On 09/17/2018 04:50 PM, Doug Hellmann wrote:
Excerpts from Zane Bitter's message of 2018-09-17 16:12:30 -0400:
On 17/09/18 3:06 PM, Jay Pipes wrote:
On 09/17/2018 01:31 PM, Doug Hellmann wrote:
New Project Application Process
===============================
We wrapped up Sunday with a discussion of of our process for reviewing
new project applications. Zane and Chris in particular felt the
process for Adjutant was too painful for the project team because
there was no way to know how long discussions might go on and now
way for them to anticipate some of the issues they encountered.
We talked about formalizing a "coach" position to have someone from
the TC (or broader community) work with the team to prepare their
application with sufficient detail, seek feedback before voting
starts, etc.
We also talked about adding a time limit to the process, so that
teams at least have a rejection with feedback in a reasonable amount
of time. Some of the less contentious discussions have averaged
from 1-4 months with a few more contentious cases taking as long
as 10 months. We did not settle on a time frame during the meeting,
so I expect this to be a topic for us to work out during the next
term.
So, to summarize... the TC is back to almost exactly the same point it
was at right before the Project Structure Reform happened in 2014-2015
(that whole Big Tent thing).
I wouldn't go that far. There are more easy decisions than there were
before the reform, but there still exist hard decisions. This is perhaps
inevitable.
The Project Structure Reform occurred because the TC could not make
decisions on whether projects should join OpenStack using objective
criteria, and due to this, new project applicants were forced to endure
long waits and subjective "graduation" reviews that could change from
one TC election cycle to the next.
The solution to this was to make an objective set of application
criteria and remove the TC from the "Supreme Court of OpenStack" role
that new applicants needed to come before and submit to the court's
judgment.
Many people complained that the Project Structure Reform was the TC
simply abrogating responsibility for being a judgmental body.
It seems that although we've now gotten rid of those objective criteria
for project inclusion and gone back to the TC being a subjective
judgmental body, that the TC is still not actually willing to pass
judgment one way or the other on new project applicants.
No criteria have been gotten rid of, but even after the Project
Structure Reform there existed criteria that were subjective. Here is a
thread discussing them during the last TC election:
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2018-April/129622.html
(I actually think that the perception that the criteria should be
entirely objective might be a contributor to the problem: when faced
with a subjective decision and no documentation or precedent to guide
them, TC members can be reluctant to choose.)
I think turning the decision about which projects fit the mission
into an entirely mechanical one would be a mistake. I would prefer
us to use, and trust, our judgement in cases where the answer needs
some thought.
I don't remember the history quite the way Jay does, either. I
remember us trying to base the decision more about what the team
was doing than how the code looked or whether the implementation
met anyone's idea of "good". That's why we retained the requirement
that the project "aligns with the OpenStack Mission".
Hmm. I very specifically remember the incubation and graduation review
of Zaqar and the fact that over a couple cycles of TC elections, the
"advice" given by the TC about specific technical implementation details
changed, often arbitrarily, depending on who was on the TC and what day
of the week it was. In fact, I pretty vividly remember this arbitrary
nature of the architectural review being one of the primary reasons we
switched to a purely objective set of criteria.
Also, for the record, I actually wasn't referring to Adjutant
specifically when I referred in my original post to "only tangentially
related to cloud computing". I was referring to my recollection of
fairly recent history. I remember the seemingly endless debates about
whether some applicants "fit" the OpenStack ecosystem or whether the
applicant was merely trying to jump on a hype bandwagon for marketing
purposes. Again, I wasn't specifically referring to Adjutant here, so I
apologize if my words came across that way.
Best,
-jay
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