Open Stack

( Clicky bits included: https://anticdent.org/tc-report-51.html )

This will be the last TC Report of the year, expect the next one
around the 9th of January.

We're closing out the year with a series of discussions about making
changes to deal with various frustrations in the contributor
community. They were triggered by [a
proposal](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2017-December/125473.html)
to consider extending the release cycle as a way to adapt to changes in
the rhythm of the community. This exploded into a [monster email
thread](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2017-December/thread.html#125473)
and several episodes of lengthy discussion in IRC.

Thierry made a
[TL;DR](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2017-December/125688.html)
of the email thread, incorporating some of what he heard from the IRC
discussion. It provides a pretty good summary, touching on many of the
major facets.

An additional idea, [changing from PTL to shared
leaders](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2017-12-18.log.html#t2017-12-18T14:28:21),
was also mooted. This one a sort of strawman to hear what people care
about; a less well-formed idea to contemplate the issues surrounding
overloaded PTLs.

There is a great deal in IRC to look at, many perspectives and insights,
if you have the time and energy to read through IRC logs:

* [Last
   Thursday](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2017-12-14.log.html#t2017-12-14T13:09:21)
   goes on for about 6 hours.
* Monday [introduces the PTL
   idea](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2017-12-18.log.html#t2017-12-18T14:28:21) from ttx.
* Tuesday morning it is [introduced
   again](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2017-12-19.log.html#t2017-12-19T09:06:32)
   by Flavio, who hadn't seen Monday's discussion.

Throughout all of this it is very clear that there are a huge number of
partially related frustrations that no single solution is going to resolve.

There was a bit of a tangent this morning where I wanted us to zero in
on a foundational cause but that led to a paralysis of "all our
problems are probably due to capitalism". This suggests that we have
to approach this using analysis and resolution of [second order
problems](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2017-12-19.log.html#t2017-12-19T09:56:29).

What we haven't got, though, is an aggregation of what people consider
to be the problems. Instead we have lurking fear or FUD. And if we did
have the list of problems, getting agreement on priority would be
difficult. This suggests we need, in part, to achieve some measure of
decoupling so that different projects can apply different solutions.
One size will not fit all.

A constant throughout all this discussion is the question of "who will
do the additional work" and the need for a vastly more effective
feedback loop with the corporations that support the humans doing work
in the community.  Not just with the foundation board but also with
the internal groups doing the work and/or managing the humans.
Fidelity of communication in terms of requirements and roadblocks,
from all parties, in all directions, is _low_.

We can improve many of the things people have been talking about, but
it's going to take a lot of discussion to reach agreement on what each
of the problems really are. Historically we have not been that good,
as a community, at accepting that broadly ranging conversations are an
okay use of time.

They are. They help us develop the shared language that is critical
to developing the shared understanding that is required to establish
shared goals.

Until we crush capitalism, we work with what we've got. Happy
New Year, comrades.

-- 
Chris Dent                      (⊙＿⊙')         https://anticdent.org/
freenode: cdent                                         tw: @anticdent