OpenStack TC: Victoria vPTG Summary of Conversations and Action Items

I hope you all had a productive and enjoyable PTG! While it’s still reasonably fresh, I wanted to take a moment to summarize discussions and actions that came out of TC discussions. 

If there is a particular action item you are interested in taking, please reply on the mailing list thread.

For the long version, check out the etherpad from the PTG.

The tldr;

Here are the #ACTION items the TC is identifying members to own:

  • Start the User Facing API Pop Up Team
  • Write a resolution about how the deconstructed PTL roles will work
  • Update Goal Selection docs to explain that one or more goals is fine; it doesn’t have to be more than one
  • Two volunteers to start the W goal selection process
  • Assign two TC liaisons per project
  •  Review Tags to make sure they are still good for driving common behavior across all openstack projects

Here are the things all TC members need to do:

  • Review last goal proposal so that we can decide to accept or reject it for the V release[4]
  • Add systems that are barriers to progress in OpenStack to the Reducing Systems and Friction list
  • Continue conversations you find important

There are a lot of ways everyone in the community can get involved! Just come visit us in the #openstack-tc IRC channel, and we can point you in the right direction.

Tuesday

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Ussuri Retrospective

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As usual we accomplished a lot. Some of the things we accomplished were around enumerating operating systems per release (again), removing python2 support, and adding the ideas repository. Towards the end of the release, we had a lot of discussions around what to do with leaderless projects, the role of PTLs, and what to do with projects that were missing PTL candidates for the next release. We discussed office hours, their history and reason for existence, and clarified how we can strengthen communication amongst ourselves, the projects, and the larger community. 

TC Onboarding

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It was brought up that those elected most recently (and even new members the election before) felt like there wasn’t enough onboarding into the TC. Through discussion about what we can do to better support returning members is to better document the daily, weekly and monthly tasks TC members are supposed to be doing. Kendall Nelson proposed a patch to start adding more detail to a guide for TC members already. It was also proposed that we have a sort of mentorship or shadow program for people interested in joining the TC or new TC members by more experienced TC members. The discussion about the shadow/mentorship program is to be continued. 

TC/UC Merge

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Thierry gave an update on the merge of the committees. The simplified version is that the current proposal is that UC members are picked from TC members, the UC operates within the TC, and that we are already setup for this given the number of TC members that have AUC status. None of this requires a by-laws change. One next step that has already begun is the merging of the openstack-users ML into openstack-discuss ML. Other next steps are to decide when to do the actual transition (disbanding the separate UC, probably at the next election?) and when to setup AUC’s to be defined as extra-ATC’s to be included in the electorate for elections. For more detail, check out the openstack-discuss ML thread.

Wednesday

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Help Wanted List

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We settled on a format for the job postings and have several on the list. We talked about how often we want to look through, update or add to it. The proposal is to do this yearly. We need to continue pushing on the board to dedicate contributors at their companies to work on these items, and get them to understand that it’s an investment that will take longer than a year in a lot of cases; interns are great, but not enough. 

TC Position on Foundation Member Community Contributions

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The discussion started with a state of things today – the expectations of platinum members, the benefits the members get being on the board and why they should donate contributor resources for these benefits, etc. A variety of proposals were made: either enforce or remove the minimum contribution level, give gold members the chance to have increased visibility (perhaps giving them some of the platinum member advantages) if they supplement their monetary contributions with contributor contributions, etc. The #ACTION that was decided was for Mohammed to take these ideas to the board and see what they think. 

OpenStack User-facing APIs

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Users are confused about the state of the user facing API’s; they’ve been told to use the OpenStackClient(OSC) but upon use, they discover that there are features missing that exist in the python-*clients. Partial implementation in the OSC is worse than if the service only used their specific CLI. Members of the OpenStackSDK joined discussions and explained that many of the barriers that projects used to have behind implementing certain commands have been resolved. The proposal is to create a pop up team and that they start with fully migrating Nova, documenting the process and collecting any other unresolved blocking issues with the hope that one day we can set the migration of the remaining projects as a community goal. Supplementally, a new idea was proposed-  enforcing new functionality to services is only added to the SDK (and optionally the OSC) and not the project’s specific CLI to stop increasing the disparity between the two. The #ACTION here is to start the pop up team, if you are interested, please reply! Additionally, if you disagree with this kind of enforcement, please contact the TC as soon as possible and explain your concerns. 

PTL Role in OpenStack today & Leaderless Projects

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This was a veeeeeeeerrrry long conversation that went in circles a few times. The very short version is that we, the TC, are willing to let project teams decide for themselves if they want to have a more deconstructed kind of PTL role by breaking it into someone responsible for releases and someone responsible for security issues. This new format also comes with setting the expectation that for things like project updates and signing up for PTG time, if someone on the team doesn’t actively take that on, the default assumption is that the project won’t participate. The #ACTION we need someone to take on is to write a resolution about how this will work and how it can be done. Ideally, this would be done before the next technical election, so that teams can choose it at that point. If you are interested in taking on the writing of this resolution, please speak up!

Cross Project Work

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-Pop Up Teams-

The two teams we have right now are Encryption and Secure Consistent Policy Groups. Both are making slow progress and will continue. 

-Reducing Community Goals Per Cycle-

Historically we have had two goals per cycle, but for smaller teams this can be a HUGE lift. The #ACTION is to clearly outline the documentation for the goal proposal and selection process to clarify that selecting only one goal is fine. No one has claimed this action item yet. 

-Victoria Goal Finalization-

Currently, we have three proposals and one accepted goal. If we are going to select a second goal, it needs to be done ASAP as Victoria development has already begun. All TC members should review the last proposal requesting selection.

-Wallaby Cycle Goal Discussion Kick Off-

Firstly, there is a #ACTION that one or two TC members are needed to guide the W goal selection. If you are interested, please reply to this thread! There were a few proposed goals for VIctoria that didn’t make it that could be the starting point for W discussions, in particular, the rootwrap goal which would be good for operators. The OpenStackCLI might be another goal to propose for Wallaby. 

Detecting Unmaintained Projects Early

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The TC liaisons program had been created a few releases ago, but the initial load on TC members was large. We discussed bringing this program back and making the project health checks happen twice a release, either the start or end of the release and once in the middle. TC liaisons will look at  previously proposed releases,  release activity of the team, the state of tempest plugins, if regular meetings are happening, if there are patches in progress and how busy the project’s IRC channel is to make a determination. Since more than one liaison will be assigned to each project, those liaisons can divvy up the work how they see fit. The other aspect that still needs to be decided is where the health checks will be recorded- in a wiki? In a meeting and meeting logs? That decision is still to be continued. The current #ACTION currently unassigned is that we need to assign liaisons for the Victoria cycle and decide when to do the first health check. 

Friday

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Reducing Systems and Friction to Drive Change

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This was another conversation that went in circles a bit before realizing that we should make a list of the more specific problems we want to address and then brainstorm solutions for them. The list we created (including things already being worked) are as follows: 

  • TC separate from UC (solution in progress)
  • Stable releases being approved by a separate team (solution in progress)
  • Making repository creation faster (especially for established project teams)
  • Create a process blueprint for project team mergers
  • Requirements Team being one person
  • Stable Team
  • Consolidate the agent experience
  • Figure out how to improve project <–> openstack client/sdk interaction.

If you feel compelled to pick one of these things up and start proposing solutions or add to the list, please do!

Monitoring in OpenStack (Ceilometer + Telemetry + Gnocchi State)

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This conversation is also ongoing, but essentially we talked about the state of things right now- largely they are not well maintained and there is added complexity with Ceilometers being partially dependent on Gnocchi. There are a couple of ideas to look into like using oslo.metrics for the interface between all the tools or using Ceilometer without Gnocchi if we can clean up those dependencies. No specific action items here, just please share your thoughts if you have them.

Ideas Repo Next Steps

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Out of the Ussuri retrospective, it was brought up that we probably needed to talk a little more about what we wanted for this repo. Essentially we just want it to be a place to collect ideas into without worrying about the how. It should be a place to document ideas we have had (old and new) and keep all the discussion in one place as opposed to historic email threads, meetings logs, other IRC logs, etc. We decided it would be good to periodically go through this repo, likely as a forum session at a summit to see if there is any updating that could happen or promotion of ideas to community goals, etc. 

‘tc:approved-release’ Tag

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This topic was proposed by the Manila team from a discussion they had earlier in the week. We talked about the history of the tag and how usage of tags has evolved. At this point, the proposal is to remove the tag as anything in the releases repo is essentially tc-approved. Ghanshyam has volunteered to document this and do the removal. The board also needs to be notified of this and to look at projects.yaml in the governance repo as the source of truth for TC approved projects. The unassigned #ACTION item is to review remaining tags and see if there are others that need to be modified/removed/added to  drive common behavior across OpenSack components. 

Board Proposals

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This was a pretty quick summary of all discussions we had that had any impact on the board and largely decided who would mention them.

Session Feedback

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This was also a pretty quick topic compared to many of the others, we talked about how things went across all our discussions (largely we called the PTG a success) logistically. We tried to make good use of the raising hands feature which mostly worked, but it lacks context and its possible that the conversation has moved on by the time it’s your turn (if you even remember what you want to say). 

OpenStack 2.0: k8s Native

———————————–

This topic was brought up at the end of our time so we didn’t have time to discuss it really. Basically Mohammed wanted to start the conversation about adding k8s as a base service and what we would do if a project proposed required k8s. Adding services that work with k8s could open a door to new innovation in OpenStack. Obviously this topic will need to be discussed further as we barely got started before we had to wrap things up. 

As a reminder, here are the #ACTION items the TC is identifying members to own::

  • Start the User Facing API Pop Up Team
  • Write a resolution about how the deconstructed PTL roles will work
  • Update Goal Selection docs to explain that one or more goals is fine; it doesn’t have to be more than one
  • Two volunteers to start the W goal selection process
  • Assign two TC liaisons per project
  •  Review Tags to make sure they are still good for driving common behavior across all openstack projects

Here are the things all of the TC members need to do:

  • Review last goal proposal so that we can decide to accept or reject it for the V release[4]
  • Add systems that are barriers to progress in openstack to the Reducing Systems and Friction list
  • Continue conversations you find important

Enjoy the below (photoshopped) team photo!

Virtual TC Meeting screenshot

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