On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 09:18:09AM -0700, Maru Newby wrote: > > On Aug 13, 2014, at 2:57 AM, Daniel P. Berrange <berra...@redhat.com> 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. > >> > >> 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 was fortunate to attend both the Nova and Neutron mid-cycles last > month, and I can attest to how productive these gatherings were. > Discussion moved quickly and misunderstandings were rapidly resolved. > Informal ('water-cooler') conversation led to many interactions that > might not otherwise have occurred. Given your attendance of summit > and other open source conferences, though, I'm assuming the value of > f2f is not in question.
I'm not questioning the value of f2f - I'm questioning the idea of doing f2f meetings sooo many times a year. OpenStack is very much the outlier here among open source projects - the vast majority of projects get along very well with much less f2f time and a far smaller % of their contributors attend those f2f meetings that do happen. So I really do question what is missing from OpenStack's community interaction that makes us believe that having 4 f2f meetings a year is critical to our success. > Nothing good is ever free. The financial cost and exclusionary > nature of an in-person meetup should definitely be weighed against > the opportunity for focused and high-bandwidth communication. It's > clear to myself and other attendees just how valuable the recent > mid-cycles were in terms of making technical decisions and building > the relationships to support their implementation. Maybe it isn't > sustainable over the long-term to meet so often, but I don't think > that should preclude us from deriving benefit in the short-term. As pointed out this benefit for core devs has a direct negative impact on other non-core devs. I'm questioning whether this is really a net win overall vs other approaches to collaboration. > I also don't think we should ignore the opportunity for more > effective decision-making on the grounds that not everyone > can directly participate. Not everyone is able to attend > summit, but it is nonetheless a critical part of our > community's decision-making process. The topic lists for a > mid-cycle are published beforehand, just like summit, to > allow non-attendees the chance to present their views in > advance and/or designate one or more attendees to advocate > on their behalf. It's not perfect, but the alternative - > not holding mid-cycles - would seem to be a case of throwing > out the baby with the bathwater. As I explain in the rest of my email below I'm not advocating getting rid of mid-cycle events entirely. I'm suggesting that we can attain a reasonable % of the benefits of f2f meetings by doing more formal virtual meetups and so be more efficient and inclusive overall. > > > >> 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. > > > > 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 :-( > > > > 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) Regards, Daniel -- |: http://berrange.com -o- http://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange/ :| |: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org :| |: http://autobuild.org -o- http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ :| |: http://entangle-photo.org -o- http://live.gnome.org/gtk-vnc :| _______________________________________________ OpenStack-dev mailing list OpenStack-dev@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev