All, I’ve spent the last few years watching the activities of the technical committee , and in recent cycles, I’m seeing a significant increase in both members of our community asking the TC to take action on things, and the TC volunteering to take action on things in the course of internal discussions (meetings, #openstack-tc, etc.). In combination, these trends appear to have significantly increased the amount of time that members of the technical committee spend on “TC work”, and decreased the time that they spend on other activities in OpenStack. As such, I suggest that the Technical Committee be restricted from actually doing anything beyond approval of merges to the governance repository.
Firstly, we select members of the technical committee from amongst those of us who have some of the deepest understanding of the entire project and frequently those actively involved in multiple projects and engaged in cross-project coordination on a regular basis. Anything less than this fails to produce enough name recognition for election. As such, when asking the TC to be responsible for activities, we should equally ask whether we wish the very people responsible for the efficiency of our collaboration to cease doing so in favor of whatever we may have assigned to the TC.
Secondly, in order to ensure continuity, we need to provide a means for rotation of the TC: this is both to allow folk on the TC to pursue other activities, and to allow folk not on the TC to join the TC and help with governance and coordination. If we wish to increase the number of folk who might be eligible for the TC, we do this best by encouraging them to take on activities that involve many projects or affect activities over all of OpenStack. These activities must necessarily be taken by those not current TC members in order to provide a platform for visibility to allow those doing them to later become TC members.
Solutions to both of these issues have been suggested involving changing the size of the TC. If we decrease the size of the TC, it becomes less important to provide mechanisms for new people to develop reputation over the entire project, but this ends up concentrating the work of the TC to a smaller number of hands, and likely reduces the volume of work overall accomplished. If we increase the size of the TC, it becomes less burdensome for the TC to take on these activities, but this ends up foundering against the question of who in our community has sufficient experience with all aspects of OpenStack to fill the remaining seats (and how to maintain a suitable set of folk to provide TC continuity).
If we instead simply assert that the TC is explicitly not responsible for any activities beyond governance approvals, we both reduce the impact that being elected to the TC has on the ability of our most prolific contributors to continue their activities and provide a means for folk who have expressed interest and initiative to broadly contribute and demonstrate their suitability for nomination in a future TC election
Feedback encouraged
Then it might fit the purpose to rename the technical committee to governance committee or other terms. If we have a technical committee not investing time to lead in technical evolvement of OpenStack, it just seems odd to me.
TC should be a place good developers aspired to, not retired to. BTW this is not a OpenStack-only issue but I see across multiple open source communities.
On Sat, May 4, 2019 at 4:51 AM Emmet Hikory persia@shipstone.jp wrote:
All, I’ve spent the last few years watching the activities of the technical committee , and in recent cycles, I’m seeing a significant increase in both members of our community asking the TC to take action on things, and the TC volunteering to take action on things in the course of internal discussions (meetings, #openstack-tc, etc.). In combination, these trends appear to have significantly increased the amount of time that members of the technical committee spend on “TC work”, and decreased the time that they spend on other activities in OpenStack. As such, I suggest that the Technical Committee be restricted from actually doing anything beyond approval of merges to the governance repository.
Firstly, we select members of the technical committee from amongstthose of us who have some of the deepest understanding of the entire project and frequently those actively involved in multiple projects and engaged in cross-project coordination on a regular basis. Anything less than this fails to produce enough name recognition for election. As such, when asking the TC to be responsible for activities, we should equally ask whether we wish the very people responsible for the efficiency of our collaboration to cease doing so in favor of whatever we may have assigned to the TC.
Secondly, in order to ensure continuity, we need to provide a meansfor rotation of the TC: this is both to allow folk on the TC to pursue other activities, and to allow folk not on the TC to join the TC and help with governance and coordination. If we wish to increase the number of folk who might be eligible for the TC, we do this best by encouraging them to take on activities that involve many projects or affect activities over all of OpenStack. These activities must necessarily be taken by those not current TC members in order to provide a platform for visibility to allow those doing them to later become TC members.
Solutions to both of these issues have been suggested involvingchanging the size of the TC. If we decrease the size of the TC, it becomes less important to provide mechanisms for new people to develop reputation over the entire project, but this ends up concentrating the work of the TC to a smaller number of hands, and likely reduces the volume of work overall accomplished. If we increase the size of the TC, it becomes less burdensome for the TC to take on these activities, but this ends up foundering against the question of who in our community has sufficient experience with all aspects of OpenStack to fill the remaining seats (and how to maintain a suitable set of folk to provide TC continuity).
If we instead simply assert that the TC is explicitly notresponsible for any activities beyond governance approvals, we both reduce the impact that being elected to the TC has on the ability of our most prolific contributors to continue their activities and provide a means for folk who have expressed interest and initiative to broadly contribute and demonstrate their suitability for nomination in a future TC election
Feedback encouraged-- Emmet HIKORY
Zhipeng Huang wrote:
Then it might fit the purpose to rename the technical committee to governance committee or other terms. If we have a technical committee not investing time to lead in technical evolvement of OpenStack, it just seems odd to me.
OpenStack has a rich governance structure, including at least the Foundation Board, the User Committee, and the Technical Committee. Within the context of governance, the Technical Committee is responsible for both technical governance of OpenStack and governance of the technical community. It is within that context that "Technical Committee" is the name.
I also agree that it is important that members of the Technical Committee are able to invest time to lead in the technical evolution of OpenStack, and this is a significant reason that I propose that the activities of the TC be restricted, precisely so that being elected does not mean that one no longer is able to invest time for this.
TC should be a place good developers aspired to, not retired to. BTW this is not a OpenStack-only issue but I see across multiple open source communities.
While I agree that it is valuable to have a target for the aspirations of good developers, I am not convinced that OpenStack can be healthy if we restrict our aspirations to nine seats. From my perspective, this causes enough competition that many excellent folk may never be elected, and that some who wish to see their aspirations fufilled may focus activity in other communities where it may be easier to achieve an arbitrary title.
Instead, I suggest that developers should aspire to be leaders in the OpenStack comunuity, and be actively involved in determining the future technical direction of OpenStack. I just don't think there needs to be any correlation between this and the mechanics of reviewing changes to the governance repository.
On 4/05/19 9:25 AM, Emmet Hikory wrote:
Zhipeng Huang wrote:
Then it might fit the purpose to rename the technical committee to governance committee or other terms. If we have a technical committee not investing time to lead in technical evolvement of OpenStack, it just seems odd to me.
OpenStack has a rich governance structure, including at least theFoundation Board, the User Committee, and the Technical Committee. Within the context of governance, the Technical Committee is responsible for both technical governance of OpenStack and governance of the technical community. It is within that context that "Technical Committee" is the name.
I also agree that it is important that members of the Technical Committeeare able to invest time to lead in the technical evolution of OpenStack, and this is a significant reason that I propose that the activities of the TC be restricted, precisely so that being elected does not mean that one no longer is able to invest time for this.
Could you be more clear about which activities you think should be restricted? Presumably you're arguing that there should be fewer... let's call it "ex officio" responsibilities to being a TC member.
The suggestion reads as kind of circular, because you appear to be saying that aspiring TC members should be doing certain kinds of socially useful tasks that are likely to get them elected to the TC, where they will be restricted from doing those tasks in order to make sure they have free time to do the kinds of socially useful things they were doing prior to getting elected to the TC, except that those are now restricted for them. Presumably we're actually talking about different sets of tasks there, but I don't think we can break the loop without being explicit about what they are.
TC should be a place good developers aspired to, not retired to. BTW this is not a OpenStack-only issue but I see across multiple open source communities.
While I agree that it is valuable to have a target for the aspirationsof good developers, I am not convinced that OpenStack can be healthy if we restrict our aspirations to nine seats.
Good news, we have 13 seats ;)
From my perspective, this causes enough competition that many excellent folk may never be elected, and that some who wish to see their aspirations fufilled may focus activity in other communities where it may be easier to achieve an arbitrary title.
Instead, I suggest that developers should aspire to be leaders in theOpenStack comunuity, and be actively involved in determining the future technical direction of OpenStack. I just don't think there needs to be any correlation between this and the mechanics of reviewing changes to the governance repository.
I couldn't agree more that we want as many people as possible to be leaders in the community and not wait to be elected to something. That said, in my personal experience, people just... listen more (for better and worse) to you when you're a TC member, because the election provides social proof that other people are listening to you too. This phenomenon seems unavoidable unless you create separate bodies for technical direction and governance (which I suspect has its own problems, like a tendency for the governance body to become dominated by professional managers).
cheers, Zane.
On 2019-05-08 14:27:54 -0400 (-0400), Zane Bitter wrote:
On 4/05/19 9:25 AM, Emmet Hikory wrote:
Zhipeng Huang wrote:
Then it might fit the purpose to rename the technical committee to governance committee or other terms. If we have a technical committee not investing time to lead in technical evolvement of OpenStack, it just seems odd to me.
OpenStack has a rich governance structure, including at least the Foundation Board, the User Committee, and the Technical Committee. Within the context of governance, the Technical Committee is responsible for both technical governance of OpenStack and governance of the technical community. It is within that context that "Technical Committee" is the name.
I also agree that it is important that members of the Technical Committee are able to invest time to lead in the technical evolution of OpenStack, and this is a significant reason that I propose that the activities of the TC be restricted, precisely so that being elected does not mean that one no longer is able to invest time for this.
Could you be more clear about which activities you think should be restricted? Presumably you're arguing that there should be fewer... let's call it "ex officio" responsibilities to being a TC member.
The suggestion reads as kind of circular, because you appear to be saying that aspiring TC members should be doing certain kinds of socially useful tasks that are likely to get them elected to the TC, where they will be restricted from doing those tasks in order to make sure they have free time to do the kinds of socially useful things they were doing prior to getting elected to the TC, except that those are now restricted for them. Presumably we're actually talking about different sets of tasks there, but I don't think we can break the loop without being explicit about what they are.
[...]
My read was that the community should, each time we assert there's something we want done and we think the TC should also take care of for us, step back and consider that those TC members are already deeply embedded in various parts of our community as well as adjacent communities getting other things done (likely the same things which got them elected to seats on the TC to begin with), and that each new thing we want them to tackle is going to take the place of yet more of those other things they'll cease having time for as a result. Taken from another perspective, it's the idea that the TC as a governing body should limit its focus to governance tasks and stop feeling pressured to find yet more initiatives and responsibilities for itself, leaving more time for the folks serving on the TC to also continue doing all manner of other important tasks they feel compelled to do in their capacity as members of the community rather than with their "TC hats" on.
Emmet Hikory wrote:
[...] As such, I suggest that the Technical Committee be restricted from actually doing anything beyond approval of merges to the governance repository.
If you look at the documented role of the TC[1], you'll see that it is mostly focused on deciding on proposed governance (or governance repository) changes. The only section that does not directly translate into governance change approval is "Ensuring a healthy, open collaboration", which is about tracking that the project still lives by its documented values, principles and rules -- activities that I think should also remain with the TC.
[1] https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/role-of-the-tc.html
Beyond that, it is true that some Technical Committee members are involved in driving other initiatives (including *proposing* governance changes), but I'd say that they do it like any other community member could.
While I think we should (continue to) encourage participation in governance from other people, and ensure a healthy turnover level in TC membership, I don't think that we should *restrict* TC members from voluntarily doing things beyond approving changes.
participants (5)
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Emmet Hikory
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Jeremy Stanley
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Thierry Carrez
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Zane Bitter
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Zhipeng Huang