Open Stack

Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> Here's a first attempt at a "direction motion" for the TC to vote on:
> 
>   The concepts of "what is core" and "what is in OpenStack" have been 
>   conflated until now. The TC cares far more about the process for new
>   projects to be included in the coordinated release than it cares about
>   which projects are required to be used by providers in order to access
>   the trademark.

That's the main point for me. By separating the two issues ("what is
developed within openstack" and "what is core openstack"), we clearly
separate what is BoD responsibility and what is TC responsibility, which
is a great way to avoid conflict between the two governance bodies
(which is what we are being asked to proactively resolve here).

>   We would like to take an inclusive but measured approach to accepting
>   new OpenStack projects. We should evaluate any given proposed project
>   on whether it embraces our values and processes, is useful to
>   OpenStack users, well integrated with other projects and represents a
>   sensible broadening of the scope of OpenStack.

Note that this still doesn't give crystal-clear guidelines on how to
judge what is promising/complementary/useful. Even if we don't have to
care about trademark anymore, we might still need to come up with more
defined guidelines for acceptation than personal gut feeling...

>   We see Incubation as a trial period where promising projects have the 
>   opportunity to demonstrate their suitability for inclusion in our 
>   coordinated releases.

A consequence of that is we would judge if the project scope is
promising/complementary/useful for OpenStack at the moment the project
applies for incubation. And we would promote it out of incubation if it
matured enough to be included in the full next release cycle. I
personally think that's OK (removes the risk of following the whole
incubation process for nothing).

>   We see the term "Core OpenStack Project" in section 4.1.b of the  
>   bylaws as being solely related to trademark guidelines. We would be 
>   happy to see the term "Core" fall into disuse and for the Foundation 
>   to simply maintain a list of projects required for trademark usage.

I'm not sure we should recommend that the "Core" term falls into disuse.
If the BoD wants to keep using "Core" as meaning "part of the
coordinated release AND required for trademark use" (which is what the
bylaws say, emphasis is mine), then I'm perfectly OK with it.

What I think we actually want is to redefine "OpenStack projects" as
being "Services + Library + Gating + Supporting" (instead of Core +
Library + Gating + Supporting), with "OpenStack Services" being the
projects sharing the same release cycle. Have incubation be the trial
period to prove you can become an official OpenStack Service. Then let
the BoD pick which of those "OpenStack projects" they want to consider
"core" for trademark use.

Regards,

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