openstack-poc team mailing list archive

[Jan Drake <jan_drake@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm concerned I was a bit too nuanced with you and so will take a bit to refamiliarize myself with the more formal language of the proposed bylaws and endeavor to be more direct; however, I think you are clearly missing what I mean by integration... your language assumes conflict, such as "the hard decisions", as if the TC is destined to find itself in conflict from its inception, and as if the community (consisting mostly of people actually doing work), actually needs some party to dictate to them rather than educate and guide them.

If you look back on the history of openstack I think you'll find "the community" rejected technical/architectural direction quite, quite ferociously.

I also will look into learning your background as I haven't done you the courtesy of that in this brief interchange; however, I'm curious whether you've ever operated in an environment such as you recommend? 

Frankly, I'd be surprised (and pleasantly educated) if you could show me such a (successful) model and its relevance and leverage to an open source foundation and community.

In my opinion, the layer at which OpenStack foundation needs to be worried about conflict-oriented conversations is above the TC.  If the assumption is the TC will necessarily be in conflict with the projects and PTLs (and thus need firm, separatist resolution), then we have a flawed model.

Tension between the TC and other governing bodies is rational.  The TC should
be bringing and championing the bottom up concerns to the foundation's more strategic layers... that requires alignment between people with technical vision and peeps with technical skin in the game.  That requires a different sort of tension.

Otherwise, as Joe pointed out, this part of the foundation is simply seeding its  own demise.

Y'all are welcome to reach me on this topic at 206-790-1074 and Justin I'd be happy to spend higher bandwidth to make my point.

At this point though, other peeps need to speak up.


JanMan



On Jun 22, 2012, at 6:46 PM, Justin Santa Barbara <justin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 5:52 PM, Jan Drake <jan_drake@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Fascinating.  The tension between community driven and committee driven technical direction, it seems.
> 
> The community elects the TC which takes the time to make tough technical decisions.  This is representative democracy (although I don't think anyone is proposing direct democracy.)
>  
> Justin, I would have been way more comfortable had your example been more vision and architecture focused instead of consequence-control focused. 
> 
> I tried to pick a case that was going to be divisive.  Focusing on the "vision" example is - I would hope - uncontroversial and thus not helpful to advancing the discussion :-)
>    
> I could see the role of the TC as bringing a perspective on highest value road-mapping across the projects and assisting in aligning decisioning to that. I can see it as a group that makes smart decisions on the boundary between core and satellite projects.  I can see it as a driver for encouraging integrations with other open source ecosystems.
> 
> But, in trademarked Jan form, if you think you can add a control function, you're likely off your chum.  (pardon my use of that obscure colloquialism).
> 
> After all, "Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses!  Not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
> 
> My understanding is that the TC will have _more_ of a mandate from the masses, in that everyone elects the TC, whereas PTL voting is restricted to developers?  (Of that project?)  
>  
> 
> Less playfully, however, there is no question that a collaboration the size of OpenStack could benefit from vision and architecture perspective outside of the individual projects involved.  That said, the intersection of such strategic and visionary thinking requires integration with (instead of management or separate direction of) the leadership of the projects. 
> 
> Creating this integration oriented approach rather than an implicitly confrontational approach is, I believe, Mr Heck's fine intent.  
> 
> I agree that the TC should work collaboratively with the PTLs, but I think we need to recognize that they should have different responsibilities, and thus won't see eye to eye on everything.  I see this as checks and balances, rather than warfare.
> 
> We'll have to trust our community to elect people that can work together; and they can always elect all the PTLs to the TC.  I suspect this will more or less happen anyway, and that we're basically arguing about angels on pinheads.
> 
> However, the proposal to require half the TC to be the PTLs, rather than having them be elected, seems peculiar to me.  It is at least sufficiently odd that it feels like it shouldn't be our starting point.  If you want to propose a "constitutional amendment" and get the community to agree to change the rules, then please do so!  But, in my opinion, the right time for that is a year or two down the road, once we see how this grand experiment turns out.  Until then, I expect we'll vote in most of the PTLs and additional people we think are reasonable people that will work well with them; so I expect everyone will be happy.  If  we get a profoundly different result from our elections, we probably have bigger problems.
> 
> Justin