The minutes of TAB meetings are provided for informational purposes only. Discussions and decisions described in the minutes should not be interpreted as official or definitive TAB or OSDL policy. While efforts are made to ensure their accuracy and completeness, we regret we cannot guarantee that they are. If you have corrections or additions, please contact tech-board at lists.osdl.org
Friday February 2, 2007
Technical Advisory Board Conference Call Minutes
Attendees
James Bottomley Greg Kroah Hartman Randy Dunlap Chris Wright Christoph Lameter Jim Zemlin Tom Hanrahan Matt Mackall
Agenda:
1. The Linux Foundation - Jim Zemlin 2. Tech writer search 3. Japan linux symposium 4. Virtualization white paper 5. NDA next steps 6. Other business
a) posting of minutes b) Feedback of DCL meeting c) policy of funding travel for TAB
Action Items: Tom - work on expanding the TAB to include other open source
developers beyond kernel developers.
Chris - help take feedback back to the virtualizaion task force James - to send Tom contacts at adaptec
1. Jim Zemlin joined the call to provide a brief status of the merger
and asked what he can do for the tab. The primary interests of the tab are the fellowship funds, and the NDA program.
A question and answer was opened up for the TAB to discuss issues about the merger.
Q: Is there much change in direction that the merger will bring?
A: main change in direction -- will be integrating all work of LF
and LSB into the Linux Foundation. Changes to expect is to
restructure the work group process so there is a single process
for all. Ian Murdock and Tom are working to define that process
Q: At one point the TAB talked about expanding tab to be more than
just the kernel and suggested we contunie to explore this
A: We should do this. It would be a healthy thing to do this.
AI: Tom to begin working on this and will bring this up at the
next meeting
It was mentioned that elections for the TAB are at LKS and that
many non-kernel key developers won't be there. But the election
process was designed to make elections more flexible
Q: How exactly are you going to certify applications?
A: It will be difficult, but LSB has a certification program in
place and they are working to improve it all the time. Perhaps
Ian Murdock will be able to discuss this with the TAB at a later
date
Q: Don't you compete against Linux distros?
A: There is no intention to compete against the distros. Distros
like the LSB standard because it comes with a fairly large test
suite
Q: If you get certification right and the distros buy into it,
perhaps you can use the model to get other areas of Linux to
certify
A: We will never be in the buisness of servce support relationsips;
what we can do is help the distros improve code quality.
Printing is good example where all distros can work together.
We feel we reached a reasonable balance with them
Q: Will Ian be full time at LF A: Yes he will be the chief tech officer
Q: operation going forward... The TAB is self generating in terms
of funding. Do you have plans to keep it that way
A: We want to help the TAB out with additional funding. Jim is
inclined to increase the cash that is allocated for funding
travel. At LF, for example, they spent a lot of funds to get
key maintainers to meetings. Jim Feels it is relatively cheap
in relation to the amount of code these key package maintainers
produced.
Q: Centeralizing the effort for forming small mini-summits, the
Linux Foundation could help organizing this
A: LF is looking for ideas to help out with that. Could there be
a way to create combined meetings where LF board, LSB work
groups, and TAB members all get together for technical meetings
in order to contain costs, provide cross pollination of all
attendees? Perhaps have 2-3 meetings per year where we have
seperate tracks that are disjoint but at the same basic location.
2. The search for tech writer
The majority conversation was determined to be "in confidence". But a summary is provided here.
The search for a technical writer is nearing completion. Candidates should be informed of the TAB's decision shortly.
3. Japan symposium
- Japan is working on a list of topics they want to hear, but they
are asking for what we can provide.
- getting close for finalizing the March agenda, but Tom wants to
map out the entire year
- What other topics do we want?
Q: are the Japanese the drivers of the Symposiums?
A: They are, but they also want our input to determine the
direction the kernel is going
- suggested topics:
+ focus on what current problems Japan has
+ why aren't they submitting code to the kernel?
+ can do a readout from the kernel summit (lks update)
+ Japan definitely interested in file systems
+ IPV6
+ Multi-path or LVM
+ HA-failover
+ embedded topics like footprint, real time, power management, and
flash file systems.
+ HPC, page migration
+ WIFI
+ Recruiting will be done at the Linux Storage Summit for candidates
that may be able to provide talks in Japan about Multi-path
Tom would like the TAB members to think about being presenters since
the Japanese would like to have kernel developers present
Symposiums - Dates are scheduled as follows - March 13-14 - July (about 3rd week) - November (about 2nd week)
In March, the current agenda so far is: - Andrew: current state of kernel - Randy: kernel mentors, newbies, janitors - Tom: present forecast information discussed at DCL
4. Virtualization white paper
Tom send out information to the task force members in response to Greg's comments on paper. Tom sent out mail with responses to the questions just before the tab meeting. It was decided to provide further discusson over email since no one had a chance to read the responses before the TAB meeting.
Christoph and Greg wanted to understand the purpose of the white paper. Is a one stop paper for those who don't know where to go to describe what the community has set.
Q: Why not use the other resources such as the virtualization wiki?
A: this paper predated the wiki and was geared not at the community
but at end users that want to know about virtualization progress
in Linux. Before the wiki was created, there was conflicting
x86 information and the users in industry didn't know what to
believe.
Why not just use the existing wiki that was created to use as their information repository?
Other comments about the paper:
- The whole area of usage is not covered in the paper.
- The speed at which the things are changing will make the paper
perpetually obsolete.
Action Item: Chirs to help take feedback back to the virtualizaion task force
5. NDA program.
Maybe it is time to pick this up at a faster pace and approach Adaptec to see if this program would be of benefit to them. Action Item: James to send Tom contacts at Adaptec
It was suggested that a wiki should be created somewhere that provides a matrix of who is interested in working on drivers and manufacturers that want developers to create open drivers for them.
6A.Posting of Minutes.
A new minutes policy was proposed to allow the minutes of the TAB meetins to be posted more rapidly.
6B.Feedback of the DCL Face-to-Face meeting held January 24-26
- need to move faster between subjects - allowed one person to
dominate the discussions and made them longer than necessary
- James gave presentation about the LF/OSDL merger
- large discussion about binary device drivers in the kernel ensued
+ when vendors talk to end users, they blame kernel community
+ The kernel community needs to reach out to the end users to
provide them with more education
+ all users care about is certification
- part of the solution is to get the distos and end users together
with kernel developers and talk about what really are the problems
and try to find solutions to the ones the developers can do
something about.
- OSDL has asked the LUAC what are the problems, but no information
came up.
- There are two conflicting desires of users
+ absolutely no os churn
+ upgraded drivers
- some elements of the roadmap was a bit confusing
6C.Travel budgets for summit sponsorships
We don't have a formal policy for organizing travel and providing funds for travel in place yet. The intent is to provide funds to sponsor key attendees at summits but the account is currently empty. Until a policy is in place, send email to Tom for travel funding requests. The Linux Foundation needs to create a mechanism to easily request funding for travel.
One summit coming up is a virtualization summit around the timeframe of OLS or LKS. This may require funding for sponsorships.