+1.

I think there have been a few efforts around the issue of the small tent thing 
described below, such as the http://www.openstack.org/brand/interop/ effort.

But those profiles seemed centred around standardizing the minimal common 
denominator parts of what's widely deployed today rather then coming up with a 
new standard for the pieces that should be required for a next generation 
iteration of the system. Without the latter, we just keep the same old stuff in 
the small tent, and no new stuff gets added.

Thanks,
Kevin
________________________________________
From: Ed Leafe [[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2016 9:59 PM
To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [tc][all] Big tent? (Related to Plugins for all)

On Jul 18, 2016, at 12:39 PM, Fox, Kevin M <[email protected]> wrote:

> I'm arguing the opposite. It should be a requirement to use the OpenStack 
> Secret Store.
>
> Instead, we're trying to make it optional and either reimplementing large 
> swaths of it in individual projects to make it optional, or skip security all 
> together.
>
> If it wasn't optional, then:
> * Keystone could rely on it being there for password hashing
> * Magnum can rely on it for security.
> * lbaas can rely on it
> * App developers can rely on it being there
> * ...
>
> Same with Zaqar. It was a requirement then,
> * Guest agents of heat, sahara, mangum, trove, etc could all rely on it being 
> there and wouldn't have to deal with workarounds
> * Horizon could rely on it being there for dynamic ui
> * App developers can rely on it being there.
>
> Yes, it seems like more work for an operator to have to install "one more 
> thing", but the savings it provides by not having to do that "one more thing" 
> in 7 different projects pays for it.

There is a lot to be said for code simplification. When Glance split out of 
Nova, the knowledge that Glance would be required to be there meant the the 
code in Nova for interacting with it didn’t have to contain tons of ‘if <glance 
is installed>: <do this> else <do something else>”. Knowing that that code was 
unnecessary made writing the interaction much simpler (and less tedious to 
read). So if we added, say, Barbican as a requirement, all of the other 
projects that need to handle secrets (a lot of them!) could simply program to 
the Barbican interface, and be done with it.

The discussion of whether project X should be required is a whole ‘nother 
topic. But I want to emphasize that often the utility of having a standard is 
grossly underestimated.

In this discussion, the issue that seems to be arising is that the Big Tent 
doesn’t provide for a path for a project to be reconsidered as an OpenStack 
standard, in the way that Nova and Glance and Swift are. The Small Tent 
“incubation” process designed to identify which projects were mature enough to 
be considered “one of us”, when “us” was the group of core projects. This was 
unnecessarily harsh, and pushed away many worthy efforts. In an attempt to 
improve this, the definition of “one of us” was broadened so that lots of 
interesting projects could be part of the community.

What I think is causing some confusion (and friction) is that OpenStack needs 
two “us”s: what projects are part of our ecosystem and build software in the 
same open way (the Big Tent concept), and which are a fundamental component of 
the overall OpenStack software, which all other projects can assume are 
available (the Small Tent concept).

To that end, it seems necessary to define a migration path for a project to 
become required. Of course, most will never need to be required, but I think a 
case could be made that several projects (Barbican and Zaqar are the obvious 
ones here) have matured to the point where it makes sense to standardize on 
them. They are mature, and no other projects have come along to challenge their 
designs. At some point, it makes sense to stop pretending that there are 
options, and establish a standard instead.


-- Ed Leafe






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