Table of Contents
minutes/april_14_2006
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
April 14, 2006
Technical Advisory Board Conference Call Minutes
Attendees:
James Bottomley Randy Dunlap Tom Hanrahan Greg Kroah-Hartman Matt Mackall Leann Ogasawara Ted Ts'o
Agenda:
- Fellowship Fund Proposals - Handling Fellowship Fund Requests - OSDL Technical training in Asia - FreedomHEC - NDA program status - LWE SF - Other
Action Items:
1) Greg to write up the Documentation Proposal for the Fellowship Fund
and email out to the TAB mailing list.
2) Tom to write it up with a detailed outline of Fellowship Fund
Request process and send it out to TAB mailing list.
3) Greg agreed to find out more on the specifics of what the
FreedomHEC needs in terms of sponsorship and email it to the TAB list.
4) James will initially approach Google about sponsorship for
FreedomHEC as well but Tom will also follow up.
5) Leann to talk to Jennifer about getting enough marketing and
advertisement for LWE SF developer sessions in order to attract the right audience.
6) Leann to speak with the OSDL initiative managers and see if
another meeting can be arranged between initiative members and the TAB (rather than the joint face to face in France) - possibly set it up as a con call.
Fellowship Fund Proposals
Contents
The TAB felt it would be good to have two proposals, PCMCIA and Documentation, prepared for the fellowship fund. The proposals are needed mainly by OSDL marketing to show to member companies and convince them to donate funds. Greg has agreed to write up the Documentation proposal, similar to the PCMCIA proposal, and has estimated it will take him 1 week. He will email the proposal out to the TAB mailing list. James will then forward the proposals to Stuart (CC Tom) and they will take them to the Technical and Marketing Subcommittee of the OSDL board to get final approval before approaching member companies for funds.
Handling Fellowship Fund Requests
OSDL will take the responsibility for initially handling requests that come in for the Fellowship Fund. OSDL will verify all requests are are in a complete coherent format - for example, who is making the request, what they are planning to do, duration of their task, dollar amount being requested. OSDL will not filter out any content. Once OSDL has a complete request they will bring it to the attention of the TAB. The TAB can then eliminate which requests have or don't have merit and in turn take appropriate requests to the Technical and Marketing Subcommittee of the OSDL Board. The Technical and Marketing Subcommittee will then vote to allocate funds to reasonable projects. Tom will write up more detailed outline of this process and send it out to TAB mailing list. It was mentioned he can probably use Dominic's prototype that was sent to the TAB mailing list early on. Look in the archives. So far the fellowship fund has 25K committed and 4 more companies are considering an additional 25K each (100K total). This is the reason for creating the proposals; to entice potential donors.
OSDL Technical training in Asia
There has been talk about a need for technical training sessions to occur in Asia. The idea for these training sessions has come about from discussions with Japanese OSDL member companies and completion of the OSDL operations plan. Japanese companies said they want and expect quarterly summits, conferences, or training sessions in regards to working with the open source community and developing code. There will be 3 training sessions planned for this year followed by 1 per quarter from there on out. Japanese companies were specific about what they want to see covered in each of the first 3 training sessions. The first session will cover general kernel and memory management, virtualization, and networking. This first session will occur in mid June and they have already arranged for Andrew Morton to talk about the kernel and memory management, Steve Hemminger for networking, and Chris Wright for virtualization. OSDL is also trying to get a couple of Japanese developers who have successfully worked with open source community to attend. Because of communication and language barriers, they are trying to focus primarily on Japanese speaking attendees. OSDL is also tentatively thinking of having the second training session in August. The focus for that would be on device drivers, dump trace, and ckrm. Greg and Christoph are might be able to attend if there are no scheduling conflicts. The third and final session of the year will happen in November. That session will focus on drivers (James Bottomly to attend and present), test tools (possibly Martin Bligh to talk about his Autotest framework), x.org (Keith Packard would be a good to get), and possibly some distributions. No official name for the conference has been decided yet. The Japanese also would like an opportunity to present their ideas on these subjects and what they are interested in working on. The duration of the conference is currently at 3 days. The 1st day is for OSDL members only - a small venue. The 2nd and 3rd day will be open to everyone. Once OSDL has this type of program working, they intend to take it to China and Korea. The TAB noted that CKRM is dead and the only possible good that it would have in these sessions would be as an example of what _not_ to do. It was mentioned that these sessions were not set in stone so adjustments can be made about topics. The TAB thought Suparna would be a good candidate to talk about dump trace. It was asked if these companies wanted technical info or how to deal with the community and it was noted that it would be a good thing for each of these training sessions to speak on this. Greg had spoke with NEC and they mentioned they really wanted information about working with the development community. It was also noted that CELF has been having good luck with their techno jamboree - plan on having it 6 times. It was also noted that Japanese developers being able to integrate into the community came up at the OSDL board meeting. All the OSDL Japanese member companies are enterprise related. It couldn't hurt to point out Japanese projects focused on the embedded side and how they are working and involved in the community.
FreedomHEC
This is an event being organized by Don Marti who works at Spikesource. He wants to create a developer specific conference . FreedomHEC meets all of the needs as far as a conference for developers and educating them on community involvement. They do need help with sponsorship. It is not yet clear on exactly what the sponsorship money is needed for, possibly to help cover travel expenses for developers to attend or they may just need help with advertisement. Tom sent out an email to OSDL member companies already to see who would want to help sponsor this. It was mentioned to maybe ask Google as well. It was also noted that some presenters attending the Storage Summit could possibly present at FreedomHEC. Greg agreed to find out more on the specifics of what they need in terms of sponsorship and email it to the TAB list. James will initially approach Google about sponsorship as well but Tom will also follow up.
NDA Program Status
James has an email sent to Steve and the CTO of HP about the NDA Program. There is no info yet. The focus of the email is to fully agree and fully understand what James is asking and wants and getting inside information from HP and what they want. Everything is being held up in the legal dept for how. The TAB will wait to identify the next target company until we can see if the process will work for HP. It might be that we are taking the wrong approach but we'll find out. Greg has a company in mind to try next - Nokia. It has to go through a special interest group. The TAB is to let Tom know when they are ready for him to work on the next company.
LWE SF
Assuming the TAB can influence these tracks who can present? Greg and James have already submitted presentation proposals. The dates are August 14 - 17th. Randy can possibly do a social engineering with the community presentation as he is doing the same for OSCON. We are still waiting to hear back from Jennifer if this is a separate track and a whole or half day event. 2 people for half a day is fine. 3 could stretch to a full day. The TAB noted that a session that is open to anyone is good, but doing something like a social engineering talk to the improper audience is a waste of time. Another worry is attracting enough people of the right target audience. The TAB may need some marketing support so the right start up firms know this session is happening. OSDL can help out in terms of marketing. PR firms would be good to engage and so on. Leann to talk to Jennifer about the marketing issue.
Other
It was asked what the status status was for the joint face to face in France between members of the TAB and the OSDL initiative members. It was noted that it was a a bit short notice for members to the TAB to attend the conference. Leann will speak with the initiative managers and see if another meeting can be arranged - possibly as a con call.
