governance/reference/opens.rst
Chris Dent 33c93087e7 Remove "meritocracy" from the opens
The value and meaning of the word "meritocracy" has been a source of
much debate in many communities, open source and otherwise. For many
people it is considered exclusionary and something of a hallmark for
not being in tune with its negative connotations. Rather than
presenting our defenses against those negative connotations and
being more explicit about the local definition of a subjective term,
we can remove it in favor of something that is more direct.

The intent, in the past, has been that "meritocracy" is supposed to
be indicative of a community where the people who get on and do
things and get stuff done are the ones that become become leaders.
The problem with this is "meritocracy" is defined by those who are
already in positions of leadership and thus implicitly excludes
those who may be leading or attempting to lead (or "do") in styles
that are different from existing leaders or who come from
backgrounds different from the norm. These styles may have just as
much "merit" as any other.

The change here simply states what is the case: one of the ways we
achieve openness is by technical governors being elected from
members of the community, rather than being imposed from elsewhere.

Also in this change "technical leads" is adjusted to "team leads" to
reflect the current expansion of "PTL".

Change-Id: Ifdadaad9e616c0ee3ce59f3c1da323ed458c0bc7
2017-06-13 11:18:17 +01:00

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==============
The Four Opens
==============
Open Source
-----------
We do **not** produce "open core" software.
We are committed to creating truly open source software that is usable and
scalable. Truly open source software is not feature or performance limited and
is not crippled. There will be no "Enterprise Edition".
We use the Apache License, 2.0.
* `OSI <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical>`_ approved
* `GPLv3 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#apache2>`_ compatible
* `DFSG <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines>`_ compatible
Open Design
-----------
**We are committed to an open design process.** Every development
cycle the OpenStack community holds face-to-face events to gather
requirements and write specifications for the upcoming release. Those
events, which are **open to anyone**, include users, developers, and
upstream projects. We gather requirements, define priorities and flesh
out technical design to guide development for the next development cycle.
The community controls the design process. You can help make this software
meet your needs.
Open Development
----------------
We maintain a publicly available source code repository through the entire
development process. We do public code reviews. We have public roadmaps. This
makes participation simpler, allows users to follow the development process and
participate in QA at an early stage.
Open Community
--------------
One of our core goals is to maintain a healthy, vibrant developer and user
community. Most decisions are made using a `lazy consensus
<http://www.apache.org/foundation/glossary.html#LazyConsensus>`_ model. All
processes are documented, open and transparent.
The technical governance of the project is provided by the community itself,
with contributors electing team leads and members of the Technical Committee.
All project meetings are held in public IRC channels and recorded. Additional
technical communication is through public mailing lists and is archived.