[OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure Draft

Mark McLoughlin markmc at redhat.com
Mon Feb 13 06:17:42 UTC 2012


Hi Jonathan,

On Fri, 2012-02-10 at 15:45 -0600, Jonathan Bryce wrote:
> 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.[..]
> 
> http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation/Structure

Thanks for posting this. It's just awesome to have a detailed draft to
mull over. There's an awful lot to be commended here, not least the very
obvious intent on Rackspace's part to do what it said it was going to
do. I see nothing in this but deep concern for OpenStack's future
success.

So, Kudos to everyone involved!

Defining which companies have made a "strategic commitment" to OpenStack
is really tough. Is it based on the funding provided? The number of
employees dedicated? The impact of those employees? How do we take into
account the size of the company? How do we value contributions to the
ecosystem or the marketing of the project? How do we do all that while
keeping the numbers down to 6-8 without appearing to undervalue the
contributions of some?

Making that kind of a value judgement seems more suited to a fair and
open vote of the foundation membership, rather than a set of
hard-and-fast rules. Perhaps we could have an election each year where
the foundation membership ranks the contributions of the various company
members to the foundation and, from that, 8 companies are awarded
"strategic" status?

Or to go a step further, we could have all 12 seats on the board be
directly elected but some candidates could explicitly be nominated by
their employer as their official representative. The membership would
vote for the candidate on the basis of that companies contributions.
That way the foundation membership implicitly ranks the contributions of
companies alongside individual member candidates.

Also, not all highly committed companies will make it into the elite
"strategic" category and gain a board seat. I think that we need to give
a strong voice to those companies and a sponsors advisory board would
provide such a forum.

Cheers,
Mark.




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