Open Stack

Hello Chris, and thank you for posting this question.

First I must apologize since I was not able to answer this thread 
earlier - due to a problem with me receiving the emails from the list. I 
had to ask the election committee how to add my answer to the thread, I 
hope this attempt works forgive me if the formatting in this answer 
comes out a bit weird.

 > There are lots of different ways to categorize the various
 > stakeholders in the OpenStack community, no list is complete. For
 > the sake of this question the people I'm concerned with are the
 > developers, end-users and operators of OpenStack: the individuals
 > who are actively involved with it on a daily basis. I'm intentionally
 > leaving out things like "the downstream".

I think that there is a basic misconception here - and that is one of 
the reasons I decided to run.
You mentioned the stakeholders - developers, end-users, and operators. 
Yes they all have a direct interaction with the community and the 
products being written, but I think it is safe to say that they all 
interact on a very different level. Their is a very clear hierarchy here 
- even if it has not been explicitly defined. These stakeholders are not 
equal. I am not saying that they should be equal but I do think that the 
current balance is nowhere near the way it should be - so that it is 
beneficial for each of these groups.


 > What can and should the TC at large, and you specifically, do to ensure
 > quality improves for the developers, end-users and operators of
 > OpenStack as a full system, both as a project being developed and a
 > product being used?

A solution is only as good as those who use it. Those who use it will 
only do so it if it useful to them. They will use it when it can solve a 
problem they have. They will use it when they know there is someone one 
the other side who is receptive to their questions, their suggestions 
and their input.

I think that the TC in the upcoming terms should find a way to help each 
of the teams and their PTL's prioritize what should be done in the next 
two cycles (because that is what the election term is for). This should 
be based on the aspirations of each of the teams, but it also must 
consider the feedback from both the users and the operators as to what 
features they would like to see implemented and what things need to be 
fixed.

As for me personally, if elected, I would like to invest my efforts in 
finding a way to get that feedback back into the TC and further down 
into each of the products. we have several initiatives running in 
parallel today, and I hope that I can find a way to allow this 
information to flow back in a more streamlined manner in order to 
improve the quality of each of the projects and help them meet the needs 
of the people who are actually going to be using it.

In addition to the above, I do believe the quality of the product will 
improve if we become more receptive to input from those who are not 
writing the code. Today that is a substantial hurdle for most end-users 
and operators, something that I would like to try and make accessible - 
without lowering the quality of the code and our products. It is fine 
balance - yet one that I think it is all of our best interests to find, 
hard as it may be.


-- 
Best Regards,
Maish Saidel-Keesing