confirmed On 07/10/14 04:30 PM, Doug Hellmann wrote: > I am announcing my candidacy for a position on the OpenStack Technical > Committee. > > I am currently employed by HP to work upstream on OpenStack. I started > contributing in 2012, not long after joining DreamHost. I am one of > the founding members of the Ceilometer project, and a core reviewer > for the requirements and unified command line interface projects. I am > also part of the team working on the Python 3 transition, and have > contributed to several of the infrastructure projects. Kilo will be my > third term serving as PTL for the Oslo project, and I have served on > the Technical Committee for the last year. In addition to my technical > contributions, I helped to found and still help to organize the > OpenStack meetup group in Atlanta, Georgia. > > I've included the answers to the formally posed election questions > below, but please follow up here with any other questions you might > have for me. > > The OpenStack community is the most exciting and welcoming group I > have interacted with in more than 20 years of contributing to open > source projects. I'm looking forward to continuing to being a part > of the community and serving the project. > > Thank you, > Doug > > Review history: https://review.openstack.org/#/q/reviewer:2472,n,z > Commit history: https://review.openstack.org/#/q/owner:2472,n,z > Stackalytics: http://stackalytics.com/?user_id=doug-hellmann > Foundation: http://www.openstack.org/community/members/profile/359 > OpenHUB: https://www.openhub.net/accounts/doughellmann > Freenode: dhellmann > Website: http://doughellmann.com > > > > * Topic: OpenStack Mission > * > * How do you feel the technical community is doing in meeting the > * OpenStack Mission? > > I am amazed by what our community produces. We have some truly > exceptional development teams building great software. We regularly > add new components to the system, and our feature set is as diverse as > the community. Our work is not perfect, but as we continue to refine > it based on experience and input from users, we are continually > improving the way we work and what we produce. > > However, there are recurring themes in the user feedback after every > release: We need to make OpenStack easier to operate, easier to use, > and easier to debug. We are starting to build cross-project teams to > work more directly on some of these areas, and it's important that we > give priority to that work and consider usability and scalability as > features. > > * Topic: Technical Committee Mission > * > * How do you feel the technical committee is doing in meeting the > * technical committee mission? > > We're fulfilling most of the mission, but we can do better. > > The Zaqar graduation discussion is a good example of an area where we > need to rethink how we bring new project teams into OpenStack. There > are several similar suggestions to drop our current incubation and > integration process completely, and that is one option. Another is to > set up the resources we would need to do an objective technical > evaluation for projects. I favor a combination of those two ideas, > evaluating projects on several criteria from the users' perspective, > but deciding the "official" status of a team based on community > considerations. > > We have also recognized that we need some way to handle cross-project > initiatives such as improving our logging to make debugging easier, > but we do not yet have a formal structure in place to accomplish those > goals. The way we set up working groups for those sorts of jobs is > going to depend on the outcome of the bigger governance discussion, > but I think they should be organized by the TC. > > * Topic: Contributor Motivation > * > * How would you characterize the various facets of contributor > * motivation? > > I don't know if we have numbers, but my impression is that most of our > contributions come from people employed at least in part to work on > OpenStack. Their commitment to the project as a whole, outside of > their area of specialty, varies for a lot of reasons. We want everyone > to have a strong commitment to the whole project, but that's not > always realistic, because it's not always up to the individual to > decide how much time or effort they can put into working on OpenStack, > or into a given area. That's perfectly normal and OK. We can, and do, > welcome contributions from all sorts of people for all sorts of > reasons. > > * Topic: Rate of Growth > * > * There is no argument the OpenStack technical community has a > * substantial rate of growth. What are some of the consequences of > * this rate? > > Growing so quickly is forcing us to think about how we organize our > selves and make changes explicitly, and more rapidly, rather than > allowing for a slower evolution. We've had a lot of blog posts and > mailing list threads talking about ways to handle the growth through > governance model changes to the project. These are important decisions > for us to make as a community, and we need to weigh both sides of each > issue carefully. > > For example, we want to be more inclusive and bring more project teams > into OpenStack, but doing that further strains our cross-project > teams' capacity to help us all with documentation, infrastructure, and > release management. More creative independence for projects can > increase complexity for deployers and users as we drift away from > consistent patterns. Providing incentives for creating new projects > may take away incentives for collaborating on existing projects, > ultimately hurting both projects. In each of these cases we want some > aspects of both sides of the equation, but we need to strike a > balance. > > Working out the changes we need to our existing set of policies will > take more thought and discussion [1], as we try to predict the > consequences of the proposed changes and craft new policies that are > flexible enough to continue to maintain a healthy community. > > [1] > https://review.openstack.org/#/q/status:open+project:openstack/governance+topic:big-tent,n,z > > * Topic: New Contributor Experience > * > * How would you characterize the experience new contributors have > * currently? > > There's no question that OpenStack has a steep learning curve, both as > a user and a contributor. > > Documentation is useful as a reference, but there's nothing quite like > having an experienced guide helping you first hand. I had the benefit > of a couple of informal mentors when I started contributing. They > walked me through the long process of setting up the tools and > development environment I needed until I was able to submit my first > patch, helped me get the most out of the design summit, and generally > eased my entrance into the community. Today we have a few formal > programs in the community to match mentors and new community > members. Those programs deserve our support, but day to day, we can > all do a little bit to help each other out by answering questions and > sharing our knowledge freely. > > * Topic: Communication > * > * How would you describe our current state of communication in the > * OpenStack community? > > Our growth is making communication more challenging, but we are > adapting. > > The specs process has helped with technical planning, setting > expectations, and recording decisions. Still, we have a lot of > initiatives not tied directly to specs -- especially those that span > project boundaries and releases. > > I told the Oslo team that my mantra for this cycle is "Write it down," > by which I mean we should clearly document our discussions and > decisions so when a topic comes up again we do not have to rely on our > memory. IRC is a great medium for quick iteration, but it's lousy as a > historical record. > > Communication is the key to maintaining a healthy open source > community. Keeping up can be difficult, but we all have to pay > attention to the messages coming out of other teams, to watch for > anything relevant, then participate in the conversation. > > * Topic: Relationship with the Foundation Board > * > * The technical committee interacts with the foundation board on several > * different fronts. How would you describe these interactions? > > I have a somewhat better impression of the relationship between the TC > and Board than has been expressed by other candidates. We are > different groups, with different perspectives, but we are all working > in what we consider to be the best interests of the OpenStack project > and that means working together. The face-to-face meeting in Atlanta > allowed some of that attitude to show through in ways that it doesn't > always in IRC or phone meetings. We have had spirited debates on > topics like DefCore and the CLA, as is natural for groups with such > different perspectives, but we are also continuing to work together to > find ways to solve those and other issues. > > > _______________________________________________ > OpenStack-dev mailing list > OpenStack-dev@lists.openstack.org > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev > >
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