Hello Stackers, The community had a very productive "design summit" at the Project Teams Gathering last week. As you're reading the various summaries posted here, and participating in new initiatives that have rolled out since, I'd like to add a brief summary of the OpenStack Technical Committee's meetings [0] at the PTG. We recorded all of these sessions and have posted the recordings to the TC's YouTube channel [1]. Alongside this summary, I'd recommend reading the Eventlet Removal Goal updates and discussion from the session that Hervé Beraud (hberaud) hosted [2]. Remember, Etherpads are true to their name—you can lose them :D So we made a handy reference to the PTG Etherpads on the wiki [3]. Community Leaders' Forum ====================== We discussed active Community Goals [4], and took questions regarding the status from various project maintainers. As it stands, the FIPS compliance goal may no longer fit the criteria for community goals. It's been challenging due to the lack of a stable OS to test FIPS compliance in the CI. The community may need to explore CentOS Stream alternatives such as Rocky Linux 10 and Alma Linux 10. We need someone to pick up the work and replace existing test jobs. Secure RBAC has got an active Goal Champion; however, work has slowed down in several project teams. We're hoping to make another push through the Gazpacho cycle. We agreed that the current cross project liaisons information (on a wiki) is severely outdated and needs to be migrated to the openstack/governance repository, a centralized, programmatic location, to avoid duplication and ensure accuracy. We also discussed the OpenInfra AI contribution policy. Some project teams have recently seen an uptick in AI-assisted contributions, but there has been some confusion, and potential stigmatization of such contributions. We identified a need for clarity on how to apply the AI policy, specifically regarding using AI-generated code and verifying copyrights. We could use some documentation and guidelines for contributors and reviewers. Action Items: - Goutham (gouthamr) will move the FIPS goal from "selected" to "proposed" and start a separate ML thread. Project teams can remove any failing FIPS jobs when this change merges. - Tony Breeds (tonyb) will enhance the project schema in the governance repository to support adding cross-project liaisons. - (needs volunteers) The FIPS goal needs rework, especially around testing, and any objective refinements. - (needs volunteers) Clarifications and instructions pertaining to AI Contributions in the Project Team Guide. Testing and Runtimes ================= We discussed testing matrix updates for MariaDB/MySQL versions and Linux distributions. The goal is to drop older, unmaintained versions and move to modern platforms (like newer Python versions, CentOS Stream, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux) to ensure compatibility and support. AlmaLinux images are now available, but no projects are currently testing with them. Kolla and OpenStack-Ansible project teams are currently interested. The biggest advantage to project teams with this would be that the wide gamut of CI providers are compatible with this Red Hat-like distribution because of its support for x86_64v2 and x86_64v3 CPU architectures (as opposed to CentOS Stream or Rocky Linux). The CentOS Stream community has offered to run a third-party CI to test CentOS Stream with OpenStack, and the team noted a good meeting between maintainers in both communities at the OpenInfra Summit in Paris that Amy Marrich (spotz) facilitated. A precursor to this discussion was the concern that the latest LTS versions of MariaDB/MySQL have changed the default behavior with respect to character sets and collations, and several OpenStack services are non-compliant with these changes. We agreed that OpenStack services need to specify the character set on tables explicitly, and so creating a community goal to mandate the use of a specific character set (and to handle character set migrations) was seen as a good path forward. We briefly discussed OpenStack Special Interest Groups. We noted that we could use fresh updates to the SIGs website, including refreshing the SIG Chairs of several SIGs. There was a suggestion that, during this exercise, we could suggest merging some SIGs, such as the Scientific SIG and other operationally related SIGs, under a more general OpenStack operators umbrella. Action Items: - Dmitriy Rabotyagov (noonedeadpunk) will propose a community goal for project teams to support character set changes in newer LTS releases of MariaDB/MySQL. - tonyb will refresh the data for all the SIGs. - gouthamr will merge the governance and governance-sigs repositories for ease of management. University Partnerships and Collaborations ================================== Kendall Nelson (diablo_rojo) would like us to maintain an ongoing list of projects and mentors for OpenStack's storied university interns. This would alleviate bottlenecks and increase student engagement in OpenStack. There's now an Etherpad for this purpose [5]. If you'd like to mentor, please do sign up. We also entertained the idea of combining efforts with the First Contact SIG, as it has not been active in a while, to create a running list of mentors and participants for various onboarding events and activities throughout the community. Action Items: - Community members sign up and propose projects [5] - Revive First Contact SIG by collaborating with the University Partnership Projects. Post-Quantum Cryptography ======================= We discussed the potential breaking of traditional asymmetric cryptography by quantum computers around 2030. JP Jung (JP) joined us to detail that there are 17 cryptographic modules in OpenStack, and the goal is to understand the problem in each project, catalog the cryptographic algorithms used, and make the entire chain well-known to achieve quantum safety. A significant concern was that OpenStack has security threats today, and the energy should be directed towards securing it for current use cases as well, not just focusing on potential future threats like quantum computing. It was noted that the Python ecosystem has minimal support for post-quantum cryptography, and Python's cryptography project has not committed to a timeline for adding support, so building a foundation with cryptography or alternative libraries might be necessary before focusing on OpenStack. JP proposed a document for the community to review [6]. Much of it probably has to be less verbose and focus on specific gaps/changes. JP's willing to be a champion of the effort to secure OpenStack in a post-quantum world. He'd like project teams to audit the use of encryption algorithms, key exchange libraries/mechanisms in their deliverables. The Security SIG is a good venue to continue this discussion, and, if necessary, a sub-team or a separate pop-up team can be formed as well. Action Items: - JP will fix up the current analysis [6] to make it specific, and highlight actionable problems. OpenStack Universe a.k.a Affiliated Projects ================================== Artem Goncherov (gtema) wanted to address the issue of signaling to users that certain tools work well with OpenStack, even if they are not official OpenStack projects. The idea is to create a connection between OpenStack and these affiliated projects, giving them recognition and a voice, and potentially providing some protection from competing projects. Thierry Carrez (ttx) suggested that the OpenInfra Universe [7] is an existing platform that lists projects in a similar category, with criteria including OSI-recognized licenses and integration with Open Infra projects. We brainstormed how to evolve the current project intake form to better represent affiliated projects, with a potential meeting to include OpenInfra Marketing folks and explore options. Action Items: - ttx will set up a meeting with interested parties to improve the OpenInfra Universe, and will share updates in a future OpenStack TC meeting. Bridging the gap between community and contributing orgs ============================================= Ildiko Vancsa (ildikov), Jeremy Stanley (fungi) and Clark Boylan (clarkb) provided an update on the effort to bridge the gap between the community and contributing organizations. There are two surveys that are currently open to contributors [8] and maintainers [9]. These surveys focus on the Flamingo release cycle and will end on November 16th, 2025. (Please take them!) Once these surveys end, we're expecting them to inform us of where things are going well and where they are not, and to measure the effectiveness of changes we've slowly been making across the community, with the ultimate goal of improving the contributor experience. There is a perception that getting a feature into OpenStack requires a personal relationship with a maintainer, which can be a barrier to entry for new contributors. The complexity of OpenStack's CI and software can also be a significant technical element that makes it difficult for external contributors to get started. Collectively, we're having trouble finding new core maintainers and building knowledge in parts of our code base to sustain them. Extending trust and lowering barriers to entry can help address these issues, and projects should consider reevaluating their processes to make it easier for new contributors to get involved. It was also highlighted that #openstack and #openstack-dev IRC channels on OFTC have become less active over time. We explored the idea of revitalizing these channels as preferred venues for cross-project discussions, and having maintainers parked there to engage with folks that aren't familiar with project-specific channels or have cross-project concerns. Action Items: - Please take the contributor [8] and maintainer [9] surveys for the 2025.2 "Flamingo" release. - (ildikov/fungi) Analyze survey results when surveys close and meet with project teams and the OpenStack TC to discuss them. Project Cascade ============= Professor Corey Leong (profcorey) introduced the Cascade project, an open-source unified communications project. He asked us about the steps to make it an official OpenStack project, including potential voting and governance requirements. The project aims to integrate unified communications services, such as voice, phone, and video using open-source projects, including OpenStack components. It'd allow OpenStack users to download and install the service on their machines. Participants drew a similarity to Trove in that Cascade would provide a managed service to OpenStack users akin to Trove providing database-as-a-service. We opined that the project is still in the early stages, and the team is researching how to integrate with OpenStack components, including identifying dependencies and interactions between services. In this stage, all of the community's infrastructure: hosting on OpenDev, publishing on wiki.openstack.org, using official IRC channels on OFTC, Meetpad, Gerrit, and Zuul, are available to Project Cascade's maintainers. We tried to understand the benefits of switching to the OpenStack namespace, i.e., bringing the project under OpenStack governance and what it would provide that is not currently available. We hope to continue this discussion in a future TC meeting or on the openstack-discuss mailing list. Action Items: - tonyb is working on fixing OpenID auth issues with wiki.openstack.org and will coordinate with profcorey on problems with other maintainer infrastructure. Now that we have that out of the way, we can focus on some other important things [10]. Again, thank you very much for participating and for the great discussions over the week! Sincerely, Goutham Pacha Ravi (gouthamr) Chair, OpenStack Technical Committee [0] OpenStack TC PTG Etherpad: https://etherpad.opendev.org/p/r.5dfdc57d7bc31731ccf9d51cb80de6c5 [1] OpenStack TC Gazpacho PTG playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhwOhbQKWT7WkK5VGgipjt4XQQlgLLci9 [2] Hervé's summary of eventlet-removal: https://lists.openstack.org/archives/list/openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.... [3] "Gazpacho" Oct 2025 PTG Etherpads: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/PTG/Oct2025PTG/Etherpads [4] OpenStack Wide Goals: https://governance.openstack.org/tc/goals/ [5] University Mentors Sign Up: https://etherpad.opendev.org/p/UPP-Projects%26Mentors [6] Post Quantum OpenStack: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Post_quantum_openstack [7] OpenInfra Universe: https://openinfra.org/universe [8] Flamingo Contributor Survey: https://openinfrafoundation.formstack.com/forms/openstack_contributor_experi... [9] Flamingo Maintainer Survey: https://openinfrafoundation.formstack.com/forms/openstack_maintainer_experie... [10] https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017577-best-gazpacho