February 2012 - Foundation - lists.openinfra.dev

[OpenStack Foundation] Technical committee
by Thierry Carrez 24 Feb '12

24 Feb '12

Hi everyone, The current structure document is quite open on the Technical committee organization. Here are my proposals to keep it efficient... Please comment. = Technical committee = == Mission == The Technical Committee (TC) is tasked with providing the technical leadership for the OpenStack project. It enforces OpenStack core projects ideals (Openness, Transparency, Commonality, Integration, Respect of release deadlines, Facilitation of downstream distribution [0]), decides on issues affecting multiple projects, and generally forms an ultimate appeals board for technical decisions. == Members == The TC is composed of 9 elected members. You can cumulate other roles (Project technical lead, Foundation board member...) with a TC seat. Note that Project technical leads do not get appointed seats to the TC: they should run for election[1]. == Meeting == TC meetings happen publicly, weekly on IRC. The TC maintains an open agenda on the wiki. A TC meeting is called if anything is posted to that wiki at least one day before the meeting time. For a meeting to be actually held, at least two thirds of the members need to be present (6 people). Non-members, in particular unelected PTLs or release manager, are more than welcome to participate to the meeting and voice their opinion, though they can't ultimately vote. == Motions == Before being put to a vote, motions presented before the TC should be discussed publicly on the mailing-list[2] for a minimum of 5 days to give a chance to the wider community to express their opinion. Members can vote positively, negatively, or abstain. Decisions need more positive votes than negative votes, and a minimum of 3 positive votes. == Election == The TC is renewed every 6 months using staggered elections: 5 seats are renewed every 6 months. People ranking 1st to 4th get elected for a one-year term. The 5th person gets elected for a 6-month term. People ranking after 6th are retained as potential substitute members (see "Revocation"). == Voters == Technical members of the Foundation, as determined by the Technical membership committee[3], are able to participate in this election. == Revocation == TC members are expected to be available and participate to weekly meetings. If a particular TC member misses 3 of the last 5 called meetings, he should automatically be revoked. He would be replaced by the top substitute (person ranking 6th and after in previous election). Even when replacing someone elected for 1 year, the substitute inherits from the shortest term; the highest ranking elected person inherits from the potential longer term[4]. == Initial election == To initially populate the TC, all 9 seats are up for election. People ranking 1st to 4th get elected for one year. People ranking 5th to 9th get elected for 6 months[5]. [0] From http://wiki.openstack.org/ProjectTypes [1] The idea is that we want to de-correlate the number of PTLs (and the relative importance of their projects) from the TC composition, to reduce committee bloat and be more fair. Influential PTLs from large projects should get elected anyway. [2] Could be the openstack ML or a specific TC ML. The idea is to avoid surprising the community with a decision, and avoid the usual kabbale critics. [3] More on this later. [4] Example: Fx got elected in Fall 2012, while Sx got elected in Spring 2013. Current board as F1, F2, F3, F4, S5 elected until Fall 2013, and S1, S2, S3, S4 elected until Spring 2014. S2 is a slacker is is revoked. S6 is called as a substitute. He should not get a longer term than S5 though. So S5 inherits from the 1-year-long term and S6 from the 6-month-long term. Resulting board is: F1, F2, F3, F4, S6 elected until Fall 2013, and S1, S3, S4, S5 elected until Spring 2014. [5] We may want to re-align elections with release cycles. Example: If TC is created in July 2012, we may want to align elections with the next design summits, so the first term only be 2 months or 8 months. -- Thierry Carrez (ttx) Release Manager, OpenStack

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[OpenStack Foundation] Technical committee Technical committee
by Jesse Andrews 21 Feb '12

21 Feb '12

Hi, Perhaps it would be useful to share the the problems / issues you are trying to improve. My reading is that TC = PBB 2.0 * without appointed seats (PTLs or RAX appointed) * attendance requirements I'm particularly worried about the idea that PTLs aren't automatic. What does it mean to allow decisions to made by the TC that a project technical lead aren't inherently part of? Thanks, Jesse Andrews

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[OpenStack Foundation] The Foundation Structure
by Andrew Clay Shafer 20 Feb '12

20 Feb '12

Greetings, According to the timeline and my understanding of the exercise, every option is still open. The point of a draft is to refine the details. http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation Reading the draft structure and the commentary/questions on this thread, and then seeing the new thread on the technical committee, I believe there that might be other ways to frame future discussions. For one thing, I don't think it is easy to process and compare information about draft proposals when they are written as prose, and I think there are better representations to work through ideas before the word smithing. Also, while I appreciate the sentiment to minimize disruption, there will never be a better opportunity to adjust aspects of OpenStack so all grievances and suggestions should be considered. For the purpose of working out the structure, I propose we need a clearer representation of what is being proposed. One clear theme is identification of several positions and committees. There has also been discussion concerning groups deserving representation on the board, followed closely by what is the best proportional representation for each group. The draft proposal identifies two groups, individuals and strategic members for the board. For the purpose of discussion, I think it will be easier to compare options and trade offs if we represent this aspect of the foundation in a table that identifies the groups, the proportional or absolute representation, the mechanism by which the representation will be determined, the qualifications for group membership, and any comments on the rights and obligations of that class of membership. The current proposal is simple enough, so I'll just keep it in line, but for anything more complicated, I believe a spreadsheet will make things easier to see and discuss than outlining the details in prose. | Strategic Members | 2/3 | every strategic member has board representation | multi-year monetary commitment | unclear beyond board and resource commitment | | Individual Members | 1/3 | popular vote | 'do stuff' for the project | continued participation | tbd | If people think this representation helps clarify the board composition for discussion, we can try using the wiki, but I personally think a shared spreadsheet may be better for edits and discussion. (at least I think so) There have been multiple suggestions to expand the classifications beyond these two groups in various ways, supported with examples from the Linux and Eclipse foundations. One suggestion is a stratification of the Strategic (or whatever the label will be) members into different levels by some yet undetermined measure of commitment into tiers of precious metals. (I'm not a fan of the Platinum/Gold/Silver labels, but that's mostly aesthetics) In addition to stratification, I would like to suggest considering that 'Strategic' support might be divided into halves between strategics that are building products based on OpenStack, and strategic users of OpenStack. This is similar to the Eclipse structure of developers and consumers. Some organizations may feasibly be both. I could see trade offs and benefits to allowing representation (and resource commitment) to the same organization for both, but my initial inclination would be only allow for one or the other. This could be represented something like: | Strategic Products | 1/3 | | Strategic Services | 1/3 | | Individual Members | 1/3 | Of course, it gets ever more complicated if you stratify each group as some have proposed, I still believe this representation is easier to understand and discuss than paragraphs. I also think the notion and eligibility of 'individual members' should be clarified. The majority of individual contributors are likely to be salaried employees of strategic members. I personally disagree with the notion of hats put forward in the strawman. Trust is great, but not as a basis for governance, and making interests and alliances explicit is more open and transparent. As alluded to in the initial email on the technical committee, the foundation should probably outline specific things that are prohibited and some mechanism for addressing grievances and infractions. I would like to see similar breakdowns for the other proposed committees. Namely, who will be represented in what numbers, who is eligible, and the mechanism for appointment to the committee. If there is not going to be 'user' representation on the board, what are the powers, rights and responsibilities of the user committee? How to best evaluate, prioritize and feed user interests into the development effort? I would like to see the relationship between the different committees made explicit. How do these groups interact with each other? What are the checks and balances? Also, how do the committees relate to the executive director? How is that position chosen? who is eligible? Is the hired staff of the foundation eligible for participation in the committees? Finally, for the moment, we haven't seen a public discussion about money. I have had conversations with Mark, Jonathan and other parties, and I think everyone agrees that there needs to be a significant monetary commitment. Where I see differences is on the topic of what the foundation will ultimately be responsible and obligated to do, which cannot fully be resolved independent of the question of committed resources. These are two sides of the same equation. I'm sure that's one of the questions that was clearly left knowingly unaddressed, but I urge that these discussions are brought out sooner rather than later. Most of these things are best finalized with a group of people all in the same room, a constitutional convention if you will. I believe that might be what is implied by the drafting committee, so maybe in addition to further comments on the topic of the drafted structure, we can get some more details on what the process will be to move forward from the draft to a fully ratified and supported foundation. I look forward to seeing the foundation come together in a way that aligns the considerable efforts being put into OpenStack by all parties. Regards, Andrew Clay Shafer

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[OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure Draft
by Jonathan Bryce 18 Feb '12

18 Feb '12

Hello Everyone, Now that we've settled on a good baseline of what the mission of the Foundation will be, it's time to set down the details of how it will be organized to accomplish that mission. Over the past couple of months, we've talked to a variety of people involved in other foundations (in leadership positions and as developers on specific projects) as well as individuals and companies already involved in OpenStack. We now have a basic framework for review that we think fits with our mission and community. This framework is not exhaustive, and there are several open questions and details that we have purposefully not taken a stance on yet, such as the details of the Technical Committee. We are working on publishing a list of those questions and we'll post those to the list and discuss in the meetup next week. http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation/Structure Going forward, we want to have another period of a few weeks where we have review and discussion in a variety of forums to revise the concepts that need to be part of the structure. At that point, we will be forming a Drafting Committee that will take the structure outline and framework and turn it into the legal documents needed to form the entity (Articles of Organization, Bylaws, Code of Conduct, Membership Agreements, etc). The Drafting Committee will primarily consist of lawyers from committed companies who can take our philosophical direction and turn it into cold, hard legalese. They will work in the open, publishing the draft documents they produce and soliciting feedback from the broader community. As they complete the revision process and publish the final set of documents, there will be a ratification period during which members commit to the Foundation under the published documents. The documents will be considered ratified when a minimum number of Individual Members have joined and minimum level of funding is secured between Strategic Members and Corporate Sponsors. At that point, the entity will be set up, funds will be collected and a 60-day transition period will start where responsibilities are handed over from the existing structure to the new Foundation. We've continued to fill out more of these details on the timeline to completion, and the schedule has been updated in the wiki on the main Foundation page: http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation Next week we're having a meetup in Sunnyvale on Wednesday at 4:30 PM. You can find the details at http://www.meetup.com/openstack/events/51553992/ . Looks like we should have a pretty good crowd there. We will also hold another set of webinars and will send out the details once those times are scheduled. If anyone has any suggestions on a better system for hosting the webinars that is cross-platform friendly, we'd love to hear it. Jonathan @jbryce 210-317-2438

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[OpenStack Foundation] Notes from Weds Meetup
by Lauren Sell 17 Feb '12

17 Feb '12

Hi everyone, We had a great meetup Wednesday evening to discuss proposed plans and structure for the Foundation. We had about 50-60 attendees who joined us, and a lot of great discussion and questions. Thanks to Sean Roberts and Yahoo! for providing a venue. We took notes and posted them to etherpad. At the top are links to a ustream recording of the event (the quality is not the best), as well as the slides that were presented: http://etherpad.openstack.org/Foundation-Meetup-Feb-2012 If you attended and notice some key points we missed or got wrong in the notes, please feel free to add them to the etherpad. We're also working to schedule webinars to gather additional feedback. Thanks, Lauren

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[OpenStack Foundation] Strawman Foundation Structure
by Mark McLoughlin 10 Feb '12

10 Feb '12

Hey, Some discussions at FOSDEM prompted me to write up in detail my ideas for the ideal foundation structure: http://wiki.openstack.org/StrawmanFoundationStructure I've just had a productive conversation with Mark and Jonathan about this and I'm glad to see they welcome the input. I was going to summarize the main differences of opinion we discussed, but I guess that might be an unwelcome pre-emptive disclosure of their ideas. Anyway, just another perspective to add to the mix. Cheers, Mark.

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[OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Mission Update
by mark＠openstack.org 08 Feb '12

08 Feb '12

Hi everyone, A few weeks ago we published a draft mission statement for discussion and feedback. We had good responses on the foundation mailing list, during the webinars and in direct discussions with a number of people, including from many of the companies that have demonstrated strong support for OpenStack and others that are getting serious about committing. The number of meeting requests has been a bit overwhelming, but we are making as much time as possible to hear from everyone. This process has taken us past the original timeline, but I think it's worth it to build up as much support for OpenStack as possible. In general, there was a lot of consensus on the basic mission of the foundation, although there does seem to be a desire to revise the overall OpenStack mission. There was also some input that influences the structure more than the mission, and we'll be incorporating that into the next document that presents a high-level draft structure. Here's a summary of the major themes we saw on the mission: * The foundation should work to protect the values of the OpenStack community, such as technical meritocracy * Even though this is a very business-friendly project and community, make clear that we value the individuals who are contributing * Some specific changes like mentioning testing resources and changing "compatibility" to "interoperability" These changes were all incorporated and are included in the wiki: http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation/Mission and you'll note that we removed the word "Draft", believing we are getting really close on this one and want to turn our attention to the big job of defining the structure. We can certainly continue to tweak the Mission, though. One common theme was the desire to go back and adjust the original OpenStack Mission from July 2010. We hadn't considered that a part of the exercise of defining the "Foundation Mission", but clearly it's on people's minds so I suggest we tackle that too as a separate work stream (Note that I removed it from the "Foundation Mission" page to keep it separate). While many said that we should change it, there was not as much consensus about what the changes should be. Some people think it should explicitly be limited to infrastructure services, while others think it should be a broader vision that can be valid and stand the test of time. One approach may be to create a broad-based visionary mission that describes the general purpose of OpenStack and also include a short charter that sets out the specific focus of the community currently which can be reviewed and changed periodically. Next up, we'll post a draft document that summarizes a proposed structure and look to get feedback on that. We'll also be holding a meetup Wednesday 2/15 at 4:30 near Cloud Connect. We'll publish the full details, including location, shortly on the meetup. We will update the timeline on the wiki this week as well. Mark @sparkycollier cell: 512-791-0356

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[OpenStack Foundation] OpenStack Foundation
by Jim Curry 04 Feb '12

04 Feb '12

Team, First, an apology. It has been 3 months since we announced our intention to move OpenStack into a foundation in 2012. Since that time, we have done a poor job of updating you on the status of our efforts and involving you in the process. Jan, Cole, Ryan and others are all more than justified in asking for better communication. We are going to improve our efforts starting today and will continue to actively communicate with you throughout the formation of the foundation. Responsibility and accountability for this effort at Rackspace rests with me, so I offer my apologies and promise that this will be improved. So now for the update. In reality, there has been a ton of work occurring to build a proposal that can serve as the basis for a constructive community conversation. I firmly believe that the best way to have a conversation with a group as diverse and large as the OpenStack community is to start with a very defined proposal that everyone can react to — positively or negatively. This proposal is not meant to be anything other than a framework to manage the discussion. No decisions are being made without the involvement of the broad community. Trying to handle the large number of complex issues over a mailing list without a base framework would be impossible to manage. It is also unfair to community members who don't live on the mailing lists day to day, but do want to review the plans and provide comments. We are basing this initial proposal on a lot of input received from the community and beyond — developers, users, companies, other open source projects and foundations, lawyers, specific country experts, etc. As you might imagine, the diversity of opinion received is large (we are not a shy group!) and pulling that together into a starting point in and of itself is a challenge. But we are about done with it and will be posting the initial proposal in the next few days. Looking back on our initial setup of OpenStack, I wish we had had more time to have solicited broader input and completed additional diligence as there are likely decisions that would have been made differently. In the hopefully long life of the OpenStack foundation, I believe a 3 month investment in setting up the right framework for a discussion is a justified investment. Rackspace has a number of resources dedicated to this effort: 1. Jonathan Bryce has been 100% focused on this effort since the announcement, and has been actively soliciting feedback from the constituencies I mentioned above. 2. Mark Collier has given up his other responsibilities to focus on getting the foundation setup with Jonathan. 3. Alice King is leading the legal efforts and actively working with other legal counsel in the community We also have numerous other team members devoting a substantial portion of their time to the foundation including our community manager, Stefano Maffulli, and other members of my team. Not to mention those of you who have generously helped along the way! I sincerely appreciate the goodwill the community demonstrates towards Rackspace. We are not perfect, and we absolutely make mistakes along the way. Its easiest to assume the worst — that Rackspace has ill intentions or is incompetent in the management of this process. But the vast majority of you are supportive even if we don't always deserve your support. Many outside this community are eagerly seeking signs of division. Lets please not give it to them. I am asking for your trust that we are good to our word, and that we will transition this project from Rackspace to you as soon as possible. Rackspace wants the foundation to happen as much as any member of this community does. We committed to you that it will happen in 2012, and it will — hopefully sooner rather than later. But much work remains to be done, and we need your active feedback, support, and patience during this process. I look forward to working with you on this effort in the coming months. Jim Curry @jimcurry

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