openstack-poc team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Bryce <jbryce@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 11, 2012, at 3:41 AM, Mark McLoughlin wrote:

> On Tue, 2012-09-11 at 10:28 +0200, Thierry Carrez wrote:
>> Jonathan Bryce wrote:
>>> Last Friday, the Foundation Board of Directors appointed Tim Bell as a member of the User Committee. According to the Bylaws, the Technical Committee also needs to appoint someone to the User Committee. Those two initial appointees will then be able to bootstrap the User Committee and grow it further.
>> 
>> Should we wait for the result of the ongoing elections, or is the
>> current PPB enough of the "Technical Committee" to be able to appoint
>> someone as far as the bylaws are concerned ?
> 
> Bylaws aside, I think it probably makes sense. That way the User
> Committee is fully part of the new Foundation setup rather than
> appointed, in part, by the "old guard".

When the papers were filed on July 18th, the PPB automatically become the TC and any actions since then have been done by the "old guard" (supporting projects definition, openstack-common PTL). The new TC will still be substantially similar to the old PPB so I don't think many would question an appointment as long as it makes sense. I'm happy to abstain from any final vote if you think it will improve the validity of it.


> But that does mean waiting another 2 weeks, which gives whoever we
> appoint less time to prepare for the summit.

I worry about waiting 2.5+ weeks--and that's if the TC meets and decides on this the day after elections--because it will then make the time before the summit and and next Board meeting very short.


>>> Would you all like to meet briefly tomorrow during our regular time to discuss this and appoint someone? Alternately, we could handle it over email.
>> 
>> Email is OK. At this point it's mostly about brainstorming options, and
>> I'm pretty sure we can reach consensus over email.
>> 
>>> I would like to start by nominating Ryan Lane from Wikimedia. I think Ryan has done a great job of evangelizing OpenStack and also being a good voice for users among the technical community.
>>> 
>>> Anyone else is welcome to nominate alternatives.
>> 
>> IMHO our ideal appointed member would be someone that is a user of
>> OpenStack but also knows our development processes and has directly
>> contributed to the project at some point. That way, while still being a
>> "user", he can efficiently bring a perspective on what the developers
>> can and cannot do.
>> 
>> Ryan is definitely a very good option here. An alternative could be
>> someone from Rackspace/HP Ops side that would also be involved a bit in
>> development, but I don't know them well enough to pick.
> 
> I think Ryan is a good choice too.
> 
> However, I wonder whether we should aim to choose someone from the
> Technical Committee itself - i.e. that whoever the TC appoints would
> actually be a representative of the TC. Given that Tim Bell is a
> Foundation Board member, it probably makes sense.
> 
> Look outside the TC if there's no-one on the TC willing to commit to the
> role, perhaps?

TIm Bell's board membership is coincidental to his user committee appointment. The user committee members are meant to be representatives of users, not the board or the TC. The companies and the ATC are pretty strongly represented within the governance structure already, and the user committee is meant to be a place for users and deployers who are not as directly represented. I think Ryan fits the bill pretty well while also having a strong connection back to the development community. While I'm sure TC members would do fine in the role, I'm not sure any of the existing or potential members would do a *better* job than Ryan.

Jonathan