Open Stack

On Monday 12 November, 2018 the OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors,
staff, and project leadership held a joint meeting to discuss the
project and foundation status [1]. We were hosted by Deutsche Telekom AG
in their Berlin Representative Office. The meeting space was inside a
room that housed their original telegraph offices built in 1861, and as
someone who appreciates old architecture I can say that DT did an
excellent job blending the feeling of the old building with the modern
fittings needed for meetings like ours.

The morning was taken up with a formal Board of Directors meeting, which
Jonathan has already summarized at [2]. I won't repeat everything he
wrote here, but there were a few topics that may be of particular
interest to ATCs.

The first is that the board has approved a set of bylaws changes [3]
that declare that the Foundation will establish "Open Infrastructure
Projects" (OIP), with the governance for each to be approved by the
Board. Because the bylaws require a vote of the Foundation members to
change, the details are left up to other documentation, which a
subcommittee of the Board is going to begin preparing [4]. Completing
that work is a prerequisite for Airship, Kata Containers, StarlingX, and
Zuul to be confirmed as Foundation projects (they are "pilot" projects
now).

The current version of the bylaws includes details about the way
OpenStack operates, by defining the membership and role of the Technical
and User Committees. Those definitions will remain, to signal the
"centrality" of the project and, and there are a few proposed wording
changes to try to make election scheduling more flexible and to clarify
the relationship between the OpenStack Technical and User Committees and
the other OIPs. There is also a change to allow the Board and TC to
update the "Technical Committee Member Policy" by voting on it together,
rather than requiring a full vote of the Foundation members.

There are also some minor cleanup and "modernization" of the language
(removing obsolete references to bootstrapping directions, for example).

There was not a lot of discussion of the changes in this meeting,
because there had been several meetings to discuss and refine them
before 12 November. Next, these changes need to be approved by the
Platinum and Gold foundation members and then approved by the individual
members. The goal is to have everything ready for approval during the
board election this January. Please watch for the announcements for that
vote and participate in the election, so that we have quorum and so the
outcome of the vote is binding.

The second topic I thought might be of interest is the discussion of the
brand research the Foundation staff commissioned and which Wes
previously summarized on the mailing list [5]. I was encouraged by the
favorability numbers in the responses (67% of respondents rate OpenStack
as "favorable" or "very favorable") as well as the 50-60% of overlap
between people reporting an interest in OpenStack and in the existing
OIPs. The "Open Infrastructure" renaming for the summit (announced last
week) was also very popular in the survey results.

After the Board meeting concluded, the Technical Committee presented a
summary of the work done during Rocky, a preview of the work to be done
during Stein (thank you to the PTLs who responded to my request for
information) and some of the initiatives the TC is undertaking right now
[6]. The Board was very interested in both the peer review culture
change that Julia has been driving and the technical vision document
that Zane has been writing [7].

Following the TC presentation, the User Committee presented updates on
their work, the user survey, and work being done in adjacent communities
such as Kubernetes [8].

We wrapped up the afternoon with presentations from each of the existing
pilot projects on their mission and status [9].

[1] joint leadership meeting agenda https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/12Nov2018BoardMeeting
[2] Jonathan’s summary of the Board meeting http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/foundation/2018-November/002654.html
[3] bylaws changes http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/foundation-board/2018-November/000459.html 
[4] Board thread on creating acceptance criteria for OIPs http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/foundation-board/2018-November/000462.html
[5] OSF branch research results http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/foundation/2018-October/002634.html
[6] TC presentation https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wcG7InY2A5y67dt5lC14CI1gQHGZ3db8-yshOu-STk8/edit#slide=id.g46a6072f4a_0_308
[7] Vision for OpenStack Clouds https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/technical-vision.html
[8] UC Presentation https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gLcChOupELCGItD-SzhECEhFMGQc4jf0PlQxAijDMhw/edit?usp=sharing 
[9] Pilot project presentations https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nsm6ht3kJRw7vZsbjLDcTfPA8d8gu3jSYinmKfgiENU/edit?usp=sharing
-- 
Doug