In this meeting we welcomed the new TAB members elected in August while saying thank you to those finishing their terms. Plus, we elected a new chair, discussed the TAB electoral process and heard updates about the Linux Plumbers conference, Kernel Testing and the Critical Infrastructure Initiative.
Present:
1) New chair election
James welcomed the new members to the committee and proceeded directly to the election of the new chair. There were three candidates: John Linville, Grant Likely, and Thomas Gleixner. A vote was held after statements from the three candidates; final tally was six votes for Grant, two for John, one for Thomas, and one abstention.
2) Linux Plumbers Conference
James related that things are going quite well. A couple more sponsors have signed on. The main problem is that registrations have exploded; the hope was to hold attendance to a maximum of 300, but there are now 398 registrations. The LPC committee members are putting a lot of time into dealing with requests from people wanting to attend.
Ric pointed out that registration filled up before the microconference tracks had been worked out. There is a need to get that done sooner so that people know if they should register or not.
The group agreed that it was past time to get the 2015 call for organizers out. There was some discussion as to whether November is too late to post a decision, but no changes were made and the committee agreed to send out the call in its current form. Jon agreed to do that.
3) Kernel testing
Greg reported that things are going well. All of the work is being done by Shuah Khan, he said; he just reports on the project at meetings. Grant said that he would try to get Linaro to contribute some resources to the project.
4) Critical infrastructure initiative
Greg reported that there is a huge list of projects that could conceivably benefit from funding. There will be another meeting of the steering committee soon.
5) UEFI secure boot
Matthew Garrett reported that not much has happened in this area in the last month.
6) Other UEFI business
[UEFI discussions are held under NDA]
Grant noted that ACPI 5.1 has been released; this update makes it much more useful on ARM64 systems.
7) TAB web site
Grant noted that the TAB web site needs updating. Pictures were requested from the new members. He also suggested making a page for former members; no objections to the idea were raised.
8) TAB election process
Kristen said that she had heard some complaints about the process by which the board is elected. The lack of privacy in voting is a problem; some candidates may work with or supervise some of the voters who, understandably, do not want to be seen voting against them. There have also been suggestions for term limits to help avoid the appearance that some community members are becoming career politicians.
Various suggestions were aired, including the use of a preprinted ballot for the elections. There was some talk of allowing email ballots, but there seemed to be a general consensus that in-person voting has value. Grant raised the wider question of who the constituency of the committee really is; should it be spread beyond the kernel community? Or even to a wider subset of the community than those who attend the kernel summit?
No real conclusions were reached; Peter will take the lead on putting together a plan for improved TAB elections for consideration.