[yocto-ab] Minutes: Yocto Advisory Board meeting, 13-July-2011

Osier-mixon, Jeffrey jeffrey.osier-mixon at intel.com
Wed Jul 20 11:47:14 PDT 2011


Minutes: Yocto Advisory Board meeting, 13-July-2011

Attendees:

Dave Stewart
Steve Sakoman
Bill Mills
Lieu Ta
Joe Green
Mark Orvek
Denys Dmytriyenko
Richard Purdie
Tracey Erway
Jim Ready
Song Liu
Nithya Ruff
John Cherry
Brad Dixon
Jason Kridner
Paul Anderson
Jeff Osier-Mixon
______________________________________________
Agenda:

- Action items from previous meeting
- Finances
- Upcoming event (LinuxCon)
______________________________________________
Action items from previous meeting:

  1->Jefro to send out invitations to engineering meetings - done

  2->AB determine what bsps to make available to advocacy team

hardware platforms for 1.1

x86, arm, mips, power
arch first, platform second
targets tend to change anyway

dave: on intel side, moving out of dave's group less involved
focus on FOSS piece instead of hw piece
current idea is to have  refresh of desktop sandybridge procs, atom
off 1.1 train, sync as close as possible

bill: ti - beagle-xm, looking to have at least 1 other platform supported in
1.1
demo how to use meta-ti
"can supply" - what does it mean to supply to advocacy group?
j: both software development (personnel) and hardware
tracey - want to promote overall across multiple archs

john working with freescale to move them toward yocto (and ibm)
  can't commit to bsps in 1.1 timeframe
  would like to see something done around 64bit p5020 line, address multilib
support
  tracey: can you reach conclusion in discussions by 1.1 release, something
to highlight?
  john: absolutely
-> John to describe Freescale conclusions in time for 1.1 release

mips?  would like to see represented
  mike: mips undergoing corp restructuring, interested in yocto and then
just busy
  mike can reengage
-> Mike to ask MIPS: if one board represented in yocto what would that be?

grant likely interested in xilinx - arm+microblaze, linux and uclinux
  RP metaxilinx layer, published patches
  insufficient interest to become a full architecture
  room to do beyond what core arch provides (advocacy)

  3->AB to continue messaging discussion on mailing list = oe vs oe-core vs
yocto
Jefro didn't see this, and didn't follow up on it
  tracey - sean sent updated thoughts, misfiled
  didn't put it on mailng list, have been discussing, have a simple way to
discuss
-> advocacy group will take AR to get messaging discussion up by end of week
  joe green, john cherry discussion on list after previous meeting -
resolving to something that looked correct

  4->AB to determine budget & funding issues, discuss with LF
we will cover this in the next agenda item

  5->OE Messaging by end of July for next board meeting
see #3 above

  6->OE training material needs help, talk to Richard
  OE docs still refer to pre oe-core
  there is documentation out there, outdated, q of finding & then finding
resources
-> Jefro to take AR to follow up with free-electrons

______________________________________________
Sync for upcoming events: LinuxCon Vancouver

  2hr hands-on presentation Jefro & Saul, Beth's presentation, BoF
  AB meeting on Thursday morning after keynotes, 10:15 until after lunch at
2pm
  let Jefro know now if any problems
-> please RSVP on Thursday LinuxCon Face-to-face

______________________________________________
Financial considerations

  the project has expenses in terms of infrastructure, advocacy, etc
  at the last meeting the group had an action to determine budget and
funding issues
  Mike from the Linux Foundation is on the call
  Paul has agreed to discuss the issues for the AB

Dave:
grateful to LF for getting us started
coming to interesting phase of life at project
as interest scales up, infrastructure issues take stage
  sean, dave, tom king, beth working on problem
tracey also brought up - marketing presence, not free
  specific budget
mike - running out of money used to get things started
  now charged with financial aspect of project
put together subteam to focus on area?
dave suggests looking at budget
as governing board, try to figure out how

Denys:
  outline of budget, working with tom king? from oe board, want to clarify
  heard that LF donating server to OE
  what is progress?
Mike: sep from dave's discussion - had lined up servers from germany
  osuosl changed requirements, supermicro white boxes causing problems
  had to reject donation, LF will just buy 1-2 really good 2u servers for
oe-core
  waiting for spec from tom, will order from dell & ship to osuosl
  also approved to reimburse tom's expenses
  just need a shopping cart from dell
  love osuosl, need to keep them happy
  projects hosted at LF so overhead can be taken care of
  our job is to "clean toilets" - do what needs to be done
  servers shipped directly to OE c/o OSU, lance will notify eric & tom
  asset mgmt perspective, need paperwork for donation, no prob

tracey:
  sample marketing budget - high budget items, ballpark, important to
consider
  200k/yr, consisting of:
    sponsor ELC & ELC-E (20k each), t-shirts and giveaways (25k), give away
bits w mem devices (15/ea)(15k)
    rebranding yocto project - good recognizable look & feel
    as we go fwd, interacting with devs imprt to release hardware for folks
to try & develop on
    50k to automate fulfillment
    20k slush
brad: unclear on hardware, create new hw? no - promotional endeavors,
contests etc
  money in budget is for alterations to yp.org website
mike: 50k a lot for a form = fulfillment engine for ti beagleboard atom etc,
pass that on to organizations?
    have LF in the middle
t: more than a form - software infrastructure on website.
  expect to be physically fulfilled by participating companies

paul: orig thought about project, recognized members participating
w/donations in kind (provide hw/people/code)
  also recognized need for centrally managed activities & resources for
success
  enough to make sure project is successful
  idea that people could pay into LF pool via membership dues/fees
  collectively managed by group like this & disbursed when appropriate
  advocacy, infrastruc, etc - central mgmt
  put in reasonable number, balk on new project, don't want to block, waive
that fee
  as project gains momentum we need to find out how to fund
  bill: good having conversation, now working on budget cycles for next year
    also need to justify bang for buck
    for this year, easier to fund specific actions than dues
  could be donation in kind, or specific $ to support activities
  for this year, create proposed budget - here is list, like fundraiser
  on wind river can do part this year to help fund some
  pro forma budget for next year, then go around - basic allocations
  need to fund solidly to keep things going
  can build into budget cycle, now is a good time to make sure it is
allocated in advance
  believe group could benefit from having central resources avail at
discretion of group
    lead gen, new servers
bill: envisioning pitching for next years budget
k to defend infrastructure, hard to pitch marketing on yocot name
  imagine interest in sponsoring one with TI logo, diff from here's 50% of
dues for promotion
paul: how did you pitch membership in LF?
  more than just branding of linux name, which already has good name rec
  shared across all business units, this would have to be one biz unit,
focus of yocto
  depth of applicability
  expecting some marketing things to be like consortium - but can separate
out pro forma budget
  hard to say just give these guys a pot of money, esp if 50% goes to
marketing
  figure out what fits between reasonable budget = as much about awareness &
markting
  some memembers may need to sponsor events in advance to meet advocacy
goals
  if we had no marketing, not driving enough awareness to create momentum
bill: if we do the right thing, right people will know it
    when mv and mentor timesys start selling projects based on yocto, mktg
pull comes from that
    a lot of mktg based on success - easy to say e.g. 10% overhead
    encourage to do as much of mktg from specifically sponsored donations in
kind
paul: we can list that in pro forma budget, donations in kind
  more specific & targeted
  set of activities no one wants to pay for, have someone at LF to do
specific activities
  company A sponsors trade show, company B donates cash, pro forma
dave: one could say, if we do it right then we don't need swag - code speaks
in open source world
    depends on how much leverage, as that takes time
    if want to grab a community & get excited, can happen organically or we
can try to generate buzz
    name recognition - people who are not coders can recognize
    want to accomplish agreed goal to lower barriers for developers
    can get to business of competing on silicon features & software services
jimready: if look at problem,only a few mktg targets - chaos generators
    all in form packaged up, that's what mv cares about, eliminate chaos
    devs will take whatever comes out of machine
    get common format through semis, that will be consumed
dave: dealing with silicon side, we hear "no one out is there asking for
yocto"
    all big machines, big complex interrelated agendas
    agreeing about getting silicon guys on board
    sometimes silicon industry not most strategic thinkers
jim: have had very large customers, semis tell them what software strategy
will be
    bellweather is semis pop stuff out- very difficult challenge to move
them
    even with large customers
    concentrate charm & efforts on making sure right folks engaged
paul: good discussion, this is why we want to meet
  some organic nature to this, advocacy alone won't do it
  messaging is key to project advocacy
  larger activity around marketing plan good for next year
  putting dollar amts, figuring out how to fund
tracey: obviously you guys don't go shopping a lot
    so many of these amounts are tiny
    understand "if you build it they will come"
    what we have learned, multiple audiences emerged that need to be aware,
don't all get same message & attention
    and they don't all write code
    if we look too simply, we miss them
    main point, not that much money, let's not have heartburn
paul: let's write it down and then fund it
tracey: made clear effort to promote yocto as yocto, not as who is doing
what
  will always represent own companies as participants, always be yocto
standing on its own
  to stay true to open source community
paul: agree - if build it doesn't work, advocacy alone doesn't work
  e.g. yocto stickers, one on my laptop, go to customers they say yocto
what's that
  give 1 min elevator pitch, they want to hear more
  from awareness stpt, that sticker paid in spades
  also had someone bugging for t-shirt
  definitely has value
  find winning combination
richard: agree that details can make dif, but there are people we need to
get message to
  if you did 10m research, still people using buildroot as answer to new
project
  decisions usually made by asking 5 savvy people, pick one answer
  thus there is value in reaching people
  define target audience need to reach
paul: I see 2 actions
  marketing, budget
->mike offers to handle budget part
  dave: small subset offline, budget proposal from advocacy & infrastructure
    come up with pro forma budget
->paul willing to jump in to come up with pro forma budget (with help from
Dave)
jefro: do before f2f?
paul:
-> will take known expenses, ask group to express opinions, prioritize
  from windriver perspective, believe in project, chance to make all lives
better, focus on value

mike: LF is now taking up 50% of OSU rackspace, not telling need to use a
colo but may get that notification
  changes cost structure significantly
  hosting costs may change significantly
  AB controls own funds
  everything is tracked
  LF is set up as legal entity to provide this service

______________________________________________
New Action Items:

-> All: please RSVP on Thursday LinuxCon Face-to-face
-> John to describe Freescale conclusions in time for 1.1 release
-> Mike to ask MIPS: if one board represented in yocto what would that be?
-> Advocacy group will take AR to get messaging discussion up by end of week
-> Jefro to take AR to follow up with free-electrons
-> Paul willing to jump in to come up with pro forma budget (with help from
Dave), will take known expenses, ask group to express opinions, prioritize
-> Mike offers to handle budget part
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