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 July 7, 2006

Technical Advisory Board Conference Call Minutes

Attendees:

James Bottomley Randy Dunlap Christoph Lamater Matt Mackall Leann Ogasawara Ted Ts'o Arjan van de Ven Chris Wright

Action Items:

     * Arjan to review Fellowship Fund wording and make any suggestions
       to Tom.
     * James to post a note about TAB nominations to tech-board-discuss
       mailing list.

Agenda:

1) Review of Fellowship Fund Requests 2) TAB Elections 3) Chris Wright Report From the OSDL-Japan Symposium 4) LWE Kernel Dev Sessions: Who, What, When 5) James Report From the OSDL Board

Review of Fellowship Fund Requests

Performance Enhancements for CIFS VFS - The TAB's initial thought was that this was a very specific task and that Samba would be more appropriate for funding the work. They wondered if this was really important for Samba compatibility? They felt there is no real driving need to fund this. Also, this is not a general area to allow other people to do more work. The TAB questioned if performance is really an issue as they haven't seen any bug reports on CIFS being too slow. They feel there are more critical projects in the Fellowship Fund queue that should be addressed over this one.

Network Intrusion - The TAB felt this project is seeking VC money which is not what the Fellowship Fund was set up for. The Fellowship Fund is meant to fund a specific developer for a specific task that will have a broad impact on the development community. Also, this proposal is not targeted towards the kernel which is what the TAB is interested in right now.

It appears that the Fellowship Fund is receiving numerous requests seeking VC funding. Arjan said he would take a look at the Fellowship Fund wording/description and recommend any changes to possibly avoid these types of requests coming in.

Tab Elections

The five members up for election are:

- Matt Mackall
- James Bottomley
- Randy Dunlap
- Ted Ts'o
- Chris Wright

The TAB needs to allow for other candidate nominations to come in so James will post an announcement to the tech-board-discuss mailing list. The voting process will be a show of hands at the kernel summit. The top 5 candidates who receive the most votes will be elected. There are no limitations on the number of candidates. Gerrit mentioned he'd add this to the kernel summit agenda. Due to the massive protest on the discuss list this will be held as a BOF. James will also have an update of the TAB activities at the BOF.

Chris Wright Report From the OSDL-Japan Symposium

The format was a 2 day event. The 1st day was a broad public event and rapidly exceeded expectations in terms of attendance, ~150 people. It was a reasonable mix of developers, technical managers, and technical leads. The first day was broken into two halves. The first half was a status update and state of the union from certain areas. Andrew Morton reported on the kernel, Steve and Yoshifuji on networking, Chris on Xen, and Junio on git. The git and the kernel presentations were especially well received. The second half was for the Japanese to pull together some of their wish lists, questions, hot topics, concerns etc. and present them to the presenters from the first half of the day and allow them to respond. The goal was to help bridge the gap and get Japanese developers more involved in the mainstream community. There was a consistent message coming from the presenters which was get on the mailing lists, submit patches, be persistent, etc. The second day was for OSDL members to give presentations on work they are currently doing or receive help on work they are doing. They were given similar feedback as those who attended the first day. The next gathering is scheduled for September. The exact details have not been stated. There has been a concern about drivers so probably something on that, Tom would be the best to contact. The TAB noted that if the exact dates could be nailed down it would make planning easier. It was recommended that either right before or right after Linux conf au could make travel easier. It was also noted that a number of TAB members could possibly attend a November date due to the OSDL-Board meeting.

LWE Kernel Dev Sessions: Who, What, When

It was decided that a Wednesday afternoon session would suit the presenters better. It would allow for all the presenters to have a round table discussion with all of them present. Otherwise, James and Greg would have to jump between this session and the OSDL-Board meeting. It was also noted that other TAB members could possibly attend: Arjan, Matt, and Ted. Randy will give a presentation on kernel social engineering. gregkh - ?. James will give a presentation on the value of getting your patches into the kernel from a developer and managers point of view. All three will send their presentation titles to the TAB mailing list which Leann will then forward to John Walker. The dates for LWE SF are August 14 - 17, of which the kernel developer session will be held the afternoon (3pm) of Wednesday the 16th.

James Report From the OSDL Board

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