On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 7:55 AM, Russell Bryant <rbry...@redhat.com> wrote: > On 08/13/2014 05:57 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: >> On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 08:57:40AM +1000, Michael Still wrote: >>> Hi. >>> >>> One of the action items from the nova midcycle was that I was asked to >>> make nova's expectations of core reviews more clear. This email is an >>> attempt at that. >>> >>> Nova expects a minimum level of sustained code reviews from cores. In >>> the past this has been generally held to be in the order of two code >>> reviews a day, which is a pretty low bar compared to the review >>> workload of many cores. I feel that existing cores understand this >>> requirement well, and I am mostly stating it here for completeness. > > Yep, this bit is obviously the most important. I would prefer a good > level of review activity be the only *hard* requirement. > >>> Additionally, there is increasing levels of concern that cores need to >>> be on the same page about the criteria we hold code to, as well as the >>> overall direction of nova. While the weekly meetings help here, it was >>> agreed that summit attendance is really important to cores. Its the >>> way we decide where we're going for the next cycle, as well as a >>> chance to make sure that people are all pulling in the same direction >>> and trust each other. >>> >>> There is also a strong preference for midcycle meetup attendance, >>> although I understand that can sometimes be hard to arrange. My stance >>> is that I'd like core's to try to attend, but understand that >>> sometimes people will miss one. In response to the increasing >>> importance of midcycles over time, I commit to trying to get the dates >>> for these events announced further in advance. >> >> Personally I'm going to find it really hard to justify long distance >> travel 4 times a year for OpenStack for personal / family reasons, >> let alone company cost. I couldn't attend Icehouse mid-cycle because >> I just had too much travel in a short time to be able to do another >> week long trip away from family. I couldn't attend Juno mid-cycle >> because it clashed we personal holiday. There are other opensource >> related conferences that I also have to attend (LinuxCon, FOSDEM, >> KVM Forum, etc), etc so doubling the expected number of openstack >> conferences from 2 to 4 is really very undesirable from my POV. >> I might be able to attend the occassional mid-cycle meetup if the >> location was convenient, but in general I don't see myself being >> able to attend them regularly. >> >> I tend to view the fact that we're emphasising the need of in-person >> meetups to be somewhat of an indication of failure of our community >> operation. The majority of open source projects work very effectively >> with far less face-to-face time. OpenStack is fortunate that companies >> are currently willing to spend 6/7-figure sums flying 1000's of >> developers around the world many times a year, but I don't see that >> lasting forever so I'm concerned about baking the idea of f2f midcycle >> meetups into our way of life even more strongly. > > I'm concerned about this, as well. There are lots of reasons people > can't attend things (budget or personal reasons). I'd hate to think > that not being able to travel this much (which I think is *a lot*) hurts > someone's ability to be an important part of the nova team. > Unfortunately, that's the direction we're trending. >
+1 I've seen a definitie uptick in travel for OpenStack, and it's not sustainable for all the reasons stated here. We need to figure out a better way to collaborate virtually, as we're a global Open Source project and we can't assume that everyone can travel all the time for all the mid-cycles, conferences, etc. > I also think it furthers the image of nova being an exclusive clique. I > think we should always look at things as ways to be as inclusive as > possible. Focusing the important conversations at the 4 in-person > meetups per year leaves most of the community out. > Again, I agree with this assessment. We need to shift things back to the weekly IRC meetings, ML discussions, and perhaps some sort of virtual conference scheduling as well. >>> Given that we consider these physical events so important, I'd like >>> people to let me know if they have travel funding issues. I can then >>> approach the Foundation about funding travel if that is required. >> >> Travel funding is certainly an issue, but I'm not sure that Foundation >> funding would be a solution, because the impact probably isn't directly >> on the core devs. Speaking with my Red Hat on, if the midcycle meetup >> is important enough, the core devs will likely get the funding to attend. >> The fallout of this though is that every attendee at a mid-cycle summit >> means fewer attendees at the next design summit. So the impact of having >> more core devs at mid-cycle is that we'll get fewer non-core devs at >> the design summit. This sucks big time for the non-core devs who want >> to engage with our community. > > I can confirm that this is the effect I am seeing for our team. There > were *a lot* of meetups this cycle, and it was expensive. > > This was actually one of the arguments against splitting the design > summit out from the main conference, yet I'm afraid we've created the > problem anyway. > >> Also having each team do a f2f mid-cycle meetup at a different location >> makes it even harder for people who have a genuine desire / need to take >> part in multiple teams. Going to multiple mid-cycle meetups is even more >> difficult to justify so they're having to make difficult decisions about >> which to go to :-( > > Indeed, and we actually need to be strongly *encouraging* cross-project > participation. > >> I'm also not a fan of mid-cycle meetups because I feel it further >> stratifies our contributors into two increasly distinct camps - core >> vs non-core. >> >> I can see that a big benefit of a mid-cycle meetup is to be a focal >> point for collaboration, to forcably break contributors our of their >> day-to-day work pattern to concentrate on discussing specific issues. >> It also obviously solves the distinct timezone problem we have with >> our dispersed contributor base. I think that we should be examining >> what we can achieve with some kind of virtual online mid-cycle meetups >> instead. Using technology like google hangouts or some similar live >> collaboration technology, not merely an IRC discussion. Pick a 2-3 >> day period, schedule formal agendas / talking slots as you would with >> a physical summit and so on. I feel this would be more inclusive to >> our community as a whole, avoid excessive travel costs, so allowing >> more of our community to attend the bigger design summits. It would >> even open possibility of having multiple meetups during a cycle (eg >> could arrange mini virtual events around each milestone if we wanted) > > I think this is a nice concrete suggestion for an alternative. I think > it's worth exploring in more detail. I would much prefer something like > this as a replacement for the mid-cycle stuff and save the in-person > meetings for the existing twice-per-year summits. > I'd like to see this option used as well and see how it works out. > -- > Russell Bryant > > _______________________________________________ > OpenStack-dev mailing list > OpenStack-dev@lists.openstack.org > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev _______________________________________________ OpenStack-dev mailing list OpenStack-dev@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev