as "teams" (which to me implies they're made up of individuals, not organizations):

Agreed. You put your finger on another one of those things we're still figuring out.  I can tell you this much, the active members are individuals who have been consistently participating. Maybe a better way to think of it is as people who have a kind of dual role. They are members as individuals, but at the same time they're also representing the company they work for.  We've never discussed some of the nuances that you raise. They're good points. For example, if someone is elected as a chair and then changes companies would they be expected to step down as chair?  My opinion would be that no they would not be.  The individual earned that role just like in any other community team.  But that's just my opinion... I think that others would agree. If it ever comes up we'll have to decide!  But by my saying that, it would also imply that there may be people who are LCOO members who do not work for a "member company".  That sounds reasonable to me, but again... it's something that just hasn't come up yet.  We haven't discussed anything like that in any depth because we haven't had to yet. I know that there are concerns about the group remaining User focused, being representative of large Users and also representing actual contributors.  People wanted to avoid a situation where there might be lots of requests or even complaints being raised without any commitment to share in the work of actually fixing and delivering on them. 

>
>    https://governance.openstack.org/uc/reference/charter.html
>
>Maybe LCOO is something other than a "working group" in the formal UC sense? Or maybe the organizations who participate in the LCOO designate representatives (those LCOO "organization coordinators"
>and "governance board" mentioned in your wiki article) who are the actual working group as far as the UC is concerned? 

Yes, I'd say that is how we've been functioning.  The "Coordinators" are the core regular attendees who also have a role as representing their company within LCOO.  When we finally get rocking and rolling on trying to help drive some significant enhancements of some kind, the "Coordinator" part would mean serving as a coordination point with respect to other architects, developers, etc., that their own company may be contributing to the effort.  And then collectively, all of the "Coordinators" would be collaborating to help in jointly  coordinating any activity we (LCOO) may have across the life cycle.  As far as a "Governance Board" goes, that was an idea we had and put in the Charter, but that was before we actually tried out this experiment. We've never been anything but the "Coordinators" that I mentioned so far. There has been no need for a "Board". But maybe if LCOO became big enough and active enough, then there would be a need. I guess we'll find out if that ever happens.

> I'm just concerned if, for example, all employees within AT&T suddenly become part of the UC electorate by way of AT&T as an organization being an active "member" of an official UC working group. The only way I can really see this working is if the UC insists that its working groups are made up of individuals and not whole organizations.

Right. Jamey McCabe has been wrestling with how to objectively and fairly label someone an AUC from evidence in meeting participation, action items, etc.  And I know that he's been plugged in on that with the User Committee.  One thing is for certain, the scenario you described would NOT happen.  In general, any people we might 'pull in' from the companies we work for, would be Active TECHNICAL Contributors.  I'm sure there would be cases where someone might only work on Requirements, Solution design, and might theoretically avoid ever making a commit in a project, but that would be a rare case and one where I think the AUC label is appropriate. 

>> Jira provides Kanban boards that can serve as a kind of dashboard 
>> allowing us to visualize activity and current status of Community 
>> activity. But that activity is still happening in Launchpad, Gerrit, 
>> etc.
>[...]
>
>Cool, so it sounds like StoryBoard may work out for you in the long-run. It already has kanban and worklist support with optional automation tied directly to defect/feature tracking and code review.
>As the current effort to move our community from launchpad.net to storyboard.openstack.org progresses over the next couple of development cycles, I encourage you to check it out and start thinking about whether its features address your needs (or consider pitching in on further development there).

I saw that but I thought it was limited to just some things for the infra team.  I'd love to learn more about it.  I'm late to the party, but I'd guess that the PWG's Story Tracker sub-team must have checked that out??

>
>> Automating the status updating is something I've begun to discuss 
>> within the PWG's "Story Tracker" team. We have the same challenge 
>> there.
>[...]
>
>Our hope is that once we get further along with the current migration blockers for StoryBoard, we'll implement an "epics"
>concept in it which ties individual stories and their tasksets to over-arching efforts where their progress can be tracked more holistically.

Again, I'd love to learn more about that.

>
>> BTW, Atlassian has always made their tools free for use by open source 
>> projects. Also, although they're commercial products they do provide 
>> the source code and allow users to modify it freely which makes them 
>> much more open-source-ish than most.
>[...]
>
><soapbox>
>Yes, I saw you mention it in the other ML thread. "Free as in beer"
>is a somewhat dirty concept in free software development circles, and our community infrastructure similarly eschews gratis services like GitHub in favor of libre alternatives (we provide read-only mirrors there on request, but don't rely on it in any of our automation and officially recommend git.openstack.org which runs entirely on free software).

>
>As an author of free software myself I prefer when people use and help improve OpenStack rather than supporting commercial/proprietary solutions to accomplish the same tasks, and so think it hypocritical to not extend the same courtesy to other free software communities who are attempting to overcome similar hurdles in their respective problem spaces. To quote Harry Tuttle, "We're all in it together."
></soapbox>
>
>I understand you'll probably end up using whatever tools you're familiar/comfortable with and which help you accomplish your goals, I just ask that you keep in mind that publicly recommending non-free tools in the service of free software development sets an example.
>OpenStack already has a slightly negative reputation as "not really free" in the wider community... one which we're desperately trying to overcome, bit by bit.

I understand and appreciate your remarks.  You've made me think about points you made that I was not sensitive to before.  Point taken.
In the cases that I'm aware of, using Jira is a pretty minor, one-off kind of thing and the decision was based on familiarity, availability, avoiding unnecessary effort and how well it meets the functional need.  There are as many or more cases where people are using other solutions too, like trello and such. But those are small one-off kinds of things meeting the needs of a relatively small number of people in comparison to the broad community.  IMO, that should not be a big deal. But if a tool was being selected for the whole community, I completely understand and agree with your concerns. It would NOT be something to undertake lightly or in any sort of vacuum.  

>--
>Jeremy Stanley
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>------------------------------
>
>Message: 4
>Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2017 18:56:46 +0000
>From: "Hayes, Graham" <graham.hayes at hpe.com>
>To: Jeremy Stanley <fungi at yuggoth.org>,
>	"openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org"
>	<openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org>,
>	"user-committee at lists.openstack.org"
>	<user-committee at lists.openstack.org>
>Subject: Re: [Openstack-operators] [LCOO] Intro to Large Contributing
>Message-ID:
>	<CS1PR84MB02152CAC63E88595DF557AF090450 at CS1PR84MB0215.NAMPRD84.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>
>	
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>On 09/02/2017 16:37, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
>> On 2017-02-09 00:59:52 +0000 (+0000), UKASICK, ANDREW wrote:
>> [...]
>>> I'm the mysterious "AndyU" who was chatting with you about a year ago 
>>> in IRC with questions about how to go about donating hosted cloud 
>>> resources for use by the Infra team. It's nice to bump into you 
>>> again! ;-) That idea is still stirring btw, but has been much slower 
>>> moving than I'd hoped.
>> [...]
>>
>> Always appreciated, and happy to pick that back up if and when you're 
>> ready.
>>
>>> I've been having a pretty lengthy conversation with jay Pipes 
>>> regarding similar questions. You can catch up on that in the thread 
>>> below this one.
>>
>> I've been following it closely, and tried not to duplicate 
>> questions/comments as much as possible.
>>
>>> LCOO is unlike any other working groups that I'm familiar with in 
>>> some significant ways. You zero'd in on one of those in your 
>>> statements above about companies joining as opposed to individuals. 
>>> In that regard, LCOO is similar to an entity like OSIC.org as opposed 
>>> to a traditional working group.
>> [...]
>>
>> This is probably where some of the confusion comes in for me; I expect 
>> it's just one of terminology/semantics. The OpenStack User Committee 
>> has specifically tied "Active members and contributors to functional 
>> teams and/or working groups" to its electorate in their charter, and 
>> also defines working groups as "teams" (which to me implies they're 
>> made up of individuals, not organizations):
>>
>>     https://governance.openstack.org/uc/reference/charter.html
>>
>> Maybe LCOO is something other than a "working group" in the formal UC 
>> sense? Or maybe the organizations who participate in the LCOO 
>> designate representatives (those LCOO "organization coordinators"
>> and "governance board" mentioned in your wiki article) who are the 
>> actual working group as far as the UC is concerned? I'm just concerned 
>> if, for example, all employees within AT&T suddenly become part of the 
>> UC electorate by way of AT&T as an organization being an active 
>> "member" of an official UC working group. The only way I can really 
>> see this working is if the UC insists that its working groups are made 
>> up of individuals and not whole organizations.
>>
>>> Jira provides Kanban boards that can serve as a kind of dashboard 
>>> allowing us to visualize activity and current status of Community 
>>> activity. But that activity is still happening in Launchpad, Gerrit, 
>>> etc.
>> [...]
>>
>> Cool, so it sounds like StoryBoard may work out for you in the 
>> long-run. It already has kanban and worklist support with optional 
>> automation tied directly to defect/feature tracking and code review.
>> As the current effort to move our community from launchpad.net to 
>> storyboard.openstack.org progresses over the next couple of 
>> development cycles, I encourage you to check it out and start thinking 
>> about whether its features address your needs (or consider pitching in 
>> on further development there).
>>
>>> Automating the status updating is something I've begun to discuss 
>>> within the PWG's "Story Tracker" team. We have the same challenge 
>>> there.
>> [...]
>>
>> Our hope is that once we get further along with the current migration 
>> blockers for StoryBoard, we'll implement an "epics"
>> concept in it which ties individual stories and their tasksets to 
>> over-arching efforts where their progress can be tracked more 
>> holistically.
>>
>>> BTW, Atlassian has always made their tools free for use by open 
>>> source projects. Also, although they're commercial products they do 
>>> provide the source code and allow users to modify it freely which 
>>> makes them much more open-source-ish than most.
>> [...]
>>
>> <soapbox>
>> Yes, I saw you mention it in the other ML thread. "Free as in beer"
>> is a somewhat dirty concept in free software development circles, and 
>> our community infrastructure similarly eschews gratis services like 
>> GitHub in favor of libre alternatives (we provide read-only mirrors 
>> there on request, but don't rely on it in any of our automation and 
>> officially recommend git.openstack.org which runs entirely on free 
>> software).
>>
>> As an author of free software myself I prefer when people use and help 
>> improve OpenStack rather than supporting commercial/proprietary 
>> solutions to accomplish the same tasks, and so think it hypocritical 
>> to not extend the same courtesy to other free software communities who 
>> are attempting to overcome similar hurdles in their respective problem 
>> spaces. To quote Harry Tuttle, "We're all in it together."
>> </soapbox>
>>
>> I understand you'll probably end up using whatever tools you're 
>> familiar/comfortable with and which help you accomplish your goals, I 
>> just ask that you keep in mind that publicly recommending non-free 
>> tools in the service of free software development sets an example.
>> OpenStack already has a slightly negative reputation as "not really 
>> free" in the wider community... one which we're desperately trying to 
>> overcome, bit by bit.
>>
>
>I would also have a request - if these tools are going to be used can we make them world readable, with no requirement to log in to view content?

Yes, it can be done but in the case of Jira on Atlassian's cloud, as I recall they recommended against it and instead recommended enabling the ability for people to create their own accounts on demand. I can't remember why though. I came up empty looking through my old emails. I agree that enabling people to browse anonymously would be desirable. I'll check into it further and if there's no significant downside, I think we'll do that.

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