Open Stack

On 11 March 2015 at 05:29, Russell Bryant <rbryant at redhat.com> wrote:
> The TC is in the middle of implementing a fairly significant change in
> project governance.  You can find an overview from Thierry on the
> OpenStack blog [1].
>
> Part of the change is to recognize more projects as being part of the
> OpenStack community.  Another critical part was replacing the integrated
> release with a set of tags.  A project would be given a tag if it meets
> some defined set of criteria.
>
> I feel that we're at a very vulnerable part of this transition.  We've
> abolished the incubation process and integrated release.  We've
> established a fairly low bar for new projects [2].  However, we have not
> yet approved *any* tags other than the one that reflects which projects
> are included in the final integrated release (Kilo) [3].  Despite the
> previously discussed challenges with the integrated release,
> it did at least mean that a project has met a very useful set of
> criteria [4].
>
> We now have several new project proposals.  However, I propose not
> approving any new projects until we have a tagging system that is at
> least far enough along to represent the set of criteria that we used to
> apply to all OpenStack projects (with exception for ones we want to
> consciously drop).  Otherwise, I think it's a significant setback to our
> project governance as we have yet to provide any useful way to navigate
> the growing set of projects.
>
> The resulting set of tags doesn't have to be focused on replicating our
> previous set of criteria.  The focus must be on what information is
> needed by various groups of consumers and tags are a mechanism to
> implement that.  In any case, we're far from that point because today we
> have nothing.
>
> I can't think of any good reason to rush into approving projects in the
> short term.  If we're not able to work out this rich tagging system in a
> reasonable amount of time, then maybe the whole approach is broken and
> we need to rethink the whole approach.

I think this is kindof missing the point of the new governance system:
the bar for entry has been replaced with a bar for getting certain
tags - holding back entrants because we don't have enough tags to
answer all the questions we could before doesn't make anything better
- we know we weren't really answering the questions folk cared about
before (thats why we've revamped the governance system at all).

If I understand your particular concern, its that if more projects are
added folk will be more confused about what is safe or sane to deploy
: I think that is a risk, but not a big one, because what was safe or
sane to deploy before was already quite fuzzy. See e.g. Neutron only a
couple of releases back :).

-Rob

-- 
Robert Collins <rbtcollins at hp.com>
Distinguished Technologist
HP Converged Cloud