Open Stack

confirmed

On 07/10/14 02:26 PM, Dean Troyer wrote:
> I am Dean Troyer here to nominate myself as a candidate for the upcoming
> Technical Committee election.
> 
> I have been involved with OpenStack for a long time, working on the
> implementation at NASA of what became Nova. Since then I have been heavily
> involved in a number of projects: I was an early contributor to DevStack
> and served as its PTL during its short tenure as a stand-alone program, and
> started Grenade to use DevStack as the basis for upgrade testing. I also
> started the OpenStackClient project to address the disparity in user
> interface experience in our CLI tools and have been working down the client
> stack to improve the application developer experience using the client
> libraries. I currently work for Nebula Inc. from my home in the hotbed of
> overachiever baseball, Kansas City MO.
> 
> Recently some ideas I wrote down regarding the technical relationship of
> OpenStack projects escaped into the wild and became part of the current
> re-thinking of what OpenStack should look like. I think these ideas are a
> result from a practical approach to building useful systems and identifying
> the natural characteristics of both the projects and the people driving
> them. Technical relationships might not define organizational
> relationships, but they often look similar in the end.
> 
> The major changes being discussed are required as a result of the
> tremendous growth of OpenStack and the changes in incentives for
> contribution. This growth also feeds a desire to be all things to all
> participants that simply is not possible at this scale. We can not rewind
> the clock to the simpler times of 5 projects, but we can recover some of
> the characteristics of those days by growing through division into a larger
> number of smaller tents.
> 
> I'll be happy to answer specific questions beyond the ones below…
> 
> Topic: OpenStack Mission
> How do you feel the technical community is doing in meeting the OpenStack
> Mission?
> I think the rapid growth in the number of incubated/integrated projects has
> diluted the TC focus and attention and it has become clear that ignoring
> the natural strata of OpenStack projects is not working.
> 
> Topic: Technical Committee Mission
> How do you feel the technical committee is doing in meeting the technical
> committee mission?
> I think this and the previous question are intertwined at this point and it
> is time to do a sanity check on where we are and where we want to go. This
> conversation has started and there is no clear answer yet.
> 
> Topic: Contributor Motivation
> How would you characterize the various facets of contributor motivation?
> I think at a high level this is one of the motivations to re-evaluate our
> existing structure. We are a corporate-driven project and in spite of
> individual efforts to remain independent the corporate influence is being
> felt in ways that the individuals may have not anticipated, ie, being
> 'Integrated' is the most valuable attribute for a project, and is the
> indicator for investment for many corporate managers.
> 
> At an individual level I see people who want to make a better cloud and
> make the tools and components to get us there. We have some procedural
> things to smooth out (CLA, etc) and some significant scaling issues to
> address (review backlogs) in order to retain and utilize the energy being
> brought to OpenStack by new contributors.
> 
> Topic: Rate of Growth
> There is no argument the OpenStack technical community has a substantial
> rate of growth. What are some of the consequences of this rate?
> As I wrote above, we have lost focus as we have attempted to widen the
> scope of integrated projects. Rather than do a smaller number of things
> very well the pressure is to do a lot of things.
> 
> Topic: New Contributor Experience
> How would you characterize the experience new contributors have currently?
> The mechanics of contributing (CLA, accounts, etc) could be much better. I
> am not convinced that the CLA is providing value. The percentage of initial
> contributions that I see that are more than trivial spelling fixes or
> similar is low, as they need to focus on the process rather than the
> content just to get going.
> 
> Topic: Communication
> How would you describe our current state of communication in the OpenStack
> community?
> There are enough different communication channels available that it is hard
> for anyone to monitor them all and still have time to write. I do think in
> general we have done a good job of herding conversations toward the mailing
> lists and logged IRC channels. Twitter and personal blogs are other common
> avenues and may or may not be easy to discover if one doesn't already know
> about them.
> 
> Topic: Relationship with the Foundation Board
> The technical committee interacts with the foundation board on several
> different fronts. How would you describe these interactions?
> I have mostly seen the interaction around the DefCore work and have found
> it interesting that neither side seems to want to say “This Is OpenStack”
> for fear of stepping on toes.
> 
> 
> dt
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> OpenStack-dev mailing list
> OpenStack-dev at lists.openstack.org
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
> 


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 473 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/attachments/20141007/74744096/attachment.pgp>