Open Stack

Hi everyone,

As chair for the previous session, it is my pleasure to welcome
newly-elected and returning members for a new 6-month session of the
Technical Committee. Here are a few things you should know.

Governance documents:

Official documents for the Technical Committee are published to the
https://governance.openstack.org/tc website. For example you can find
there the TC charter[0], which explains the rules under which we
operate. Changes to governance are proposed to the openstack/governance
git repository.

Reviews and Votes:

You should all have your Gerrit rights set up. You can use CodeReview
votes to express objections and desired/recommended changes. RollCall
votes are used to formally vote on a proposal. Items that require formal
voting (see exceptions below) are marked with the "formal-vote" topic so
that you can more easily find them all on Gerrit.

Approval rules:

The default approval rules are described in the charter. To be approved,
a vote needs to have (when the vote "closes") more +1s than -1s, and at
least 5 +1s. In practice (in order to avoid having to signal vote
closing) changes are approved when they hit majority (7 +1s) after a
3-day grace period to allow for last-minute objections that may swing
votes. For some rare cases of tight votes, a "final call for votes" will
be emitted when discussion is exhausted, and the default rule will approve.

Not all changes require formal voting. In order to speed up trivial
changes, we have a number of house rules[1] for specific changes
(repository additions, tag assignment, typos, technical code changes...).

Tracker and status updates:

The chair tracks the status of the various items requiring formal votes
on the TC Tracker[2] (currently updated on Tuesday and Friday mornings).
The chair also posts (on openstack-dev) a weekly update detailing
recently-approved changes, items requiring review attention, voting or
about-to-be-approved (currently on Friday morning). Please read it as it
may highlight other things needing TC members attention beyond reviews.

IRC channel and office hours:

In order to in encourage geographic and cultural diversity, the TC
dropped its reliance on formal weekly one-hour intense IRC meetings. To
keep the direct discussion going and allow the rest of the community to
interact directly with the TC we set up a number of office hours
instead. We encourage all TC members to join the office hours slots that
happen during a convenient time for them. Currently the office hours
happen: 09:00 UTC on Tuesdays, 01:00 UTC on Wednesdays, 15:00 UTC on
Thursdays. The #openstack-tc channel is obviously open and accessible
outside of office hours, but with likely less TC members being around
and paying attention.

Mailing-list:

The openstack-tc mailing list is used for administrative communications
to all TC members, such as this one. Please subscribe if you haven't
yet. This list is public and archived, but posts by people who are not
on the TC are moderated. The TC list is not meant for technical or
governance change discussion. Such threads should happen on the
openstack-dev ML, with the [tc] prefix. The TC list is more for things
that are only of interest for TC members.

Chair "election":

The elected membership needs to choose who will chair the TC for the
next 6 months. The chair tracks the work that is happening within the
TC, applies the rules for the approval of changes following our charter,
posts weekly updates on the progress that is being made and is
responsible for communications with the Board and UC. If you are
interested and can commit the corresponding extra time, please propose a
change similar to my candidacy[3]. We'll use Gerrit votes to select the
winner over the coming week, in time for Sydney.

Sydney:

There will be a Board+TC+UC+Staff ("Leadership") meeting in Sydney on
Sunday, November 5, starting at 11am and closing at 5pm. Participation
is of course voluntary. It should be followed by an evening
event/dinner. I don't have all details right now, will post them as soon
as they are communicated. It's time for us to discuss what we want to
see on the agenda for this meeting. I expect us to discuss that during
office hours this week !

Welcome again, and thanks for volunteering to be a TC member.

[0] https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/charter.html
[1] https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/house-rules.html
[2] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Technical_Committee_Tracker
[3] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/514553/

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)