Minutes of the January 2015 TAB Meeting

In this, our first meeting of 2015, the TAB had further discussions about our electoral process and talked about formalizing the working relationship between the Linux Foundation and the Linux Plumbers Planning Committee.

First meeting in 2015. The previous meeting was November 2014, and our December meeting was cancelled.

Present

• Grant Likely (Chair)
• Kristen Accardi
• H. Peter Anvin
• John Linville
• Sarah Sharp
• Amanda McPhearson (LF)

Minutes

Meeting called to order at 21:00 UTC

0) Action Item Review

1. [Grant] TAB communication update - create past TAB page - DONE - need to hit publish
2. [Greg] post kernel testing project plan to the TAB mailing list. - DONE
3. [Grant] to investigate and to ask Jim about taking new projects to the TAB - Still todo.

1) Electoral Process

Kristen recaped our discussion on the mailing list so far about or electoral process and feels that the discussion has come to a good conclusion. There are still a few gaps that need to be closed on the current proposed changes.

One issue is the process for selecting electoral officers. Instead of depending on LF personel to run the election, it was proposed that it should be sufficient for the TAB to select electoral officers ahead of time. Another issues is that the process for running an election needs to be documented and specific about who does what.

Peter brought up the question of who is included in the electoral process. He was dually concerned that requiring voters to be physically present would exclude interested kernel developers who cannot attend, and would allow people who are not a part of the development community to vote or influence the results. While agreeing that this could be an issue, Kristen suggested that the problem may just be largely theoretical. So far with TAB elections, we haven't had many complaints of either of those problems actually occuring. Whereas, there have been complaints about process and privacy in previous elections. Therefore, we agreed that for now we will only focus on process reform. Issues of can constituency be debated independently.

Kristen will update the electoral process proposal and post it to the mailing list to be reviewed at the next meeting, and voted on at the March meeting.

2) Plumbers

Grant brought up the issue of coordination between the Linux Plumbers Planning Committee and the Linux Foundation. Several times in past years it has been suggested that the relationship between the Linux Foundation and Plumbers should be formalized. A meeting has been scheduled for early February between the TAB, LF and Plumbers planning committee to discuss. Grant is going to provide an agenda.

Otherwise, the TAB is happy with the way Plumbers planning is progressing. Kristen would like to see the planning committees milestone schedule, just to be reassured that planning is on track, but doesn't feel there is any need for the TAB to get involved. Seeing as neither of the Plumbers TAB representatives were able to make this month's call, the topic was deferred to next month.

3) Other Business

Given that not everyone was able to make this meeting, some of the agenda items were deferred to next month.

Meeting adjourned at 21:49