Open Stack

Hi all,

I would like to announce my non-candidacy for the TC this term.

To be clear, I'm not running for a seat on the TC right now, but I hope you
will read this anyway.

Background
=========

I ran for a seat on the Technical Committee twelve months ago, on a
platform that consisted of two points:
- OpenStack is complex and hard to install. Let's make it easier.
- accepting new projects into OpenStack is hard. Let's make it easier.

I half-succeeded.

I learned a lot through participating in the integration and graduation
review processes during Icehouse and Juno, and believe my contributions to
the "big tent" discussions during Kilo helped to shape it. It is now much
easier for the OpenStack community to grow new projects. Unfortunately,
this also makes OpenStack *more* complex, not less.

It has also become apparent that bare-metal-as-a-service is a desired cloud
use-case, separate from its use within any installation framework such as
TripleO. Ironic is now integrated with OpenStack -- and also capable of
being used alone outside of OpenStack -- and I will continue to drive this
work forward.

I would still like to see OpenStack be easier to install, but I don't think
this will happen soon. The vendor and distributor ecosystem has positioned
"easy install" as one of their primary value-adds, and we have not seen as
much upstream investment into this as I had expected a year ago.

Maybe that's OK, for now.

Non-Platform
==========

Now, I'd like to ask you all to go read Thierry's blog post on what he'd
like to see in TC candidates at this time, if you haven't already. You can
find it here: http://ttx.re/tech-committee-candidates.html.

I'd also like to thank Thierry for writing that up - he said it much better
than I would have, and besides, I haven't made the time to write a real
blog post in a while.

Next, please see Jay's list of reasons not to vote for someone to be on the
TC, which you can find here:
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2015-April/062234.html

Once you've read both of those, you'll understand why I am not running for
the TC this cycle. As the PTL for Ironic, I simply don't have the time.

Being a member of the technical committee is not merely a commitment of a
few hours a week; it is not just a forum for resolving differences between
two or three projects; and it's definitely not a social club or popularity
contest.

First and foremost, it is an elected body of representatives. I believe the
members should *represent* OpenStack's technical constituency -- both
internally and externally. On the one hand, that means listening to the
technical community, understanding the issues within and between projects,
being both willing and capable to jump in and address them when necessary;
and on the other hand, representing that constituency to the broader
community.

Secondly, it is a policy-setting body. We create social and technical
structures to guide the community. Some times we've gone too far, and
sometimes in the wrong direction, and I would like to call upon members of
the community with experience in shepherding open source communities to
raise their voices to the TC and be heard.

The size of our community exceeds Dunbar's number by two orders of
magnitude, and it's still growing rapidly. Clearly, we need some structure
to ensure our efforts coalesce into a sustainable ecosystem, but what
exactly does that look like? I'm not sure, but I know it's going to take
both skill and effort to lead OpenStack into the next year.

I still believe, as I did when I joined OpenStack more than three years
ago, that this is an amazing community of people with a lot of promise and
a long journey ahead, who are solving some fascinating problems both social
and technical. I still want to - and plan to - play a part in shaping that,
and I will continue to voice my opinions and concerns, just as loudly and
in all the wrong places as I did before my time on the Technical Committee.
I'll be putting in just as much time and effort to discussions of community
building and project policy whether or not I'm on the TC.

Which is to say, not enough.

So, this cycle, I have chosen not to run for a seat on the TC.

Thanks for reading!

-Devananda
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