Open Stack

Hi everyone,

Incubation is currently an OpenStack project status that grants a
promising project more access to OpenStack shared resources, especially
in the CI, release management and QA space. That status lets the
promising project prove that it is ready to join other official
OpenStack core projects for the next full development cycle.

In the past governance the Project Policy Board was the only decider on
Incubation and Core inclusion. With the new governance, the Technical
Committee is still the only decider on Incubation status and still
proposes projects for Core inclusion, but the Board of Directors has the
possibility to veto that Core inclusion.

This creates an awkward process where a project could go all the way
through Incubation and be denied Core inclusion at the end of that
process, basically wasting OpenStack resources. We need to evolve the
Incubation process so that the question of whether a project belongs in
"Core" is fully resolved as early as possible. And define how a project
can enter, grow or exit the incubation process.

This also raises the question of whether "Core" should really be the
only destination of an Incubated project. Which triggers the very
question of what OpenStack Core actually is. For some it's the
collection of OpenStack projects that work well and complement each
other, for others Core should only include the IaaS pieces, for others
they should represent the bare minimum you need to implement to be able
to be called an "OpenStack Cloud"...

Once "Core" is defined we can evaluate the need for a category that
would still be in "OpenStack" but not have the "Core" label on it.
Incubation could then lead two ways.

We need to discuss all this in the next two weeks before delegates of
the TC will join a committee with Board of Directors delegates to come
to a final decision on this. So let the public discussion begin.

Cheers,

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)
Chair, OpenStack Technical Committee