Open Stack

Confirmed.

On 10/06/2013 04:04 AM, Michael Still wrote:
> Greetings! I am currently a member of the TC, and I would like to
> continue to serve.
>
> I'm going to write this email backwards because I am aware it is quite
> long. I have put what I hope to achieve on the TC at the top, but
> provide background detail afterwards for those who want to dig deeper.
> I am of course happy to answer questions.
>
> == Executive summary ==
>
> * I am a Nova and Oslo core reviewer, who works full time on upstream OpenStack
> * Provide geographic diversity to the TC, doing my best to represent
> the APAC region
> * Continue to incubate new projects so long as they form a logical
> part of a cloud deployment, regardless of whether they will graduate
> within a single release
> * We need to work on improving documentation, and I'd like to see the
> TC work on this in Icehouse
> * Assist the Foundation Board in defining "what is core" and placing
> high quality technical evangelists at conferences around the world
> * Also, I have a cool accent
>
> == What I want to get done on the TC in Icehouse ==
>
> First off, the TC has incubated a number of projects in the Havana
> release, and I'd like to see that continue. I think its important that
> we build a platform that includes the services that a deployer would
> need to build a cloud and that those platform elements work well
> together. Now, its clear that not everyone will deploy all of the
> projects we are incubating, but I think its still important that they
> play well together and have a consistent look and feel.
>
> I suspect that ultimately we'll need to work out how to handle this
> growth differently -- we have a lot of PTLs now and the summit is
> going to be super busy, but these are both good problems to have and I
> am confident that we can solve them as a community. I also do not
> believe that an incubated project needs to graduate within one
> release. I'd rather take a less mature project if we think it has a
> good chance of getting to graduation in the forseeable future and work
> with them, than ignore them and then be surprised that they never
> became a well integrated project.
>
> We need to get better at documentation, and the TC needs to do more in
> this area. Having high quality documentation is very important to the
> continued success of OpenStack. Anne Gentle and the docs team are
> doing a fantastic job, but I am personally of the belief that the docs
> team simply isn't big enough to keep up with the work load we impose
> on them. I'd like to see the community, lead by the TC, discuss how we
> can grow that team and produce the documentation the project deserves.
> I've seen proposals that we block code reviews which don't have an
> associated doc patch for example, and while I think that's too blunt a
> metric we need to do _something_. Could we do something with reporting
> the number of undocumented features are landing? Could we be better at
> approaching corporate contributors and asking for more documentation
> support?
>
> The TC needs to also provide more assistance to the Foundation Board.
> The reality is that the Board and TC don't solve isolated problems --
> they both work on different aspects of the same problem. The Board has
> been doing really good work, but the TC should be helping what defines
> "core" OpenStack. While this discussion might be framed as being about
> trademarks, it ultimately affects how users see our software and I
> think that matters a lot to the technical people as well.
>
> I'd also like the TC to be helping the Foundation place technical
> talks at conferences around the world. We have a limited window to
> drive OpenStack deployment, and having solid technical talks at as
> many technical conferences around the world as possible is one of the
> ways we can achieve that. While I'm lucky enough to work somewhere
> with good support for these activities internally, that's not true of
> all of our developers. The TC and Board should be working together to
> identify high quality technical evangelists, and then helping them get
> accepted at conferences. Perhaps the Board can also allocated some
> travel support for this sort of activity -- I'd love to see that
> happen.
>
> Overall I think the TC should be helping the Board more. The TC has
> unique insights into what projects and events matter to the technical
> deployers of OpenStack, and we should be helping the Foundation make
> good decisions. During the Havana release there was one meeting
> between the TC and the Board (the day before the Havana summit opened)
> that I am aware of, and I think we need to be talking more than that.
>
> == Background ==
>
> I first started hacking on Nova during the Diablo release, with my
> first code contributions appearing in the Essex release. Since then
> I've hacked mostly on Nova and Oslo, although I have also contributed
> to many other projects as my travels have required. For example, I've
> tried hard to keep various projects in sync with their imports of
> parts of Oslo I maintain.
>
> I work full time on OpenStack at Rackspace, leading a team of
> developers who work solely on upstream open source OpenStack. I am a
> Nova and Oslo core reviewer. I am in fact one of the most active code
> reviewers for Nova. I have been serving on the TC for the last six
> months.
>
> == Current goals ==
>
> While I am still personally focussed on Nova, I have also spent much
> of the last release getting others involved in the community. This has
> included proposing an OpenStack mini-conference at linux.conf.au 2014,
> which has been accepted. I have also spoken about OpenStack at a
> variety of Australian conferences and meetups. I want to spend the
> next release continuing to try and bring new people into the
> community.
>
> I went along to the recent docs bootcamp hosted by Mirantis to try and
> work out how Nova developers can make life easier for the docs team.
> There are some obvious things we can do there, such as being more
> consistent with requiring DocImpact comments and what content they
> should contain. I even ended up writing some doc patches to see how
> the other half lives. Its much harder than it looks.
>
> I run a team of OpenStack developers in Australia which has hired
> three people in the last couple of months, and which will continue to
> grow. I've been trying hard with this team to not just hire smart
> people, but to also hire people new to the community as I believe that
> we ultimately need to grow the pool of contributors instead of just
> poaching off each other. That's not to say that people shouldn't move
> between OpenStack companies (I have), but that its not sufficient by
> itself to meet our future needs.
>
> I am still focused on operations as well, as that's the background I
> come from. Most of my contributions to Nova in Havana were attempts to
> make Nova easier to operate, and that will continue in Icehouse.
> Better console support, deferred instance file delete, continuing to
> make periodic tasks work better and CI tests for database migrations
> are all problems I want to attack in the next release.
>
> Finally, I believe the TC has taken some interesting steps in the last
> six months that put us a good direction -- not assuming PTLs will
> serve on the TC, and introducing programmes for example. The TC fills
> an important role in trying to keep our overall offering coherent, and
> I'd like to continue to work on that problem.
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>