CentOS Board - meeting minutes - 2020-01-08

CentOS Board - meeting minutes - YYYY-MM-DD

Attendees

Actions

Decisions, resolutions, and agreements

Agenda + Minutes

Public minutes

Attendees

Brian Exelbierd (guest)

Rich Bowen (guest)

Karsten Wade (Secretary)

Jim Perrin

Mike McLean

Ralph Angenendt

Tru Huynh

Karanbir Singh (Chair)

Actions

ACTION: Karsten to work out a vid conf call process so we can start even if the Chair or Secretary are delayed.

ACTION: Rich to generate a draft statement for us on what is happening with C8.

ACTION: Rich to work with Aoife on what is being reported out of CPE for CentOS to highlight what is happening on an ongoing basis -- a lot is happening, how do we highlight it?

ACTION: Karsten and Rich to arrange space of some kind at Dojo for open discussions

Decisions, resolutions, and agreements

AGREED: have Bex, Rich, Karsten work on audience surveys to generate data into the spreadsheet that has actual meaning. Rich to be the face of this, Board has oversight. Starting with “friends and families” information as most accessible and likely to be accurate/trustworthy.

AGREED: Holding some open discussions/work session at Dojo

Agenda + Minutes

Adopt minutes from 2019-12-18

Introduction of Brian Exelbeird (bex) and his relationship to CentOS and Red Hat. Rich Bowen to join for this first part of the meeting

Recording: BlueJeans (RH account), Google Drive (shared to personal gmail accounts)

Discussion of how Bex is helping track CentOS Stream for the business.

Being the conduit into the business and for the GM (Stephanie Chiras) of the Platform BU.

Work with Board as a representative for Stefanie et al.

Help coordinate quarterly meetings between BU and BOD.

ASAP meeting with Stefanie, February?

Resource for the Board

Able to help Red Hat folks craft answers for us before we meet with them so the experience is more crisp and productive.

Reflect accurately into Red Hat, and make sure the connections are happening outward to the Board. Part of keeping a tighter feedback loop with the business.

Has a community-centric viewpoint.

Available to care about things the BOD cares about, and to coordinate with other people the BOD might want to hear from, talk to, etc.

KB: what does RHEL’s community look like in relation to Stream?

Note - it’s a single stream in Stream -- not a multiple, not related to SIGs built on codebases and what those look like, but note that it is a pre-RHEL stream, not a multi-faceted concept, it’s focused on what RHEL will become.

RHEL community is similar to CentOS, largely users who haven’t found a path to contribution. There are a large amount of contributors, e.g. via partner programs and other classic engineer-to-engineer relationships.

What does it mean to contribute to RHEL? It used to be “go to Fedora and pray” or “look at this best-effort side thing in CentOS that sort feeds back in”. Bex has been asked to make a clear picture, and Stream is a clear picture.

Sees that Stream will takeover some but not all of that community function for RHEL. RHEL maintaining own relationship with folks who need own different types of relationships -- NDA, etc. so it ends up getting routed through 

What do successful successful dev and prod look like for these audience segments so we’re all working from the same context so we don’t forget about someone and turn off their use case accidentally; or say ‘no’ and shut off a big use case benefit.

Each component of the project may not be all things for all people.

If we wanted to build The Thing that would fit for each use case, what would that look like in each?

KB: what are the sample sets we’re going to bring on board to help us answer these questions?

Bex: happy to have those discussions but need to have a Board directive to do so -- not his place to define who are the marquee user groups to talk to.

Ralph: these seem to represent where someone had examples in mind based on how these audiences are written.

KB: interesting to hear about what RHEL thinks about these groups.

Bex: yes, interested in hearing who are the marquee users from the BOD and other perspectives, not just his or the RHEL BU.

RHEL has people who do market intelligence, if we have something we need from them.

But let’s not have the Project look from the product perspective but rather think what is the sizing relative to what fits the project.

There is some influence from the RHEL BU in this list, for sure.

These needs to be a useful instrument for the project to help inform e.g. SIGs and what is in them.

KB: let’s be careful not to use a list such as this to filter what the community brings as possibilities or for correctness of consumption, that would be an anti-pattern and anti-open source.

Shouldn’t confuse CentOS Board, CentOS Project, CentOS Linux, and CentOS Stream.

Creating this and getting the data for it is going to be a lot of work.

Segmenting helps us make sure that resource burn is going toward where the project feels the foci should be.

KB: Let’s convert this into a user survey we can talk to people we know, as a first iteration to seed things. Have Rich own getting this data. Get folks to contribute this data back in to be part of the process around goals, etc. as well.

Audience segments -- a few more requests for this Spreadsheet

What is our best guess of relative size of the various market segments? XS, S, M, L, XL

For “Definition of Dev” & “Definition of Production”, what comments do we have?

What would be the “Definitions of Dev/Prod” we’d put for the new segments we identified: Gov, Mil, National Labs, and Academia?

Long discussion about the value and meaning of this data for the project.

What does success look like? What does that mean for all our constituencies? Making sure we’re thinking more broadly than what the business-myopic might be.

As we start saying yes to things, what are the tradeoffs for audiences we care about?

Good opportunity to become a contributor-centric community, as a position between Fedora and Red Hat.

AGREED: have Bex, Rich, Karsten work on audience surveys to generate data into the spreadsheet that has actual meaning. Rich to be the face of this, Board has oversight. Starting with “friends and families” information as most accessible and likely to be accurate/trustworthy.

Build pipeline changes - Joined by Rich Bowen

Update from Jim/KB

Having to make realtime changes to build systems due to the differences in how EL8 and Stream 8 need to be built. Part of this is coordinating back to RCM.

8.1 looking to seeding this weekend, release next week

CBS is next on the list

Need to discuss what the buildroot looks like

SIGs are asking for full access to buildroot; seeing it as a first class citizen rather than a last-place accumulation point.

Looking for the balance of the buildroot packages that are held back, causing things working/not working in the EL 8 environments that should be similar.

Discussions on buildroot coming soon; team has been heads down

KB: leaving users badly exposed leaving open CVEs

Jim: some are missing buildroot packages, tickets to RCM, time to turn around, etc. Tooling around it is improving by force.

ACTION: Rich to generate a draft statement for us on what is happening with C8.

ACTION: Rich to work with Aoife on what is being reported out of CPE for CentOS to highlight what is happening on an ongoing basis -- a lot is happening, how do we highlight it?

CPE improvements are slower than community, but expect more resources ongoing; Carl George first example.

Non-public information as there is no way currently to explain best the direction of resourcing and how that helps various project users and contributors

Everyone is hearing a lot of risky reactions around the obvious delays with C8; need to hit the mark with 8.2 certainly 8.3?

Project goals refresh

Working session with the draft process doc

Begin public segment 13 Jan?

No objections to timeline so far.

AGREED: Holding some open discussions/work session at Dojo

ACTION: Karsten and Rich to arrange space of some kind at Dojo for open discussions

Rolling (last from 2019-12-18, new items to the rolling agenda highlighted as [NEW]):

[NEW] Reporting on and better understanding the build process for CentOS Linux 8 and the update lag / point release challenges

“But I hope we don't have to wait for all that to happen before we get C8 buildroots in CBS for the SIGs to build packages.”

AGREED: Rich will draft a statement about the ongoing challenges to C8 builds.

[NEW] Trademark Guidelines review:

What works & what does not.

What do we want to get fixed; who wants to work on that.

[NEW] Advisory Council - discussion toward a proposal - discussion draft

On hold while goals discussion is held, which includes a review and update of governance. We’ll figure out what model we want from that and how this idea might fit.

Any other topics aka What other things do you want on our key initiatives list?

New branding work underway

Website update work: https://github.com/areguera/centos-style-websites

Framework proposed into logo discussion: https://git.centos.org/centos/Artwork/issue/1#comment-62 

Stepping-up our meeting norms

Announcing Fabian …

New Board members

Transparency initiatives

Public agenda + minutes

Public agenda

On Wednesday 08 January 2020, the CentOS Board of Directors will hold its first meeting of the decade and 2020 calendar year. Below is the agenda for that meeting that can be shared with the community and wider public.

Adopt minutes from 2019-12-18

Build pipeline changes

Update from Jim/KB

Project goals refresh

Working session with the draft process doc

Planning to announce and begin process in coming weeks

Rolling (last from 2019-12-18, new items to the rolling agenda highlighted as [NEW]):

[NEW] Reporting on and better understanding the build process for CentOS Linux 8 and the update lag / point release challenges

[NEW] Trademark Guidelines review:

What works & what does not.

What do we want to get fixed; who wants to work on that.

[NEW] Looking at new Board membership and structure (ongoing)

On hold while goals discussion is held, which includes a review and update of governance. We’ll figure out what model we want from that and how this idea might fit.

Any other topics aka What other things do you want on our key initiatives list?

New branding work underway

Website update work: https://github.com/areguera/centos-style-websites

Framework proposed into logo discussion: https://git.centos.org/centos/Artwork/issue/1#comment-62 

Stepping-up our meeting norms (ongoing)

Transparency initiatives (ongoing)

Public minutes

On 2020-01-08 the CentOS Board of Directors held the first meeting of 2020, welcoming guest Rich Bowen, Community Architect for the CentOS Project.

The group talked through some background for each-other as part of the framework for updating the project goals. The Board is drafting a process that is for refreshing the project's goals openly and transparently. More details including a timeline should start rolling out in the middle of January to the centos-devel mailing list and announced on blog.centos.org.

The Board then heard from Jim Perrin as head of Community Platform Engineering (CPE) about the ongoing work around the EL 8 rebuild, SIG needs, and what the path forward might look like. He covered how the teams have been making realtime changes to build systems due to the differences in how CentOS Linux 8 and CentOS Stream need to be built. Regarding some open requests, discussions on the build root are coming soon, as the team raises their heads from work that has been underway. In general, Jim reported that tooling around the build systems are improving by force. He identified Aofie Maloney as a key contact to work with Rich Bowen on highlighting the ongoing work from CPE that affects various CentOS Project constituencies. We’re all hoping this communication helps raise visibility and focus questions about work to keep everyone better informed.

As a participant in the discussion, Rich Bowen agreed to write up a post for the community that covers the current situation of CentOS Linux 8 builds. This has been subsequently been posted:

https://blog.centos.org/2020/01/update-state-of-centos-linux-8-and-centos-stream/

In support of these efforts, the Board came to the following decisions, resolutions, and agreements:

CentOS Project five-year goals refresh:

AGREED: Available co-authors of the goals will be present to discuss the effort, conduct reviews, and create works during the CentOS Dojo before FOSDEM on 31 Jan 2020.

ACTION: Karsten and Rich to arrange space of some kind at Dojo for open discussions around goals setting.

ACTION: Karsten driving goals process document through current pre-draft phase.

Project build systems discussion:

ACTION: Rich to publish a statement/status for what is happening with CentOS Linux 8.

ACTION: Rich to work with Aoife Moloney on what is being reported out of CPE for CentOS portion to highlight what is happening on an ongoing basis--a lot is happening, how do we highlight it?

Present at the meeting:

Jim Perrin

Karsten Wade (Secretary)

Mike McLean

Ralph Angenendt

Tru Huynh [quorum]

Karanbir Singh (Chair)

Rich Bowen (guest)