Open Stack

On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 10:41 AM, Jeremy Stanley <fungi at yuggoth.org> wrote:

> On 2016-08-26 05:40:31 -0700 (-0700), Anne Gentle wrote:
> [...]
> > I'd be comfortable with an archive policy that keeps all documents
> > (project repos, openstack-manuals, api-site) for two years and
> > then backs them up to a storage area that is not accessible from
> > the web.
>
> Probably the closest thing we have to this is our server backups
> (implemented using software called "bup"). Their purpose is to be
> able to restore the previous state of our important systems in the
> event of loss or compromise of service, so possibly not the same
> thing you're desiring here. Also, identifying which documents are
> "older" than a certain date is nontrivial (we can delete files last
> modified before a certain date, but does that actually achieve the
> same result?).
>
> How about taking this from the revision control perspective... we
> (presumably) have the source used to build that rendered form of the
> documentation all the way back to the beginning, and if someone
> really needs (for legal reasons) a copy of it then they can expend
> the resources to figure out how to render it again?
>
> > Lana, I believe you should review that with legal and the Foundation.
> > There's the legal-discuss mailing list to get that started.
> [...]
>
> [I am not a lawyer and I'm responding as a concerned member of the
> community, not representing the opinions of my employer.]
>
> I won't object to anyone consulting lawyers, but I'm pretty sure the
> Foundation (the only legal entity we really have in this context) is
> under no contractual obligation to maintain documentation at all for
> software produced by the community. It's probably best to start out
> asking them from that angle, rather than soliciting their opinions
> on how long they think old releases of software should have rendered
> documentation on a Web site (that latter question is something the
> community and in particular the community members working on that
> content and those systems should be free to decide).
>
> I can understand the sort of legal paranoia which infects business
> uses for documentation, but meeting those requirements falls on
> those businesses. For example, Rackspace almost certainly retains
> old versions of any documentation they've produced and published on
> their site, some of which may be derived from old versions of
> OpenStack upstream documentation, but meeting their document
> retention requirements is not the legal responsibility of the
> OpenStack community at large (how would any court even be able to
> enforce such a requirement on our community itself?).
>

This phrasing is a bit strong (paranoia, infection, yikes). I want to be
sure to represent that this is clearly an entirely new context, and all I
have to draw from is past experiences. We'll need to listen to various
representatives in the community to decide what outcomes we want here.


>
> If the OpenStack Foundation really is somehow legally responsible
> for keeping and publishing old copies of OpenStack software
> documentation, that's something they would need to do directly as
> well. They have no authority to impose those requirements on the
> community, and to my knowledge not even any mechanisms in place
> through which they could ensure it's happening anyway.
>

Okay, this separation of Foundation from infra-team-members helps me
understand your perspective in this policy shaping.

I also want to add that this type of project is a cool opportunity to
innovate in docs publishing. You'd learn a ton by helping out, and Andreas
is a fantastic teacher, plus the infra team is super lively. At a scale of
hundreds of thousands of pages this type of work is crucial, cool, and at a
scale that you can have bragging rights on for years to come. :)

Anne


> --
> Jeremy Stanley
>
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>



-- 
Anne Gentle
www.justwriteclick.com
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