131 lines
6.4 KiB
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131 lines
6.4 KiB
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Top 5 help wanted list
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This document lists areas where the OpenStack Technical Committee seeks
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contributions to significantly help OpenStack as a whole. While in most
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cases things happen naturally through the normal contribution dynamics
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in the community, in some cases a `tragedy of the commons`_ is at play.
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Guidance, leadership and proper recognition of efforts is therefore needed
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to encourage individuals or organizations to contribute in areas where they
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could make a big impact.
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Each item should clearly explain why the item matters (value of the effort
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to the community, operators and users), why we need help there (description
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of the current situation) and what experience or benefit the volunteer can
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expect to gain from tackling it. It should also include the name of a TC
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sponsor (responsible for evangelizing, articulating and channelling the work,
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but also facilitating connections between candidates and target teams). For
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an estimate of the commitment required, interested candidates should reach
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out to the TC sponsor, or the PTL of the affected project.
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.. _`tragedy of the commons`: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
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1. Documentation owners
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=======================
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The #1 pain point in OpenStack, especially for new potential adopters, is
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complexity. While cutting down complexity everwhere we can is critical,
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proper documentation is essential in addressing that complexity. It directly
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benefits operators and users of OpenStack, but also facilitates ramping up
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new direct contributors to the project itself.
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The documentation team has been struggling with limited resources since the
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dawn of OpenStack, despite the heroic efforts of previous team members. An
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ambitious `plan`_ to further decentralize the Documentation team (and turn it
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into a guidance and mentoring support team) has been outlined. To be
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successful, this plan requires project teams to own their own documentation,
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which means that the role of documentation owners will be critical.
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Volunteers for this role will in the short term drive this ambitious
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transition, by being members of their project team and members of the new
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decentralized documentation team. On the long-term they will become a
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reference go-to person in their project, and respected mentors in the
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OpenStack community.
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Interested? Contact the Documentation PTL (asettle) or the TC sponsor for
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this item (dhellmann).
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.. _`plan`: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/472275/
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2. Glance Contributors
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======================
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`Glance`_ is a service to manage images for OpenStack clouds. It's one of the
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early projects in OpenStack and it's deployed in almost every OpenStack cloud.
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Without Glance, Nova can't boot instances.
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Glance is struggling to find new contributors that would be willing to provide
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reviews, to work on bugs or to work on new features. This struggle started as a
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result of the latest lay-offs that happened at the end of 2016 and beginning of
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2017.
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Glance is a great project to ramp up on OpenStack and it's a great project for
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developers regardless of their experience. Glance has welcomed interns, junior
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developers, and more senior developers. In every case, it's a great way to grow
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and contribute to OpenStack.
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Glance is a critical project in OpenStack. Contributions to the future of the
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image registry are essential to the stability of OpenStack. More importantly,
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Glance is not "done". There's significant technical debt that needs to be taken
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care off and several features that can be implemented.
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Interested? Join the Glance IRC channel (#openstack-glance) or reach out to the
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Glance PTL (rosmaita), the TC sponsor for this item (flaper87) or starting a new
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email thread on the ML using the tag `[glance]`.
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.. _`Glance`: https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/projects/glance.html
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3. Community Infrastructure Sysadmins
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=====================================
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The Infrastructure_ team is responsible for designing, building and
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maintaining the systems that are used in the day to day operation of
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the OpenStack project as a whole; this includes development,
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testing, and collaboration tools. All of the software it runs is
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open source, and under public configuration management so that
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everyone in the community has the opportunity to participate. One
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very effective way to get involved in OpenStack, gaining a deep
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understanding of and visibility within the community, is by helping
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operate this infrastructure. Attrition due to shifts in employment
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or availability of personal time impacts the team's ability to
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support the community effectively, and so there is a constant need
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for new contributors who can commit to investing sufficient effort
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to overcome the steep learning curve associated with these varied
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technologies.
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Because our community is global, its support needs span most
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timezones. Unfortunately, the bulk of long-term contributors to
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Infrastructure are concentrated in the Americas and so this leaves
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APAC and EMEA community members with far fewer options for immediate
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assistance with urgent issues. Gaining more contributors who are
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active during those times (whether they live in those parts of the
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World or not) would provide a substantial benefit to the community.
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This is not necessarily as easy as it sounds because it's harder to
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get as much overlap with the current bulk of the team for shadowing
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and knowledge transfer, but there are still some existing team
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members in those timezones who can help mitigate that somewhat.
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In particular, the team seeks developers and systems administrators
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with a background both in maintaining Unix/Linux servers and free
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software, and places heavy emphasis on systems automation and
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configuration management (primarily Ansible and Puppet at the
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moment). Everything possible goes through code review, and gets
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extensively documented and communicated with the rest of the
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community over IRC and mailing lists. Server resources are donated
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by companies operating OpenStack services, and the team also
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operates a persistent deployment of OpenStack too, so there is
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substantial opportunity both for people who have experience in those
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technologies as well as anyone wishing to gain more familiarity with
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them.
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Join the #openstack-infra channel on the Freenode IRC network or
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reach out through the openstack-infra mailing lists on
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lists.openstack.org if you would like to get involved. It's a
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rewarding chance to learn and help others, but most of all it's fun!
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.. _Infrastructure: :ref:project-infrastructure
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