Open Stack

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?

 > 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.

 > 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.

 > 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.

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.

 >  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.

 >  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.

<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.

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
>>
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