Open Stack

On Wed, Dec 13, 2017 at 05:17:26PM +0100, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Hi everyone,

Hey Thierry,

> Over the past year, it has become pretty obvious to me that our
> self-imposed rhythm no longer matches our natural pace. It feels like we
> are always running elections, feature freeze is always just around the
> corner, we lose too much time to events, and generally the impression
> that there is less time to get things done. Milestones in the
> development cycles are mostly useless now as they fly past us too fast.
> A lot of other people reported that same feeling.

Thanks for articulating it out loud.  FWIW, I share that same feeling to
an extent, especially as one of those people involved in mulitple
communities (the lower-layer components that OpenStack depends on) and
simply don't have the necessary bandwidth to keep up.

[...]

> In another thread, John Dickinson suggested that we move to one-year
> development cycles, and I've been thinking a lot about it. I now think
> it is actually the right way to reconcile our self-imposed rhythm with
> the current pace of development, and I would like us to consider
> switching to year-long development cycles for coordinated releases as
> soon as possible.
> 
> What it means:
> 
> - We'd only do one *coordinated* release of the OpenStack components per
> year, and maintain one stable branch per year
> - We'd elect PTLs for one year instead of every 6 months
> - We'd only have one set of community goals per year
> - We'd have only one PTG with all teams each year

The above sounds reasonable to me.  

And it should (and will) reduce a lot of breathlessness and 'keeping the
pedal glued to the metal' feeling that comes from being unable to keep
up with things.  Not to mention, the OpenStack Foundation welcomes a bit
of breathing room from having to organize and coordinate so many events.

For a relatively mature (~7 years; and ~5 years if we count from the
time governance changed to OpenStack Foudation) project, one official
contributor gathering per year sounds fine.  And for those that need
more face time, people would continue to organize informal meetups.  But
admittedly, this shifts the logistics apsect onto contributors -- that's
probably okay, many other contributor communities self-organize meetups.

[...]

> When ?

[...]

> So the year-long cycles would ideally start at the beginning of the
> year, when we would organize the yearly PTG. That said, I'm not sure we
> can really afford to keep the current rhythm for one more year before
> switching. That is why I'd like us to consider taking the plunge and
> just doing it for *Rocky*, and have a single PTG in 2018 (in Dublin).

Jumping right in sounds good.  Getting started immediately will also get
us to real world 'data' sooner, rather than dilly-dallying around.

[...]

> So... What do you think ?

I welcome this proposal.

-- 
/kashyap