Open Stack

On Feb 9, 2015, at 9:28 PM, Jay Pipes <jaypipes at gmail.com<mailto:jaypipes at gmail.com>> wrote:

On 02/02/2015 02:51 PM, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
On Fri, 2015-01-30 at 23:05 +0000, Everett Toews wrote:
To converge the OpenStack APIs to a consistent and pragmatic RESTful
design by creating guidelines that the projects should follow. The
intent is not to create backwards incompatible changes in existing
APIs, but to have new APIs and future versions of existing APIs
converge.

It's looking good already. I think it would be good also to mention the
end-recipients of the consistent and pragmatic RESTful design so that
whoever reads the mission is reminded why that's important. Something
like:

        To improve developer experience converging the OpenStack API to
        a consistent and pragmatic RESTful design. The working group
        creates guidelines that all OpenStack projects should follow,
        avoids introducing backwards incompatible changes in existing
        APIs and promotes convergence of new APIs and future versions of
        existing APIs.

After reading all the mails in this thread, I've decided that Stef's suggested mission statement above is the one I think best represents what we're trying to do.

That said, I think it should begin "To improve developer experience *by* converging" ... :)

+1

I think we could be even more explicit about the audience.

To improve developer experience *of API consumers by* converging the OpenStack API to a consistent and pragmatic RESTful design. The working group creates guidelines that all OpenStack projects should follow, avoids introducing backwards incompatible changes in existing APIs, and promotes convergence of new APIs and future versions of existing APIs.

I’m not crazy about the term "API consumer" and could bike shed a bit on it. The problem being that alternative terms for "API consumer" have been taken in OpenStack land. “developer” is used for contributor developers building OpenStack itself, “user” is used for operators deploying OpenStack, and “end user” has too many meanings. “API consumer” makes it clear what side of the API the working group audience falls on.

I also like dtroyer’s idea of a Tweetable mantra but I think we need to distill that mantra _from_ a longer mission statement. If we constrained the mission statement to <= 140 chars at the outset, we’d be losing valuable information that’s vital in communicating our intent. And if we can’t fully communicate our intent in a mission statement then it doesn’t have as much value.

Thanks,
Everett

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