Open Stack

On 21/02/19 6:13 AM, Chris Dent wrote:
> 
> This is another set of questions for TC candidates, to look at a
> different side of things from my first one [1] and somewhat related
> to the one Doug has asked [2].
> 
> As Doug mentions, a continuing role of the TC is to evaluate
> applicants to be official projects. These questions are about that.
> 
> There are 63 teams in the official list of projects. How do you feel
> about this size? Too big, too small, just right? Why?

I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, AWS launched 30+ services at their conference *last year 
alone*. (For those keeping score, that's more services than OpenStack 
had in total when people started complaining that OpenStack had too many 
services and users wouldn't be able to cope with the choice.) I'm sure 
many of those are pretty half-baked, and some will eventually amount to 
nothing, but I look at that and can't help but think: that should be us! 
With the power of open, we can have any developer in the world behind 
us. We should be able to out-innovate any one company, even a big one. 
It makes me sad that after 10 years we haven't built the base to make 
OpenStack attractive as *the* place to do those kinds of things.

On the other hand, many of those services we do have are only lightly 
maintained. That's not hurting anybody (except perhaps the folks stuck 
maintaining them), but in many cases we might just be delaying the 
inevitable. And some of those services are a feature masquerading as a 
separate service, that operate as a separate team because they couldn't 
find another way to get code into where they needed it (usually on the 
compute node) - those might actually be hurting because they paper over 
problems with how our community works that might better be addressed 
head-on.

> If you had to make a single declaration about growth in the number
> of projects would you prefer to see (and why, of course):
> 
> * More projects as required by demand.
> * Slower or no growth to focus on what we've got.
> * Trim the number of projects to "get back to our roots".
> * Something else.

I don't think I can pick one. It's all of the above, including the 
'Something else'.

> How has the relatively recent emergence of the open infrastructure
> projects that are at the same "level" in the Foundation as OpenStack
> changed your thoughts on the above questions?

Not much, TBH.

> Do you think the number of projects has any impact (positive or
> negative) on our overall ability to get things done?

Not really. People will work on the problems they have. If OpenStack 
doesn't have a project to solve their problem then they won't work on 
OpenStack - they're not going to go work on a different OpenStack 
project instead.

To the extent that the number of projects has forced horizontal teams to 
adopt more scalable ways of working, it's probably had a positive 
impact. (e.g. the release management automation tools are great, and I 
don't know if they'd ever have been written if there were still only 6 
projects.)

> Recognizing that there are many types of contributors, not just
> developers, this question is about developers: Throughout history
> different members of the community have sometimes identified as an
> "OpenStack developer", sometimes as a project developer (e.g., "Nova
> developer"). Should we encourage contributors to think of themselves
> as primarily OpenStack developers? If so, how do we do that? If not,
> why not?

I think that's to be encouraged. And it's worth noting that in our 
guiding principles we require community members to put the needs of 
OpenStack as a whole above those of their individual projects (and both 
of those above the needs of their employers)[1]. But I also think it's 
natural for folks to sometimes identify with the stuff they are directly 
working on. We all wear many hats in this community, and ultimately 
everyone will have to learn for themselves how best to juggle that.

cheers,
Zane.

[1] 
https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/principles.html#openstack-first-project-team-second-company-third

> Thanks.
> 
> [1] 
> http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-discuss/2019-February/002914.html 
> 
> [2] 
> http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-discuss/2019-February/002923.html 
> 
> 
>