Open Stack

# Intro

Feedback from last week's first attempt at a weekly overview of TC
activity was positive enough to continue. Suggestions on how to make
it more useful welcome. Main change this time is that I've added
some information on stuff happened outside the meeting, a link to
the meeting minutes, and a section on stuff we talked about last
week that we said we'd pick up later but haven't yet.

# Prior to the Meeting

## Communications

Shortly after producing the first version of this newsletter last
week I was approach by Flavio who reminded me that there has been a
communications working group for the TC that had plans to provide
regular updates on the state of things TC. We agreed that such a
thing should still happen, that I ought to be involved, but that I
would probably still to do this, so that I could editorialize freely
if I wished.

Then in discussion of dropping the regular meetings[^1] it came up
that if we do that it will be very important to have plenty of
structured communication to the mailing list to replace some of the
cadence marking that the meeting provides, something the TC chair
might provide . As I'm typing this, this week's meeting has started
and it is clear (by the immediate rush of discussion) the topic is
of dropping the meetings is going to a big deal and if followed
through will be a significant shakeup to how interactions happen
within the TC and between the TC and everyone else. It is especially
important for people who are not on the TC but want to interact with
it regularly in a conversational way. If you have thoughts on this,
read and respond to[^1].

## Draft Vision for the TC[^0]

This is mostly sitting idle, awaiting feedback from sessions in
Boston. The idea is to use the vision to establish some goals for
the TC and OpenStack. If you're interested or invested in that
future, your feedback is important (on the review, in email, in the
survey that was sent out, or in the sessions next week). You might
look at what's there and think "what is all this fantasizing?". If
that's your reaction you should say so, and say what you think
should be talked about instead. Or you might love it. If you do, you
could say why. That would be useful.

[^0]: <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/453262/>

# This Week's Meeting

Minutes and Log: <http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/tc/2017/tc.2017-05-02-20.01.html>

## Killing the Meeting[^1]

As mentioned above we leapt right into talking about killing the
meeting. Wide variety of opinions on what function the meeting is
providing in the first place, thus a broad selection of suggestions
on what can be done instead of the meeting to serve those functions.
Eventually we realized we weren't getting anywhere and there was a
motion to move the discussion to email because:

* it would be visible there to everyone
* gerrit is a poor medium for exploratory or expansive discussion
* email can be digested at whatever pace the reader requires

There were some ideas on how to make sure a thread moves forward to
a conclusion. A regular summary and reality check of "is this where
we are" every small number of days is a useful idea.

[^1]: <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/459848/>

## Not Making Decisions Synchronously[^2]

This is related to killing the meetings; the idea is that making
decisions synchronously excludes everyone who cannot be there at
that specific moment in time or who cannot digest the language
quickly enough to participate at full speed in a synchronous
environment. There's some confusion over whether this should be a
goal for just the TC or the entire OpenStack community. We
eventually had to punt on this because we didn't really know. The
conversation will move to the review.

(In my observations of the TC for the past couple of years, this is
a common pattern. There's often lack of clarity on intent of a
resolution or other proposal. What are the real problems it is
trying to address, or the environments it is trying to create?
People have very different interpretations and when it gets
difficult or unclear, rather than reaching the bottom of the
difference, the conversation is shifted to another time or medium.
Often this is due to time constraints, but frequently the topic is
never rejoined so incomplete understandings accumulate in a massive
pile.)

[^2]: <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/460946/>

## Change the target for this goal to uWSGI not Apache mod_wsgi[^3]

General agreement about doing this change, not a big deal, but some
concern about changing a cycle goal in the middle of the cycle
("moving the goal posts"). Agreement was that changing details of
implementation are not the same thing as changing the goal
(especially when it is a simplification) so it is okay as long as
the change is reflected in the doc, not just the git history.

[^3]: <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/460951/>

## More on maintenance-mode

There's a newish tag called status:maintenance-mode which means that
a project is receiving limited attention for a period of time.
There's a proposal[^4] that the TC should become core on such a
project to make sure there are people to handle urgent matters. The
question is whether this is necessary since:

* the TC can get those privileges at any time on any project when
   there is an urgent matter
* being in maintenance-mode is supposed to mean there is sufficient
   attention from project team members for urgent matters, if not
   the project is abandoned

This turned out more contentious and confused than expected and it
too was punted to the review[^4].

[^4]: <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/460963/>

## Open Discussion

The above filled pretty much the whole hour, suggesting that perhaps
we all have a lot more to say to one another than a single hour
allows. That was acknowledged and suggestions were made that we
really need to use email more and better, even though it can be
challenging. That is, we need to level up our email skills.

To help ensure more talking to one another and do a bit of near-term
planning, a TC gathering will happen in Boston late next week.
Evidently I will be spit-balling, and no one will be sitting near
me.

# Dropped Stuff

_A section of reminders of things we said we'd talk about more but
haven't yet._

## OpenStack moving too fast and too slow

At last week's meeting, while discussing the findings from the user
survey there was discussion[^t] of

> the complicated problem of OpenStack moving both
> too fast and too slow at the same time, depending on who was
> looking. And the difficulty with lack of centralized control over
> the technical direction of OpenStack and (probably most importantly)
> the application of resources.

that was supposed to move the mailing list[^m]. As far as I can see
it did not. dfisher have you got the cycles to pick that up again
here on the list? Or if not you, maybe mordred, fungi or dhellman?
If it was already discussed, my apologies for losing it, can someone
point it out to me?

[^t]: <http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/tc/2017/tc.2017-04-25-20.00.log.html#l-177>
[^m]: <http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/tc/2017/tc.2017-04-25-20.00.log.html#l-259>

# Colophon

This is an opinionated overview of Technical Committee activity from
my perspective. As such it is subjective and potentially wrong
enough to cause disagreements. That's a good thing if it leads to
discussions that make things better or more correct.

-- 
Chris Dent                  ┬──┬◡ﾉ(° -°ﾉ)       https://anticdent.org/
freenode: cdent                                         tw: @anticdent