Open Stack

Excerpts from Zhipeng Huang's message of 2017-09-25 21:51:34 +0800:
> Disclaimer: The proposal comes from conclusions of offline discussion in
> response to the padding thread in openstack-dev mailing list. Credit to
> Doug Hellmann and Ildiko Vancsa for their great suggestions and advices.
> 
> *Motivation*:
> 
> Given the recent heated debate on the padding activity[0], we have come to
> a conclusion that the root cause would be the break down of communications
> among various parties in this matter : first-comers, project core
> contributors, company management level people, foundation, local OpenStack
> chapters.
> 
> It means that we don't actually have a channel in a way that when a
> suspicious padding activity is spotted, who should be the first contact to
> go to. Some are merged with the belief that there is no harm done, at the
> mean time some are rejected with the intention that mal-practice like this
> should be stopped.
> 
> It also means if we move beyond the padding issue, we found ourselves
> facing a bigger issue that with the burgeoning OpenStack adoptions
> worldwide, the central dev community is out of sync in several ways with
> the local communities, culturally speaking. We have many local meetups and
> events for sure, but newbies from a certain region still rely on indirect
> information rather than proper community training when they want to be a
> OpenStack developer.

Yes, although the recent thread on potentially unwanted patches
triggered the discussion, I think it's important that we not focus on
that problem as the reason for this group to exist.

We have several different groups taking different approaches to helping
new contributors to our community. I suggested a SIG as a way to bring
those groups together to collaborate, remove redundancy, and build on
each other's work.

> 
> Spontaneous response plus improper upstream training could lead to unstable
> situation.
> 
> Therefore we want to propose to establish the First Contact SIG to solve
> the issue, institutionally and methodologically. (Hopefully once for all in
> due time)
> 
> *Goals*:
> 1. To serve as the first contact point when project develop team finding
> something extraordinary.
> 2. To serve as the first contact point for local community to reach out to
> the dev community, whether it is first-comer onboarding, language
> translation issue, culture issue, etc.
> 3. To enable groups like Upstream Institute to maximize their capabilities
> on helping individuals, especially first-comers.
> 4. To enable local chapters could get a direct line with the dev community
> (not the foundation governance layer since we already have many links on
> that level) without involvement of more  non-tech interest parties.
> 5 To work with Linux Foundation CHAOSS program on project merit
> identification.
> 
> In short, we hope this SIG could provide a social answer to a social
> problem with enough technical capabilities.
> 
> *Proposed Formation*
> 1. one or two people serves as the first contact from the dev community side
> 2. each local/regional chapter should provide at least one lead active in
> the SIG to serve as the first contact from the local side.

I think instead of requiring contacts from each chapter, we want to
encourage interested parties to join. Not every group is going to be
large enough to support a sustained interaction, and not every group is
going to need one (my local meetup only has a couple of developers, for
example).

> 
> *Possible Output*
> 1. Chapter outlining the scope, goals and means.
> 2. Input material for TC/Board on any related resolution.
> 
> Again this is only a proposal. We will need as much feedback as possible,
> as well as people that volunteer for the SIG positions to complete the
> mission.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Zhipeng (Howard) Huang
> 
> Standard Engineer
> IT Standard & Patent/IT Product Line
> Huawei Technologies Co,. Ltd
> Email: huangzhipeng at huawei.com
> Office: Huawei Industrial Base, Longgang, Shenzhen
> 
> (Previous)
> Research Assistant
> Mobile Ad-Hoc Network Lab, Calit2
> University of California, Irvine
> Email: zhipengh at uci.edu
> Office: Calit2 Building Room 2402
> 
> OpenStack, OPNFV, OpenDaylight, OpenCompute Aficionado