Open Stack

On Mon, 23 Apr 2018, Doug Hellmann wrote:

> We frequently have discussions about whether the TC is active enough,
> in terms of driving new policies, technology choices, and other
> issues that affect the entire community.

Another good question. Like all the others I wish they had come a
bit earlier so that we had more time to deliberate and converse
before the elections start tonight. These deserve considerable
thought.

I hope it's no secret that I think the TC should be more active in
its leadership, both technically and culturally. Often the TC
operates as a kind of supreme court, leading from behind. Since I
joined the community four years ago I've often wished for a more
unified leadership from the front, and I think the representative
model provided by the TC (a model which transcends the individual
projects and concentrates on the bigger picture) could provide
that if we want it to.

> Please describe one case where we were either active or reactive
> and how that was shown to be the right choice over time.
>
> Please describe another case where the choice to be active or
> reactive ended up being the wrong choice.

I think the recent process which eventually led to clarification on
interop testing at https://review.openstack.org/#/c/550571/ is a
relatively good example of what might be described as active
reaction. Through consultation with many involved parties we changed
the rules to better reflect reality and support projects more
effectively.

At the same time, we failed to act quickly enough on the same topic
with https://review.openstack.org/#/c/521602/ , where though some
parties had identified some clear problems, the TC (as a group)
failed to act in a timely fashion (there's a nearly two month gap
with no comments) to resolve them, in part because there wasn't
agreement that it was a domain that the TC should legislate.

My feeling is that if technical contributors to OpenStack are
involved, then that's a place where the TC can and should engage.

> If you think the TC should tend to be more active in driving change
> than it is today, please describe the changes (policy, culture,
> etc.) you think would need to be made to do that effectively (not
> which policies you want us to be more active on, but *how* to
> organize the TC to be more active and have that work within the
> community culture).

Despite my use of the term "legislate" above I think Howard's idea
of "a new direction outlook per cycle or per year" is a critical
aspect of what the TC should be doing. Setting tone and overarching
themes to help distinguish between what matters and what does not
matter. The vision statement was somewhat useful in this regard, but
we also need something that is more immediate term: thematic goals
for this cycle. OpenStack-wide goals are also helpful, but they tend
to be very specific and don't do much to help answer "no" to the
question: "is this thing I'm considering aligned with the current
themes?"

We've talked in the past about using time at the PTG to express
these themes but I think we need to do more than that. As you
(Doug), have said before: We need to habituate people to where they
can reliably find and discover information about what matters. This
will often mean what feels like a lot of repetition.

It will take effort to make these kinds of changes. We are large
enough now, and vest so much power and self-determination in the
individual projects, that it will take a lot of convincing and
orchestrating to make a significant culture change that aligns us on
common goals.

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