John Griffith wrote:
On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 4:30 PM, Joe Gordon <joe.gord...@gmail.com <mailto:joe.gord...@gmail.com>> wrote: I am starting this thread based on Thierry's feedback on [0]. Instead of writing the same thing twice, you can look at the rendered html from that patch [1]. Neutron tried to go from core to maintainer but after input from the TC and others, they are keeping the term 'core' but are clarifying what it means to be a neutron core [2]. [2] does a very good job of showing how what it means to be core is evolving. From "everyone is a dev and everyone is a reviewer. No committers or repo owners, no aristocracy. Some people just commit to do a lot of reviewing and keep current with the code, and have votes that matter more (+2)." (Theirry) To a system where cores are more then people who have votes that matter more. Neutron's proposal tries to align that document with what is already happening. 1. They share responsibility in the project's success. 2. They have made a long-term, recurring time investment to improve the project. 3. They spend their time doing what needs to be done to ensure the projects success, not necessarily what is the most interesting or fun. I think there are a few issues at the heart of this debate: 1. Our current concept of a core team has never been able to grow past 20 or so people, even for really big projects like nova and cinder. Why is that? How do we delegate responsibility for subsystems? How do we keep growing? 2. If everyone is just developers and reviewers who is actually responsible for the projects success? How does that mesh with the ideal of no 'aristocracy'? Do are early goals still make sense today? Do you feel like a core deveper/reviewer (we initially called them core developers) [1]: In OpenStack a core developer is a developer who has submitted enough high quality code and done enough code reviews that we trust their code reviews for merging into the base source tree. It is important that we have a process for active developers to be added to the core developer team. Or a maintainer [1]: 1. They share responsibility in the project’s success. 2. They have made a long-term, recurring time investment to improve the project. 3. They spend that time doing whatever needs to be done, not necessarily what is the most interesting or fun. Maintainers are often under-appreciated, because their work is harder to appreciate. It’s easy to appreciate a really cool and technically advanced feature. It’s harder to appreciate the absence of bugs, the slow but steady improvement in stability, or the reliability of a release process. But those things distinguish a good project from a great one. [0] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/163660/ [1] http://docs-draft.openstack.org/60/163660/3/check/gate-governance-docs/f386acf//doc/build/html/resolutions/20150311-rename-core-to-maintainers.html [2] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/164208/ __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe <http://openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev Hey Joe, I mentioned in last weeks TC meeting that I didn't really see a burning need to change or create new "labels"; but that's probably beside the point. So if I read this it really comes down to a number of people in the community want "core" to mean something more than "special reviewer" is that right? I mean regardless of whether you change the name from "core" to "maintainer" I really don't care. If it makes some folks feel better to have that title/label associated with themselves that's cool by me (yes I get the *extra* responsibilities part you lined out).
+1 to this. I feel we have much much much bigger things to be thinking about than just labels. Maybe this was a misunderstanding of this mail thread but in all honesty who cares...
What is missing for me here however is "who picks these special people". I'm convinced that this does more to promote the idea of "special" contributors than anything else. Maybe that's actually what you want, but it seemed based on your message that wasn't the case. Anyway, core nominations are fairly objective in my opinion and is *mostly* based on number of reviews and perceived quality of those reviews (measured somewhat by disagreement rates etc). What are the metrics for this special group of folks that you're proposing we empower and title as maintainers? Do I get to be a "maintainer", is it reserved for a special group of people, a specific company? What's the criteria? Do *you* get to be a "maintainer"? What standards are *Maintainers* held to? Who/How do we decide he/she is doing their job? Are there any rules about representation and interests (keeping the team of people balanced). What about the work by those "maintainers" that introduces more/new bugs? My feeling on this is that yes a lot of this sort of thing is happening naturally on its own and that's a pretty cool thing IMO. What you're saying though is you want to formalize it? Is the problem that people don't feel like they're getting recognition or credit that they deserve? The "nobody wants to work on the not fun stuff" I kinda get, and yeah.. that happens. I'd argue though there are a good number of people that are however jumping in on things outside of features.
+1 to this. There will always be people who will want to work on fun stuff and those who don't; it's the job of leadership in the community to direct people if they can (but also the same job of that leadership to understand that they can't direct everyone; it is open-source after all and saying 'no' to people just makes them run to some other project that doesn't do this...).
IMHO (and a rant probably better for another thread) but I've seen to many projects/specs/split-outs (ie, scheduler tweaks, constraint solving scheduler...) get abandoned because of cores saying this or that is the priority right now (and this in all honesty pisses me off); I don't feel this is right (cores should be leaders and guides, not dictators); if a core is going to tell anyone that then they better act as a guide to the person they are telling that to and make sure they lead that person they just told "no"; after all any child can say "no" but it takes a real man/woman to go the extra distance...
It's sort of funny looking back over the years. We used to complain over and over that "we don't have enough reviewers", and that "reviewing is crucial but under appreciated work". Since then there's all sorts of people striving to spend time doing reviews and provide in some cases real constructive feedback. Now we seem to be saying "reviewing isn't where it's at, anybody can do that; bug fixes is the new coolness". I think there are others way to address this by the way, possibly more effective ways. Heck, you could even do commit credits; it costs five bug fixes to the overall project before you can commit a feature (ok, don't take me seriously there). Maybe I'm misinterpreting some of this, maybe there's something in between. Regardless I personally need a good deal more detail before I form my opinion.
+1 I should probably not write emails this late, ha.
Thanks, John __________________________________________________________________________ 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
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