Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 2015-03-08 08:20:31 -0430 (-0430), Flavio Percoco wrote: > I'm pretty sure this was discussed already in a TC meeting, which > I did not attend unfortunately. In the spite of keeoing things > open - not only the issues but also the solutions found - would > someone from the TC (or Stefano) mind highlighting what the > resolution for this issue is? [...] http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/tc/2015/tc.2015-02-24-20.02.log.html#l-107 https://review.openstack.org/159930 -- Jeremy Stanley __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 18/02/15 10:07 -0500, Doug Hellmann wrote: On Wed, Feb 18, 2015, at 05:40 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 09:29:19AM -0800, Clint Byrum wrote: > Excerpts from Daniel P. Berrange's message of 2015-02-17 02:37:50 -0800: > > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 03:14:39PM +0100, Stefano Maffulli wrote: > > > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > > > > > > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > > > > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > > > > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > > > > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > > > > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > > > > > This is seriously disturbing. > > > > > > If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, > > > please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as > > > a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. > > > > > > No public shaming, please: education first. > > > > I've been thinking about these last few lines a bit, I'm not entirely > > comfortable with the dynamic this sets up. > > > > What primarily concerns me is the issue of community accountability. A core > > feature of OpenStack's project & individual team governance is the idea > > of democractic elections, where the individual contributors can vote in > > people who they think will lead OpenStack in a positive way, or conversely > > hold leadership to account by voting them out next time. The ability of > > individuals contributors to exercise this freedom though, relies on the > > voters being well informed about what is happening in the community. > > > > If cases of bad community behaviour, such as use of passwd protected IRC > > channels, are always primarily dealt with via further private communications, > > then we are denying the voters the information they need to hold people to > > account. I can understand the desire to avoid publically shaming people > > right away, because the accusations may be false, or may be arising from a > > simple mis-understanding, but at some point genuine issues like this need > > to be public. Without this we make it difficult for contributors to make > > an informed decision at future elections. > > > > Right now, this thread has left me wondering whether there are still any > > projects which are using password protected IRC channels, or whether they > > have all been deleted, and whether I will be unwittingly voting for people > > who supported their use in future openstack elections. > > > > Shaming a person is a last resort, when that person may not listen to > reason. It's sometimes necessary to bring shame to a practice, but even > then, those who are participating are now draped in shame as well and > will have a hard time saving face. This really isn't about trying to shame people, rather it is about having accountability in the open. If the accusations of running private IRC channels were false, then yes, it would be an example of shaming to then publicise those who were accused. Since it is confirmed that private password protected IRC channels do in fact exist, then we need to have the explanations as to why this was done be made in public. The community can then decide whether the explanations offered provide sufficient justification. This isn't about shaming, it is about each individual being able to decide for themselves as to whether what happened was acceptable, given the explanations. Right. And Stef is pulling that information together from the appropriate sources. Sometimes it's easier to have those sorts of conversations one-on-one than in a fully public forum. When we have the full picture, then will know whether further action is needed (I hope the team decides to close down the channel on their own, for example). In any case, we will publish the facts. But let's give Stef time to work on it, first. Hi All, I'm pretty sure this was discussed already in a TC meeting, which I did not attend unfortunately. In the spite of keeoing things open - not only the issues but also the solutions found - would someone from the TC (or Stefano) mind highlighting what the resolution for this issue is? I don't think there's a great solution for the per-project organizational issues other than recommending people to work in the open and having the community fighting for it. However, I do expect there to be a solution for the secret channel, which by the way still exists. Thank you all for participating in this discussion, Flavio Doug 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 :| __ Op
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 18, 2015, at 05:40 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 09:29:19AM -0800, Clint Byrum wrote: > > Excerpts from Daniel P. Berrange's message of 2015-02-17 02:37:50 -0800: > > > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 03:14:39PM +0100, Stefano Maffulli wrote: > > > > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > > > > > > > > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > > > > > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > > > > > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > > > > > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > > > > > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > > > > > > > This is seriously disturbing. > > > > > > > > If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, > > > > please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as > > > > a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. > > > > > > > > No public shaming, please: education first. > > > > > > I've been thinking about these last few lines a bit, I'm not entirely > > > comfortable with the dynamic this sets up. > > > > > > What primarily concerns me is the issue of community accountability. A > > > core > > > feature of OpenStack's project & individual team governance is the idea > > > of democractic elections, where the individual contributors can vote in > > > people who they think will lead OpenStack in a positive way, or conversely > > > hold leadership to account by voting them out next time. The ability of > > > individuals contributors to exercise this freedom though, relies on the > > > voters being well informed about what is happening in the community. > > > > > > If cases of bad community behaviour, such as use of passwd protected IRC > > > channels, are always primarily dealt with via further private > > > communications, > > > then we are denying the voters the information they need to hold people to > > > account. I can understand the desire to avoid publically shaming people > > > right away, because the accusations may be false, or may be arising from a > > > simple mis-understanding, but at some point genuine issues like this need > > > to be public. Without this we make it difficult for contributors to make > > > an informed decision at future elections. > > > > > > Right now, this thread has left me wondering whether there are still any > > > projects which are using password protected IRC channels, or whether they > > > have all been deleted, and whether I will be unwittingly voting for people > > > who supported their use in future openstack elections. > > > > > > > Shaming a person is a last resort, when that person may not listen to > > reason. It's sometimes necessary to bring shame to a practice, but even > > then, those who are participating are now draped in shame as well and > > will have a hard time saving face. > > This really isn't about trying to shame people, rather it is about > having accountability in the open. > > If the accusations of running private IRC channels were false, then > yes, it would be an example of shaming to then publicise those who > were accused. > > Since it is confirmed that private password protected IRC channels > do in fact exist, then we need to have the explanations as to why > this was done be made in public. The community can then decide > whether the explanations offered provide sufficient justification. > This isn't about shaming, it is about each individual being able > to decide for themselves as to whether what happened was acceptable, > given the explanations. Right. And Stef is pulling that information together from the appropriate sources. Sometimes it's easier to have those sorts of conversations one-on-one than in a fully public forum. When we have the full picture, then will know whether further action is needed (I hope the team decides to close down the channel on their own, for example). In any case, we will publish the facts. But let's give Stef time to work on it, first. Doug > > 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 Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Unsubscribe: > openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 09:29:19AM -0800, Clint Byrum wrote: > Excerpts from Daniel P. Berrange's message of 2015-02-17 02:37:50 -0800: > > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 03:14:39PM +0100, Stefano Maffulli wrote: > > > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > > > > > > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > > > > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > > > > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > > > > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > > > > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > > > > > This is seriously disturbing. > > > > > > If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, > > > please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as > > > a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. > > > > > > No public shaming, please: education first. > > > > I've been thinking about these last few lines a bit, I'm not entirely > > comfortable with the dynamic this sets up. > > > > What primarily concerns me is the issue of community accountability. A core > > feature of OpenStack's project & individual team governance is the idea > > of democractic elections, where the individual contributors can vote in > > people who they think will lead OpenStack in a positive way, or conversely > > hold leadership to account by voting them out next time. The ability of > > individuals contributors to exercise this freedom though, relies on the > > voters being well informed about what is happening in the community. > > > > If cases of bad community behaviour, such as use of passwd protected IRC > > channels, are always primarily dealt with via further private > > communications, > > then we are denying the voters the information they need to hold people to > > account. I can understand the desire to avoid publically shaming people > > right away, because the accusations may be false, or may be arising from a > > simple mis-understanding, but at some point genuine issues like this need > > to be public. Without this we make it difficult for contributors to make > > an informed decision at future elections. > > > > Right now, this thread has left me wondering whether there are still any > > projects which are using password protected IRC channels, or whether they > > have all been deleted, and whether I will be unwittingly voting for people > > who supported their use in future openstack elections. > > > > Shaming a person is a last resort, when that person may not listen to > reason. It's sometimes necessary to bring shame to a practice, but even > then, those who are participating are now draped in shame as well and > will have a hard time saving face. This really isn't about trying to shame people, rather it is about having accountability in the open. If the accusations of running private IRC channels were false, then yes, it would be an example of shaming to then publicise those who were accused. Since it is confirmed that private password protected IRC channels do in fact exist, then we need to have the explanations as to why this was done be made in public. The community can then decide whether the explanations offered provide sufficient justification. This isn't about shaming, it is about each individual being able to decide for themselves as to whether what happened was acceptable, given the explanations. 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 Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Excerpts from Ed Leafe's message of 2015-02-17 10:11:01 -0800: > On Feb 17, 2015, at 11:29 AM, Clint Byrum wrote: > > > Shaming a person is a last resort, when that person may not listen to > > reason. It's sometimes necessary to bring shame to a practice, but even > > then, those who are participating are now draped in shame as well and > > will have a hard time saving face. > > Why must pointing out that someone is doing something incorrectly necessarily > "shaming"? Those of us who review code do that all the time; telling someone > that there is a better way to code something is certainly not shaming, since > we all benefit from those suggestions. > Funny you should bring that up, that may be an entirely new branch of this thread which is how harmful some of our review practices are to overall community harmony. I definitely think there's a small amount of unhealthy shaming in reviews, and a not small amount of non-constructive criticism. Saying "This code is not covered by tests." or "You could make this less complex by using a generator." is constructive criticism that has as little shaming effect as possible without beating around the bush. This is the very definition of _educating_. However, being entirely subjective and attacking stylistic issues (please know that I'm not claiming innocence at all here) does damage to the relationship between coder and review team. Of course, a discussion of style has a place, but I believe that place is in a private conversation, not out in the open where it will almost certainly bring shame to the submitter. > Sure, you can also be a jerk about how you tell someone they can improve, but > that's certainly not the norm in this community. > I agree that the subjective stylistic nit picking comes in a polite way. I think that only softens the blow to someone's ego and still conveys a level of disrespect that will eventually erode the level of trust between the submitter and the project as a whole. So, somewhat ironically, I think the right place to make subjective observations about someone's work is in a private message. Unfortunately, I think humans are quite subjective themselves, and so what might be too harsh and shameful to one ego, might be just the right thing to educate the next. Calibration of one's criticism practices is one of those things I'm sure most of us geeks would like to think we don't have to worry about. However, I think it is worthwhile to consider it before making any critique, especially when one doesn't know the recipient of the critique extremely well. __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Feb 17, 2015, at 11:29 AM, Clint Byrum wrote: > Shaming a person is a last resort, when that person may not listen to > reason. It's sometimes necessary to bring shame to a practice, but even > then, those who are participating are now draped in shame as well and > will have a hard time saving face. Why must pointing out that someone is doing something incorrectly necessarily "shaming"? Those of us who review code do that all the time; telling someone that there is a better way to code something is certainly not shaming, since we all benefit from those suggestions. Sure, you can also be a jerk about how you tell someone they can improve, but that's certainly not the norm in this community. -- Ed Leafe signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Excerpts from Daniel P. Berrange's message of 2015-02-17 02:37:50 -0800: > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 03:14:39PM +0100, Stefano Maffulli wrote: > > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > > > > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > > > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > > > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > > > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > > > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > > > This is seriously disturbing. > > > > If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, > > please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as > > a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. > > > > No public shaming, please: education first. > > I've been thinking about these last few lines a bit, I'm not entirely > comfortable with the dynamic this sets up. > > What primarily concerns me is the issue of community accountability. A core > feature of OpenStack's project & individual team governance is the idea > of democractic elections, where the individual contributors can vote in > people who they think will lead OpenStack in a positive way, or conversely > hold leadership to account by voting them out next time. The ability of > individuals contributors to exercise this freedom though, relies on the > voters being well informed about what is happening in the community. > > If cases of bad community behaviour, such as use of passwd protected IRC > channels, are always primarily dealt with via further private communications, > then we are denying the voters the information they need to hold people to > account. I can understand the desire to avoid publically shaming people > right away, because the accusations may be false, or may be arising from a > simple mis-understanding, but at some point genuine issues like this need > to be public. Without this we make it difficult for contributors to make > an informed decision at future elections. > > Right now, this thread has left me wondering whether there are still any > projects which are using password protected IRC channels, or whether they > have all been deleted, and whether I will be unwittingly voting for people > who supported their use in future openstack elections. > Shaming a person is a last resort, when that person may not listen to reason. It's sometimes necessary to bring shame to a practice, but even then, those who are participating are now draped in shame as well and will have a hard time saving face. However, if we show respect to peoples' ideas, and take the time not only to educate them on our values, but also to educate ourselves about what motivates that practice, then I think we will have a much easier time changing, or even accepting, these behaviors. __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 17/02/15 10:44 -0500, Doug Hellmann wrote: On Tue, Feb 17, 2015, at 05:37 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 03:14:39PM +0100, Stefano Maffulli wrote: > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > This is seriously disturbing. > > If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, > please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as > a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. > > No public shaming, please: education first. I've been thinking about these last few lines a bit, I'm not entirely comfortable with the dynamic this sets up. What primarily concerns me is the issue of community accountability. A core feature of OpenStack's project & individual team governance is the idea of democractic elections, where the individual contributors can vote in people who they think will lead OpenStack in a positive way, or conversely hold leadership to account by voting them out next time. The ability of individuals contributors to exercise this freedom though, relies on the voters being well informed about what is happening in the community. If cases of bad community behaviour, such as use of passwd protected IRC channels, are always primarily dealt with via further private communications, then we are denying the voters the information they need to hold people to account. I can understand the desire to avoid publically shaming people right away, because the accusations may be false, or may be arising from a simple mis-understanding, but at some point genuine issues like this need to be public. Without this we make it difficult for contributors to make an informed decision at future elections. Right now, this thread has left me wondering whether there are still any projects which are using password protected IRC channels, or whether they have all been deleted, and whether I will be unwittingly voting for people who supported their use in future openstack elections. I trust Stef, as one of our Community Managers, to investigate and report back. Let's give that a little time, and allow for the fact that with travel and other things going on it may take a while. I've added it to the TC agenda [1] for next week so we can check in to see where things stand. Doug [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings/TechnicalCommittee#Agenda Thanks! FWIW, I'm share Dan's concerns with regards to generating community awareness on what's considered a violation of openness not being enough. The issues discussed in this thread have a broader impact than just openness. Also, the channel still exists, despite dropping it being so simple: /msg chanserv drop #your-super-secret-channel But even if that drop happens in the next couple of minutes, I'd really love for us to find a better way to generate more awareness on these topics. The whole problem goes even beyond that channel existing now but the fact that it's been around for >1 year. This thread also meantioned other things that violate our openness. For instance: - Closed phone calls considered the place for making *final* decisions - Closed planning tools with restricted access. Nothing bad about using external tools as far as they remain OPEN. - Assuming 1 medium "is the right tool for everything" without taking under consideration other aspects of our community (TZ, language, etc). Again, thanks for making this point a priority for the TC as well, looking forward to the next TC meeting, I'll try to be there. Cheers, Flavio 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 Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev -- @flaper87 Flavio Percoco pgpWOvxKuDDsl.pgp Description: PGP signature __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Tue, Feb 17, 2015, at 05:37 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 03:14:39PM +0100, Stefano Maffulli wrote: > > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > > > > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > > > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > > > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > > > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > > > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > > > This is seriously disturbing. > > > > If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, > > please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as > > a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. > > > > No public shaming, please: education first. > > I've been thinking about these last few lines a bit, I'm not entirely > comfortable with the dynamic this sets up. > > What primarily concerns me is the issue of community accountability. A > core > feature of OpenStack's project & individual team governance is the idea > of democractic elections, where the individual contributors can vote in > people who they think will lead OpenStack in a positive way, or > conversely > hold leadership to account by voting them out next time. The ability of > individuals contributors to exercise this freedom though, relies on the > voters being well informed about what is happening in the community. > > If cases of bad community behaviour, such as use of passwd protected IRC > channels, are always primarily dealt with via further private > communications, > then we are denying the voters the information they need to hold people > to > account. I can understand the desire to avoid publically shaming people > right away, because the accusations may be false, or may be arising from > a > simple mis-understanding, but at some point genuine issues like this need > to be public. Without this we make it difficult for contributors to make > an informed decision at future elections. > > Right now, this thread has left me wondering whether there are still any > projects which are using password protected IRC channels, or whether they > have all been deleted, and whether I will be unwittingly voting for > people > who supported their use in future openstack elections. I trust Stef, as one of our Community Managers, to investigate and report back. Let's give that a little time, and allow for the fact that with travel and other things going on it may take a while. I've added it to the TC agenda [1] for next week so we can check in to see where things stand. Doug [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings/TechnicalCommittee#Agenda > > 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 Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Unsubscribe: > openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 03:14:39PM +0100, Stefano Maffulli wrote: > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > This is seriously disturbing. > > If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, > please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as > a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. > > No public shaming, please: education first. I've been thinking about these last few lines a bit, I'm not entirely comfortable with the dynamic this sets up. What primarily concerns me is the issue of community accountability. A core feature of OpenStack's project & individual team governance is the idea of democractic elections, where the individual contributors can vote in people who they think will lead OpenStack in a positive way, or conversely hold leadership to account by voting them out next time. The ability of individuals contributors to exercise this freedom though, relies on the voters being well informed about what is happening in the community. If cases of bad community behaviour, such as use of passwd protected IRC channels, are always primarily dealt with via further private communications, then we are denying the voters the information they need to hold people to account. I can understand the desire to avoid publically shaming people right away, because the accusations may be false, or may be arising from a simple mis-understanding, but at some point genuine issues like this need to be public. Without this we make it difficult for contributors to make an informed decision at future elections. Right now, this thread has left me wondering whether there are still any projects which are using password protected IRC channels, or whether they have all been deleted, and whether I will be unwittingly voting for people who supported their use in future openstack elections. 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 Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
I was traveling for two days, and I miss a great thread like this. Go figure! One comment in-line. On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 3:55 AM, Flavio Percoco wrote: > Greetings all, > > During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the > things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving > to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing > these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my > concerns. > > Since I believe we all work with good faith and we *all* should assume > such when it comes to things happening in our community, I won't make > names and I won't point fingers - yes, I don't have enough fingers to > point based on the info I have. People that fall into the groups I'll > mention below know that I'm talking to them. > > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private > discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you > went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's > good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I > don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and > that you had enough consensus. > > Furthermore, you should consider that having private conversations, at > the very end, doesn't help with speeding up discussions. We've a > community of people who *care* about the project they're working on. > This means that whenever they see something that doesn't make much > sense, they'll chime in and ask for clarification. If there was a > private discussion on that topic, you'll have to provide the details > of such discussion and bring that person up to date, which means the > discussion will basically start again... from scratch. > > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. > > If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of > most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the > mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting > with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something > that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing > list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in > your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* > > Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. > We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take > advantage of it? > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > This is not right and I don't believe "core reviewers" (note I did not just say core, but core reviewer) are special in any way. In fact, they are likely less special because they have a huge responsibility: Reviewing code in a timely manner and merging changes to close bugs and features! This is nothing special other than much more additional work. I think more projects need to do a better job of ensuring their core reviewers are actually reviewing code, and it's a good idea to in fact cycle core reviewers in and out more frequently. Otherwise, a sense of entitlement can in fact occur, and this is where things go bad. > This is the point where my good faith assumption skill falls short. > Seriously, don't get me wrong but: WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F**K? > > THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING PRIVATE FOR CORE REVIEWERS* TO > DISCUSS. > > If anything core reviewers should be the ones *FORCING* - it seems > that *encouraging* doesn't have the same effect anymore - *OPENNESS* in > order to include other non-core members in those discussions. > > Remember that the "core" flag is granted because of the reviews that > person has provided and because that individual *WANTS* to be part of > it. It's not a prize for people. In fact, I consider core reviewers to > be volunteers and their job is infinitely thanked. > > This is a very good point and I agree with it. > Since, "All generalizations are false, including this one. - Mark > Twain", I'm pretty sure there are folks that disagree with the above. > If you do, I care about your thoughts. This is wor
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Stefano Maffulli wrote: >> And so far, no real indication of why IRC is worse than a private >> phone call or a water-cooler conversation on a regular basis. > > Multiple people have explained why already and you're choosing to ignore > their words: permanent private IRC channels are a bad habit that > reinforces a bad, anti-social behavior. When people develop the habit of > hanging out separately from the rest, aristocracies start to emerge. > That's bad for an open and democratic meritocracy like OpenStack. Right. The danger of a permanent private channel is that, when one is readily available, participants will end up having most of their discussions there. And when they do, it fragments your community between those with access and those without. We don't have elite committers in OpenStack, everyone produces code and everyone reviews code. That's a critical part of how we do development. The pain of setting up a private channel when necessary to solve exceptional issues ensures that it stays exceptional. The fact that it's not permanent makes sure you don't fall into the trap of discussing something there that should just be discussed on a public channel instead. Because as I said elsewhere in this thread, it's only human nature, when you have the choice between a channel where only your friends are, and a channel where anyone could listen, you'll naturally prefer starting discussions in the restricted channel. It takes a significant amount of effort on all participants to just use this convenient and permanent channel for the exceptional topics that may benefit from extra privacy. And that effort is getting bigger as long as the channel survives. -- Thierry Carrez (ttx) __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Thu, 2015-02-12 at 16:01 +, Amrith Kumar wrote: > How is a private IRC channel any different from a culture of private > discussions? Having a chat over lunch, in the hallway, on the > telephone, etc., I will articulate again why I think that a group of leaders of OpenStack *should not* establish a *permanent* private channel for them to hang out. This community values openness, all the leaders of this community are accessible, have open-door policies. This community (call it 'organization' if you prefer) has values and habits, all revolve around public and accessible discussions. A *permanent* private channel for OpenStack has nothing to do in this community and should not exist. The causes for this permanent channel need to be identified and removed. > Let me be honest with you and say this. If you or someone else can > show me a good reason why the IRC channel (password protected) that I > participate in is somehow bad for open communication, I will be happy > to fix that. No, sorry, it has to be the other way around: we've been having IRC public channels and public conversations for years and we've created one of the largest, probably the fastest growing open source collaboration out there. It's up to you to demonstrate why you need a private *permanent* channel. > And so far, no real indication of why IRC is worse than a private > phone call or a water-cooler conversation on a regular basis. Multiple people have explained why already and you're choosing to ignore their words: permanent private IRC channels are a bad habit that reinforces a bad, anti-social behavior. When people develop the habit of hanging out separately from the rest, aristocracies start to emerge. That's bad for an open and democratic meritocracy like OpenStack. > Stefano, I agree. Private conversations should be the norm. That's not what I wanted to say. I'm saying the exact opposite: Private conversations should *not* be the norm, even though they happen often and are necessary, channes for private conversations should be created ad-hoc when/where needed and destroyed afterwards. If we need private conversations so much to justify the creation of an elitarian place for people to permanently hangout there we have a very large problem that needs to be fixed. Why do you need to hang out in private with fellow developers? /stef __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Thu, 12 Feb 2015, Flavio Percoco wrote: On 11/02/15 11:24 +, Chris Dent wrote: I think it is time we recognize and act on the fact that the corporate landlords that pay many of us to farm on this land need to provide more resources. This will help to ensure the health of semi-artifical opensource ecology that is OpenStack. At the moment many things are packed tight with very little room to breathe. We need some air. I agree with lots of what you said except for this last bit here. I don't believe OpenStack is a "semi-artificial opensrouce ecology". OpenStack has demostrated throughout the years the ability of growing without sacrificing openness. Sorry that probably comes across sounding much more negative than I intended. What I was trying to say was that there is an avenue that is probably worth exploring to help with some of the issues that overwhelm each of as individuals: Implore the corporate entities that pay us to provide more resources so that there is more room within the community for people to work on things with less pressure. There are significant numbers of us who work on OpenStack because it is our job. Mind you its a pretty cool job with lots of interesting people and good stuff to learn, but it is a job; one in which money is a factor. That money is being applied by the corporate entities because it is in their interest for this thing called OpenStack to be created _and_ that it be created in the collaborative fashion provided by opensource. A lot of people are finding it hard to be as effective as they'd like to be. One way (of presumably many) to deal with that is to make sure the economic beneficiaries are fully aware of the situation. If they are rational actors they may wish to do something to improve the situation. Saying OpenStack is "semi-artificial opensource" is degrading some of the things most of us have been fighting for. I'm not offended, just worried. We've many similar messages from outside the community and having them coming from within the community is worrisome. a) I'm relatively new, so am fairly fresh-face and naive and willing to make somewhat stupid generalities based on things not being like what I'm used to. This has its pros and cons... b) I've been doing some form of FLOSS software on unix-like machines since long before the term opensource was popularized. I'm not scratching an itch or working on a problem that is solved by making OpenStack better. I made a lot of changes to PAM a long time ago because I needed better auth on the servers I managed. Today I work on OpenStack because the combination of pay and learning opportunities make it a reasonable job. There are lots of people like me. b is what makes it semi-artificial. I'm not stating it as a pejorative. Corporate opensource is a grand thing and I'm very happy to see it exist, but it's _different_ from old(er) school itch- scratching opensource, more...constructed? All I'm saying is that we should recognize that difference and use it where it could be useful. In practical terms: let's get the landlords to open up the purse a bit. I think this is a reasonable request: If your computer no longer has enough memory to do your job you ask your manager to get your more RAM. Pretty similar thing going on here. What the OpenStack community did and does is truly remarkable and that it has done it while maintaining its opensource cred is a credit to people like yourself who have kept up the good fight. It's a very complex environment. That said, I may have mis-understood what you meant so, please correct me if I did. Tired and I should've probably waited 'til tomorrow before replying. Oh well, :D I may be in the same boat. -- Chris Dent tw:@anticdent freenode:cdent https://tank.peermore.com/tanks/cdent __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 2015-02-12 18:34:56 +0100 (+0100), Flavio Percoco wrote: [...] > we *don't* have a public voip channel [...] Well, technically we do if you want one. https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Conferencing But of course the logistics around all the project connecting in and talking at once would be a bit nightmarish. -- Jeremy Stanley __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 12/02/15 12:04 +, Chris Dent wrote: On Thu, 12 Feb 2015, Flavio Percoco wrote: The important bit, thoguh, is that email is meant for asynchronous communication and IRC isn't. If things that require the intervention of other folks from the community are being discussed and those folks are not on IRC, it'd be wrong to consider the topic as "discussed". This is really the crux of the biscuit and thank you for continuing to bring it back round to this point. My personal experience of OpenStack has been that unless I am * on IRC (too) many hours per day * going to (too) many IRC meetings when I should be doing something interesting with my family * watching a fair few spec and governance gerrits then I will miss out on not just the decision making _process_ for things which are relevant to the work I need or want to do and plan for but also the _decisions_ themselves. For example how many people really know the extent and impact of the big tent governance plans? Ideally I should be able to delegate a lot of this farming for information to other people in the community but that only works if there is a habit by those others of summarizing to the mailing list. (Which goes back to my earlier point about of "gosh aren't we all a bit busy?") These are good observations and they impact 2 things. How things are communicated and our *phisical* ability to cover many things. W.r.t the later, it's hard to know when something simple is not part of our responsabilities and that we should delegate to others (this goes back to what you said in your other email). That said, I think a key point in understanding when something is not OK with the way your community (in this case project) communicates is by analyzing what the effort you need to put on keeping yourself updated is. If you need ninja-skills to avoid missing things in the project you're working on, then IMHO there's something wrong. The above is why I mentioned in one of my previous replies that email should be the default. I hate emails, really, but It'd take me way more to dig into all the IRC logs and ping people than just reading more emails. If that weren't enough, there're also timezones and a whole bunch of other things related to this. I guess what I want to say here - besides that I should probably stop for today - is that we should strive to make it easier for people to participate in discussions - keeping in mind all the things related to this, Nikola elaborated a quite good list in one of his replies - but we also should be very careful with "burnouts". But that probably deserves a different thread. Flavio -- Chris Dent tw:@anticdent freenode:cdent https://tank.peermore.com/tanks/cdent __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev -- @flaper87 Flavio Percoco pgpc3lHpFPmP2.pgp Description: PGP signature __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 11/02/15 11:24 +, Chris Dent wrote: On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, Flavio Percoco wrote: During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my concerns. Thanks for writing this. I agree with pretty much everything you say, especially the focus on the mailing list being only truly available and persistent medium we have for engaging everyone. Yes it is noisy and takes work, but it is an important part of the work. I'm not certain, but I have an intuition that many of the suboptimal and moving-in-the-direction-of-closed behaviors that you're describing are the result of people trying to cope with having too much to do with insufficient tools. Technology projects often sacrifice the management of information in favor of what's believed to be the core task (making stuff?) when there are insufficient resources. This is unfortunate because the effective sharing and management of information is the fuel that drives, optimizes and corrects the entire process and thus leads to more effective making of stuff. This thread and many of the threads going around lately speak a lot about people not being able to participate in a way that lets them generate the most quality -- either because there's insufficient time and energy to move the mountain or because each move they make opens up another rabbit hole. As many have said this is not sustainable. Many of the proposed strategies or short term tactics involve trying to hack the system so that work that is perceived to be extraneous is removed or made secondary. This won't fix it. I think it is time we recognize and act on the fact that the corporate landlords that pay many of us to farm on this land need to provide more resources. This will help to ensure the health of semi-artifical opensource ecology that is OpenStack. At the moment many things are packed tight with very little room to breathe. We need some air. I agree with lots of what you said except for this last bit here. I don't believe OpenStack is a "semi-artificial opensrouce ecology". OpenStack has demostrated throughout the years the ability of growing without sacrificing openness. Have there been cases where we've failed to do so? Probably but there's always someone that raises the red-flag and calls out the community on the things that are not working well enough. Saying OpenStack is "semi-artificial opensource" is degrading some of the things most of us have been fighting for. I'm not offended, just worried. We've many similar messages from outside the community and having them coming from within the community is worrisome. That said, I may have mis-understood what you meant so, please correct me if I did. Tired and I should've probably waited 'til tomorrow before replying. Oh well, :D Cheers, Flavio -- @flaper87 Flavio Percoco pgpAgmbwI00Mk.pgp Description: PGP signature __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
pinion that this is a misguided notion, and suggest that in the interest of the shared goal that we have (open communication, ...) that we address the real problems and build the right behaviors. I've mentioned in several different ways how these private channels harm our community by excluding other folks and making them feel un-priviledged. If you think that's not enough then I'll ask you to give me access to both the cannel and its logs and I'll show you how it harms our community. We've been working really hard to prevent all kind of *priviledges* out of this community. I don't expect the "no-private-irc-channel" thing to fix all the problems we have but it's a matter of principles and education. The problem is not the water-cooler/phone conversations you have but the impact these conversations have in the community. I've been part of many beer-cooler conversations and they all ended in, lets bring this up to the community. However, I can assure you that there was no tag on the beer-cooler with written "if you ain't core you ain't drinking". This means that those discussions were still open (and ended open) and they were also welcoming and free as in "free beer". Cheers, Flavio Stefano writes, | On Thu, 2015-02-12 at 10:37 +0100, Thierry Carrez wrote: | > Right. You can't prevent occasional private discussions and pings, and | > you shouldn't. It's when you encourage and officialize them (by for | > example creating a channel for them) that things start to go bad. | | Yes, that's very bad. Private IRC channels are a bad habit that reinforces | a bad, anti-social behavior. And IRC is mostly a habit: I join tens of | channels but I regularly read one or two. Most people I know have similar | habits. | | Private conversations are a fact of life but in OpenStack space they | should be the *exception*, created when needed and destroyed after the | crisis. | | I have private conversations all the time: they are about specific | individuals, include sensitive data, legal issues that cannot be diffused | and similar. I create a private channel or a PM for that conversation | only. | | I don't hang out with others in a private channel: that's a very bad | habit. if you have a private channel you hangout there, you'll read that | channel, share jokes on that and will eventually throw in there topics to | discuss that are perfectly safe to discuss publicly. Stefano, I agree. Private conversations should be the norm. And private conversations that circumvent the public discussion decision making process are bad. Why then the specific demonization of private IRC in particular? My 2c, and thanks for surfacing this issue and keeping this conversation in the open. -amrith -- Amrith Kumar, CTO Tesora (www.tesora.com) Twitter: @amrithkumar IRC: amrith @freenode | -Original Message- | From: Flavio Percoco [mailto:fla...@redhat.com] | Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2015 3:06 AM | To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) | Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets | fight for it | | On 11/02/15 17:19 +, Amrith Kumar wrote: | | [snip] | | >Mostly, I'm very happy to see Flavio's email which ends with this: | > | >> All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for | >> the openness of our community and encourage everyone to make that a | >> must have thing in each sub-community. You don't need to be core- | reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community as open | as possible. | > | >Open decision making and discussion are absolutely the lifeblood of an | open source community. And I agree, as an ATC I will fight for the open | discussion and decision making. In equal measure, I recognize that I'm | human and there are times when a quiet "sidebar" with someone, either on | the telephone, or over a glass of suitable beverage can go further and | quicker than any extent of public conversation with the exact same | participants. | > | >You write: | > | >| This is seriously disturbing. | > | >Yes, what would be seriously disturbing would be if there were decisions | being made without the open/public scrutiny. | > | >There seems to be a leap-of-faith that a private IRC channel implies | covert decisions and therefore they should be shutdown. OK, great, the | Twenty-First Amendment took the same point of view, see how well that | worked out. | > | >I assure you that later today, tomorrow, and the next day, I will have | private conversations with other ATC's. Some will be on the telephone, and | some will be on public IRC channels with some totally unique name that | you'd never know to guess. But, I will try my best to, and I welcome the | feedback when people feel that I deviate from
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 2015-02-12 17:20:37 +0100 (+0100), Alan Pevec wrote: > Discussing CVEs in private came up few times but I'm not sure IRC > is secure enough for that. IMHO discussion about embargoed issues > must be kept in private Launchpad bugs but I'd like to hear from > VMT team. I do from time to time /msg a security review liaison for some particular project to bring a new vulnerability report to their attention or prod them to put a status update in an embargoed bug. I connect to IRC via SSL/TLS, authenticate and protect my nick through the network's nickserv bot and hope most of them follow the same precautions. Nevertheless I do try not to discuss specifics, but rather keep those brief exchanges vague/general. In the end I'm not sure private, encrypted, authenticated discussion in IRC is substantially less secure than having a bug set to private in launchpad though (after all, I and the rest of the project infrastructure admins don't run either freenode nor launchpad so we're beholden to them to keep their services above board regardless). The VMT also do collectively have brief private discussions with one another via a variety of secured media around logistics/coordination efforts and to perform last-minute checks of our advisory texts prior to disclosure, but I don't want to paint the VMT in a special light here and feel that the point of all this is that the result of any such discussions should be reflected in public as soon as it is safe to do so (be that making the bug visible to everyone, sending an OSSA to various mailing lists, pushing patches into Gerrit, et cetera). -- Jeremy Stanley signature.asc Description: Digital signature __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
>> I think there's a place for >> private conversation (eg. discussing a security issue that corresponds >> to a CVE... > CVE's are a special exception and I'd even argue on the need of > private conversations there. Discussing CVEs in private came up few times but I'm not sure IRC is secure enough for that. IMHO discussion about embargoed issues must be kept in private Launchpad bugs but I'd like to hear from VMT team. Cheers, Alan __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
open". Finally, you write: | Our community is far from perfect but lets try to not make it worse. | So, if you are participating in a private IRC channel, I ask you to please | reconsider leaving such medium and encourage the openness. Let me be honest with you and say this. If you or someone else can show me a good reason why the IRC channel (password protected) that I participate in is somehow bad for open communication, I will be happy to fix that. And so far, no real indication of why IRC is worse than a private phone call or a water-cooler conversation on a regular basis. So if you think that eliminating private IRC channels will solve some problem, I have to tell you that this it is my considered opinion that this is a misguided notion, and suggest that in the interest of the shared goal that we have (open communication, ...) that we address the real problems and build the right behaviors. Stefano writes, | On Thu, 2015-02-12 at 10:37 +0100, Thierry Carrez wrote: | > Right. You can't prevent occasional private discussions and pings, and | > you shouldn't. It's when you encourage and officialize them (by for | > example creating a channel for them) that things start to go bad. | | Yes, that's very bad. Private IRC channels are a bad habit that reinforces | a bad, anti-social behavior. And IRC is mostly a habit: I join tens of | channels but I regularly read one or two. Most people I know have similar | habits. | | Private conversations are a fact of life but in OpenStack space they | should be the *exception*, created when needed and destroyed after the | crisis. | | I have private conversations all the time: they are about specific | individuals, include sensitive data, legal issues that cannot be diffused | and similar. I create a private channel or a PM for that conversation | only. | | I don't hang out with others in a private channel: that's a very bad | habit. if you have a private channel you hangout there, you'll read that | channel, share jokes on that and will eventually throw in there topics to | discuss that are perfectly safe to discuss publicly. Stefano, I agree. Private conversations should be the norm. And private conversations that circumvent the public discussion decision making process are bad. Why then the specific demonization of private IRC in particular? My 2c, and thanks for surfacing this issue and keeping this conversation in the open. -amrith -- Amrith Kumar, CTO Tesora (www.tesora.com) Twitter: @amrithkumar IRC: amrith @freenode | -Original Message- | From: Flavio Percoco [mailto:fla...@redhat.com] | Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2015 3:06 AM | To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) | Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets | fight for it | | On 11/02/15 17:19 +, Amrith Kumar wrote: | | [snip] | | >Mostly, I'm very happy to see Flavio's email which ends with this: | > | >> All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for | >> the openness of our community and encourage everyone to make that a | >> must have thing in each sub-community. You don't need to be core- | reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community as open | as possible. | > | >Open decision making and discussion are absolutely the lifeblood of an | open source community. And I agree, as an ATC I will fight for the open | discussion and decision making. In equal measure, I recognize that I'm | human and there are times when a quiet "sidebar" with someone, either on | the telephone, or over a glass of suitable beverage can go further and | quicker than any extent of public conversation with the exact same | participants. | > | >You write: | > | >| This is seriously disturbing. | > | >Yes, what would be seriously disturbing would be if there were decisions | being made without the open/public scrutiny. | > | >There seems to be a leap-of-faith that a private IRC channel implies | covert decisions and therefore they should be shutdown. OK, great, the | Twenty-First Amendment took the same point of view, see how well that | worked out. | > | >I assure you that later today, tomorrow, and the next day, I will have | private conversations with other ATC's. Some will be on the telephone, and | some will be on public IRC channels with some totally unique name that | you'd never know to guess. But, I will try my best to, and I welcome the | feedback when people feel that I deviate from the norm of ensuring public, | open discussion and decision making where all are invited to participate. | > | >Personally, I think the focus on password protected IRC channels is a | distraction from the real issue that we need to ensure that the rapidly | growing community is one where public discussion and decision making are | still
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 2015-02-12 10:35:18 + (+), Kuvaja, Erno wrote: [...] > I'd like to point out that that this discussion has been pushing > all inclusive open approach. Not ATC, not specially approved > individuals, but everyone. Mailing list can easily facilitate > participation of everyone who wishes to do so. Summits cannot. If > we pull the line to ATCs and specially invited individuals, we can > throw this whole topic to the trash as 90% of the discussed was > just dismissed. [...] And perhaps I too should have been more clear. Plenty of people who have not contributed a patch to a project but contribute to the community in other ways also get free passes to the conference and qualify for travel assistance funding. It's just that we have an easy way to track code contributions so we can wrap some automation around that (along with people who have speaking proposals accepted, who assist as track chairs, who volunteer to assist with day-of tasks for the conference, et cetera), but anyone else who is consistently contributing should feel free to reach out and request complimentary passes or assistance. -- Jeremy Stanley __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Thu, 2015-02-12 at 10:37 +0100, Thierry Carrez wrote: > Right. You can't prevent occasional private discussions and pings, and > you shouldn't. It's when you encourage and officialize them (by for > example creating a channel for them) that things start to go bad. Yes, that's very bad. Private IRC channels are a bad habit that reinforces a bad, anti-social behavior. And IRC is mostly a habit: I join tens of channels but I regularly read one or two. Most people I know have similar habits. Private conversations are a fact of life but in OpenStack space they should be the *exception*, created when needed and destroyed after the crisis. I have private conversations all the time: they are about specific individuals, include sensitive data, legal issues that cannot be diffused and similar. I create a private channel or a PM for that conversation only. I don't hang out with others in a private channel: that's a very bad habit. if you have a private channel you hangout there, you'll read that channel, share jokes on that and will eventually throw in there topics to discuss that are perfectly safe to discuss publicly. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Thu, 2015-02-12 at 10:35 +, Kuvaja, Erno wrote: > I'm not attacking against having summits, I think the face to face > time is incredibly valuable for all kind of things. My point was to > bring up general flaw of the flow between all inclusive decision > making vs. decided in summit session. I have the feeling you're assigning too much importance to the conversations that happen face to face in the summit. Summits are the apex, the end (or one of the final moments) of conversations that started months/weeks before the bi-annual event. They're not the place where an elite shows up, discusses newly revealed topics and decides without involving anyone else. With the design summits being the result of longer conversations, there is very little risk for the relevant people for *that specific* conversation not to be in the room. For those rare occasions, we have setup VoIP bridges and other tools to include them in the room, in real time and have them participate to the decision-making process in full. I don't accept the thought that everything has to go back to the mailing list because that would slow us down *even more*. We're trying to keep a fine balancing act in place here, between speed and execution and inclusion. If someone has troubles going to the Summit, let's talk and solve the problems of the individuals because we can't generalize this issue too much. /stef __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Thu, 12 Feb 2015, Flavio Percoco wrote: The important bit, thoguh, is that email is meant for asynchronous communication and IRC isn't. If things that require the intervention of other folks from the community are being discussed and those folks are not on IRC, it'd be wrong to consider the topic as "discussed". This is really the crux of the biscuit and thank you for continuing to bring it back round to this point. My personal experience of OpenStack has been that unless I am * on IRC (too) many hours per day * going to (too) many IRC meetings when I should be doing something interesting with my family * watching a fair few spec and governance gerrits then I will miss out on not just the decision making _process_ for things which are relevant to the work I need or want to do and plan for but also the _decisions_ themselves. For example how many people really know the extent and impact of the big tent governance plans? Ideally I should be able to delegate a lot of this farming for information to other people in the community but that only works if there is a habit by those others of summarizing to the mailing list. (Which goes back to my earlier point about of "gosh aren't we all a bit busy?") -- Chris Dent tw:@anticdent freenode:cdent https://tank.peermore.com/tanks/cdent __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 02/11/2015 06:20 PM, Clint Byrum wrote: > Excerpts from Nikola Đipanov's message of 2015-02-11 05:26:47 -0800: >> On 02/11/2015 02:13 PM, Sean Dague wrote: >>> >>> If core team members start dropping off external IRC where they are >>> communicating across corporate boundaries, then the local tribal effects >>> start taking over. You get people start talking about the upstream as >>> "them". The moment we get into us vs. them, we've got a problem. >>> Especially when the upstream project is "them". >>> >> >> A lot of assumptions being presented as fact here. >> >> I believe the technical term for the above is 'slippery slope fallacy'. >> > > I don't see that fallacy, though it could descend into that if people > keep pushing in that direction. Where I think Sean did a nice job > stopping short of the slippery slope is that he only identified the step > that is happening _now_, not the next step. > > I tend to agree that right now, if core team members are not talking > on IRC to other core members in the open, whether inside or outside > corporate boundaries, then we do see an us vs. them mentality happen. > It's not "I think thats the next step". I have personally seen that > happening and will work hard to stop it. I think Sean has probably seen > his share of it too, as that is what he described in detail without > publicly shaming anyone or any company (well done Sean). > There are several things I don't agree with in Sean's email, but this one strikes me as particularly annoying, and potentially dangerous. You also reinforce it in your reply. Both of you seem to imply that there is the "right" way to do OpenStack, and be "core" outside of following the development process. The notion is annoying because it leads to exclusivity that Flavio complains about, and is making our community a worse place for that. Different people who can be valuable contributors, have wildly different (to name only a few): personal styles of working, obligations to their own employer, obligations to their family, level of command of the English language, possibility to travel to remote parts of the world, possibility to cross boarders without additional strain on time and finances, possibility to engage in a real-time written discussion, possibility to engage in a real time discussion in person in a language that is not their own in a room full of native speakers of the used language, possibility to engage in real-time discussions effectively. Need I go on... Not only does your and Sean's argument not acknowledge these differences that can easily lead to exclusion of valuable contributors - you actually go as far as to say that unless everyone does it "the right way", the community will be worse for it, and try to back it up with made up stuff like "local tribe effects" (really?! We are talking about adult professional people here). So yes there is a "us" and "them" - but the divide is not where you think it is. This is why I believe an argument like this dropped smack in the middle of a discussion like the one Flavio started is deeply toxic, all fallacies aside. >> We can and _must_ do much better than this on this mailing list! Let's >> drag the discussion level back up! > > I'm certain we can always improve, and I appreciate you taking the time > to have a Gandalf moment to stop the Balrog of fallacy from entering > this thread. We seriously can't let the discussion slip down that > slope.. oh wait. > LOL on the LOTR reference (I look nothing like Gandalf though I may dress like that sometimes). I hope I explained what I meant when I said that this kind of argument really has no place in a discussion about making the community more open by nurturing open communication. > That said, I do want us to talk about uncomfortable things when > necessary. I think this thread is not something where it will be entirely > productive to stay 100% positive throughout. We might just have to use > some negative language along side our positive suggestions to make sure > people have an efficient way to measure their own behavior. > By all means - I only wish there would be more level-headed discussion about the negatives around here. N. __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
> -Original Message- > From: Donald Stufft [mailto:don...@stufft.io] > Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 4:34 PM > To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets > fight for it > > > > On Feb 11, 2015, at 11:15 AM, Jeremy Stanley wrote: > > > > On 2015-02-11 11:31:13 + (+), Kuvaja, Erno wrote: > > [...] > >> If you don't belong to the group of privileged living in the area and > >> receiving free ticket somehow or company paying your participation > >> you're not included. $600 + travel + accommodation is quite hefty > >> premium to be included, not really FOSS. > > [...] > > > > Here I have to respectfully disagree. Anyone who uploads a change to > > an official OpenStack source code repository for review and has it > > approved/merged since Juno release day gets a 100% discount comp > > voucher for the full conference and design summit coming up in May. > > In addition, much like a lot of other large free software projects do > > for their conferences, the OpenStack Foundation sets aside funding[1] > > to cover travel and lodging for participants who need it. > > Let's (continue to) make sure this _is_ "really FOSS," and that any of > > our contributors who want to be involved can be involved. > > > > [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Travel_Support_Program > > For whatever it's worth, I totally agree that the summits don't make > Openstack "not really FOSS" and I think the travel program is great, but I do > just want to point out (as someone for whom travel is not monetarily dificult, > but > logistically) that decision making which requires travel can be exclusive. I > don't personally get too bothered by it but it feels like maybe the > fundamental issue that some are expericing is when there are decisions > being made via a single channel, regardless of if that channel is a phone > call, > IRC, a mailing list, or a design summit. The more channels any particular > decision involves the more likely it is nobody is going to feel like they > didn't > get a chance to participate. > > --- > Donald Stufft > PGP: 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA Thanks Donald, My point exactly even I now see it did not come out really that way. Thanks Jeremy, I'd like to point out that that this discussion has been pushing all inclusive open approach. Not ATC, not specially approved individuals, but everyone. Mailing list can easily facilitate participation of everyone who wishes to do so. Summits cannot. If we pull the line to ATCs and specially invited individuals, we can throw this whole topic to the trash as 90% of the discussed was just dismissed. All, I'm not attacking against having summits, I think the face to face time is incredibly valuable for all kind of things. My point was to bring up general flaw of the flow between all inclusive decision making vs. decided in summit session. - Erno > > > __ > > OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Unsubscribe: OpenStack-dev- > requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 12/02/15 01:41 -0800, Nikhil Manchanda wrote: On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:55 AM, Flavio Percoco wrote: [...] ## Keep discussions open I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and that you had enough consensus. Completely agree with what you've said here. I think there's a place for private conversation (eg. discussing a security issue that corresponds to a CVE, giving folks honest feedback without public shaming, quickly pinging someone, etc.) but when it comes to discussions that have a bearing on a project (albeit however minimal) we need to ensure that all of those happen in the open, so that any interested parties are able to participate. Personally, I have not seen any examples of private talks which have led to making decisions in the absence of community discussion, but if this is happening -- we need to put a definitive stop to it. I have seen it and I've also seen things like: "This was discussed in a call and it's good to go" CVE's are a special exception and I'd even argue on the need of private conversations there. However, lets say there's a private IRC discussion to quickly solve the CVE. Right after such discussion, the feedback *has* to be put on the bug otherwise people reviewing the patch - or even just following the bug - will be missing some context on the proposed solution or state of the discussion. This fallsback to the point that it'll probably take as much time to discuss something privately and then explain it to others than simply keep it open. That's why we have private bugs for CVEs. As far as giving honest feedback goes, that's a "personal" conversation and I don't really care how/where that happens as long as there are no discussions about the project itself. If feeedback w.r.t the project - no individual's comments, performance, work, code, etc - is being discussed, it can perfectly happen in the public channel. [...] ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions happen. If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take advantage of it? We should absolutely take advantage of all forms of communication, and all the tools that we have at our disposal so that we can foster more open and clear communication. However, I do realize that different strokes work for different folks. While many might find it more effective to communicate over email, others find IRC, or even a VOIP call a better way of ironing out differences. I don't think that makes any one method of communication better than others. While I personally believe that every discussion or design conversation that happens on IRC does not need to be taken to the mailing list, there's absolutely nothing that should prohibit anyone in the community from taking a discussion from IRC (or anywhere else) to the mailing list at _any_ time. Probably not every decision but I'd go as far as saying that almost all of them. The reason goes even beyond just openness. The mailing list also brings history, indexed contents, etc. Good thing that many channels have logging enabled. The important bit, thoguh, is that email is meant for asynchronous communication and IRC isn't. If things that require the intervention of other folks from the community are being discussed and those folks are not on IRC, it'd be wrong to consider the topic as "discussed". Will that slow down the work? Yes, likely, but that's the trade-off we're paying to keep things right and keep this community as a place where we all feel comfortable to work in. There's a lot of common sense in the decision of moving discussions to the m-l or not. However, when in doubt, I'd say the mailing list is the way to go.
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Excerpts from Flavio Percoco's message of 2015-02-12 00:13:35 -0800: > On 11/02/15 09:37 -0800, Clint Byrum wrote: > >Excerpts from Stefano Maffulli's message of 2015-02-11 06:14:39 -0800: > >> On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 10:55 +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote: > >> > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > >> > >> It's good to have a reminder every now and then. Thank you Flavio for > >> caring enough to notice bad patterns and for raising a flag. > >> > >> > ## Keep discussions open > >> > > >> > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > >> > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > >> > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > >> > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > >> > discussions sufficient. > >> [...] > >> > >> Well said. Conversations can happen anywhere and any time, but they > >> should stay in open and accessible channels. Consensus needs to be built > >> and decisions need to be shared, agreed upon by the community at large > >> (and mailing lists are the most accessible media we have). > >> > >> That said, it's is very hard to generalize and I'd rather deal/solve > >> specific examples. Sometimes, I'm sure there are episodes when a fast > >> decision was needed and a limited amount of people had to carry the > >> burden of responsibility. Life is hard, software development is hard and > >> general rules sometimes need to be adapted to the reality. Again, too > >> much generalization here for what I'm confortable with. > >> > >> Maybe it's worth repeating that I'm personally (and in my role) > >> available to listen and mediate in cases when communication seems to > >> happen behind closed doors. If you think something unhealthy is > >> happening, talk to me (confidentiality assured). > >> > >> > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > >> > > >> > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > >> > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. > >> > >> Not sure I agree with the causality but, the facts are those: traffic on > >> the list and on IRC is very high (although not increasing anymore > >> [1][2]). > >> > >> > I > >> > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > >> > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > >> > happen. > >> > >> Email is hard, I have the feeling that the vast majority of people use > >> bad (they all suck, no joke) email clients. Lots and lots of email is > >> even worse. Most contributors commit very few patches: the investment > >> for them to configure their MUA to filter our traffic is too high. > >> > >> I have added more topics today to the openstack-dev list[3]. Maybe, > >> besides filtering on the receiving end, we may spend some time > >> explaining how to use mailman topics? I'll draft something on Ask, it > >> may help those that have limited interest in OpenStack. > >> > >> What else can we do to make things better? > >> > > > >I am one of those people who has a highly optimized MUA for mailing list > >reading. It is still hard. Even with one keypress to kill threads from > >view forever, and full text index searching, I still find it takes me > >an hour just to filter the "don't want to see" from the "want to see" > >threads each day. > > > >The filtering on the list-server side I think is not known by everybody, > >and it might be a good idea to socialize it even more, and maybe even > >invest in making the UI for it really straight forward for people to > >use. > > > >That said, even if you just choose [all], and [yourproject], some > >[yourproject] tags are pretty busy. > > Would it be helpful if we share our email clients configs so that > others can use them? I guess we could have a section for this in the > wiki page. > > I'm sure each one of us has his/her own server-side filters so, I > guess we could start with those. > Great idea Flavio. I went ahead and created a github repository with my sup-mail hook which tags everything with openstack-dev. The mail client itself is where most of the magic happens, but being able to read "all the openstack-dev things" and then "all the not openstack-dev things" is quite important to my email workflow. I called the repository "FERK" for "Firehose Email Reading Kit". I'm happy to merge pull requests if people want to share their other email client configurations and also things like procmail filters. https://github.com/SpamapS/ferk __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:55 AM, Flavio Percoco wrote: > [...] > > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private > discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you > went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's > good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I > don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and > that you had enough consensus. > Completely agree with what you've said here. I think there's a place for private conversation (eg. discussing a security issue that corresponds to a CVE, giving folks honest feedback without public shaming, quickly pinging someone, etc.) but when it comes to discussions that have a bearing on a project (albeit however minimal) we need to ensure that all of those happen in the open, so that any interested parties are able to participate. Personally, I have not seen any examples of private talks which have led to making decisions in the absence of community discussion, but if this is happening -- we need to put a definitive stop to it. > [...] > > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. > > If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of > most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the > mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting > with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something > that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing > list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in > your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* > > Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. > We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take > advantage of it? > We should absolutely take advantage of all forms of communication, and all the tools that we have at our disposal so that we can foster more open and clear communication. However, I do realize that different strokes work for different folks. While many might find it more effective to communicate over email, others find IRC, or even a VOIP call a better way of ironing out differences. I don't think that makes any one method of communication better than others. While I personally believe that every discussion or design conversation that happens on IRC does not need to be taken to the mailing list, there's absolutely nothing that should prohibit anyone in the community from taking a discussion from IRC (or anywhere else) to the mailing list at _any_ time. > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > [...] Completely agree with you about cores not being super-heroes. On the latter point though, I'd consider that there's certainly a reasonable subset of conversations that are okay to have in private (like security related issues, and some other examples already cited above). However, if the existence of machinery which makes having such conversations convenient (hangout, private IRC, face-to-face in a closed room, whatever) seems to have a detrimental effect on the spirit of openness in our community, then I would err on the side of caution and dismantle that machinery rather than let our commitment to openness come under fire. > [...] > > All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for > the openness of our community and encourage everyone to make that a > must have thing in each sub-community. You don't need to be > core-reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community > as open as possible. > > Cheers, > Flavio Thanks for putting this together Flavio -- a timely reminder to strive towards keeping our community open and inclusive. It's much appreciated! __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Flavio Percoco wrote: > On 11/02/15 17:19 +, Amrith Kumar wrote: >> Personally, I think the focus on password protected IRC channels is a >> distraction from the real issue that we need to ensure that the >> rapidly growing community is one where public discussion and decision >> making are still "the norm". Let's be adult about it and realize that >> people will have private conversations. What we need to focus on is >> ensuring that the community rejects "private decision making". > > I personally don't care if you have private discussions with other > folks regardless of what their ATC status and impact on the community > is. You're free to do so, I don't plan to critizice that and that's > entirely your problem. However, I do care when those discussions > happen in a private IRC channel because I don't beleive that's neither > good for our community nor necessary. > > It's not good for our community because it *excludes* people that are > not in such channels and it creates the wrong message around what core > means, just like it happened with "integrated" projects and like it > happens with PTLs. In addition to that, it isolates discussions which > is something we've been encouraging people not to do because not > everyone sees it the same way. Right. You can't prevent occasional private discussions and pings, and you shouldn't. It's when you encourage and officialize them (by for example creating a channel for them) that things start to go bad. I've been using IRC for more than 20 years, and with various FOSS communities. I've been in a number of private channels, and they *always* are a slippery slope to a private club, which quickly turns into a clique. Those are cozy and convenient: only your friends are listening, nobody objects with you. It really takes a non-trivial amount of effort on all participants to continue having public discussions where they belong, because it's easier and more natural to talk to a controlled group. When I was working at Canonical, we continually struggled to have the Ubuntu Server discussions in the Freenode #ubuntu-server channel instead of on the Canonical IRC #server channel. That's only human nature. We can't avoid companies setting up private IRC channels. But we can avoid OpenStack project teams from setting those up. And I really think we should. Private discussions should be exceptional rather than the norm, and avoiding setting up IRC channels for them is a great way to ensure they stay exceptional. -- Thierry Carrez (ttx) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 11/02/15 09:37 -0800, Clint Byrum wrote: Excerpts from Stefano Maffulli's message of 2015-02-11 06:14:39 -0800: On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 10:55 +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote: > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. It's good to have a reminder every now and then. Thank you Flavio for caring enough to notice bad patterns and for raising a flag. > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. [...] Well said. Conversations can happen anywhere and any time, but they should stay in open and accessible channels. Consensus needs to be built and decisions need to be shared, agreed upon by the community at large (and mailing lists are the most accessible media we have). That said, it's is very hard to generalize and I'd rather deal/solve specific examples. Sometimes, I'm sure there are episodes when a fast decision was needed and a limited amount of people had to carry the burden of responsibility. Life is hard, software development is hard and general rules sometimes need to be adapted to the reality. Again, too much generalization here for what I'm confortable with. Maybe it's worth repeating that I'm personally (and in my role) available to listen and mediate in cases when communication seems to happen behind closed doors. If you think something unhealthy is happening, talk to me (confidentiality assured). > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. Not sure I agree with the causality but, the facts are those: traffic on the list and on IRC is very high (although not increasing anymore [1][2]). > I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. Email is hard, I have the feeling that the vast majority of people use bad (they all suck, no joke) email clients. Lots and lots of email is even worse. Most contributors commit very few patches: the investment for them to configure their MUA to filter our traffic is too high. I have added more topics today to the openstack-dev list[3]. Maybe, besides filtering on the receiving end, we may spend some time explaining how to use mailman topics? I'll draft something on Ask, it may help those that have limited interest in OpenStack. What else can we do to make things better? I am one of those people who has a highly optimized MUA for mailing list reading. It is still hard. Even with one keypress to kill threads from view forever, and full text index searching, I still find it takes me an hour just to filter the "don't want to see" from the "want to see" threads each day. The filtering on the list-server side I think is not known by everybody, and it might be a good idea to socialize it even more, and maybe even invest in making the UI for it really straight forward for people to use. That said, even if you just choose [all], and [yourproject], some [yourproject] tags are pretty busy. Would it be helpful if we share our email clients configs so that others can use them? I guess we could have a section for this in the wiki page. I'm sure each one of us has his/her own server-side filters so, I guess we could start with those. Cheers, Flavio -- @flaper87 Flavio Percoco pgpD0VSZxPbJY.pgp Description: PGP signature __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 11/02/15 17:19 +, Amrith Kumar wrote: [snip] Mostly, I'm very happy to see Flavio's email which ends with this: All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for the openness of our community and encourage everyone to make that a must have thing in each sub-community. You don't need to be core-reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community as open as possible. Open decision making and discussion are absolutely the lifeblood of an open source community. And I agree, as an ATC I will fight for the open discussion and decision making. In equal measure, I recognize that I'm human and there are times when a quiet "sidebar" with someone, either on the telephone, or over a glass of suitable beverage can go further and quicker than any extent of public conversation with the exact same participants. You write: | This is seriously disturbing. Yes, what would be seriously disturbing would be if there were decisions being made without the open/public scrutiny. There seems to be a leap-of-faith that a private IRC channel implies covert decisions and therefore they should be shutdown. OK, great, the Twenty-First Amendment took the same point of view, see how well that worked out. I assure you that later today, tomorrow, and the next day, I will have private conversations with other ATC's. Some will be on the telephone, and some will be on public IRC channels with some totally unique name that you'd never know to guess. But, I will try my best to, and I welcome the feedback when people feel that I deviate from the norm of ensuring public, open discussion and decision making where all are invited to participate. Personally, I think the focus on password protected IRC channels is a distraction from the real issue that we need to ensure that the rapidly growing community is one where public discussion and decision making are still "the norm". Let's be adult about it and realize that people will have private conversations. What we need to focus on is ensuring that the community rejects "private decision making". I personally don't care if you have private discussions with other folks regardless of what their ATC status and impact on the community is. You're free to do so, I don't plan to critizice that and that's entirely your problem. However, I do care when those discussions happen in a private IRC channel because I don't beleive that's neither good for our community nor necessary. It's not good for our community because it *excludes* people that are not in such channels and it creates the wrong message around what core means, just like it happened with "integrated" projects and like it happens with PTLs. In addition to that, it isolates discussions which is something we've been encouraging people not to do because not everyone sees it the same way. Furthermore, I don't think it is necessary because at the very end you will have to disclose the discussion in order to make it effective upstream. If this is not happening for you then I really don't want to know it because I'd just rage quit. The reason for that is that the only way to push something upstream without disclosing a hallway/phone conversation is by having a small group of folks pushing whatever was discussed quickly enough to avoid other community interactions, which is more than just wrong. Side Note: note that the above is not an accusation but just a speculation based on your previous email and on the fact that I keep fooling myself with the thought that I had seen it all and then finding out new things. Unfortunately, being an adult doesn't seem to be enough, we're lacking of education on how open-source works and it's affecting a community that we've been fighting to keep open and welcoming. If these "casual" private conversations are affecting our community, I'd rather not have them than seeing the work of these last years vanish. Our community is far from perfect but lets try to not make it worse. So, if you are participating in a private IRC channel, I ask you to please reconsider leaving such medium and encourage the openness. One last note. As someone that has mentored for the last three cycles in Outreachy and that also mentored in GSoC in one of those cycles (That makes it 4 programs in 3 cycles), I find it very offensive that people that have been longer in this community do the opposite of what I've been encouraging the participants of these programs to do. That is, having the courage to participate in public discussion and engaging with the community. There, I said it, and I said it in the open. And I infinitely thank you for this. Flavio -- @flaper87 Flavio Percoco pgpu_UbK5FTb3.pgp Description: PGP signature __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mai
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 2015-02-11 14:06:23 -0600 (-0600), Brian Curtin wrote: > If people feel it's a negative or uncomfortable environment, find > out why and try to do something to improve it. Telling someone > that there are worse options out there is the opposite of > fostering an open community. Fair point--I was merely agreeing that sometimes in an effort to keep the community healthy it's necessary to discuss topics which may make some participants uncomfortable and may escalate into heated debate. I certainly didn't mean to imply that we should endeavor to be more like any other particular community, only that we shouldn't be afraid to do so when it's required (and that we're decidedly tame when we do, compared to a lot of other possible examples). -- Jeremy Stanley __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:43 PM, Jeremy Stanley wrote: > Also, if there are people on this list who feel like > discussions here sometimes get negative or uncomfortable, I'm happy > to point you to free software community mailing lists (more than I > can count on all my fingers and toes) whose day-to-day interactions > make the worst of our flame wars (if you can even call them that) > look like a gradeschool holiday pageant by comparison. If people feel it's a negative or uncomfortable environment, find out why and try to do something to improve it. Telling someone that there are worse options out there is the opposite of fostering an open community. __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 2015-02-11 09:20:34 -0800 (-0800), Clint Byrum wrote: [...] > That said, I do want us to talk about uncomfortable things when > necessary. I think this thread is not something where it will be > entirely productive to stay 100% positive throughout. We might > just have to use some negative language along side our positive > suggestions to make sure people have an efficient way to measure > their own behavior. Well said. Also, if there are people on this list who feel like discussions here sometimes get negative or uncomfortable, I'm happy to point you to free software community mailing lists (more than I can count on all my fingers and toes) whose day-to-day interactions make the worst of our flame wars (if you can even call them that) look like a gradeschool holiday pageant by comparison. I'm regularly surprised by how positive and civil we manage to keep things in our corner of the free software world. -- Jeremy Stanley __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 02/11/2015 04:52 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 10:55:18AM +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote: >> Greetings all, >> >> During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the >> things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving >> to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing >> these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my >> concerns. >> >> Since I believe we all work with good faith and we *all* should assume >> such when it comes to things happening in our community, I won't make >> names and I won't point fingers - yes, I don't have enough fingers to >> point based on the info I have. People that fall into the groups I'll >> mention below know that I'm talking to them. >> >> This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. >> >> ## Keep discussions open >> >> I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some >> discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe >> there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. >> HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private >> discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private >> discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you >> went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's >> good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I >> don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and >> that you had enough consensus. > > With the timezones of our worldwide contributors it is pretty much > guaranteed that any realtime phone call will have excluded a part > of our community. > >> Furthermore, you should consider that having private conversations, at >> the very end, doesn't help with speeding up discussions. We've a >> community of people who *care* about the project they're working on. >> This means that whenever they see something that doesn't make much >> sense, they'll chime in and ask for clarification. If there was a >> private discussion on that topic, you'll have to provide the details >> of such discussion and bring that person up to date, which means the >> discussion will basically start again... from scratch. > > I can see that if people have reached an impass in discussions via > email or irc, it is sometimes helpful to have a call to break a > roadblock. I absolutely agree though that the results of any such > calls should not be presented as a final decision. At the very least > it is neccessary to describe the rationale for the POV obtained as > a result of the call, and give the broader community the opportunity > to put forward counterpoints if required. We should certainly not > just say 'its good to go' and +A sommething based on a private call. > >> ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel >> >> I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is >> hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I >> don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong >> to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions >> happen. > > Again, timezones. It is a physical impossibility for most people to > be on IRC for more than 8 hours a day, so that's only 1/3 of the day > that any signle person will likely be on IRC. And no, expecting > people to have a permanently connected IRC proxy and then read the > other 16 hours of logs each morning is not a solution. > > Personally I've stopped joining IRC most the time regardless, because > I feel I am far more productive when I'm not being interrupted with > IRC pings every 20 minutes. There should be few things so urgent that > they can't be dealt with over email. Again because of our timezone > differences we should be wary of making important decisions in a > rush - anything remotely non-trivial should have at least a 24 hour > window to allow people on all timezones a chance to see the point > and join in discussion. > >> If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of >> most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the >> mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting >> with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something >> that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing >> list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in >> your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* >> >> Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. >> We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take >> advantage of it? > > There are alot of IRC meetings that take place in the project: > > https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings > > and alot of decisions get made in these meetings. Very rarely do > the decisions ever get disseminated to the mailing lists. We seem > to rely on the fact that we have IRC logs of the meetings as a way > to communicate what
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
t people will have > private conversations. What we need to focus on is ensuring that the > community rejects "private decision making". > > There, I said it, and I said it in the open. Here's my thing though: Some discussions are by nature private. Phone calls, hallway talks, etc. As a rule, I don't have a problem with those sorts of private conversations because they generally provide a benefit that more public means don't (namely higher bandwidth). As long as they're eventually summarized in public I'm good with that. On the other hand, private IRC discussions are almost never necessary in my experience. I've seriously considered requesting that anyone who PM's me just take it to a public IRC channel. Why? Even if I really am the only person on the internet who can answer a question (unlikely ;-), having my answer out in public may be helpful to someone else. In many cases there are also other people in a public channel who might know something about the topic and be able provide useful input. Making a discussion private severely limits both the people who benefit from it and the people who can contribute to it. Obviously there are exceptions to that - a ping to revisit a review doesn't necessarily need to be in a public channel, but then that isn't really a discussion either so I'm not sure it's the sort of thing we're talking about here. And if that ping turns into a discussion of my review comments then it does belong in public IMHO. -Ben > > -amrith > > -- > > Amrith Kumar, CTO Tesora (www.tesora.com) > > Twitter: @amrithkumar > IRC: amrith @freenode > I work on OpenStack Trove (#openstack-trove) > > > > | -Original Message- > | From: Stefano Maffulli [mailto:stef...@openstack.org] > | Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 9:15 AM > | To: openstack-dev@lists.openstack.org > | Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets > | fight for it > | > | On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 10:55 +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote: > | > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > | > | It's good to have a reminder every now and then. Thank you Flavio for > | caring enough to notice bad patterns and for raising a flag. > | > | > ## Keep discussions open > | > > | > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > | > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > | > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > | > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > | > discussions sufficient. > | [...] > | > | Well said. Conversations can happen anywhere and any time, but they should > | stay in open and accessible channels. Consensus needs to be built and > | decisions need to be shared, agreed upon by the community at large (and > | mailing lists are the most accessible media we have). > | > | That said, it's is very hard to generalize and I'd rather deal/solve > | specific examples. Sometimes, I'm sure there are episodes when a fast > | decision was needed and a limited amount of people had to carry the burden > | of responsibility. Life is hard, software development is hard and general > | rules sometimes need to be adapted to the reality. Again, too much > | generalization here for what I'm confortable with. > | > | Maybe it's worth repeating that I'm personally (and in my role) available > | to listen and mediate in cases when communication seems to happen behind > | closed doors. If you think something unhealthy is happening, talk to me > | (confidentiality assured). > | > | > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > | > > | > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > | > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. > | > | Not sure I agree with the causality but, the facts are those: traffic on > | the list and on IRC is very high (although not increasing anymore [1][2]). > | > | > I > | > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > | > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > | > happen. > | > | Email is hard, I have the feeling that the vast majority of people use bad > | (they all suck, no joke) email clients. Lots and lots of email is even > | worse. Most contributors commit very few patches: the investment for them > | to configure their MUA to filter our traffic is too high. > | > | I have added more topics today to the openstack-dev list[3]. Maybe, > | besides filtering on the receiving end, we may spend some time explaining > | how
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Stefano, I was informed (in a private message on IRC) that where I said "Twenty First amendment" I should have said "Eighteenth Amendment". The former repealed the latter. My apologies to all who were trying to figure out what I may have meant. -amrith P.S. Why I got that in a private message I know not. | -Original Message- | From: Amrith Kumar [mailto:amr...@tesora.com] | Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 12:20 PM | To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) | Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets | fight for it | | Stefano, | | You write: | | | This is seriously disturbing. | | | | If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private | | channel, please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we | | failed as a community at convincing you that an open channel is the | place to be. | | | | No public shaming, please: education first. | | I was going to contact you privately but figured that would be ironic | given the conversation we're having. So here is my reply to you in the | open, for all to see and respond. | | Let me begin by saying that I agree with a lot of what Flavio wrote. | | Where he says that decisions and discussions must always be made in the | open, he is dead-on. | | Where he says that decisions in private are bad, he is dead-on. | | I beg to differ however on the subject of discussions in private | (emphasis: discussions, not decisions). Now that sounds bad but let's | leave private IRC channels aside. | | If you and I had a phone call, that's not a bad thing. What is bad if we | colluded in some way, and made a decision that we then foisted on the | community as a "done deal". | | IRC is a great thing and so is the mailing list. And a lot of | conversations are well suited for those mediums. And I read them regularly | and I find them useful. However, I will admit that there are times when I | just pick up the phone and call a colleague or call some other ATC in | OpenStack. | | As Flavio says in his email: | | | > ## Keep discussions open | | > | | > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some | | > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe | | > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. | | > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private | | > discussions sufficient. | | Further, there are in fact times when members of a core team can have | meaningful discussions about things. Security related bugs are one, on | occasion things like people's conduct (when it is marginal) and I can make | a list of a couple of more things easily, but I think you see the point. | | Given time-zones, long distance costs, and the like, IRC is a good option | as is a private skype call or skype IM. Not everything is suitable for | IRC/mailing list and a public forum. And in some cases since a public IRC | channel with three parallel conversations going can be noisy, a less | cluttered private conversation is invaluable. | | Mostly, I'm very happy to see Flavio's email which ends with this: | | > All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for | > the openness of our community and encourage everyone to make that a | > must have thing in each sub-community. You don't need to be core- | reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community as open | as possible. | | Open decision making and discussion are absolutely the lifeblood of an | open source community. And I agree, as an ATC I will fight for the open | discussion and decision making. In equal measure, I recognize that I'm | human and there are times when a quiet "sidebar" with someone, either on | the telephone, or over a glass of suitable beverage can go further and | quicker than any extent of public conversation with the exact same | participants. | | You write: | | | This is seriously disturbing. | | Yes, what would be seriously disturbing would be if there were decisions | being made without the open/public scrutiny. | | There seems to be a leap-of-faith that a private IRC channel implies | covert decisions and therefore they should be shutdown. OK, great, the | Twenty-First Amendment took the same point of view, see how well that | worked out. | | I assure you that later today, tomorrow, and the next day, I will have | private conversations with other ATC's. Some will be on the telephone, and | some will be on public IRC channels with some totally unique name that | you'd never know to guess. But, I will try my best to, and I welcome the | feedback when people feel that I deviate from the norm of ensuring public, | open discussion and decision making where all are invited to participate. | | Personally, I think the focus on password protected IR
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Excerpts from Stefano Maffulli's message of 2015-02-11 06:14:39 -0800: > On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 10:55 +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote: > > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > > It's good to have a reminder every now and then. Thank you Flavio for > caring enough to notice bad patterns and for raising a flag. > > > ## Keep discussions open > > > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > > discussions sufficient. > [...] > > Well said. Conversations can happen anywhere and any time, but they > should stay in open and accessible channels. Consensus needs to be built > and decisions need to be shared, agreed upon by the community at large > (and mailing lists are the most accessible media we have). > > That said, it's is very hard to generalize and I'd rather deal/solve > specific examples. Sometimes, I'm sure there are episodes when a fast > decision was needed and a limited amount of people had to carry the > burden of responsibility. Life is hard, software development is hard and > general rules sometimes need to be adapted to the reality. Again, too > much generalization here for what I'm confortable with. > > Maybe it's worth repeating that I'm personally (and in my role) > available to listen and mediate in cases when communication seems to > happen behind closed doors. If you think something unhealthy is > happening, talk to me (confidentiality assured). > > > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. > > Not sure I agree with the causality but, the facts are those: traffic on > the list and on IRC is very high (although not increasing anymore > [1][2]). > > > I > > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > > happen. > > Email is hard, I have the feeling that the vast majority of people use > bad (they all suck, no joke) email clients. Lots and lots of email is > even worse. Most contributors commit very few patches: the investment > for them to configure their MUA to filter our traffic is too high. > > I have added more topics today to the openstack-dev list[3]. Maybe, > besides filtering on the receiving end, we may spend some time > explaining how to use mailman topics? I'll draft something on Ask, it > may help those that have limited interest in OpenStack. > > What else can we do to make things better? > I am one of those people who has a highly optimized MUA for mailing list reading. It is still hard. Even with one keypress to kill threads from view forever, and full text index searching, I still find it takes me an hour just to filter the "don't want to see" from the "want to see" threads each day. The filtering on the list-server side I think is not known by everybody, and it might be a good idea to socialize it even more, and maybe even invest in making the UI for it really straight forward for people to use. That said, even if you just choose [all], and [yourproject], some [yourproject] tags are pretty busy. > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > This is seriously disturbing. > > If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, > please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as > a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. > > No public shaming, please: education first. > I really like what you had to say above. I think we can do better and I don't really blame those who've worked around OpenStack's problems with their own solution. Whether or not that solution is in fact quite dangerous for the project as a whole is another matter that we should consider separately from "why did these people feel a need to isolate themselves?" I am confident this community will find a solution that works well enough that we can move past this swiftly. __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Excerpts from Nikola Đipanov's message of 2015-02-11 05:26:47 -0800: > On 02/11/2015 02:13 PM, Sean Dague wrote: > > > > If core team members start dropping off external IRC where they are > > communicating across corporate boundaries, then the local tribal effects > > start taking over. You get people start talking about the upstream as > > "them". The moment we get into us vs. them, we've got a problem. > > Especially when the upstream project is "them". > > > > A lot of assumptions being presented as fact here. > > I believe the technical term for the above is 'slippery slope fallacy'. > I don't see that fallacy, though it could descend into that if people keep pushing in that direction. Where I think Sean did a nice job stopping short of the slippery slope is that he only identified the step that is happening _now_, not the next step. I tend to agree that right now, if core team members are not talking on IRC to other core members in the open, whether inside or outside corporate boundaries, then we do see an us vs. them mentality happen. It's not "I think thats the next step". I have personally seen that happening and will work hard to stop it. I think Sean has probably seen his share of it too, as that is what he described in detail without publicly shaming anyone or any company (well done Sean). > We can and _must_ do much better than this on this mailing list! Let's > drag the discussion level back up! I'm certain we can always improve, and I appreciate you taking the time to have a Gandalf moment to stop the Balrog of fallacy from entering this thread. We seriously can't let the discussion slip down that slope.. oh wait. That said, I do want us to talk about uncomfortable things when necessary. I think this thread is not something where it will be entirely productive to stay 100% positive throughout. We might just have to use some negative language along side our positive suggestions to make sure people have an efficient way to measure their own behavior. __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Stefano, You write: | This is seriously disturbing. | | If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, | please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as a | community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. | | No public shaming, please: education first. I was going to contact you privately but figured that would be ironic given the conversation we're having. So here is my reply to you in the open, for all to see and respond. Let me begin by saying that I agree with a lot of what Flavio wrote. Where he says that decisions and discussions must always be made in the open, he is dead-on. Where he says that decisions in private are bad, he is dead-on. I beg to differ however on the subject of discussions in private (emphasis: discussions, not decisions). Now that sounds bad but let's leave private IRC channels aside. If you and I had a phone call, that's not a bad thing. What is bad if we colluded in some way, and made a decision that we then foisted on the community as a "done deal". IRC is a great thing and so is the mailing list. And a lot of conversations are well suited for those mediums. And I read them regularly and I find them useful. However, I will admit that there are times when I just pick up the phone and call a colleague or call some other ATC in OpenStack. As Flavio says in his email: | > ## Keep discussions open | > | > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some | > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe | > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. | > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private | > discussions sufficient. Further, there are in fact times when members of a core team can have meaningful discussions about things. Security related bugs are one, on occasion things like people's conduct (when it is marginal) and I can make a list of a couple of more things easily, but I think you see the point. Given time-zones, long distance costs, and the like, IRC is a good option as is a private skype call or skype IM. Not everything is suitable for IRC/mailing list and a public forum. And in some cases since a public IRC channel with three parallel conversations going can be noisy, a less cluttered private conversation is invaluable. Mostly, I'm very happy to see Flavio's email which ends with this: > All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for the > openness of our community > and encourage everyone to make that a must have thing in each sub-community. > You don't need to > be core-reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community as > open as possible. Open decision making and discussion are absolutely the lifeblood of an open source community. And I agree, as an ATC I will fight for the open discussion and decision making. In equal measure, I recognize that I'm human and there are times when a quiet "sidebar" with someone, either on the telephone, or over a glass of suitable beverage can go further and quicker than any extent of public conversation with the exact same participants. You write: | This is seriously disturbing. Yes, what would be seriously disturbing would be if there were decisions being made without the open/public scrutiny. There seems to be a leap-of-faith that a private IRC channel implies covert decisions and therefore they should be shutdown. OK, great, the Twenty-First Amendment took the same point of view, see how well that worked out. I assure you that later today, tomorrow, and the next day, I will have private conversations with other ATC's. Some will be on the telephone, and some will be on public IRC channels with some totally unique name that you'd never know to guess. But, I will try my best to, and I welcome the feedback when people feel that I deviate from the norm of ensuring public, open discussion and decision making where all are invited to participate. Personally, I think the focus on password protected IRC channels is a distraction from the real issue that we need to ensure that the rapidly growing community is one where public discussion and decision making are still "the norm". Let's be adult about it and realize that people will have private conversations. What we need to focus on is ensuring that the community rejects "private decision making". There, I said it, and I said it in the open. -amrith -- Amrith Kumar, CTO Tesora (www.tesora.com) Twitter: @amrithkumar IRC: amrith @freenode I work on OpenStack Trove (#openstack-trove) | -Original Message----- | From: Stefano Maffulli [mailto:stef...@openstack.org] | Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 9:15 AM | To: openstack-dev@lists.openstack.org | Subj
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
> On Feb 11, 2015, at 11:15 AM, Jeremy Stanley wrote: > > On 2015-02-11 11:31:13 + (+), Kuvaja, Erno wrote: > [...] >> If you don't belong to the group of privileged living in the area >> and receiving free ticket somehow or company paying your >> participation you're not included. $600 + travel + accommodation >> is quite hefty premium to be included, not really FOSS. > [...] > > Here I have to respectfully disagree. Anyone who uploads a change to > an official OpenStack source code repository for review and has it > approved/merged since Juno release day gets a 100% discount comp > voucher for the full conference and design summit coming up in May. > In addition, much like a lot of other large free software projects > do for their conferences, the OpenStack Foundation sets aside > funding[1] to cover travel and lodging for participants who need it. > Let's (continue to) make sure this _is_ "really FOSS," and that any > of our contributors who want to be involved can be involved. > > [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Travel_Support_Program For whatever it's worth, I totally agree that the summits don't make Openstack "not really FOSS" and I think the travel program is great, but I do just want to point out (as someone for whom travel is not monetarily dificult, but logistically) that decision making which requires travel can be exclusive. I don't personally get too bothered by it but it feels like maybe the fundamental issue that some are expericing is when there are decisions being made via a single channel, regardless of if that channel is a phone call, IRC, a mailing list, or a design summit. The more channels any particular decision involves the more likely it is nobody is going to feel like they didn't get a chance to participate. --- Donald Stufft PGP: 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015, at 11:15 AM, Jeremy Stanley wrote: > On 2015-02-11 11:31:13 + (+), Kuvaja, Erno wrote: > [...] > > If you don't belong to the group of privileged living in the area > > and receiving free ticket somehow or company paying your > > participation you're not included. $600 + travel + accommodation > > is quite hefty premium to be included, not really FOSS. > [...] > > Here I have to respectfully disagree. Anyone who uploads a change to > an official OpenStack source code repository for review and has it > approved/merged since Juno release day gets a 100% discount comp > voucher for the full conference and design summit coming up in May. > In addition, much like a lot of other large free software projects > do for their conferences, the OpenStack Foundation sets aside > funding[1] to cover travel and lodging for participants who need it. > Let's (continue to) make sure this _is_ "really FOSS," and that any > of our contributors who want to be involved can be involved. > > [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Travel_Support_Program Good reminder, Jeremy. The travel program is in place to help contributors who wouldn't otherwise be able to attend. Thanks to the commitment of generous corporate sponsors, we've had success bringing a range of participants to the past several summits -- not all of them developers. Everyone who would like to attend the summit but won't have other sponsorship should go to the wiki page to submit an application for the Vancouver summit. Doug > -- > Jeremy Stanley > > __ > OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Unsubscribe: > openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015, at 09:32 AM, Sean Dague wrote: > On 02/11/2015 09:02 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 08:13:05AM -0500, Sean Dague wrote: > >> On 02/11/2015 05:52 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. > >>> > >>> Again, timezones. It is a physical impossibility for most people to > >>> be on IRC for more than 8 hours a day, so that's only 1/3 of the day > >>> that any signle person will likely be on IRC. And no, expecting > >>> people to have a permanently connected IRC proxy and then read the > >>> other 16 hours of logs each morning is not a solution. > >>> > >>> Personally I've stopped joining IRC most the time regardless, because > >>> I feel I am far more productive when I'm not being interrupted with > >>> IRC pings every 20 minutes. There should be few things so urgent that > >>> they can't be dealt with over email. Again because of our timezone > >>> differences we should be wary of making important decisions in a > >>> rush - anything remotely non-trivial should have at least a 24 hour > >>> window to allow people on all timezones a chance to see the point > >>> and join in discussion. > >> > >> IRC is mostly not about discussions, it's about discussion, context, > >> team building, and trust. And it's a cross organization open forum for > >> that. > >> > >> If core team members start dropping off external IRC where they are > >> communicating across corporate boundaries, then the local tribal effects > >> start taking over. You get people start talking about the upstream as > >> "them". The moment we get into us vs. them, we've got a problem. > >> Especially when the upstream project is "them". > > > > It is perfectly possible to communicate effectively over email. Pretty > > much every single other open source project I've ever contributed to > > works almost exclusively over email without their being corporate "tribal > > effects". OpenStack is really the exception here with its obsession on > > using IRC for so much communication. > > My experiences have been different. While a lot of projects mirrored the > kernel process which was all mailing list, most of the projects I've > worked on that haven't been written in C are far more IRC driven. > > Every time I've had to address an issue with a non OpenStack python > dependency, it's been IRC to get things done, not a mailing list. Most > of these projects don't have mailing lists. A lot of people come to > OpenStack from those sorts of project cultures. So I don't think > OpenStack is an exception in Open Source. > > It was the community norm when I showed up, so it's the norm that I take > forward. > > The alternative when I got started wasn't even that discussions were > happening in open IRC, it was that they were happening via completely > private back channels, often in physical hallways of individual > companies. IRC was a ton more open than that for sure. And it was a > transition that people used to physical conversations could make easier > than moving to email. > > >> So while I agree, I'd personally get a ton more done if I didn't make > >> myself available to answer questions or help sort out misunderstandings > >> people were having with things I'm an expert in, doing so would > >> definitely detrimentally impact the project as a whole. So I find it an > >> unfortunate decision for a core team member. > > > > It is up to each individual to decide how they can maximise their > > contribution to the project. I'm still more than happy to answer > > questions in reviews, or via email, and will join IRC meetings where > > there is an important topic that directly needs my input. I simply > > feel that I can maximise the value of my contribution to the project > > without being on IRC getting direct pings all the time, when the > > overwhealming majority of those pings can be easily dealt with via > > email or gerrit. > > Definitely true, to each his/her own. I still consider it unfortunate. > I've also heard core developers state that they stopped reading the > mailing list months ago. Which I also find unfortunate. Unfortunate is putting it mildly. The #1 issue we have in this project is communicating with each other about changes that will affect the way the whole project works. We've put new processes in place over the last year for formalizing reviews of designs, but that's only one tool among many that we use. The mailing list is important specifically because it's less rigidly structured, so conversations can happen more freely. We're too big of a group for any individual to expect us to seek them out to make sure their voice is heard. It
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 2015-02-11 11:31:13 + (+), Kuvaja, Erno wrote: [...] > If you don't belong to the group of privileged living in the area > and receiving free ticket somehow or company paying your > participation you're not included. $600 + travel + accommodation > is quite hefty premium to be included, not really FOSS. [...] Here I have to respectfully disagree. Anyone who uploads a change to an official OpenStack source code repository for review and has it approved/merged since Juno release day gets a 100% discount comp voucher for the full conference and design summit coming up in May. In addition, much like a lot of other large free software projects do for their conferences, the OpenStack Foundation sets aside funding[1] to cover travel and lodging for participants who need it. Let's (continue to) make sure this _is_ "really FOSS," and that any of our contributors who want to be involved can be involved. [1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Travel_Support_Program -- Jeremy Stanley __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 09:32 -0500, Sean Dague wrote: > Definitely true, to each his/her own. I still consider it unfortunate. > I've also heard core developers state that they stopped reading the > mailing list months ago. Which I also find unfortunate. That's terrible: do you know why they don't read the list anymore? If you don't know why, could you ask them or (better yet) put me in touch with them so I can work out a solution for them? thanks, stef __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015, at 09:14 AM, Stefano Maffulli wrote: > On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 10:55 +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote: > > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > > It's good to have a reminder every now and then. Thank you Flavio for > caring enough to notice bad patterns and for raising a flag. > > > ## Keep discussions open > > > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > > discussions sufficient. > [...] > > Well said. Conversations can happen anywhere and any time, but they > should stay in open and accessible channels. Consensus needs to be built > and decisions need to be shared, agreed upon by the community at large > (and mailing lists are the most accessible media we have). > > That said, it's is very hard to generalize and I'd rather deal/solve > specific examples. Sometimes, I'm sure there are episodes when a fast > decision was needed and a limited amount of people had to carry the > burden of responsibility. Life is hard, software development is hard and > general rules sometimes need to be adapted to the reality. Again, too > much generalization here for what I'm confortable with. > > Maybe it's worth repeating that I'm personally (and in my role) > available to listen and mediate in cases when communication seems to > happen behind closed doors. If you think something unhealthy is > happening, talk to me (confidentiality assured). > > > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. > > Not sure I agree with the causality but, the facts are those: traffic on > the list and on IRC is very high (although not increasing anymore > [1][2]). > > > I > > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > > happen. > > Email is hard, I have the feeling that the vast majority of people use > bad (they all suck, no joke) email clients. Lots and lots of email is > even worse. Most contributors commit very few patches: the investment > for them to configure their MUA to filter our traffic is too high. > > I have added more topics today to the openstack-dev list[3]. Maybe, > besides filtering on the receiving end, we may spend some time > explaining how to use mailman topics? I'll draft something on Ask, it > may help those that have limited interest in OpenStack. > > What else can we do to make things better? > > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > This is seriously disturbing. > > If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, > please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as > a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. > > No public shaming, please: education first. Thanks for stepping in, Stef. I want to also back what Sean said elsewhere in the thread, though. This appears to be a serious breach of the openness policies of the project. I hope the team in question resolves the situation themselves, and quickly. Doug > > Cheers, > stef > > > [1] http://activity.openstack.org/dash/browser/mls.html > [2] http://activity.openstack.org/dash/browser/irc.html > [3] thanks to Luigi Toscano for highlighting some missing ones > > > __ > OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Unsubscribe: > openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 02/11/2015 09:02 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 08:13:05AM -0500, Sean Dague wrote: >> On 02/11/2015 05:52 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions happen. >>> >>> Again, timezones. It is a physical impossibility for most people to >>> be on IRC for more than 8 hours a day, so that's only 1/3 of the day >>> that any signle person will likely be on IRC. And no, expecting >>> people to have a permanently connected IRC proxy and then read the >>> other 16 hours of logs each morning is not a solution. >>> >>> Personally I've stopped joining IRC most the time regardless, because >>> I feel I am far more productive when I'm not being interrupted with >>> IRC pings every 20 minutes. There should be few things so urgent that >>> they can't be dealt with over email. Again because of our timezone >>> differences we should be wary of making important decisions in a >>> rush - anything remotely non-trivial should have at least a 24 hour >>> window to allow people on all timezones a chance to see the point >>> and join in discussion. >> >> IRC is mostly not about discussions, it's about discussion, context, >> team building, and trust. And it's a cross organization open forum for that. >> >> If core team members start dropping off external IRC where they are >> communicating across corporate boundaries, then the local tribal effects >> start taking over. You get people start talking about the upstream as >> "them". The moment we get into us vs. them, we've got a problem. >> Especially when the upstream project is "them". > > It is perfectly possible to communicate effectively over email. Pretty > much every single other open source project I've ever contributed to > works almost exclusively over email without their being corporate "tribal > effects". OpenStack is really the exception here with its obsession on > using IRC for so much communication. My experiences have been different. While a lot of projects mirrored the kernel process which was all mailing list, most of the projects I've worked on that haven't been written in C are far more IRC driven. Every time I've had to address an issue with a non OpenStack python dependency, it's been IRC to get things done, not a mailing list. Most of these projects don't have mailing lists. A lot of people come to OpenStack from those sorts of project cultures. So I don't think OpenStack is an exception in Open Source. It was the community norm when I showed up, so it's the norm that I take forward. The alternative when I got started wasn't even that discussions were happening in open IRC, it was that they were happening via completely private back channels, often in physical hallways of individual companies. IRC was a ton more open than that for sure. And it was a transition that people used to physical conversations could make easier than moving to email. >> So while I agree, I'd personally get a ton more done if I didn't make >> myself available to answer questions or help sort out misunderstandings >> people were having with things I'm an expert in, doing so would >> definitely detrimentally impact the project as a whole. So I find it an >> unfortunate decision for a core team member. > > It is up to each individual to decide how they can maximise their > contribution to the project. I'm still more than happy to answer > questions in reviews, or via email, and will join IRC meetings where > there is an important topic that directly needs my input. I simply > feel that I can maximise the value of my contribution to the project > without being on IRC getting direct pings all the time, when the > overwhealming majority of those pings can be easily dealt with via > email or gerrit. Definitely true, to each his/her own. I still consider it unfortunate. I've also heard core developers state that they stopped reading the mailing list months ago. Which I also find unfortunate. -Sean -- Sean Dague http://dague.net signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 10:55 +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote: > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. It's good to have a reminder every now and then. Thank you Flavio for caring enough to notice bad patterns and for raising a flag. > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. [...] Well said. Conversations can happen anywhere and any time, but they should stay in open and accessible channels. Consensus needs to be built and decisions need to be shared, agreed upon by the community at large (and mailing lists are the most accessible media we have). That said, it's is very hard to generalize and I'd rather deal/solve specific examples. Sometimes, I'm sure there are episodes when a fast decision was needed and a limited amount of people had to carry the burden of responsibility. Life is hard, software development is hard and general rules sometimes need to be adapted to the reality. Again, too much generalization here for what I'm confortable with. Maybe it's worth repeating that I'm personally (and in my role) available to listen and mediate in cases when communication seems to happen behind closed doors. If you think something unhealthy is happening, talk to me (confidentiality assured). > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. Not sure I agree with the causality but, the facts are those: traffic on the list and on IRC is very high (although not increasing anymore [1][2]). > I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. Email is hard, I have the feeling that the vast majority of people use bad (they all suck, no joke) email clients. Lots and lots of email is even worse. Most contributors commit very few patches: the investment for them to configure their MUA to filter our traffic is too high. I have added more topics today to the openstack-dev list[3]. Maybe, besides filtering on the receiving end, we may spend some time explaining how to use mailman topics? I'll draft something on Ask, it may help those that have limited interest in OpenStack. What else can we do to make things better? > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. This is seriously disturbing. If you're one of those core reviewers hanging out on a private channel, please contact me privately: I'd love to hear from you why we failed as a community at convincing you that an open channel is the place to be. No public shaming, please: education first. Cheers, stef [1] http://activity.openstack.org/dash/browser/mls.html [2] http://activity.openstack.org/dash/browser/irc.html [3] thanks to Luigi Toscano for highlighting some missing ones __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 08:13:05AM -0500, Sean Dague wrote: > On 02/11/2015 05:52 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > >> ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > >> > >> I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > >> hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > >> don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > >> to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > >> happen. > > > > Again, timezones. It is a physical impossibility for most people to > > be on IRC for more than 8 hours a day, so that's only 1/3 of the day > > that any signle person will likely be on IRC. And no, expecting > > people to have a permanently connected IRC proxy and then read the > > other 16 hours of logs each morning is not a solution. > > > > Personally I've stopped joining IRC most the time regardless, because > > I feel I am far more productive when I'm not being interrupted with > > IRC pings every 20 minutes. There should be few things so urgent that > > they can't be dealt with over email. Again because of our timezone > > differences we should be wary of making important decisions in a > > rush - anything remotely non-trivial should have at least a 24 hour > > window to allow people on all timezones a chance to see the point > > and join in discussion. > > IRC is mostly not about discussions, it's about discussion, context, > team building, and trust. And it's a cross organization open forum for that. > > If core team members start dropping off external IRC where they are > communicating across corporate boundaries, then the local tribal effects > start taking over. You get people start talking about the upstream as > "them". The moment we get into us vs. them, we've got a problem. > Especially when the upstream project is "them". It is perfectly possible to communicate effectively over email. Pretty much every single other open source project I've ever contributed to works almost exclusively over email without their being corporate "tribal effects". OpenStack is really the exception here with its obsession on using IRC for so much communication. > So while I agree, I'd personally get a ton more done if I didn't make > myself available to answer questions or help sort out misunderstandings > people were having with things I'm an expert in, doing so would > definitely detrimentally impact the project as a whole. So I find it an > unfortunate decision for a core team member. It is up to each individual to decide how they can maximise their contribution to the project. I'm still more than happy to answer questions in reviews, or via email, and will join IRC meetings where there is an important topic that directly needs my input. I simply feel that I can maximise the value of my contribution to the project without being on IRC getting direct pings all the time, when the overwhealming majority of those pings can be easily dealt with via email or gerrit. 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 Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 2/11/15, 3:26 PM, "Nikola Đipanov" wrote: >On 02/11/2015 02:13 PM, Sean Dague wrote: >> >> If core team members start dropping off external IRC where they are >> communicating across corporate boundaries, then the local tribal effects >> start taking over. You get people start talking about the upstream as >> "them". The moment we get into us vs. them, we've got a problem. >> Especially when the upstream project is "them". >> > >A lot of assumptions being presented as fact here. > >I believe the technical term for the above is 'slippery slope fallacy'. > >We can and _must_ do much better than this on this mailing list! Let's >drag the discussion level back up! +1 The discussion should be on how to keep things collaborative and open. > >N. > >__ >OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) >Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe >http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 02/11/2015 02:13 PM, Sean Dague wrote: > > If core team members start dropping off external IRC where they are > communicating across corporate boundaries, then the local tribal effects > start taking over. You get people start talking about the upstream as > "them". The moment we get into us vs. them, we've got a problem. > Especially when the upstream project is "them". > A lot of assumptions being presented as fact here. I believe the technical term for the above is 'slippery slope fallacy'. We can and _must_ do much better than this on this mailing list! Let's drag the discussion level back up! N. __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 02/11/2015 05:52 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 10:55:18AM +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote: >> Greetings all, >> >> During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the >> things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving >> to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing >> these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my >> concerns. >> >> Since I believe we all work with good faith and we *all* should assume >> such when it comes to things happening in our community, I won't make >> names and I won't point fingers - yes, I don't have enough fingers to >> point based on the info I have. People that fall into the groups I'll >> mention below know that I'm talking to them. >> >> This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. >> >> ## Keep discussions open >> >> I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some >> discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe >> there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. >> HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private >> discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private >> discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you >> went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's >> good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I >> don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and >> that you had enough consensus. > > With the timezones of our worldwide contributors it is pretty much > guaranteed that any realtime phone call will have excluded a part > of our community. > >> Furthermore, you should consider that having private conversations, at >> the very end, doesn't help with speeding up discussions. We've a >> community of people who *care* about the project they're working on. >> This means that whenever they see something that doesn't make much >> sense, they'll chime in and ask for clarification. If there was a >> private discussion on that topic, you'll have to provide the details >> of such discussion and bring that person up to date, which means the >> discussion will basically start again... from scratch. > > I can see that if people have reached an impass in discussions via > email or irc, it is sometimes helpful to have a call to break a > roadblock. I absolutely agree though that the results of any such > calls should not be presented as a final decision. At the very least > it is neccessary to describe the rationale for the POV obtained as > a result of the call, and give the broader community the opportunity > to put forward counterpoints if required. We should certainly not > just say 'its good to go' and +A sommething based on a private call. > >> ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel >> >> I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is >> hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I >> don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong >> to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions >> happen. > > Again, timezones. It is a physical impossibility for most people to > be on IRC for more than 8 hours a day, so that's only 1/3 of the day > that any signle person will likely be on IRC. And no, expecting > people to have a permanently connected IRC proxy and then read the > other 16 hours of logs each morning is not a solution. > > Personally I've stopped joining IRC most the time regardless, because > I feel I am far more productive when I'm not being interrupted with > IRC pings every 20 minutes. There should be few things so urgent that > they can't be dealt with over email. Again because of our timezone > differences we should be wary of making important decisions in a > rush - anything remotely non-trivial should have at least a 24 hour > window to allow people on all timezones a chance to see the point > and join in discussion. IRC is mostly not about discussions, it's about discussion, context, team building, and trust. And it's a cross organization open forum for that. If core team members start dropping off external IRC where they are communicating across corporate boundaries, then the local tribal effects start taking over. You get people start talking about the upstream as "them". The moment we get into us vs. them, we've got a problem. Especially when the upstream project is "them". So while I agree, I'd personally get a ton more done if I didn't make myself available to answer questions or help sort out misunderstandings people were having with things I'm an expert in, doing so would definitely detrimentally impact the project as a whole. So I find it an unfortunate decision for a core team member. -Sean -- Sean Dague http://dague.net __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubs
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 02/11/2015 04:55 AM, Flavio Percoco wrote: > Greetings all, > > During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the > things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving > to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing > these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my > concerns. > > Since I believe we all work with good faith and we *all* should assume > such when it comes to things happening in our community, I won't make > names and I won't point fingers - yes, I don't have enough fingers to > point based on the info I have. People that fall into the groups I'll > mention below know that I'm talking to them. > > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private > discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you > went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's > good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I > don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and > that you had enough consensus. > > Furthermore, you should consider that having private conversations, at > the very end, doesn't help with speeding up discussions. We've a > community of people who *care* about the project they're working on. > This means that whenever they see something that doesn't make much > sense, they'll chime in and ask for clarification. If there was a > private discussion on that topic, you'll have to provide the details > of such discussion and bring that person up to date, which means the > discussion will basically start again... from scratch. > > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. > > If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of > most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the > mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting > with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something > that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing > list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in > your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* > > Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. > We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take > advantage of it? > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. > > This is the point where my good faith assumption skill falls short. > Seriously, don't get me wrong but: WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F**K? > > THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING PRIVATE FOR CORE REVIEWERS* TO > DISCUSS. I'm kind of floored to find out that password protected irc channels exist. That actually violates our base tenants of being an OpenStack project, so is grounds for removing the project from OpenStack. > If anything core reviewers should be the ones *FORCING* - it seems > that *encouraging* doesn't have the same effect anymore - *OPENNESS* in > order to include other non-core members in those discussions. > > Remember that the "core" flag is granted because of the reviews that > person has provided and because that individual *WANTS* to be part of > it. It's not a prize for people. In fact, I consider core reviewers to > be volunteers and their job is infinitely thanked. > > Since, "All generalizations are false, including this one. - Mark > Twain", I'm pretty sure there are folks that disagree with the above. > If you do, I care about your thoughts. This is worth discussing and > fighting for. > > All the above being said, I'd like to thank everyone who fights for > the openness of our community and encourage everyone to make that a > must have thing in each sub-community. You don't need to be > core-reviewer or PTL to do so. Speak up and help keeping the community > as open as possible. > > Cheers, > Flavio > > > > __ > OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) > Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsu
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, Chris Dent wrote: I think it is time we recognize and act on the fact that the corporate landlords that pay many of us to farm on this land need to provide more resources. In case it wasn't clear, by this I don't mean project managers and other styles of enterprisey hoopaa joop. I mean more testing rigs and more supported community members. -- Chris Dent tw:@anticdent freenode:cdent https://tank.peermore.com/tanks/cdent __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On 11/02/15 11:31 +, Kuvaja, Erno wrote: ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions happen. If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take advantage of it? This is tough call ... ~ real time communication is just so much more efficient. You can get things done in minutes that would take hours & days to deal with over e-mail. As I mentioned, I don't think there's anything wrong with a quick chat fo sort small issues out that don't have a huge impact on the project. However, those communications shouldn't be considered the ultimate decision for things that will happen in the project. A good example is the #openstack-glance channe, which you decided to leave since we enabled logging. If we need to discuss something outside the meeting - or start a discussion that simple won't fit in a meeting - I'd need to choose between IRC discussions or mailing list. I'll obviously choose the mailing list because I would hate it to reach a consensus without listenting to your thoughts. If m-l is not used, you'll likely share your opinion and that *WILL* slow down the process anyway - a discussion that should've followed a different path. It also does not help that the -dev mailing list is really crowded, the tags are not consistent (sorry for finger pointing but oslo seems to be specially inconsistent with some tagging [oslo] some tagging [oslo.something] etc. Please keep that [oslo] there ;D ). In the case of oslo.messaging, we do this because we actually have different groups depending on the project. We have a oslo-core team and a oslo.messaging-core team. This encourages contributions on topics that folks care about. I don't think there's anything bad about that, just use filters. I would not discourage people to use irc or other communication means, just being prepared to answer those questions again. I'm discouraging the usage of IRC as the *main* communication channel. I really hope no one, across the gazillion of projects I'm part of, is expecting me to be present at every time on every channel (although I am thanks to ZNC). That's phisically impossible, hence emails. ## Cores are *NOT* special At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password protected, irc channels for core reviewers. This is the point where my good faith assumption skill falls short. Seriously, don't get me wrong but: WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F**K? THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING PRIVATE FOR CORE REVIEWERS* TO DISCUSS. Here I do disagree. There is stuff called private bugs for security etc. that _should_ kept private. Again speeds up progress hugely when the discussion does not need to happen in Launchpad and it keeps the bug itself cleaner as well. I do agree that there should not be secret society making common decisions behind closed doors, but there is reasons to keep some details initially between closed group only. And most commonly that closed group seems to be cores. Note that my complain is about private core channels used for general discussion. However, since you've brought the CVE thing up, lemme disagree with you. CVE discussions should be kept in the LP bug as well. Do you want to have a quick chat with someone about a bug? Sure, go ahead. Afterwards, you MUST get back to the LP bug and provide the feedback there. Otherwise, you just broke the process and other folks that weren't part of that conversation will be out. Also, must core-sec teams have some core members in them but not *all* of them, which means the super secure core channel is just bullshit. Random channels with obscured names created in a per-bug basis would be even more secure than the super secure channel with +s and password protected (yes, I just made this up). If anything core reviewers should be the ones *FORCING* - it seems that *encouraging* doesn't have the same effect anymore - *OPENNESS* in order to include other non-core members in those discussions. Remember that the "core" flag is granted because
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 12:53:24PM +0100, Nikola Đipanov wrote: > + Inf for writing this Flavio! Absolutely! I never even knew such things existed in this community. > Only some observations below. [. . .] > > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > > happen. > > > > If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of > > most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the > > mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting > > with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something > > that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing > > list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in > > your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* > > > > Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. > > We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take > > advantage of it? > > > > I think the above 2 are somewhat intertwined with another trend in the > community I've personally noticed towards the end of the Juno cycle, > that I also strongly believe needs to DIAFF. > > An idea that it is possible to "manage" and open source community using > similar methods that are commonly used for managing subordinates in a > corporate hierarchy. That intention/notion to "let's manage the community like a team just as we do at good old $company" should be absolutely demolished! People who advocate such behavior are using ridiculously outdated brain models and should drop what they're doing immediately and do some introspection. -- /kashyap __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
+ Inf for writing this Flavio! Only some observations below. On 02/11/2015 10:55 AM, Flavio Percoco wrote: > Greetings all, > > During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the > things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving > to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing > these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my > concerns. > > Since I believe we all work with good faith and we *all* should assume > such when it comes to things happening in our community, I won't make > names and I won't point fingers - yes, I don't have enough fingers to > point based on the info I have. People that fall into the groups I'll > mention below know that I'm talking to them. > > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private > discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you > went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's > good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I > don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and > that you had enough consensus. > > Furthermore, you should consider that having private conversations, at > the very end, doesn't help with speeding up discussions. We've a > community of people who *care* about the project they're working on. > This means that whenever they see something that doesn't make much > sense, they'll chime in and ask for clarification. If there was a > private discussion on that topic, you'll have to provide the details > of such discussion and bring that person up to date, which means the > discussion will basically start again... from scratch. > > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. > > If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of > most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the > mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting > with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something > that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing > list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in > your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* > > Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. > We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take > advantage of it? > I think the above 2 are somewhat intertwined with another trend in the community I've personally noticed towards the end of the Juno cycle, that I also strongly believe needs to DIAFF. An idea that it is possible to "manage" and open source community using similar methods that are commonly used for managing subordinates in a corporate hierarchy. There are other (somewhat less) horrible examples around, and they all came about as a (IMHO knee jerk) response to explosive growth, and they all need to stop. I urge people who are seen as leaders in their respective projects to stop and think the next time they want to propose a "policy change" or a "process" - ask yourself "Is there an OSS project that does something similar successfully, or have I seen this from our old PM?" and then not propose it if the answer is clearly that this will help the distributed workflow of an OSS community. On 02/11/2015 11:29 AM, Thierry Carrez wrote: >> This is the point where my good faith assumption skill falls short. >> Seriously, don't get me wrong but: WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F**K? >> >> THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING PRIVATE FOR CORE REVIEWERS* TO >> DISCUSS. >> >> If anything core reviewers should be the ones *FORCING* - it seems >> that *encouraging* doesn't have the same effect anymore - *OPENNESS* in >> order to include other non-core members in those discussions. >> >> Remember that the "core" flag is granted because of the reviews that >> person has provided and because that individual *WANTS* to be part of >> it. It's not a prize for people. In fact, I consider core reviewers to >> be volunteers and their job is infinitely thanked. > > +1000 > > Core reviewing has always be designed to be a duty, not a badge. There > has been a trends toward making it a badge, with some companies giving > bonuses to core reviewers, and HP making +2 pins and throwing +2 > parties. I think that's a significant mistake and complained about it, > but then
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
> -Original Message- > From: Flavio Percoco [mailto:fla...@redhat.com] > Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 9:55 AM > To: openstack-dev@lists.openstack.org > Subject: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight > for it > > Greetings all, > > During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the things I > love > the most about this community are degrading and moving to a state that I > personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing these things improve, I'm > taking the time today to share one of my concerns. > > Since I believe we all work with good faith and we *all* should assume such > when it comes to things happening in our community, I won't make names > and I won't point fingers - yes, I don't have enough fingers to point based on > the info I have. People that fall into the groups I'll mention below know that > I'm talking to them. > > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some discussions in > private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe there's anything wrong in > having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private discussions, if > you've discussed a spec privately and right after you went upstream and said: > "This has been discussed in a call and it's good to go", I beg you to stop > for 2 > seconds and reconsider that. I don't believe you were able to fit all the > community in that call and that you had enough consensus. ++ > > Furthermore, you should consider that having private conversations, at the > very end, doesn't help with speeding up discussions. We've a community of > people who *care* about the project they're working on. > This means that whenever they see something that doesn't make much > sense, they'll chime in and ask for clarification. If there was a private > discussion on that topic, you'll have to provide the details of such > discussion > and bring that person up to date, which means the discussion will basically > start again... from scratch. And when they do come and ask for clarification do not just state that this was discussed and agreed already. > > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is hard and > time > consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I don't think there's > anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong to expect *EVERYONE* to > be in the IRC channel when those discussions happen. > > If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of most of > your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the mailing list as > oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting with time zones. > Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something that should go to the > mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing list and don't be afraid of > having > a bigger community chiming in in your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* > > Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. > We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take > advantage of it? This is tough call ... ~ real time communication is just so much more efficient. You can get things done in minutes that would take hours & days to deal with over e-mail. It also does not help that the -dev mailing list is really crowded, the tags are not consistent (sorry for finger pointing but oslo seems to be specially inconsistent with some tagging [oslo] some tagging [oslo.something] etc. Please keep that [oslo] there ;D ). I would not discourage people to use irc or other communication means, just being prepared to answer those questions again. > > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became a > thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know that some > projects even have private (flagged with +s), password protected, irc > channels for core reviewers. > > This is the point where my good faith assumption skill falls short. > Seriously, don't get me wrong but: WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F**K? > > THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING PRIVATE FOR CORE REVIEWERS* > TO DISCUSS. Here I do disagree. There is stuff called private bugs for security etc. that _should_ kept private. Again speeds up progress hugely when the discussion does not need to happen in Launchpad and it keeps the bug itself cleaner as well. I do agree that there should not be secret society making common decisions behind closed doors, but there is reasons to keep some details initially between closed group only. And most commonly that closed group seems to be cores. > > If anything core reviewers should be the ones *FORCING* - it seems that > *encou
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, Flavio Percoco wrote: During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my concerns. Thanks for writing this. I agree with pretty much everything you say, especially the focus on the mailing list being only truly available and persistent medium we have for engaging everyone. Yes it is noisy and takes work, but it is an important part of the work. I'm not certain, but I have an intuition that many of the suboptimal and moving-in-the-direction-of-closed behaviors that you're describing are the result of people trying to cope with having too much to do with insufficient tools. Technology projects often sacrifice the management of information in favor of what's believed to be the core task (making stuff?) when there are insufficient resources. This is unfortunate because the effective sharing and management of information is the fuel that drives, optimizes and corrects the entire process and thus leads to more effective making of stuff. This thread and many of the threads going around lately speak a lot about people not being able to participate in a way that lets them generate the most quality -- either because there's insufficient time and energy to move the mountain or because each move they make opens up another rabbit hole. As many have said this is not sustainable. Many of the proposed strategies or short term tactics involve trying to hack the system so that work that is perceived to be extraneous is removed or made secondary. This won't fix it. I think it is time we recognize and act on the fact that the corporate landlords that pay many of us to farm on this land need to provide more resources. This will help to ensure the health of semi-artifical opensource ecology that is OpenStack. At the moment many things are packed tight with very little room to breathe. We need some air. -- Chris Dent tw:@anticdent freenode:cdent https://tank.peermore.com/tanks/cdent __ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 10:55:18AM +0100, Flavio Percoco wrote: > Greetings all, > > During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the > things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving > to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing > these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my > concerns. > > Since I believe we all work with good faith and we *all* should assume > such when it comes to things happening in our community, I won't make > names and I won't point fingers - yes, I don't have enough fingers to > point based on the info I have. People that fall into the groups I'll > mention below know that I'm talking to them. > > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private > discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you > went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's > good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I > don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and > that you had enough consensus. With the timezones of our worldwide contributors it is pretty much guaranteed that any realtime phone call will have excluded a part of our community. > Furthermore, you should consider that having private conversations, at > the very end, doesn't help with speeding up discussions. We've a > community of people who *care* about the project they're working on. > This means that whenever they see something that doesn't make much > sense, they'll chime in and ask for clarification. If there was a > private discussion on that topic, you'll have to provide the details > of such discussion and bring that person up to date, which means the > discussion will basically start again... from scratch. I can see that if people have reached an impass in discussions via email or irc, it is sometimes helpful to have a call to break a roadblock. I absolutely agree though that the results of any such calls should not be presented as a final decision. At the very least it is neccessary to describe the rationale for the POV obtained as a result of the call, and give the broader community the opportunity to put forward counterpoints if required. We should certainly not just say 'its good to go' and +A sommething based on a private call. > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. Again, timezones. It is a physical impossibility for most people to be on IRC for more than 8 hours a day, so that's only 1/3 of the day that any signle person will likely be on IRC. And no, expecting people to have a permanently connected IRC proxy and then read the other 16 hours of logs each morning is not a solution. Personally I've stopped joining IRC most the time regardless, because I feel I am far more productive when I'm not being interrupted with IRC pings every 20 minutes. There should be few things so urgent that they can't be dealt with over email. Again because of our timezone differences we should be wary of making important decisions in a rush - anything remotely non-trivial should have at least a 24 hour window to allow people on all timezones a chance to see the point and join in discussion. > If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of > most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the > mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting > with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something > that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing > list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in > your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* > > Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. > We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take > advantage of it? There are alot of IRC meetings that take place in the project: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings and alot of decisions get made in these meetings. Very rarely do the decisions ever get disseminated to the mailing lists. We seem to rely on the fact that we have IRC logs of the meetings as a way to communicate what took place. If you have ever tried to regularly read through IRC logs of meetings that last an hour or more, it should be clear that this is an awful way to communicate info wit
Re: [openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it
Flavio Percoco wrote: > During the last two cycles, I've had the feeling that some of the > things I love the most about this community are degrading and moving > to a state that I personally disagree with. With the hope of seeing > these things improve, I'm taking the time today to share one of my > concerns. > > Since I believe we all work with good faith and we *all* should assume > such when it comes to things happening in our community, I won't make > names and I won't point fingers - yes, I don't have enough fingers to > point based on the info I have. People that fall into the groups I'll > mention below know that I'm talking to them. > > This email is dedicated to the openness of our community/project. > > ## Keep discussions open > > I don't believe there's anything wrong about kicking off some > discussions in private channels about specs/bugs. I don't believe > there's anything wrong in having calls to speed up some discussions. > HOWEVER, I believe it's *completely* wrong to consider those private > discussions sufficient. If you have had that kind of private > discussions, if you've discussed a spec privately and right after you > went upstream and said: "This has been discussed in a call and it's > good to go", I beg you to stop for 2 seconds and reconsider that. I > don't believe you were able to fit all the community in that call and > that you had enough consensus. > > Furthermore, you should consider that having private conversations, at > the very end, doesn't help with speeding up discussions. We've a > community of people who *care* about the project they're working on. > This means that whenever they see something that doesn't make much > sense, they'll chime in and ask for clarification. If there was a > private discussion on that topic, you'll have to provide the details > of such discussion and bring that person up to date, which means the > discussion will basically start again... from scratch. +100 > ## Mailing List vs IRC Channel > > I get it, our mailing list is freaking busy, keeping up with it is > hard and time consuming and that leads to lots of IRC discussions. I > don't think there's anything wrong with that but I believe it's wrong > to expect *EVERYONE* to be in the IRC channel when those discussions > happen. > > If you are discussing something on IRC that requires the attention of > most of your project's community, I highly recommend you to use the > mailing list as oppose to pinging everyone independently and fighting > with time zones. Using IRC bouncers as a replacement for something > that should go to the mailing list is absurd. Please, use the mailing > list and don't be afraid of having a bigger community chiming in in > your discussion. *THAT'S A GOOD THING* > > Changes, specs, APIs, etc. Everything is good for the mailing list. > We've fought hard to make this community grow, why shouldn't we take > advantage of it? +1 > ## Cores are *NOT* special > > At some point, for some reason that is unknown to me, this message > changed and the feeling of core's being some kind of superheros became > a thing. It's gotten far enough to the point that I've came to know > that some projects even have private (flagged with +s), password > protected, irc channels for core reviewers. If those exist, I think they should die in a fire. I'm fine with the TC passing a resolution so that such channels are opened. Private channels where "real decisions" are made are pretty contrary to our ideal of open development. > This is the point where my good faith assumption skill falls short. > Seriously, don't get me wrong but: WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F**K? > > THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING PRIVATE FOR CORE REVIEWERS* TO > DISCUSS. > > If anything core reviewers should be the ones *FORCING* - it seems > that *encouraging* doesn't have the same effect anymore - *OPENNESS* in > order to include other non-core members in those discussions. > > Remember that the "core" flag is granted because of the reviews that > person has provided and because that individual *WANTS* to be part of > it. It's not a prize for people. In fact, I consider core reviewers to > be volunteers and their job is infinitely thanked. +1000 Core reviewing has always be designed to be a duty, not a badge. There has been a trends toward making it a badge, with some companies giving bonuses to core reviewers, and HP making +2 pins and throwing +2 parties. I think that's a significant mistake and complained about it, but then my influence only goes that far. The problem with special rights (like +2) is that if you don't actively resist it, they naturally turn into an aristocracy (especially when only existing cores vote on new cores). That aristocracy then usually turns into a clique which is excluding new blood and new opinions, and then that project slowly dies. Thanks Flavio for this timely reminder. -- Thierry Carrez (ttx) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
