Open Stack

Hi Jay

It seems like I blinked and 10 more emails flew by since last night.  ;-)
One of the difficulties for people like myself, and I think most of the LCOO participants are like me, is that I have full-time internal commitments with my employer that significantly limit the amount of time I can spend on things like Community email list. Frankly, that's at the heart of why we've been having conference calls when we meeting and using Slack.  We're just not able to be in IRC rooms through the day like the people we have committed to full-time community development work can.

I'm inserting my comments below.  


-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Pipes [mailto:jaypipes at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2017 11:32 AM
To: UKASICK, ANDREW <au3678 at att.com> >; Edgar Magana <edgar.magana at workday.com> >; openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org; user-committee at lists.openstack.org
Cc: MCCABE, JAMEY A <jm6819 at att.com> >
Subject: Re: [Openstack-operators] [openstack-dev] Large Contributing OpenStack Operators working group?

Hi Andy, thanks very much for your response. I appreciate it. Comments and questions inline.

On 02/02/2017 09:44 PM, UKASICK, ANDREW wrote:
> > Hi Jay.
> >
> > It's already getting late here and I still have to do my farm chores 
> > but I want to acknowledge your request. I think you've developed quite 
> > a wrong impression of things and clearly some of that is on us because 
> > in the early stages of forming the LCOO working group, we were all 
> > still trying to find our feet and in an effort to just get started, we 
> > wrote some things that in hind sight we would probably change today. 
> > Our group has been maturing and evolving as we have been discussing 
> > our shared purpose and also as a result of our collaboration with 
> > other working groups. The UC, EWG and PWG are all represented in LCOO 
> > and vice versa.

> That is comforting to hear, thank you Andy. I am still curious what the LCOO's purpose is, though, in relation to those working groups and committees. Please forgive me for being thick-headed! I just don't understand whether the LCOO is intended to be a driver of contribution
> *within* those existing working groups, or whether the LCOO is intended to be a *separate* driver of contribution that would pick efforts/blueprints/use cases from those existing working groups and have contributors work on those? Or is the idea to have LCOO be a sort of aggregator of use cases for Telcos and operate more as a status and roadmap tracking body? Or something else entirely?

Frankly, that's what we've been asking ourselves too from our first meeting.  We had a "vision" of sorts, but none of us really knew if it was the right vision or how to make it work.  At first we spent a lot of time just getting to know each other, sharing information, etc.  One thing we definitely are is a forum in which large operators can discuss their challenges and share helpful information.  For example, nearly all members are on old OpenStack releases like Juno, Kilo (or older).  Upgrading is a HUGE pain point. New releases bring major improvements but we can't get to those releases.  How do I deal with a challenge in Kilo is a different kind of discussion that how do I drive a desired enhancement in Pike or Queens.  Most of us are not in purely technical roles in our companies. Many of us would perhaps better be described as product managers and also bring more of a business perspective.

But we wanted the group to do more. We did not want to just be self-serving. We wanted to make a real contribution to the Community.  We've only been meeting for an hour (sometimes 2) a week so it has taken a few months for this to play out but I think we're finding our niche.  We've been developing a close relationship with the Product Working Group and our LCOO group seems to be a great fit for helping to make their "Story Process" successful.  Some of the Members like NTT and Intel have already been doing that. I guess the rest of us are finally catching up. Obviously, we need to take on "Stories" that resonate with the business needs of our various companies because without that we would not be able to draw out the technical resources to drive it. But that said, there are a lot of pain points and no shortage of business needs. I don't think anyone really cares where a need originally surfaced in the community or by whom. We have limited resources, but if the Story needs an owner and we have the means to take it on, it's a candidate. Beyond that it's a matter of prioritizing. We're only going to be discussing the first such story next week. It's all still evolving.


> > Much of what you mention from the
> > Confluence site, which we've only been using for about a month, is I 
> > think also being taken out of context. You called it "closed" but just 
> > as you were able to quickly and easily create an account, get access, 
> > and browse around, so can anyone else.

> Sorry, when I said "closed" I meant that Atlassian products are not open-source. Atlassian owns the code and owns the content, which is why OpenStack teams don't use Jira and Confluence for work tracking.

AH! I misunderstood.  You're right that Atlassian is not open-source, but let me say this for them, they're about as close as you can get and still be commercial.  It doesn't seem to be well known, but Atlassian has long (always?) made their products available for free to open-source projects.  That's probably why they're so widely used. They also give you a copy of the complete source code and license to modify it without breaking your support.  Furthermore JIRA, Confluence, etc, are built with a plugin architecture that works so well that they have their own app store (the Atlassian marketplace). It works like the apps for your phone.  Anyone can develop extensions and give them away for free or sell them through the app store.  Some will add truly major enhancements, major changes to the gui etc., yet they can be deployed or upgraded live and in production with a mouse click.  I used to administer a 20,000 user instance several years ago and it was already working that well back then.  They're also very extensible in other ways with very robust and stable API's and command line tools through which virtually all functionality is exposed. Events can be made to trigger scripts and so forth. It's pretty nice. As you observed OPNFV uses it and so do many OpenStack Community members including OSIC and your own Mirantis. I know because I used to have an account in their JIRA instance.  ;-)  

Atlassian gave our LCOO group cloud instances of JIRA, JIRA Portfolio manager, Confluence, Confluence Questions (kinda like stack overflow), a really useful Calendar add-on and  individual and group video chat (hip chat) for free with a 2,000 user license.  They'd give us more tools as well, but we didn't need them. We're still not even using Hip Chat.  

It's important to not that we only use JIRA for planning & tracking purposes.  It does not take the place of any community tools. All dev work is done as usual. But people in more of a portfolio management type role often will use JIRA to create epics and stories. Then you have a story workflow that matches the community flow like BP > Spec > Committed > Merged.  The story describes the work item and contains links to the related bits and pieces in Launchpad, gerrit, etherpads, etc.  When a story goes from Committed to merged for example, the developer just drags it over to the Merged column in the JIRA Kanban board. Very simple and it meets a vital need.  Using JIRA and building in automation to do all the tracking is a possibility we've been giving some thought to in the PWG Story Tracker sub-team.  Don't know if that will be pursued or not.


 > > In fact you also had
> > the complete ability to create your own pages, read and comment on the 
> > pages, edit or even delete the pages, put things on the calendar, 
> > whatever. The pages work like etherpads allowing simultaneous editing 
> > but with much more powerful tools and the convenience of a wiki 
> > format. And hey, it was free. The site is completely open except for 
> > one small section and that is explained if you stumbled across it.
> > Other working groups routinely put things in secured Google docs and 
> > such. I don't think we're out of line but just this morning we 
> > discussed ways to be more open. We were not publishing all our 
> > meetings in the User Committee email list which was an oversight that 
> > we're correcting. I'd encourage you to just reach out to us with any 
> > questions or concerns before taking what certainly feels like a 
> > confrontational posture in such a broadly public forum.

> I recognize that I have a tendency to be ideological and rigid in certain of my viewpoints, and I am sorry to have offended. Please accept my apologies, Andy. I sincerely wish to see open and productive collaboration between contributors and users of OpenStack.

No offense taken!  I tried to be on my best behavior but I know I snuck in a few subtle digs. Please accept my apologies as well. I feel the same way that you do.

 > > We're all
> > community members and we're exploring how best to make a significant, 
> > positive contribution. That is what everyone wants to do.

> Cheers to that.

> > I'm not a co-chair of LCOO, but I am a co-chair of a sub-team that we 
> > recently formed to begin laying the groundwork for what we hope will 
> > eventually become some significant contributions from a working group 
> > perspective. I don't speak for the group, I'm just telling you my 
> > opinion. First of all I cannot understand why the community would not 
> > want to welcome people who want to contribute?

> Two points here.

> Firstly, I certainly do not represent the entire OpenStack community :) I am but one (sometimes blunt, certainly emotional, but often wrong) opinion out of many. Please don't equate my questions with the broader OpenStack community not being welcoming.

> Secondly, I absolutely *do* want to welcome people who want to contribute! And I'm not just talking about development contributions. I value documentation, bug reporting, spec writing, use case development, architectural research, marketing and all sorts of other contributions. 
> My goal is not to put up walls to contribution. Instead, my goal is to ensure that the avenues by which the OpenStack community gathers contributions (of all forms) don't overlap, since such overlap inevitably leads to missed opportunities and duplicated efforts.

Understood. We want to be smart about this. We've been learning a lot (me especially since I probably started out as the most clueless one). The mistakes we've made are not for lack of desire to do our best; we're just learning. 

> A secondary goal of mine is to reduce bureaucracy in our governance and ensure that we have as unimpeded a pipeline as possible between the folks describing work that needs done, and the folks that are doing that work. Please take my questions as an effort to examine whether the additional process and structure of the LCOO is indeed warranted in order to accomplish the goals the LCOO member companies have.

Understood.  One thing I've learned is that the UC and the working groups I've become involved with all want that as well.  There have been a lot of challenges but I think they're all moving things in a very good direction.  Solid, mutually beneficial partnerships between  "the folks describing work that needs done, and the folks that are doing that work" (as you say) I think will really be the key.  Because the companies participating in LCOO are contributing on both ends, I'm hopeful that we may be able to help with that.

 > >  I don't think that we
> > deserve to be called about and have our right to exist challenged.
> > You all work alongside the companies that have come together under 
> > LCOO every day. We're all community members. There is nothing 
> > nefarious going on, no hidden agenda, no secret bid for power or any 
> > other such thing.

> Yes, I do work alongside the member companies of the LCOO every day. I'm close colleagues and friends with a number of folks in the LCOO. 
> However, I am not questioning anyone's right to existence. I am merely questioning whether the LCOO is set up in a way to ensure the success of its member companies' roadmaps.

Fair enough. Sorry I was getting defensive. It was late and I had not gotten any supper yet... makes me grumpy. 

 > >  There is no need for fear and anyone is welcome to
> > attend meetings, view agendas and minutes, comment on and add to them. 
> > IMO, our identity could be best characterized as large operators whose 
> > companies are also committed to being significant contributors to the 
> > development effort. That brings some unique character to LCOO. We 
> > wanted to avoid creating a forum where everyone comes with their 
> > complaints, demands and wish lists. We wanted to create a group in 
> > which everyone has real skin in the game. In which everyone is a 
> > contributor. Our identity is also as USERS of openstack.

> I think all of the above is awesome! That said, I don't think there are things about the existing OpenStack contributor ecosystem that have
> *prevented* any of the LCOO member company's contributors from actively participating in the development of OpenStack projects. If there *are* things about the contributor ecosystem that have inhibited participation from Intel, Orange, AT&T, Reliance, NTT, etc, then let us address those issues directly. I personally would be pleased to have a discussion on those topics, as I'm sure the User Committee would as well.

Personally I was able to attend my first Summit in Austen. It was jaw dropping and awesome. I have always been a big fan and support of open-source from the start. I actually managed to get the first open-source tool approved as "Standard" at ATT years ago (CVS). My experience with OpenStack has been nothing but positive in every way. I LOVE the way that open-source empowers the little guy. I'm very happy to have gotten the opportunity to become a part of this in my professional life. It's ALL GOOD!

<snip> >

> > Another aspect of what we've been doing is providing a forum in which
> > participants can discuss the challenges they're experiencing from a
> > USER perspective. Share information, solutions, help one another. For
> > example we had some meetings where AT&T presented about Gluon which
> > you seem to have keyed in on. But the Gluon project is not being
> > managed from within LCOO meetings. Gluon is a project that AT&T
> > initiated, but as you saw, it's being managed separately. LCOO does
> > not have an OPNFV jira instance. We do have an LCOO Jira instance,
> > but we're still getting it ready to begin using it. You could have
> > jumped right into it when you were in our Confluence site. They're
> > integrated. We also dedicated many sessions to sharing what each
> > other is working on in the community. But none of that work has been
> > planned or driven from within LCOO thus far and that is not our
> > focus. We want to be aware of one another's efforts, offer feedback
> > and support, but LCOO is not the BORG. That said though, we are
> > hoping to take on a small number of efforts for the Community of the
> > nature I described earlier under the PWG Process linked above. I'm
> > optimistic that we may be able to do that in time to (if all goes
> > smoothly) see actual development underway in Queens. That's something
> > that we'll need JIRA for, to help with the planning and tracking
> > across the broad openstack portfolio. That's the same way that many
> > others in the community use JIRA, including OSIC who we recently had
> > meetings with to explore how they were using it.
> >
> > Personally I resent having our right to form a working group like
> > this challenged at all. But I hope I've been able to lay some of your
> > concerns to rest. The bottom line is that we're all in this together.
> > Politics be damned, let's pull together and do all that we can to
> > make OpenStack as great as it can be and make the world a better
> > place along the way.

> Trust me, politics was the last thing I had in mind when I wrote my 
> questions about the LCOO!

 > >  Here in the USA where I live, I find myself
> > rather disgusted with politics right now. Let's move forward.

> You and me both, Andy. And I'm happy to move the conversation forward 
> with you, constructively.

Do you like beer?  I DO!  Let's meetup in Boston and get to know each other better.  :-)
And if you can, please come and meet with our LCOO folks while you're there. We'll be on the schedule so you can find us.
That goes for everyone!  ;-)

-Andy

> Best,
> -jay

> > -Andy > >


> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jay Pipes [mailto:jaypipes at gmail.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2017 7:23 PM
> > To: Edgar Magana <edgar.magana at workday.com> >; openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org; user-committee at lists.openstack.org
> > Cc: MCCABE, JAMEY A <jm6819 at att.com> >; UKASICK, ANDREW <au3678 at att.com> >
> > Subject: Re: [Openstack-operators] [openstack-dev] Large Contributing OpenStack Operators working group?
> >
> > On 02/02/2017 05:02 PM, Edgar Magana wrote:
> >> > Jay,
> >> >
> >> > I am including the WG chairs to make sure they answers your questions and addresses your concerns.
> >> > In Barcelona the UC asked exactly the same questions and recommended to the co-chairs of the LCOO WG to work with the existing WG to identify overlapping activities and either to work together or go ahead with the WG if there were not overlapping on goals and deliverables.
> >
> > Was there any follow-on from that request from the UC?
> >
> >> > I will let the co-chairs to follow up yours questions. BTW. I do not think this topic should be posted in the openstack-dev mailing list. So, I will BCC it.
> >
> > Sure, no problem.
> >
> >> > Andrew and Jamey,
> >> >
> >> > Please, address these questions. Let’s work all together to make sure that we have all groups aligned and coordinated.
> >
> > Thanks, Edgar, appreciated. Andrew and Jamey, please do let me know if you would like me to rephrase or elaborate on any questions. Happy to do so. I genuinely want to see alignment with other groups in this effort.
> >
> > Best,
> > -jay
> >
> >> > Thanks,
> >> >
> >> > Edgar
> >> >
> >> > On 2/2/17, 12:14 PM, "Jay Pipes" <jaypipes at gmail.com> > wrote:
> >> >
> >> >     Hi,
> >> >
> >> >     I was told about this group today. I have a few questions. Hopefully
> >> >     someone from this team can illuminate me with some answers.
> >> >
> >> >     1) What is the purpose of this group? The wiki states that the team
> >> >     "aims to define the use cases and identify and prioritise the
> >> >     requirements which are needed to deploy, manage, and run services on top
> >> >     of OpenStack. This work includes identifying functional gaps, creating
> >> >     blueprints, submitting and reviewing patches to the relevant OpenStack
> >> >     projects, contributing to working those items, tracking their completion."
> >> >
> >> >     What is the difference between the LCOO and the following existing
> >> >     working groups?
> >> >
> >> >       * Large Deployment Team
> >> >       * Massively Distributed Team
> >> >       * Product Working Group
> >> >       * Telco/NFV Working Group
> >> >
> >> >     2) According to the wiki page, only companies that are "Multi-Cloud
> >> >     Operator[s] and/or Network Service Provider[s]" are welcome in this
> >> >     team. Why is the team called "Large Contributing OpenStack Operators" if
> >> >     it's only for Telcos? Further, if this is truly only for Telcos, why
> >> >     isn't the Telco/NFV working group appropriate?
> >> >
> >> >     3) Under the "Guiding principles" section of the above wiki, the top
> >> >     principle is "Align with the OpenStack Foundation". If this is the case,
> >> >     why did the group move its content to the closed Atlassian Confuence
> >> >     platform? Why does the group have a set of separate Slack channels
> >> >     instead of using the OpenStack mailing lists and IRC channels? Why is
> >> >     the OPNFV Jira used for tracking work items for the LCOO agenda?
> >> >
> >> >     See https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__wiki.openstack.org_wiki_Gluon_Tasks-2DOcata&d=DwICAg&c=DS6PUFBBr_KiLo7Sjt3ljp5jaW5k2i9ijVXllEdOozc&r=G0XRJfDQsuBvqa_wpWyDAUlSpeMV4W1qfWqBfctlWwQ&m=haOSpIhsa6KyDvuhRFigFVTLrTJxJ1Zv3kfm0JwTTtY&s=kntt00JEwpizTxQus4U9FhnwF_7WicJ7oRncGmkYPGc&e=  for examples.
> >> >
> >> >     4) I see a lot of agenda items around projects like Gluon, Craton,
> >> >     Watcher, and Blazar. I don't see any concrete ideas about talking with
> >> >     the developers of the key infrastructure services that OpenStack is
> >> >     built around. How does the LCOO plan on reaching out to the developers
> >> >     of the long-standing OpenStack projects like Nova, Neutron, Cinder, and
> >> >     Keystone to drive their shared agenda?
> >> >
> >> >     Thanks for reading and (hopefully) answering.
> >> >
> >> >     -jay
> >> >
> >> >     __________________________________________________________________________
> >> >     OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
> >> >     Unsubscribe: OpenStack-dev-request at lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe
> >> >
> >> > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.openstack.or
> >> > g_cgi-2Dbin_mailman_listinfo_openstack-2Ddev&d=DwICAg&c=DS6PUFBBr_KiLo
> >> > 7Sjt3ljp5jaW5k2i9ijVXllEdOozc&r=G0XRJfDQsuBvqa_wpWyDAUlSpeMV4W1qfWqBfc
> >> > tlWwQ&m=haOSpIhsa6KyDvuhRFigFVTLrTJxJ1Zv3kfm0JwTTtY&s=RzyOgrwm1BfJXW8S
> >> > deBdAOpYEAXsisGKWvj_Lk3iEec&e=
> >> >
> >> >
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> >> >