CentOS Board - meeting minutes - 2019-12-18

CentOS Board - meeting minutes - 2019-12-18

Attendees

Actions

Decisions, resolutions, and agreements

Agenda

Consent items

Public agenda

Public agenda consent items

Public minutes

Attendees

KB Singh

Jim Perrin

Karsten Wade

Mike McLean

Carl Trieloff

Ralph Angenendt

Guest -- Stef Walter

Actions

ACTION: (Carry all actions from notes below up to this section)

ACTION: KB & Karsten to reach out to Thomas & Pat.

ACTION:  use the goals process to bring Stef in and along. KB,KW,JP to be hands on for scaffolding the goals.

ACTION: Jim to work with Fabian/CPE to begin working on a signing and release solution for SIGs, work starting in Jan 2020.

Decisions, resolutions, and agreements

Board agrees there is a significant debt in the content flow, CPE agrees to commit engineering towards this in early CY 2020.

Agenda + Minutes

Meet with Stef Walter to talk about representing and evangelizing for CentOS toward a contributor project as part of a newly formed Advisory Council.

Stef joining us for the first 30 minutes of call to talk through the concept.

Councilor role description.

NOTES

Came out of Carl and KB conversation, seeing that he has the right skillset

Stef quite interested in creating contribution ability especially through his teams.

KW: context around Advisory Council, bootstrapping an engagement group that have a touch point with the project + code today.

Composition : Sig leaders as members

Were really good at some things, are they the things that are most impactful, and what the sig cares about most (?)

Contributor pipeline, from beginning to end, enablement is key

Stef as bootstrap for AC

CT - 1) meeting Stef; 2) what is mechanism to bring Stef in; 3) Karsten’s alternate mechanism.

JP: Carl’s influence is welcome and needed, but his being on board itself might not have the desired level of impact ( int / ext ), so Carl having a formal position, off the board might also be good enough ( words used, not concerned either way )

MM - ideas work both ways to accomplish ends in terms of board sets and advisory council. What is the likelihood of perception of forceful move in just adding an outsider?

SW - happy to go at pace stakeholders define

KB - goals document, we’ve been doing that more or less. Where we are today is an opportunity to rewrite our goals document in a way that the community agree with direction. Bringing in these various voices to define the goals is possible. Opportunity is right now, next 3 months.

RA - CT asks what are specific questions or conversations to have?

Rewriting goals document in public is a good thing. As a changing organization, we met, here’s where we want to be

ACTION - board f2f before FOSDEM to work stuff?

To get Stream to be something we need someone evangelizing and focusing on that one.

CT - could use goals process to bring in Pat and Tomas and Stef to work that process.

KB - nit about to their bosses, should be empowered to be who they have done not because of who they represent.

JP - +1 to KB

MM - think about optics with all due seriousness/consideration.

Stef questions -- very lean in terms of taking on responsibility, Board sounds like bounded work, Councilor sounds unbound. If advisory role represents the work we’re doing already, and if the platform does what is needed, that’s OK.

CT - stef has the bridge to RHEL, ability to drive and evangelize is bar none/top notch.

ACTION - use the goals process to bring Stef in and along. KB,KW,JP to be hands on for scaffolding the goals.

KB & KW to reach out to Pat and Thomas, and see if they can be part of this as well

Advisory Council - discussion toward a proposal - discussion draft

[NEW] IRC channel move

Build discussion:

CPE is ready to build and release into Amazon for C8. Request to authorize them to proceed as the “new way” for CentOS Linux 8 and CentOS Stream

Amazon relationship issue, more work is needed here.

Work on plumbing for this to happen in 8.1 time frame.

CPE can begin building a new signing & release solution for SIGs in the new year. Request to authorize them to proceed as a new system for C8 and replacement for C7, maybe C6.

ACTION: Jim and KB work this out. Fabian can start working on a signing solution for Jan.

Public report: board agrees there is a significant debt in the content flow, CPE agree’s to commit engineering towards this early FY ‘20

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

Early Jan ETA for ISOS

Audience segments, anything missing? Spreadsheet

"Cowboys" - DIY Hyperscalers (Facebook, Google)

Enterprises - Comcast, SFDC, Workday

Free Riders - Home lab users

Free Riders - Small business (2-3 servers)

Free Riders - Non-Profits & Other Cost Constrained Orgs

Free Riders - Small web hosters

Large/Established ISVs (SAP, SQL Server)

Pre & small ISVs

Container ISVs

Partner Collaborations (Intel DPDK)

Enterprise developers

Upstream Developers - Projects

Upstream Developers - CI Providers/Users

HPC / Scientific Computing

Trademark Guidelines review:

What works & what does not.

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

Rolling (last from 2019-11-13):

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

Consent items

Shared auth with Fedora, as described here

Secretary role revitalized -- not formally in the governance yet, role is delegated meeting organization duties from the Chair to include calling for meetings, managing the private and public agenda for meetings, and handling the creation and release of private and public minutes. Karsten has volunteered to take this role until approximately June 2020.

Public agenda

Looking at if Community Platform Engineering (CPE) can begin to build and release CentOS Linux 8 and CentOS Stream into various public clouds.

Review of signing and release solutions for SIGs in the new year.

Rolling (last from 2019-11-13):

Any other topics aka “What other things do you want on our key initiatives list for 2020?”

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 

Looking at new Board membership and structure (ongoing)

Stepping-up our meeting norms (ongoing)

Transparency initiatives (ongoing)

Public agenda consent items

Secretary role revitalized -- not formally in the governance yet, role is delegated meeting organization duties from the Chair to include calling for meetings, managing the private and public agenda for meetings, and handling the creation and release of private and public minutes. Karsten has volunteered to take this role until approximately June 2020.

Board intending to confirm support for planning a shift to sharing auth backends with the Fedora Project.

Public minutes

On 2019-12-18 the CentOS Board of Directors held the final meeting of the 2019 calendar year.

The meeting was focused primarily on how the Board can lead the project further into being a contributor-centric open source project while continuing to deliver value to our community of users. Of particular interest is growing participation in CentOS Streams in addition to ongoing efforts around CentOS SIGs.

As a centralizing effort, the Board agreed to revisiting the goals document created five years ago, and to undergo an effort to refresh those goals in the light of the project’s evolution. The Board will be inviting various stakeholders into these discussions as we undergo a public revision of the goals at the start of 2020.

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

Image creation, signing, and distribution:

AGREED: Board agrees there is a significant technical debt in the content flow. To address this the Board authorizes Community Platform Engineering (CPE) to commit engineering toward addressing this in early CY 2020.

ACTION: Jim to work with Fabian/CPE to begin working on a signing and release solution for SIGs, work starting in Jan 2020.

ACTION: Prioritize transparency and reporting to foster a better understanding of the build process for CentOS Linux 8, with an emphasis on the update lag/point release challenges

Project strategic goals:

AGREED: Undergo a revision of the project goals, to include a range of topics from technical to social/cultural. Do this work transparently, reaching out to specific community members and stakeholders such as RHEL Engineering.

Consent agenda items:

AGREED: Secretary role revitalized -- not formally in the governance yet, role is delegated meeting organization and management duties from the Chair to include calling for meetings, managing the private and public agenda for meetings, and handling the creation and release of private and public minutes. Karsten Wade has volunteered to take this role until approximately June 2020.

ACTION: Early in 2020 Karsten & KB to draft governance updates to reflect the Secretary role.

AGREED: Board confirms support for planning a shift to sharing auth backends with the Fedora Project.