Open Stack

Michael McCune wrote:
> [...]
> I don't have any answers to this more existential question about the
> SIG, but we as a group felt it was a good idea to reach out to the
> wider community for advice and guidance. So, what do you all have to
> say? What would you like to see from the API-SIG moving forward?
> Should we re-evaluate the purpose of this group and how it relates to
> the OpenStack community?
> [...]

Thanks for starting this thread, Michael. Just because something was 
needed at one point in our history does not mean we need to continue 
doing it forever, so reevaluating periodically is important.

The API WG was originally formed to (1) provide guidelines for API 
design for project teams to follow, and (2) improve API user experience 
by converging the OpenStack APIs to be consistent. It was then converted 
to a SIG, but the original purpose remained.

Would you say that those goals have been completed? Are the documented 
guidelines sufficiently complete to be usable? Is the resulting API user 
experience sufficiently consistent? If not, maybe this is an opportunity 
to recruit, by painting a desirable common goal, maybe leveraging the 
"community goals" process to achieve incremental, baby-steps 
improvements within the scope of a release cycle.

Personally I think it's always good to have a group of API design 
experts that project teams can tap into when they have questions on good 
API design. I just have no idea how often such advice is actually asked 
for. How often do you get questions on API design from projects adding 
features to their API? Would you say that when a new project adds an 
API, it is well-designed, or it would have benefited from your advice?

Cheers,

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)