Open Stack

Excerpts from Graham Hayes's message of 2018-04-23 15:36:32 +0100:
> On 18/04/18 11:38, Chris Dent wrote:
> > On Tue, 17 Apr 2018, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> > 
> >> So... Is there any specific topic you think we should cover in that
> >> meeting ?
> > 
> > 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/
> 
> 
> I think as an add on to this, would to ask the board to talk to members
> and see what contributions they have made to the technical side of
> OpenStack.
> 
> This should not just be Number of commits / reviews / bugs etc but
> also the motivation for the work, e.g. - Feature for a product, bug fix
> found in a product, cross project work or upstream project maintenance.

A while back Jay Pipes suggested that we ask contributing companies
to summarize their work. I think that was in the context of
understanding what platinum members are doing, but it could apply
to everyone. By leaving the definition of "contribution" open-ended
and asking as a way to celebrate those contributions, we could avoid
any sense of shaming as well as see what the companies consider to
be important.

> 
> I don't necessarily want to shame corporate members of the foundation,
> but I think it is important to understand where our contributor base
> comes from, and what each member brings to the community table.
> 
> We should also ask the board to try and formulate a plan for growing
> new cross project leaders (not just TC / PTLs). We need to grow more
> technical contributors in the horizontal teams, which requires more
> than assigning a contributor to the QA / Infra / Olso / Docs teams
> for a year or so - the people should be allowed a certain amount
> of stability in a role, while not necessarily driving business goals.

This topic has come up a few times. I wonder if we could get more
traction here if we had details about how attempts in the past have
failed ("person X was given 6 months to train on the team before
being moved to a different project", etc.)? Pulling together that
sort of information might take longer than we have between now and
the Vancouver meeting.

I also anticipate the board's response being, "Tell us what you need
done." so we should have an answer to that, even if it's just "we need
help with ideas, let's form a working group".

> 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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