[openstack-dev] [tc] [all] TC Report 18-35

Chris Dent cdent+os at anticdent.org
Tue Aug 28 18:06:26 UTC 2018


HTML: https://anticdent.org/tc-report-18-35.html

I didn't do a TC report last week because we spent much of the time
discussing the issues surrounding extracting the placement
service from nova. I've been working on making that happen—because
that's been the intent from the start—for a couple of years now, so
tend to be fairly central to those discussions. It felt
inappropriate to use these reports as a bully pulpit and in any case
I was exhausted, so took a break.

However, the topic was still a factor in the recent week's
discussion so I guess we're stuck with it: leaving it out would be
odd given that it has occupied such a lot of TC attention _and_
these reports are expressly my subjective opinion.

Placement is in the last section, in case you're of a mind to skip
it.

# The Tech Vision

There's been a bit of discussion on the [Draft Technical
Vision](https://review.openstack.org/#/c/592205/).  First,
[generally what it is trying to do and how do dependencies fit
in](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-08-22.log.html#t2018-08-22T09:20:12).
This eventually flowed into questioning how much [voice and
discretion](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-08-22.log.html#t2018-08-22T18:37:24)
individual contributors have with regard to OpenStack overall, as
opposed to merely doing what their employers say. There were
_widely_ divergent perspectives on this.

The truth is probably that everyone has a different experience on a
big spectrum.

# TC Elections and Campaigning

As
[announced](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2018-August/133893.html),
TC Election Season approaches. We had some discussion
[Friday](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-08-24.log.html#t2018-08-24T13:23:35)
about making sure that the right skills were present in candidates
and that any events we held with regard to campaigning, perhaps at
the PTG, were not actively exclusionary.

# That Placement Thing

The links below are for historical reference, for people who want to
catch up. The current state of affairs and immediate plans are being
worked out in [this
thread](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2018-August/thread.html#133781),
based on a medium term plan of doing the technical work to create a
separate and working repo and then get that repo working happily
with nova, devstack, grenade and tempest. Technical consensus is
being reached, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but discussion
is working and several people are participating. The questions about
governance are not yet firmly resolved, but the hope is that before
the end of the Stein cycle placement ought to be its own official
project.

In case you're curious about why the TC is involved in this topic at
all, there are two reasons: a) Eric asked for advice, b) it is
relevant to the TC's role as [ultimate appeals
board](https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/charter.html).

The torrid story goes something like this: While working on a PTG
planning etherpad for [extracting placement from
nova](https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/placement-extract-stein-copy),
there were some questions about the eventual disposition of
placement: a project within or beside nova. That resulted in a [huge
email
thread](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2018-August/thread.html#133445).

In the midst of that thread, the nova scheduler meeting raised the
question of [how do we
decide](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/nova_scheduler/2018/nova_scheduler.2018-08-20-14.00.log.html#l-64)?
That got moved to the TC IRC channel and mutated from "how do we
decide" to many different topics and perspectives. Thus ensued several
hours of
[argument](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-08-20.log.html#t2018-08-20T15:27:57).
Followed by a
["wow" reprise](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-08-21.log.html#t2018-08-21T08:10:01)
on Tuesday morning.

By Thursday a potential compromise was mooted in the [nova
meeting](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/nova/2018/nova.2018-08-23-14.00.log.html#l-205).
However, in the intervening period, several people in the TC,
notably Doug and Thierry had expressed a desire to address some of
the underlying issues (those that caused so much argument Monday and
elsewhere) in a more concrete fashion. I wanted to be sure that
they had a chance to provide their input before the compromise deal
was sealed. The conversation was moved back to the TC IRC channel
asking for input. This led to yet more
[tension](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-08-23.log.html#t2018-08-23T14:48:55).
It's not yet clear if that is resolved.

All this must seem pretty ridiculous to observers. As is so often
the case in community interactions, the tensions that are playing
out are not directly tied to any specific technical issues (which,
thankfully, are resolving in the short term for placement) but are
from the accumulation and aggregation over time of difficulties and
frustrations associated with unresolved problems in the exercise and
distribution of control and trust, unfinished goals, and unfulfilled
promises. When changes like the placement extraction come up, they
can act as proxies for deep and lingering problems that we have not
developed good systems for resolving.

What we do instead of investigating the deep issues is address the
immediate symptomatic problems in a technical way and try to move
on. People who are not satisfied with this have little recourse.
They can either move elsewhere or attempt to cope. We've lost plenty
of good people as a result. Some of those that choose to stick
around get tetchy.

If you have thoughts and feelings about these (or any other) deep
and systemic issues in OpenStack, anyone in the TC should be happy
to speak with you about them. For best results you should be willing
to speak about your concerns publicly. If for some reason you are
not comfortable doing so, that is itself an issue that needs to be
addressed, but starting out privately is welcomed.

The big goal here is for OpenStack to be good, as a technical
production _and_ as a community.

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


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