Open Stack

On Tue, 17 Apr 2018, Thierry Carrez wrote:

> So... Is there any specific topic you think we should cover in that
> meeting ?

I'll bite. I've got two topics that I think are pretty critical to
address with the various segments of the community that are the
source of code commits and reviews. Neither of these are
specifically Board issues but are things are that I think are pretty
critical to discuss and address, and topics for which corporate
members of the foundation ought to be worried about.

These aren't fully formed ideas or questions, but I hope that before
we get to Vancouver they might evolve into concrete agenda items
with the usual feedback loops in email. I figure it is better to get
the ball rolling early than wait for perfection.

In the past on topics like this we've said "usually it's not the
right people at the board meeting to make headway on these kinds of
things". That's not our problem nor our responsibility. If the
people at the board meetings are designated representatives of the
corporate members it's their responsibility to hear our issues and
respond appropriately (even if that means, over the long term,
changing the people that are there). The health and productivity of
the community is what we should be concerned with.

The topics:

1. What are we to do, as a community, when external pressures for
results are not matched by contribution of resources to produce
those results? There are probably several examples of this, but one
that I'm particularly familiar with is the drive to be able to
satisfy complex hardware topologies demanded by virtual network
functions and related NFV use cases. Within nova, and I suspect other
projects, there is intense pressure to make progress and intense
effort that is removing resources from other areas. But the amount
of daily, visible contribution from the interest companies [1] is
_sometimes_ limited. There are many factors in this, and obviously
"throw more people at it" is not a silver bullet, but there are
things to talk about here that need the input from all the segments.

2. We've made progress of late with acknowledging the concepts
and importance of casual contribution and "drive-by bug fixing" in
our changing environment. But we've not yet made enough progress in
changing the way we do work. Corporate foundation members need to be
more aware and more accepting that the people they provide to work
"mostly upstream" need to be focused on making other people capable
of contribution. Not on getting features done. And those of us who
do have the privilege of being "mostly upstream" need to adjust our
priorities.

Somewhere in that screed are, I think, some things worth talking
about, but they need to be distilled out.

[1] http://superuser.openstack.org/articles/5g-open-source-att/

-- 
Chris Dent                       ٩◔̯◔۶           https://anticdent.org/
freenode: cdent                                         tw: @anticdent