Strategic project governance

OpenStack Foundation Community Meeting

October 10, 2018

Goals for today’s meeting

• Share and get feedback on the latest governance framework for adding new projects
• Clarify role of “Strategic Focus Areas” in our ongoing strategic planning efforts
• Quick updates on other activities in flight, Berlin Summit, future community meetings

Agenda

• Strategic Project Governance Presentation (25 Min)
• Feedback, Q&A (15 Min)
• Future Community Meetings & Newsletters (5 Min)

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Strategic project governance

Status & Next Steps

SFAs & New Projects governance

• Board work group met regularly
• Reviewed & refined an initial strawman proposal for governance of SFAs & New Projects
• Notes & proposal shared with wider community for feedback on mailing lists, IRC, PTG

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Today’s proposal reflects the feedback to date from a wide range of stakeholders

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But first, some background...

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Open Infrastructure

• New applications are putting new demands on infrastructure: AI, Edge
• OpenStack is the only open solution at IaaS layer
• But, the infrastructure requires more than OpenStack: no one technology or open source project can do it all, and users are combining multiple technologies at different layers of the stack
• More value is unlocked for users when the focus is integration and operation of open source technologies across use cases and verticals

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The future of OSF is to help build new markets for Open Infrastructure

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Goal

The goal of OSF and the Strategic Focus Areas is to serve developers, users, and the open infrastructure ecosystem by providing a set of shared resources to build community, facilitate collaboration amongst users, and support integration of open source infrastructure technologies.

Key Principles:

• Focus on use cases and user value when organizing a new Strategic Focus Area
• Follow the Four Opens: open source, open design, open development, open community
• Communities should have the ability to self-organize in the way that is most effective for their active contributors
• Technical decisions should be made by technical people representative of the contributors
• Overall governance should be representative and diverse, and should provide opportunities for new leaders to rise up and contributors of all types to participate

‘Four Opens’: Cornerstone of our Culture

OpenStack Foundation culture is built on the four opens, which we believe are paramount to building vibrant, sustainable and truly collaborative communities:

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1. Open Source - Open Source, not open core
2. Open Design - Public discussion and meetings to plan roadmap; focus on user input and direction
3. Open Development - All development activities (code repositories, reviews…) happen publicly with the ability for anyone to participate throughout the development process
4. Open Community - Representative governance, collaborative culture, level playing field

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https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/opens.html

Important policies, or the ‘non-negotiables’

IP Management

• Foundation owns and manages all trademarks
• Foundation owns key web domains
• Open source, not open core
• CLA, DCO or appropriate contributor agreements in place

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Governance

• Technical decisions made by technical people representative of the contributors, on the merits of the proposal
• Governance should be representative and diverse, and should provide opportunities for new leaders to rise up
• Public documentation of governance, development process, and how to contribute
• Projects must adhere to the OpenStack Foundation Code of Conduct

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Important policies, cont.

Communications

• Communications channels publicly archived and available on the internet
• IRC is preferred, but there’s potential to support other channels
• No private channels or mailing-lists; everyone should be able to access everything
• Prefer asynchronous communications. Meetings should be recorded (text or video) and publicly available on the internet, organized in a way that’s easy to reference

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Technology

• Prefer open source tools
• Automated testing pipeline in place (potential to leverage OpenStack Foundation infrastructure)
• Publicly available and open code repositories

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The ‘negotiables,’ potential to bring your own

• Project name (needs to pass legal trademark search)
• Development language (Python is our heritage, but we’re not limited to Python)
• Technical governance structure, including code reviewers and project leadership, as long as it adheres to the four opens and guidelines
• OpenStack Foundation-hosted git/Gerrit systems is recommended, but if the project already exists on Github or other publicly-accessible repos that is an option
• Shared libraries
• Release cadence

Example Pilot Project Support

Approach is to leverage and document best practices from OpenStack, grow strong ambassadors in the community and leverage established infrastructure (events, tools).

• Community management
• Governance and release management (consulting, process establishment, tools)
• Issue escalation / resolution as needed
• Collaboration
• Space to meet at OpenStack Summit & Project Teams Gathering
• Mailing lists, git repos, CI system support - if desired
• Education/awareness
• Logo development, potential to appear in Foundation swag store
• Lightweight website template/design
• Primary trademark validation and support
• Superuser magazine articles & contribution opportunities
• PR support as appropriate
• Visibility at OpenStack Summit, OpenStack Days and User Groups

• Define the scope of the OSF "open infrastructure" efforts�
• Involve a range of activities:
• Identifying use cases
• Collaborating across communities
• Supporting the creation of missing technology pieces
• Testing end-to-end

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Strategic Focus Areas

Strategic Focus Areas

Shared:

• Technologies
• Contributors
• Users
• Ecosystem

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Datacenter

cloud software

Edge Computing

infrastructure

Container

infrastructure

CI/CD

infrastructure

• The "missing technology pieces" that we may need to create/support to reach our strategic focus areas goals�
• A project (OpenStack, Kata Containers...) may have one or several components/deliverables (Nova, Cinder...)�
• Projects ideally help with several of our SFAs

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• Reuse across focus areas is something we should encourage rather than discourage

Projects

• Do not tie projects to a specific focus area - they’re decoupled�
• Technical governance should be set at project-level, not at strategic focus area level or at component level�
• SFA: keep it simple, a list of strategic areas we’re actively working on - no “incubation” or “graduation” stages �
• Projects: Distinct phases with clear steps, criteria, & owners�

Base proposal for SFA & Project Governance

• SFA:
• Board approves strategic focus areas as part of regular strategic reviews.�
• Projects:
• Foundation staff should have freedom to experiment with pilot projects
• Board approves projects moving from “pilot” to “confirmed”, signaling long-term investment of Foundation resources
• Other Foundation governance bodies should have the opportunity to provide input in the confirmation process of new projects by the Board

Base proposal for SFA & Project Governance

• Goal: Building a sustainable model for usage and development based on 4 Opens, starting up the 3 forces (technology, ecosystem, users)�
• Criteria: Project fills a gap that advances the OSF mission, early signs of interest from 3 forces, alignment with one or more SFAs, willingness to embrace the Four Opens / "OpenStack way"�
• Code is available and published on a public development platform�
• Governance: Executive Director approves new Pilot Projects

Project Stage 1: Pilot -- goals & governance

• Create an open collaboration - contribution and release model, technical and strategic decision making�
• Develop project websites and market position�
• Determine event participation model�
• Define governance and operate under governance�
• Attract multiple organizations to participate

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Project Stage 1: Pilot - expectations during Pilot

• Goal: Establish the project for the future and expand the community, ecosystem and usage; solidify the OSF commitment to the project and community
• Reviewed within 18 months of becoming a pilot (Board can defer confirmation)
• Project confirmation criteria
• Board determines the long term success of the project is strategic to�OSF's mission
• Adopted the 4 opens, spawned open collaboration, including �engagement from users, developers, and the ecosystem
• Fully formed governance and had at least one release

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Project Stage 2: Confirmed - goals & governance

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• Build out a strong commercial ecosystem with productization

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• Continue to attract additional developers

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• Refine marketing and carve out a leadership position in the relevant space

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• Encourage an active and engaged user community

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Project Stage 2: Confirmed - expectations ongoing

• Focus areas today: Datacenter cloud, Container Infrastructure, Edge, CI/CD
• Future additions: TBD

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• Pilot projects:

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• Confirmed projects:

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Current status

• Only projects interested in adopting the Four Opens
• Only projects that help with open infrastructure (one or more of our SFAs)
• Only projects successfully spawning an open collaboration
• Only projects that are working well with our already-supported projects

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Supporting a limited number of projects

• Support more than just OpenStack
• Making sure there is a place where early collaboration can happen
• Promote our open collaboration model beyond our own projects
• Attract more resources

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Goals for our project infrastructure

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• The project infrastructure will get its own domain (opendev.org)�and governance structure
• Any project can be hosted on our project infrastructure,�as long as they are under an OSI-approved license

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• Such projects may present themselves as "hosted on opendev.org"�but not as “OSF projects”

A project infrastructure for more than OpenStack

Project Governance Timeline & Next Steps

• October 10: Community meeting to share latest update and provide feedback
• Please provide your feedback before Oct 25 Board Meeting!!
• October 25: Board meeting - review & potentially approve project governance model
• Nov 12: Board meeting - review & potentially approve bylaws changes
• Nov 13-15, Berlin Summit:
• If approved, announce new project governance model
• Spotlight on Airship (tech preview) & StarlingX (v1 release Oct 24)
• With lots of OpenStack, Zuul & Kata as well as many other projects :)
• January 2019: Individual Board Member Election
• Bylaws changes on the ballot (TC typo raised at Vancouver Summit meeting plus any governance related updates approved in Berlin Summit Board Meeting)

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Feedback�Q&A

Other updates

Newly (re)elected Technical Committee members

• Doug Hellmann (dhellmann)
• Ghanshyam Mann (gmann)
• Jean-Philippe Evrard (evrardjp)
• Jeremy Stanley (fungi)
• Julia Kreger (TheJulia)
• Lance Bragstad (lbragstad)

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https://governance.openstack.org/election/results/stein/tc.html

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**Picture taken today in Stockholm! Hello friends!

Nominate your peers for the Community

Contributor Awards!

• Nominations are open until October 21st; it takes 5 minutes (or less!) to nominate a worthy contributor!
• For the first time at the Berlin Summit, we’ll hand out awards at Day 1 lunch and recognize winners on the keynote stage Day 2
• Interested in helping decide the winners? Questions? Contact knelson@openstack.org
• All OSF project contributions recognized!

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Nomination form: https://openstackfoundation.formstack.com/forms/berlin_stein_ccas

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**Yay Alex Settle! This could be you! Or your friends!

Other community news & updates

• OpenStack User Survey report to be delivered at Berlin Summit, Nov 13
• Ongoing work to establish OpenStack Foundation “Rep Office” in China
• OpenStack HA whitepaper in the works, led by Adam Spiers & Self-Healing SIG
• Open Infrastructure Community newsletter plans forming, led by Chris Hoge
• Upcoming community meetings:
• October 24: spotlight on StarlingX v1 release
• Working on something cool? Want to give a demo or update? The Community Meetings are intended to be an open forum! Contact chris@openstack.org to get on the agenda!

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Thank you !

openstack

openstack

OpenStackFoundation

@OpenStack