Open Stack

On 06/09/19 13:44 -0400, Zane Bitter wrote:
>On 5/09/19 7:36 AM, Tom Barron wrote:
>>IIUC Gold Membership in the Foundation provides voting privileges at 
>>a cost of $50-200K/year and Corporate Sponsorship provides these 
>>plus various marketing benefits at a cost of $10-25K/year.  So far 
>>as I can tell there is not a requirement of a commitment of 
>>contributors and maintainers with the exception of the (currently 
>>closed) Platinum Membership, which costs $500K/year and requires at 
>>least 2 FTE equivalents contributing to OpenStack.
>
>Even this incredibly minimal requirement was famously not met for 
>years by one platinum member, and a (different) platinum member was 
>accepted without ever having contributed upstream in the past or 
>apparently ever intending to in the future.
>
>What I'm saying is that if this a the mechanism we want to use to 
>drive contributions, I can tell you now how it's gonna work out.

I expect that you are right but if anyone has references to past 
communications between TC and Foundation about participation 
requirements or expectations for Members and Sponsors I'd appreciate 
pointers to these.  (By analogy, it's helpful to know who has made 
commitments to the Paris Agreement [1], who has not, and actual track 
records even if one is not convinced that the agreement is going to 
work out.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement

>
>The question we should be asking ourselves is why companies see value 
>in being sponsors of the foundation but not in contributing upstream, 
>and how we convince them of the value of the latter.

Participating companies are complex organizations whose decision 
makers have a mix of motives and goals, but functionally I think the 
classic tragedy of the commons model fits pretty well.  It may be 
worth $50-500/K per year to foster the perception that one is a 
supporter or contributor to OpenStack, and to get the various 
marketing advantages that come along, even if one doesn't actively 
contribute to or maintain the software or community beyond that.

>
>One initiative the TC started on this front is this:
>
>https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/upstream-investment-opportunities/index.html
>
>(BTW we could use help in converting the outdated Help Most Wanted 
>entries to this format. Volunteers welcome.)

Reframing "Help Wanted" as "Investment Opportunities" is IMO a great 
idea.  There were seven entries for 2018 and there is one for 2019.  
Did the other six get done or does the help solicited amount to 
submitting governance reviews like the one you did for Glance [2]
for the remaining 2018 items?

[2] https://review.opendev.org/#/c/668054/