Open Stack

On Wed, 27 Aug 2014, Angus Salkeld wrote:

> I believe developers working on OpenStack work for companies that
> really want this to happen. The developers also want their projects to
> be well regarded. Just the way the problem is using framed is a bit
> like you did above and this is very daunting for any one person to
> solve. If we can we quantify the problem, break the work into doable
> items of work (bugs) and prioritized it will be solved a lot faster.

Yes.

It's very easy when encountering organizational scaling issues to
start catastrophizing and then throwing all the extant problems under
the same umbrella. This thread (and the czar one) has grown to include
a huge number of problems. We could easily change the subject to just
"The Future".

I think two things need to happen:

* Be rational about the fact that at least in some areas we are trying
   to do too much with too little.

   Strategically that means we need:

   * to prioritize and decompose issues (of all sorts) better
   * get more resources (human and otherwise)

   That first is on us. The second I guess gets bumped up to the people
   with the money; one aspect of being rational is utilizing the fact
   that though OpenStack is open source, it is to a very large extent
   corporate open source. If the corps need to step up, we need to tell
   them.

* Do pretty much exactly what Angus says:

   10 identify bugs (not just in code)
   20 find groups who care about those bugs
   30 fix em
   40 GOTO 10 # FOR THE REST OF TIME!!!!

   We all know this, but I get the impression it can be hard to get
   traction. I think a lot of the slipping comes from too much emphasis
   on the different projects. It would be better to think "I work on
   OpenStack" rather than "I work on Ceilometer" (or whatever).

I'm not opposed to process and bureaucracy, it can be very important
part of the puzzle of getting lots of different groups to work
together. However an increase in both can be a bad smell indicating an
effort to hack around things that are perceived to be insurmountable
problems (e.g. getting more nodes for CI, having more documentors,
etc.).
-- 
Chris Dent tw:@anticdent freenode:cdent
https://tank.peermore.com/tanks/cdent