Open Stack

(Blog version: <https://anticdent.org/tc-report-18-03.html>)

If a common theme exists in TC activity in the past week, it is the
cloudy nature of leadership and governance and how this relates to
what the TC should be doing, as a body, and how TC members, as
individuals, should identify what they are doing ("I'm doing this with
my TC hat on", "I am not doing this with my TC hat on").

It's a bit of a strange business, to me, because I think much of what
a TC member can do is related to the relative freedom being elected
allows them to achieve. I feel I can budget the time to write this
newsletter because I'm a TC member, but I would be doing a _bad thing_
if I declared that this document was an official utterance of
OpenStack governance™.

Other TC members probably have a much different experience.

## Entropy and Governance

The theme started with [a
discussion](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-01-11.log.html#t2018-01-11T13:27:51)
about driving some cleanup of stale repos on
<https://git.openstack.org/cgit> and whether that was an activity that
should be associated with the TC role. It is clear there are some
conflicts:

* Because many repositories on `git.openstack.org` are not _official_
   OpenStack projects it would be inappropriate to manage them out of
   existence. In this case, using OpenStack infra does not indicate
   volunteering oneself to be governed by the TC. Only being _official_
   does that.
* On the other hand, if being on the TC represents a kind of
   leadership and presents a form of freedom-to-do, then such cleanups
   represent an opportunity to, as [Sean put
   it](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-01-11.log.html#t2018-01-11T13:37:29),
   improve things: "Governed or not, I care about OpenStack and would
   like to see it not weighed down by entropy." In some sense, the role
   of the TC is to exercise that caring for OpenStack and what that
   caring is is context-dependent.

These issues are further complicated by the changing shape of the
OpenStack Foundation where there will be things which are officially
part of the Foundation (such as Kata), and may use OpenStack infra,
but have little to no relationship with the TC. Expect this to get
more complicated before it gets less.

That was before office-hours. By the time office hours started, the
conversation abstracted (as it often does) into more of a discussion
about the [role of the
TC](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-01-11.log.html#t2018-01-11T15:21:03)
with me saying:

> What I'm upset (mildly) about is our continued effort to sort [of]
> _not_ have the TC fill the leadership void that I think exists in
> OpenStack. The details of this particular case are a stimulus for
> that conversation, but not necessar[il]y relevant.

(I did get a bit cranky in the discussion, my apologies to those who
there. This is one of the issues that I'm most passionate about in
OpenStack and I let myself run away a bit. My personal feeling has
always been that we need an activist _and_ responsive TC if we
expect to steward an environment that improves and adapts to change.)

The log is worth reading if this is a topic of interest to you. We
delineated some problems that have been left on the floor in the past,
some meta-problems with how we identify problems, and even had some
agreement on things to try.

## OpenStack-wide Goals

Mixed in with the above discussions—and a good example of where the
TC does provide some coordination and leadership to help guide all the
boats in a similar direction—were efforts to establish sufficient
proposals for [OpenStack-wide
goals](https://governance.openstack.org/tc/goals/index.html) to make a
fair choice. There are now four reviews pending:

* [Pagination Links](https://review.openstack.org/#/c/532627/)
* [Asserting Cold Upgrade
   Capabilities](https://review.openstack.org/#/c/533544/)
* [Migrating to StoryBoard](https://review.openstack.org/#/c/513875/)
* [Removing mox](https://review.openstack.org/#/c/532361/)

It's quite likely that the StoryBoard goal will move to later, to get
increased experience with it (such as by using it for [tracking rocky
goals](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2018-January/126189.html)).
That leaves the other three. They provide a nice balance between
improving the user experience, improving the operator experience, and
dealing with some technical debt.

If you have thoughts on these goals you should comment on the reviews.
There is also a [mailing list
thread](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2018-January/126090.html)
in progress.

Late in the day today, there was discussion of perhaps [limiting the
number of
goals](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-01-16.log.html#t2018-01-16T13:05:31).
Some projects are still trying to complete queens goals and were
delayed for various reasons, including greater than expected time
required to adapt to zuulv3.

## Interop Testing

Colleen provided a useful
[summary](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2018-January/126146.html)
of the situation with the [location of tests for the interop
program](https://review.openstack.org/#/c/521602). This discussion
ground to a bit of a halt but needs to be resolved.

## Project Boundaries in Expanded Foundation

[Qinling has applied to be
official](https://review.openstack.org/#/c/533827/). It is a project
to do function as a service. This caused [some
conversation](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-01-16.log.html#t2018-01-16T09:27:32)
this morning on what impact the expansion of the Foundation will have on
the evaluation of candidate projects.

## S Cycle Voting

Also [this
morning](http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2018-01-16.log.html#t2018-01-16T09:01:37)
Thierry started the process of making it official that the naming poll
for the S cycle will [be
public](https://review.openstack.org/#/c/534226/). If you have reason
to believe this is a bad idea, please comment on the review.

-- 
Chris Dent                      (⊙＿⊙')         https://anticdent.org/
freenode: cdent                                         tw: @anticdent