Open Stack

Stefano,

I was informed (in a private message on IRC) that where I said "Twenty First amendment" I should have said "Eighteenth Amendment". The former repealed the latter.

My apologies to all who were trying to figure out what I may have meant.

-amrith

P.S. Why I got that in a private message I know not.

| -----Original Message-----
| From: Amrith Kumar [mailto:amrith at tesora.com]
| Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 12:20 PM
| To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
| Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets
| fight for it
| 
| Stefano,
| 
| You write:
| 
| | This is seriously disturbing.
| |
| | If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private
| | channel, please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we
| | failed as a community at convincing you that an open channel is the
| place to be.
| |
| | No public shaming, please: education first.
| 
| I was going to contact you privately but figured that would be ironic
| given the conversation we're having. So here is my reply to you in the
| open, for all to see and respond.
| 
| Let me begin by saying that I agree with a lot of what Flavio wrote.
| 
| Where he says that decisions and discussions must always be made in the
| open, he is dead-on.
| 
| Where he says that decisions in private are bad, he is dead-on.
| 
| I beg to differ however on the subject of discussions in private
| (emphasis: discussions, not decisions). Now that sounds bad but let's
| leave private IRC channels aside.
| 
| If you and I had a phone call, that's not a bad thing. What is bad if we
| colluded in some way, and made a decision that we then foisted on the
| community as a "done deal".
| 
| IRC is a great thing and so is the mailing list. And a lot of
| conversations are well suited for those mediums. And I read them regularly
| and I find them useful. However, I will admit that there are times when I
| just pick up the phone and call a colleague or call some other ATC in
| OpenStack.
| 
| As Flavio says in his email:
| 
| | > ## Keep discussions open
| | >
| | > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some
| | > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe
| | > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions.
| | > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private
| | > discussions sufficient.
| 
| Further, there are in fact times when members of a core team can have
| meaningful discussions about things. Security related bugs are one, on
| occasion things like people's conduct (when it is marginal) and I can make
| a list of a couple of more things easily, but I think you see the point.
| 
| Given time-zones, long distance costs, and the like, IRC is a good option
| as is a private skype call or skype IM. Not everything is suitable for
| IRC/mailing list and a public forum. And in some cases since a public IRC
| channel with three parallel conversations going can be noisy, a less
| cluttered private conversation is invaluable.
| 
| Mostly, I'm very happy to see Flavio's email which ends with this:
| 
| > All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for
| > the openness of our community and encourage everyone to make that a
| > must have thing in each sub-community. You don't need to be core-
| reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community as open
| as possible.
| 
| Open decision making and discussion are absolutely the lifeblood of an
| open source community. And I agree, as an ATC I will fight for the open
| discussion and decision making. In equal measure, I recognize that I'm
| human and there are times when a quiet "sidebar" with someone, either on
| the telephone, or over a glass of suitable beverage can go further and
| quicker than any extent of public conversation with the exact same
| participants.
| 
| You write:
| 
| | This is seriously disturbing.
| 
| Yes, what would be seriously disturbing would be if there were decisions
| being made without the open/public scrutiny.
| 
| There seems to be a leap-of-faith that a private IRC channel implies
| covert decisions and therefore they should be shutdown. OK, great, the
| Twenty-First Amendment took the same point of view, see how well that
| worked out.
| 
| I assure you that later today, tomorrow, and the next day, I will have
| private conversations with other ATC's. Some will be on the telephone, and
| some will be on public IRC channels with some totally unique name that
| you'd never know to guess. But, I will try my best to, and I welcome the
| feedback when people feel that I deviate from the norm of ensuring public,
| open discussion and decision making where all are invited to participate.
| 
| Personally, I think the focus on password protected IRC channels is a
| distraction from the real issue that we need to ensure that the rapidly
| growing community is one where public discussion and decision making are
| still "the norm". Let's be adult about it and realize that people will
| have private conversations. What we need to focus on is ensuring that the
| community rejects "private decision making".
| 
| There, I said it, and I said it in the open.
| 
| -amrith
| 
| --
| 
| Amrith Kumar, CTO Tesora (www.tesora.com)
| 
| Twitter: @amrithkumar
| IRC: amrith @freenode
| I work on OpenStack Trove (#openstack-trove)
| 
| 
| 
| | -----Original Message-----
| | From: Stefano Maffulli [mailto:stefano at openstack.org]
| | Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 9:15 AM
| | To: openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org
| | Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open,
| | lets fight for it
| |
| | On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 10:55 +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote:
| | > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project.
| |
| | It's good to have a reminder every now and then. Thank you Flavio for
| | caring enough to notice bad patterns and for raising a flag.
| |
| | > ## Keep discussions open
| | >
| | > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some
| | > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe
| | > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions.
| | > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private
| | > discussions sufficient.
| | [...]
| |
| | Well said. Conversations can happen anywhere and any time, but they
| | should stay in open and accessible channels. Consensus needs to be
| | built and decisions need to be shared, agreed upon by the community at
| | large (and mailing lists are the most accessible media we have).
| |
| | That said, it's is very hard to generalize and I'd rather deal/solve
| | specific examples. Sometimes, I'm sure there are episodes when a fast
| | decision was needed and a limited amount of people had to carry the
| | burden of responsibility. Life is hard, software development is hard
| | and general rules sometimes need to be adapted to the reality. Again,
| | too much generalization here for what I'm confortable with.
| |
| | Maybe it's worth repeating that I'm personally (and in my role)
| | available to listen and mediate in cases when communication seems to
| | happen behind closed doors. If you think something unhealthy is
| | happening, talk to me (confidentiality assured).
| |
| | > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel
| | >
| | > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is
| | > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions.
| |
| | Not sure I agree with the causality but, the facts are those: traffic
| | on the list and on IRC is very high (although not increasing anymore
| [1][2]).
| |
| | >  I
| | > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's
| | > wrong to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those
| | > discussions happen.
| |
| | Email is hard, I have the feeling that the vast majority of people use
| | bad (they all suck, no joke) email clients. Lots and lots of email is
| | even worse. Most contributors commit very few patches: the investment
| | for them to configure their MUA to filter our traffic is too high.
| |
| | I have added more topics today to the openstack-dev list[3]. Maybe,
| | besides filtering on the receiving end, we may spend some time
| | explaining how to use mailman topics? I'll draft something on Ask, it
| | may help those that have limited interest in OpenStack.
| |
| | What else can we do to make things better?
| |
| | > ## Cores are *NOT* special
| | >
| | > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message
| | > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros
| | > became a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came
| | > to know that some projects even have private (flagged with +s),
| | > password protected, irc channels for core reviewers.
| |
| | This is seriously disturbing.
| |
| | If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private
| | channel, please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we
| | failed as a community at convincing you that an open channel is the
| place to be.
| |
| | No public shaming, please: education first.
| |
| | Cheers,
| | stef
| |
| |
| | [1] http://activity.openstack.org/dash/browser/mls.html
| | [2] http://activity.openstack.org/dash/browser/irc.html
| | [3] thanks to Luigi Toscano for highlighting some missing ones
| |
| |
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