If there's a unifying theme in the mix of discussions that have happended in #openstack-tc this past week, it is power: who has it, what does it really mean, and how to exercise it.

This is probably because it is election season. After a slow start there is now a rather large number of candidates, a very diverse group. Is great to see.

On Wednesday, there were questions about the constellations idea mooted in the TC Vision Statement and the extent to which the TC has power to enforce integration between projects. Especially those which are considered core and those that are not (in this particular case Zaqar). The precedent here is that the TC has minimal direct power in such cases (each project is fairly autonomous), whereas individuals, some of whom happen to be on the TC, do have power, by virtue of making specific changes in code. The role of the TC in these kinds of situations is in making ideas and approaches visible (like constellations) and drawing attention to needs (like the top 5 list).

Thursday's discussion provides an interesting counterpoint. There some potential candidates expressed concern about running because they were interested in maintaining the good things that OpenStack has and had no specific agenda for drastic or dramatic change while candidates often express what they'd like to change. This desire for stability is probably a good fit, because in some ways the main power of the TC is choosing which projects to let into the club and in extreme cases kicking bad projects out. That latter is effectively the nuclear option: since nobody wants to use it the autonomy of projects is enhanced.

Continuing the rolling segues: On the same day, ttx provided access to the answers to two questions related to "developer satisfaction" that were added to the PTG survey. These aren't the original questions, they were adjusted to be considerably more open ended than the originals, which were effectively yes or no questions. The questions:

• What is the most important thing we should do to improve the OpenStack software over the next year?
• What is one change that would make you happier as an OpenStack Upstream developer?

I intend to analyse and group these for themes when I have the time, but just reading them en masse is interesting if you have some time. One emerging theme is that some projects are perceived to have too much power.

Which bring us to today's office hours where the power to say yes or no to a project was discussed again.

First up Glare There are a few different (sometimes overlapping) camps:

• If we can't come up with reasons to not include them, we should include them.
• If we can't come up with reasons to include then, we should not include them.
• If they are going to cause difficulties for Glance or the stability of the images API, that's a risk.
• If the Glare use case is abstract storage of stuff, and that's useful for everyone, why should Glare be an OpenStack project and not a more global or general open source project?

This needs to be resolved soon. It would be easier to figure out if there was already a small and clear use case being addressed by Glare with a clear audience.

Then Mogan, a bare metal compute service. There the camps are:

• The overlaps with Nova and Ironic, especially at the API-level are a significant problem.
• The overlaps with Nova and Ironic, especially at the API-level are a significant opportunity.

Straight into the log for more.

Finally, we landed on the topic of whether there's anything the TC can do to help with the extraction of placement from nova.