2007 Linux Kernel Summit

2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Theodore Ts'o]

Hi folks,

	It's time to start kicking off the 2007 Kernel Summit planning
process.  This year, the Kernel Summit will be held in Cambridge,
England, at the DeVere University Arms Hotel, September 5-6 (with a
welcome reception on the 4th).  The decision to move the Kernel Summit
to England is a one-year experiment based on the very strong request of
last year's kernel summit attendees to try a location outside of Ottawa,
and especially from the roughly 1/3rd of the attendees that come from
the UK or Europe.  So the plan is for us to book the Ottawa Congress
Ceter space for July 2008 (which we will need to do by mid-year 2007),
and pending how well the Cambridge venue works out in September 2007,
we'll figure out how often we want to try moving the Kernel Summit to
other locations in future years beyond 2008.  

(It'd be great to fantasize pairing the Kernel Summit with
Linux.conf.au, but unless we can get some sponsor's CEO offers up their
personal jet, or we pick up a major airline as a sponsor, it's not
likely to happen any time soon due to the reality of corporate travel
budgets.  :-)

As in previous years, I've set up a e-mail discussion list for people
who are interested in making suggestions for this year's kernel summit.
In the probably hopeless attempt to avoid the list address getting
instantly harvested by spammers from all of the LKML archives, the list
submission address and subscription URL can be found by executing the
following perl script:

#!/usr/bin/perl
$at="@"; 
$AD=(gmtime(time))[5]+1900;
print "ksummit-" . $AD . "-discuss" . $at . "thunk.org\n";
print "http://thunk.org/mailman/listinfo/ksummit-" . $AD . "-discuss\n";

More announcements about the topic and attendee selection process will
be made in the next week or so on the discuss list, but in the meantime,
if there are any folks who are interested in putting together
mini-summits or workshops for various kernel subsystems at Ottawa on the
25th or 26th, please let me know.  It may be possible for Usenix to make
some hotel conference rooms available, to provide an opportunity for
kernel development teams who want to get together before OLS and the
Kernel Summit to do so.

Finally, let me introduce to this year's program committee:

	Jens Axboe
	James Bottomley
	Jonathon Corbet
	Dirk Hohndel
	Gerrit Huizenga
	Dave Jones
	Andi Kleen
	Greg Kroah-Hartman
	Steve Hemminger	
	Matthew Mackall
	Andrew Morton
	Theodore Ts'o

If you have any questions, please feel to contact me or the entire
kernel summit program committee.  Our contact e-mail address can be
found by taking the output from the above perl script and running it
through the command: "sed -e 's/discuss/pc/'".

Regards,

						- Ted

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 02:09:17AM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> 	It's time to start kicking off the 2007 Kernel Summit planning
> process.  This year, the Kernel Summit will be held in Cambridge,
> England, at the DeVere University Arms Hotel, September 5-6 (with a
> welcome reception on the 4th).  The decision to move the Kernel Summit
> to England is a one-year experiment based on the very strong request of
> last year's kernel summit attendees to try a location outside of Ottawa,
> and especially from the roughly 1/3rd of the attendees that come from
> the UK or Europe.  So the plan is for us to book the Ottawa Congress
> Ceter space for July 2008 (which we will need to do by mid-year 2007),

Very strong please no from me.  Please move it around to different
venues, if needed in north america again.  kernel summit shouldn't
be a marketing add-on but something on it's own.

While we're at it it would be nice to get rid of all that usenix
and sponsors that get a seat baggage aswell, especially as we've
proven that all small on-topic conferences without that overhead
are a lot more productive.

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Alan Cox]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 12:07:11PM +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > process.  This year, the Kernel Summit will be held in Cambridge,
> > England, at the DeVere University Arms Hotel, September 5-6 (with a
> > welcome reception on the 4th).  The decision to move the Kernel Summit
> > to England is a one-year experiment based on the very strong request of
> > last year's kernel summit attendees to try a location outside of Ottawa,
> > and especially from the roughly 1/3rd of the attendees that come from
> > the UK or Europe.  So the plan is for us to book the Ottawa Congress
> > Ceter space for July 2008 (which we will need to do by mid-year 2007),

Ditto..

Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
else different this time - perhaps Czech Republic, or somewhere else more
easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)

> While we're at it it would be nice to get rid of all that usenix

Well if you want to organise and fund it yourself 8)

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Theodore Tso]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 07:45:02AM -0500, Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
> else different this time - perhaps Czech Republic, or somewhere else more
> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
> 

Understand that one of the feedback that I get from the keepers of the
corporate travel budgets is that money for sending employees to exotic
locations is finite --- which is why we haven't tried pairing the
kernel summit with linux.conf.au.  Cambridge works out because there
are relatively cheap flights to Amsterdam and then you can take a
cheap Ryan Air flight to Stanisted.  Still, the fact that it isn't
paired with another conference means that we are getting some
expressions of unhappiness from other Kernel Summit stakeholders.
It's for that reason that (a) I'm trying to line up some folks who
might be interested in trying to put together a relatively small,
2-day technical conference after the Kernel Summit, which can
hopefully serve as a seed for something like OLS and LCA in UK/Europe,
and (b) I've told folks that the moving it away from Cambridge is a
one-time experiment, after which point we will re-evaluate.

I understand that if it were only up to us developers, we'd want to
have the conference in Honolulu, or perhaps in Australia or New
Zeland.  Unfortunately there are other stakeholers and other financial
realities involved.

> > While we're at it it would be nice to get rid of all that usenix
> 
> Well if you want to organise and fund it yourself 8)

The sponsors help pay for the conference venue, as well as travel
scholoarships for those people who don't have corporate affiliations,
or whose companies refuse to pay their travel, and who were important
that they be there.  One of my concerns is if we have too many kernel
developers where their employes refuse to pay travel, we won't have
enough travel scholoarship money.

It's a somewhat tricky balancing act.

						- Ted

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Steven Whitehouse]

Hi,

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 08:14:17AM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 07:45:02AM -0500, Alan Cox wrote:
> > 
> > Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
> > else different this time - perhaps Czech Republic, or somewhere else more
> > easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
> > 
> 
> Understand that one of the feedback that I get from the keepers of the
> corporate travel budgets is that money for sending employees to exotic
> locations is finite --- which is why we haven't tried pairing the
> kernel summit with linux.conf.au.  Cambridge works out because there
> are relatively cheap flights to Amsterdam and then you can take a
> cheap Ryan Air flight to Stanisted.  Still, the fact that it isn't
> paired with another conference means that we are getting some
> expressions of unhappiness from other Kernel Summit stakeholders.
> It's for that reason that (a) I'm trying to line up some folks who
> might be interested in trying to put together a relatively small,
> 2-day technical conference after the Kernel Summit, which can
> hopefully serve as a seed for something like OLS and LCA in UK/Europe,
> and (b) I've told folks that the moving it away from Cambridge is a
> one-time experiment, after which point we will re-evaluate.
>

Wrt, point (a), UKUUG are moving their UK based Summer Linux conference
to coincide timewise with the kernel summit. Normally its in the July/August
time frame. Location probably, but last I heard from Alasdair Kergon not
certain to be, in Cambridge,

Steve.

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Alan]

> hopefully serve as a seed for something like OLS and LCA in UK/Europe,
> and (b) I've told folks that the moving it away from Cambridge is a
> one-time experiment, after which point we will re-evaluate.

Perhaps that will work out for the best, it may be the right answer long
term is to alternate anyway ?

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Rik van Riel]

Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 07:45:02AM -0500, Alan Cox wrote:
>> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
>> else different this time - perhaps Czech Republic, or somewhere else more
>> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
>>
> 
> Understand that one of the feedback that I get from the keepers of the
> corporate travel budgets is that money for sending employees to exotic
> locations is finite 

So we need to find locations where the increased price of the
plane ticket is cancelled out by lower hotel rates? :)

-- 
Politics is the struggle between those who want to make their country
the best in the world, and those who believe it already is.  Each group
calls the other unpatriotic.

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[David Miller]

From: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 07:45:02 -0500

> On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 12:07:11PM +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > process.  This year, the Kernel Summit will be held in Cambridge,
> > > England, at the DeVere University Arms Hotel, September 5-6 (with a
> > > welcome reception on the 4th).  The decision to move the Kernel Summit
> > > to England is a one-year experiment based on the very strong request of
> > > last year's kernel summit attendees to try a location outside of Ottawa,
> > > and especially from the roughly 1/3rd of the attendees that come from
> > > the UK or Europe.  So the plan is for us to book the Ottawa Congress
> > > Ceter space for July 2008 (which we will need to do by mid-year 2007),
> 
> Ditto..
> 
> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
> else different this time - perhaps Czech Republic, or somewhere else more
> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)

This is my position as well.

If the kernel summit is important enough, all the bean counters will
find a way to get their constituents to the event, it's as simple as
that.

For the first time in many years I'm strongly considering actually
going to the kernel summit, however if it goes back to Ottawa I
definitely will stop going again.

+1 4 cz (Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit)

[Oleg Verych]

In gmane.linux.kernel, David Miller wrote:
> From: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com>
> Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 07:45:02 -0500
>
>> On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 12:07:11PM +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>> > > process.  This year, the Kernel Summit will be held in Cambridge,
>> > > England, at the DeVere University Arms Hotel, September 5-6 (with a
>> > > welcome reception on the 4th).  The decision to move the Kernel Summit
>> > > to England is a one-year experiment based on the very strong request of
>> > > last year's kernel summit attendees to try a location outside of Ottawa,
>> > > and especially from the roughly 1/3rd of the attendees that come from
>> > > the UK or Europe.  So the plan is for us to book the Ottawa Congress
>> > > Ceter space for July 2008 (which we will need to do by mid-year 2007),
>> 
>> Ditto..
>> 
>> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
   else different this time - perhaps *Czech Republic*, or somewhere else more
>> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
>
> This is my position as well.
[]
> For the first time in many years I'm strongly considering actually
> going to the kernel summit, however if it goes back to Ottawa I
> definitely will stop going again.

It would be interesting. Thank you Alan, David!

;D
____

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Sunil Naidu]

On 1/22/07, Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Ditto..
>
> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
> else different this time - perhaps Czech Republic, or somewhere else more
> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
>
> > While we're at it it would be nice to get rid of all that usenix
>
> Well if you want to organise and fund it yourself 8)
>

Alan, why don't be India's turn this time? Linux is popular and active
here too. And you too saw this at 2005 (FOSS.in). Richard Stallman saw
too. Many of us contribute for Linux (My company is the largest
contributor to Linux globally, plus have exclusive Labs for
Linux....others like HP, Intel are present here and doing good work on
Linux).

If Kernel community comes down to India...this would have a big impact
on the community + industry too. I wish to see Linux takes atleast 40%
of Desktops here by 2010.

And, in this way my president's dream would take off in a big way ;-)

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=35147
http://www.ciol.com/content/developer/Linux/2004/104102101.asp

Any other reasons am missing here?

Thanks,

~Akula2

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[James Morris]

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, Sunil Naidu wrote:

> If Kernel community comes down to India...this would have a big impact
> on the community + industry too.

I think it's a good idea.

> Any other reasons am missing here?

Cost of flying 70 mainly US/European developers to India.


- James
-- 
James Morris
<jmorris@namei.org>

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Josh Boyer]

On 1/23/07, James Morris <jmorris@namei.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, Sunil Naidu wrote:
>
> > If Kernel community comes down to India...this would have a big impact
> > on the community + industry too.
>
> I think it's a good idea.
>
> > Any other reasons am missing here?
>
> Cost of flying 70 mainly US/European developers to India.

You have to remember that the Kernel Summit is invite only.  Holding
the summit at a location doesn't really mean it's open to anyone
there.

josh

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Sunil Naidu]

On 1/24/07, Josh Boyer <jwboyer@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Any other reasons am missing here?
> >
> > Cost of flying 70 mainly US/European developers to India.

Thanks James. I thought about this factor. Thinking about what are the
factors which make a Kernel developer to show interest on a particular
location.

> You have to remember that the Kernel Summit is invite only.  Holding
> the summit at a location doesn't really mean it's open to anyone
> there.

Defnitely this could be held on invite only. Many Top forums happen in
India in this fashion. This initiatives itself would be like a booster
in a Rocket which gives *huge* impact.

I do strongly feel this would be a big push to Linux among community
(apart from corporates). Plus, a message sender too ;-) We can debate
on this...

> josh

Thanks,

~Akula2

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Theodore Tso]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 04:41:39AM +0530, Sunil Naidu wrote:
> >You have to remember that the Kernel Summit is invite only.  Holding
> >the summit at a location doesn't really mean it's open to anyone
> >there.
> 
> Defnitely this could be held on invite only. Many Top forums happen in
> India in this fashion. This initiatives itself would be like a booster
> in a Rocket which gives *huge* impact.

Presumably the way to do this would be to have a large conference
(such as OLS) after the kernel summit.  Hopefully most kernel summit
attendees would stick around for 2-3 days afterwards for the technical
conference.

The problem is that the value of the kernel summit is that we get the
> 90% of the key, "right" people there so we can have face-to-face
conversations.  There reason why I started organizing it years ago was
that I hoped that if key developers had a chance to meet with each
other at least once a year, it would help them more productively
communicate with each other via e-mail the rest of the year.  I think
it has succeeded in that goal quite well.  The problem though is that
most people can't afford to fly to India or Australia, and their
employers' travel budgets won't allow that either --- and the value of
the K-S is based on getting as many of the key kernel developers in
one place as possible.

Two years ago, maddog tried to convince me that Brazil would be a
perfect place to hold a kernel summit, and that the Brazillian
government was 100% behind linux, and could provide a wonderful
location, yadda, yadda, yadda.  What I told him was that the only way
I could imagine it working would be if the Brazillian government was
willing to pay travel costs for all 80+ kernel summit attendees to fly
from whatever their home airport to Brazil.  That way, we don't have
to deal with the pushback from corporate travel budget keepers for
having to pay $$$ for travel to places around the world.  When I told
maddog that, presumably he went back to his Brazillian contacts and we
never heard back from him about moving the kernel summit to Brazil again.  :-)

I would suspect it would be a similar issue with India.  I'd love to
have the opportunity to visit Bangalore (or should I say Bengaluru? :-).  
I also know that it's extremely unlikely that my employer would agree
to pay for me to fly there, not to mention all of the other folks that
would need to go to the K-S.  But hey, if you think that there are
organizations in India who would be willing to pay travel for _all_ of
the K-S attendees (preferably business class travel :-), let's
talk....

						- Ted

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Sunil Naidu]

On 1/24/07, Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> Presumably the way to do this would be to have a large conference
> (such as OLS) after the kernel summit.  Hopefully most kernel summit
> attendees would stick around for 2-3 days afterwards for the technical
> conference.

This is a good idea ;-) There is a FOSS held in India every year, can
we consider to make use of this venue? Pl have a look:-

http://foss.in/2006/

> The problem is that the value of the kernel summit is that we get the
> > 90% of the key, "right" people there so we can have face-to-face
> conversations.  There reason why I started organizing it years ago was
> that I hoped that if key developers had a chance to meet with each
> other at least once a year, it would help them more productively
> communicate with each other via e-mail the rest of the year.  I think
> it has succeeded in that goal quite well.  The problem though is that
> most people can't afford to fly to India or Australia, and their
> employers' travel budgets won't allow that either --- and the value of
> the K-S is based on getting as many of the key kernel developers in
> one place as possible.

I do fully agree with you on this. It should be a quality time with
atleast 90% key people.

> Two years ago, maddog tried to convince me that Brazil would be a
> perfect place to hold a kernel summit, and that the Brazillian
> government was 100% behind linux, and could provide a wonderful
> location, yadda, yadda, yadda.  What I told him was that the only way
> I could imagine it working would be if the Brazillian government was
> willing to pay travel costs for all 80+ kernel summit attendees to fly
> from whatever their home airport to Brazil.  That way, we don't have
> to deal with the pushback from corporate travel budget keepers for
> having to pay $$$ for travel to places around the world.  When I told
> maddog that, presumably he went back to his Brazillian contacts and we
> never heard back from him about moving the kernel summit to Brazil again.  :-)

I really doubt whether any Government pays for a Kernel Summit (they
will have their own reasons or whatever). Maddog might have felt same
like me - huge potential of Linux lies with in B-R-I-C nations, hence
we need to stir up more for the movement to catch up (KS would be
perfect for this). This initiative would also pays the way for making
the dream of a competing Linux Desktop turning into a reality.

I am not saying any other nation is less significant, history of Linux
is the proof for that. All am wishing is, let's make something more or
do more good for our Penguin ;-)

> I would suspect it would be a similar issue with India.  I'd love to
> have the opportunity to visit Bangalore (or should I say Bengaluru? :-).
> I also know that it's extremely unlikely that my employer would agree
> to pay for me to fly there, not to mention all of the other folks that
> would need to go to the K-S.  But hey, if you think that there are
> organizations in India who would be willing to pay travel for _all_ of
> the K-S attendees (preferably business class travel :-), let's
> talk....

Earlier it was Bangalore, it's now Bengaluru. Linux is also happening
in other places here in India like Hyderabad, Pune, Gurgoan, etc
(these cities has IT power houses).

I do not know about other organizations much. I shall put this with my
bosses in my Labs first, this would be involving my company itself .
Also, shall explore with my peers (other orgnizations like FOSS). What
is the deadline to decide about the location? Believe me, my wish is
so high...I wanted to sponsor for u guys (can bear a dozen)...but not
so many as 80 ;-)

[OT] I read as key kernel developers as some 440 members. Is this for
2.4.x or what? I am confused with the figure 80 ?? KS would have
Linus, Alan, Andrew, Ingo, and others?

>                                                 - Ted

Thanks,

~Akula2

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 02:09 -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> 	It's time to start kicking off the 2007 Kernel Summit planning
> process.  This year, the Kernel Summit will be held in Cambridge,
> England, at the DeVere University Arms Hotel, September 5-6 (with a
> welcome reception on the 4th).  

BTW. While I'm all about it, this KS in Cambridge, I just got told,
pretty much collides with the Rugby World Cup in France which starts on
the 7th. While not as bad as the soccer one, that still means that air
fares to europe might skyrocket around those dates :-(

Ben.

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Martin Bligh]

On 1/24/07, Martin Bligh <mbligh@mbligh.org> wrote:
> Two years ago, maddog tried to convince me that Brazil would be a
> perfect place to hold a kernel summit, and that the Brazillian
> government was 100% behind linux, and could provide a wonderful
> location, yadda, yadda, yadda.  What I told him was that the only way
> I could imagine it working would be if the Brazillian government was
> willing to pay travel costs for all 80+ kernel summit attendees to fly
> from whatever their home airport to Brazil.  That way, we don't have
> to deal with the pushback from corporate travel budget keepers for
> having to pay $$$ for travel to places around the world.  When I told
>  maddog that, presumably he went back to his Brazillian contacts and we
> never heard back from him about moving the kernel summit to Brazil again.  :-)
>
> I would suspect it would be a similar issue with India.  I'd love to
> have the opportunity to visit Bangalore (or should I say Bengaluru? :-).
> I also know that it's extremely unlikely that my employer would agree
> to pay for me to fly there, not to mention all of the other folks that
> would need to go to the K-S.  But hey, if you think that there are
> organizations in India who would be willing to pay travel for _all_ of
> the K-S attendees (preferably business class travel :-), let's
> talk....

It's not just the cost of travel by any means - the extra travel time and
jetlag involved is huge - having everybody sleep through a conference is
distinctly less productive.

One of the advantages of the EST timezone locations is that it's at least
reasonably central to most of the players involved. Obviously, wherever
we hold it, some people get screwed ... the question is what screws
the fewest people the least. Personally, I'd prefer PST for purely selfish
reasons, but ... ;-)

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Scott Preece]

On 1/24/07, Martin Bligh <mbligh@mbligh.org> wrote:
>
> It's not just the cost of travel by any means - the extra travel time and
> jetlag involved is huge - having everybody sleep through a conference is
> distinctly less productive.
>
> One of the advantages of the EST timezone locations is that it's at least
> reasonably central to most of the players involved. Obviously, wherever
> we hold it, some people get screwed ... the question is what screws
> the fewest people the least. Personally, I'd prefer PST for purely selfish
> reasons, but ... ;-)
---

Hmm - Sounds like it needs to go to Halifax! [I was going to suggest
Reykjavik, but was surprised to see it was in the same time zone as
the UK.]

I wonder what the geographic center of the kernel community is.
Somebody with boundless energy could harvest the mail headers from
LKML, remove duplicates, and figure out the temporal center from the
timezone information in the headers, but I don't know an easy way to
get to air-mile distances...

scott

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Alan Cox]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 01:47:45PM -0600, Scott Preece wrote:
> Hmm - Sounds like it needs to go to Halifax! [I was going to suggest
> Reykjavik, but was surprised to see it was in the same time zone as
> the UK.]

Reykjavik is a fantastic place with some truely wonderful Linux folks. As to
the timezone, well winter is mostly dark, summer is mostly light so time 
zones don't matter 8)

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Scott Preece]

On 1/24/07, Oleg Verych <olecom@flower.upol.cz> wrote:

> > From: "Scott Preece" <sepreece@gmail.com>

> []
> > Hmm - Sounds like it needs to go to Halifax! [I was going to suggest
> > Reykjavik, but was surprised to see it was in the same time zone as
> > the UK.]
> >
> > I wonder what the geographic center of the kernel community is.
> > Somebody with boundless energy could harvest the mail headers from
> > LKML, remove duplicates, and figure out the temporal center from the
>
> Do you mean meridian?
>
> Interesting idea. Well, i think duplicates will show actual most active
> timezones, so they mustn't be removed. To somebody with lkml's mbox it's
> task of new minutes to grep "Data:" header, grab 7th field (UTC shift),
> and then count (i'm using my boundless teaching energy here ;).
---

I only meant to eliminate duplicate addresses, not duplicate
timezones. That is, if the goal is to spread the pain of travel evenly
over the community members, you don't want to weight those members by
how often they send mail to the list!

scott

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dirk Hohndel]

On 1/23/07 9:57 AM, "David Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:
>> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
>> else different this time - perhaps Czech Republic, or somewhere else more
>> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
> 
> This is my position as well.
> 
> If the kernel summit is important enough, all the bean counters will
> find a way to get their constituents to the event, it's as simple as
> that.

Actually, it isn't.

Within the Northern Hemisphere and with locations that are reasonably
cheaply to reach from most of Europe and North America, yes, at the end of
the day people will be able to come.

We seem to have two different types of motivation for proposed locations in
this discussion. Some of us are looking for a convenient location. Some of
us are proposing locations as a political statement. I believe the latter
isn't a good idea. The kernel summit is by invitation only. It therefore is
a very bad forum to bring Linux to a place.

Add to that that locations like Brazil or India will add thousands of
dollars of cost per person and add much more problems with jet lag for many
people I think they'll be very hard to justify.

> For the first time in many years I'm strongly considering actually
> going to the kernel summit, however if it goes back to Ottawa I
> definitely will stop going again.

Is that specific to Ottawa, or is this any North American location? I
strongly believe that it's a good idea to alternate between locations in
North America and Europe. That's were most of the attendees live. Just as it
was a bad idea to keep it in North America all the time, it would be a bad
idea to keep it in Europe.

/D

Re: +1 4 cz (Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit)

[Vojtech Pavlik]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 07:18:46PM +0000, Oleg Verych wrote:

> >> Ditto..
> >> 
> >> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
> >> else different this time - perhaps *Czech Republic*, or somewhere else more
> >> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
> >
> > This is my position as well.
> > 
> > For the first time in many years I'm strongly considering actually
> > going to the kernel summit, however if it goes back to Ottawa I
> > definitely will stop going again.
> 
> It would be interesting. Thank you Alan, David!

I (and SUSE/Novell) would be happy to help organizing the Kernel Summit
in Czech Republic.

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
Director SuSE Labs

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[David Miller]

From: Dirk Hohndel <dirk.hohndel@intel.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:22:54 -0800

> > For the first time in many years I'm strongly considering actually
> > going to the kernel summit, however if it goes back to Ottawa I
> > definitely will stop going again.
> 
> Is that specific to Ottawa, or is this any North American location?

It's about repetitiveness and what that does to human beings.

As someone who organizes a yearly Linux kernel conference for all the
networking folks, I can proudly say we haven't gone to the same
location more than one time.  I believe that is critical to keep the
repetitiveness out of a conference.

We've held netconf in Japan, Montreal, Portland, and this year will
likely be Europe.  People found a way to make it and we found
sufficient sponsorship for all attendees who needed monetary travel
assistence every time.  This is why I don't buy the funding argument
at all.  People who want to come and have the desire, will find a way.
Conferences who think attendance is important, will find a way to
provide sponsorship for travel when needed.

It's too damn repetitive to go to the same location over and over.
Why do you think LCA tries to go to a different city every year and
even let "foreigners" run the show last year in New Zealand? :-)
Nobody want to go to the same place twice if they have to travel
at all.

As an added bonus, we can hand off the conference organizing to
different folks in the local location each year.  That will also add
some new life and excitement to kernel summit, have different people
chair, organize, and run the conference.  If you use the same people,
just like using the same venue, the thing gets stale, and the kernel
summit is extremely stale at the moment.

That's what I'm against, going to the same location over and over.  It
makes the event more like a chore than something to look forward to
and enjoy.

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dirk Hohndel]

On 1/25/07 12:51 PM, "David Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:
>>> For the first time in many years I'm strongly considering actually
>>> going to the kernel summit, however if it goes back to Ottawa I
>>> definitely will stop going again.
>> 
>> Is that specific to Ottawa, or is this any North American location?
> 
> It's about repetitiveness and what that does to human beings.
> 
> It's too damn repetitive to go to the same location over and over.

I fully agree with that. And I certainly hope that LKS will change location
every year (and I am the last person who pushes for it to return to Ottawa -
I'd like to see it come back to North America and maybe have it alternate
between continents, though).

So how about Vancouver, B.C. for 08 and Praha, CZ for 09?

/D

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[David Miller]

From: Dirk Hohndel <dirk.hohndel@intel.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:59:12 -0800

> So how about Vancouver, B.C. for 08 and Praha, CZ for 09?

That's fine especially since I can drive to Vancouver :-)

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Sunil Naidu]

> From: Dirk Hohndel <dirk.hohndel@intel.com>
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:22:54 -0800
>
> We've held netconf in Japan, Montreal, Portland, and this year will
> likely be Europe.  People found a way to make it and we found
> sufficient sponsorship for all attendees who needed monetary travel
> assistence every time.  This is why I don't buy the funding argument
> at all.  People who want to come and have the desire, will find a way.
> Conferences who think attendance is important, will find a way to
> provide sponsorship for travel when needed.

Good thoughts ;-)  I too believe in this - Where there is a Will,
there is a Way! That's the reason why I have proposed India as the
location for KS 2007, am still awaiting for the response from Theodore
Tso.

But, funding or drag or time zone could be genuine reasons for many
because of the Geographical factors. Again, this shouldn't deter I
feel...Else, we have to wait for KS 2008 or 2009 ;-)

[OT] Dirk, I did attend Intel Developer Forum 2006 by paying $70
because I wanted to!

~Akula2

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 06:16:13AM +0530, Sunil Naidu wrote:
> Good thoughts ;-)  I too believe in this - Where there is a Will,
> there is a Way! That's the reason why I have proposed India as the
> location for KS 2007, am still awaiting for the response from Theodore
> Tso.

I did give you a response.  Find a way to pay for 80+ kernel summit
invitees to travel to India (preferably in business class :-), and
we'll talk.  That's not realistic?  Well, then perhaps having the
concept of holding Kernel Summit in India is not realistic.

As Dirk has pointed out, the Kernel Summit is a little unusual
compared to events such as FOSDEM or FISL, where there are 4000-5000
attendees, and the emphasis is on the power of a large number of
people in the OSS community.  The Kernel Summit is a very different
event, in that it is by-invitation with less than 100 people.  The
whole point is to get the top contributors together to be able to talk
amongst themselves in a high bandwidth environment.  You can't do that
amongst a crowd of 800, never mind 2000 or 4000.

So the only reason why any organization would be willing to pay so
that top contributors would come to some country like India would be
if to attract visibility and excitement to some big conference or
other big OSS/Linux initiative that happened right after the kernel
summit.  But quite frankly, I personally wouldn't consider it a wise
use of money; it would cost a heck of a lot of money and there are
plenty of other, more cost effective ways to promote a big OSS
conference in India.

And if there's no business case for the Indian government or some
local Indian companies to pay to fly all of the KS attendees to India,
why in the world do you think that companies like HP, Intel, IBM, Red
Hat, Novell, etc. will pay for their employees to travel to the Kernel
Summit?  They don't have even less of the incentive than the local
Indian companies/government to do so!  Maybe during the dot-com
madness of the late 1990's, when people spent money like crazy on
things that made no business sense whatsoever, but those days are long
gone.  Money doesn't grow on trees any more, if it ever did.

The main reason why we are trying a one-year experiment in Cambridge
is because approximately 1/3rd of the KS attendees are from Europe.
At the moment I believe we have exactly one person from India, who has
been selected through her own merit, to attend the Kernel Summit.  So
does it make sense to fly everyone else to India?  It doesn't seem so
to me!  

So the real answer to how do get the Kernel Summit to happen in India?
Bring a very large number of developers together in India.  Get them
to work really hard, encourage them to participate on LKML, and
produce lots of useful patches.  Eventually, some of them will do
enough good work that they will be recognized as maintainers of key
subsystems.  When there are 25-30+ people from India who have done
enough for the Linux kernel community and risen to be recognized as
top contributors in the Linux world such that they are invited to the
Kernel Summit on their own merits, I'm sure there a Kernel Summit in
India would very quickly follow.

Still, if someone wants to pay a vast quantity of money to pay travel
for all so that the KS can be held in some exotic location (especially
if it's Waikiki beach, or Aspen Colorado during the skiing season),
I'm sure people will be willing to listen.  But realistically, it just
doesn't make sense, so it's not likely someone would make us such an
offer.  (Unless perhaps in some conspiracy theory scenario where
Microsoft pays $$$ to some VC company to sponsor an event in Moskow,
and then contracts out to the KGB to fill the meeting room with an
aerosolized powder of Polonium 210 to kill off all of the top Linux
developers in one fell swoop.  But that sort of thing only happens in
spy novels.  :-)

Regards,

						- Ted

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Josh Boyer]

On 1/25/07, Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
  (Unless perhaps in some conspiracy theory scenario where
> Microsoft pays $$$ to some VC company to sponsor an event in Moskow,
> and then contracts out to the KGB to fill the meeting room with an
> aerosolized powder of Polonium 210 to kill off all of the top Linux
> developers in one fell swoop.  But that sort of thing only happens in
> spy novels.  :-)

And if it did, we would be sad to be sure.  But source code never dies ;)

josh

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 10:28:49PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 06:16:13AM +0530, Sunil Naidu wrote:
> > Good thoughts ;-)  I too believe in this - Where there is a Will,
> > there is a Way! That's the reason why I have proposed India as the
> > location for KS 2007, am still awaiting for the response from Theodore
> > Tso.
> 
> I did give you a response.  Find a way to pay for 80+ kernel summit
> invitees to travel to India (preferably in business class :-), and
> we'll talk.  That's not realistic?  Well, then perhaps having the
> concept of holding Kernel Summit in India is not realistic.

Does this mean that the attendees of the 2007 summit in England all get
business class tickets to travel to it?

Sounds good to me!

thanks,

greg k-h

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[David Miller]

From: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:17:56 -0800

> On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 10:28:49PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 06:16:13AM +0530, Sunil Naidu wrote:
> > > Good thoughts ;-)  I too believe in this - Where there is a Will,
> > > there is a Way! That's the reason why I have proposed India as the
> > > location for KS 2007, am still awaiting for the response from Theodore
> > > Tso.
> > 
> > I did give you a response.  Find a way to pay for 80+ kernel summit
> > invitees to travel to India (preferably in business class :-), and
> > we'll talk.  That's not realistic?  Well, then perhaps having the
> > concept of holding Kernel Summit in India is not realistic.
> 
> Does this mean that the attendees of the 2007 summit in England all get
> business class tickets to travel to it?
> 
> Sounds good to me!

Yeah, it seems like Ted is using unfair apples-to-oranges comparisons
here.

People all went to Australia mostly in cattle class just fine.  Just
put an extra day on one side to recover from jet lag, you don't need
business class to accomplish that.

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Em Qui, 2007-01-25 às 12:51 -0800, David Miller escreveu:
> From: Dirk Hohndel <dirk.hohndel@intel.com>
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:22:54 -0800
> 

> It's too damn repetitive to go to the same location over and over.
> Why do you think LCA tries to go to a different city every year and
> even let "foreigners" run the show last year in New Zealand? :-)
> Nobody want to go to the same place twice if they have to travel
> at all.
> 
> As an added bonus, we can hand off the conference organizing to
> different folks in the local location each year.  That will also add
> some new life and excitement to kernel summit, have different people
> chair, organize, and run the conference.  If you use the same people,
> just like using the same venue, the thing gets stale, and the kernel
> summit is extremely stale at the moment.
> 
> That's what I'm against, going to the same location over and over.  It
> makes the event more like a chore than something to look forward to
> and enjoy.
If the conference would be hold in Brazil, I may help having local
support. 

The company I work hold last year an ETSI internal meeting about IMS in
Brasília. It were a very interesting experience. The meeting were closed
to ETSI members and some people invited. After the meeting, there were
two days of an open event.

It should be noticed that about 99.9% of the attendants came from
Europe, with travelling costs covered by their companies. The Brazilian
company organized the event and covered some local costs (like
lunch/dinner/cocktail/event hostage).

Probably, the major companies with worldwide presence will cover
travelling costs, whatever place KS would be hold, since the local
offices of those companies will have interests on holding the
conference.

Just my $2 cents.

Cheers,
Mauro.

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Bjørn Mork]

Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org> writes:

> The company I work hold last year an ETSI internal meeting about IMS in
> Brasília. It were a very interesting experience. The meeting were closed
> to ETSI members and some people invited. After the meeting, there were
> two days of an open event.
>
> It should be noticed that about 99.9% of the attendants came from
> Europe, with travelling costs covered by their companies. The Brazilian
> company organized the event and covered some local costs (like
> lunch/dinner/cocktail/event hostage).

Well, FWIW, some years ago we (I was working for the Norwegian
regulatory body at the time) tried to host an ETSI working group
meeting in Longyearbyen ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longyearbyen ).
Despite this actually being in Europe, there were quite a few
complaints. Some of the regular participants had problems with the
additional travelling expenses, but the most common complaint was the
wast of time.  And that was nowhere near an intercontinental flight...

We ended up having the meeting in Oslo, as usual.


Bjørn
-- 
I mean, it's well known that the oceans are full of dirty fish.

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Ralf Baechle]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 10:23:40AM -0200, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> From:	Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
> To:	David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
> Content-Type:	text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15
> Date:	Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:23:40 -0200
> Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit
> Cc:	ksummit-2006-discuss@thunk.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> 
> Em Qui, 2007-01-25 às 12:51 -0800, David Miller escreveu:
> > From: Dirk Hohndel <dirk.hohndel@intel.com>
> > Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:22:54 -0800
> > 
> 
> > It's too damn repetitive to go to the same location over and over.
> > Why do you think LCA tries to go to a different city every year and
> > even let "foreigners" run the show last year in New Zealand? :-)
> > Nobody want to go to the same place twice if they have to travel
> > at all.
> > 
> > As an added bonus, we can hand off the conference organizing to
> > different folks in the local location each year.  That will also add
> > some new life and excitement to kernel summit, have different people
> > chair, organize, and run the conference.  If you use the same people,
> > just like using the same venue, the thing gets stale, and the kernel
> > summit is extremely stale at the moment.
> > 
> > That's what I'm against, going to the same location over and over.  It
> > makes the event more like a chore than something to look forward to
> > and enjoy.
> If the conference would be hold in Brazil, I may help having local
> support. 
> 
> The company I work hold last year an ETSI internal meeting about IMS in
> Brasília. It were a very interesting experience. The meeting were closed
> to ETSI members and some people invited. After the meeting, there were
> two days of an open event.
> 
> It should be noticed that about 99.9% of the attendants came from
> Europe, with travelling costs covered by their companies. The Brazilian
> company organized the event and covered some local costs (like
> lunch/dinner/cocktail/event hostage).
> 
> Probably, the major companies with worldwide presence will cover
> travelling costs, whatever place KS would be hold, since the local
> offices of those companies will have interests on holding the
> conference.
> 
> Just my $2 cents.

And since the cost of travel keeps being raised - in the past my tickets
to Brazil (To Curitiba which from either Zuerich or Frankfurt had exactly
same price) were typically 10-20% less than a ticket to the US west coast
and well below the cost of getting to Ottawa.  Cost for food, a bus or
similar is often virtually free comparing to Cambridge.

I see no problem in convincing my emplyer of traveling to any destination
in the world as long as the trip doesn't have the character of an
entertainment and the total cost is in relation to the importance of the
trip.

  Ralf

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Alan]

> And since the cost of travel keeps being raised - in the past my tickets
> to Brazil (To Curitiba which from either Zuerich or Frankfurt had exactly
> same price) were typically 10-20% less than a ticket to the US west coast
> and well below the cost of getting to Ottawa.  Cost for food, a bus or
> similar is often virtually free comparing to Cambridge.

Ditto my experience because there are monopolies on most of the flight
routes to Ottawa. Indeed if I remember the numbers on the ticket roughly
right it wasn't much different to .AU and more than Bangalore.

Alan

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Sunil Naidu]

On 1/26/07, Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> I did give you a response.  Find a way to pay for 80+ kernel summit
> invitees to travel to India (preferably in business class :-), and
> we'll talk.  That's not realistic?  Well, then perhaps having the
> concept of holding Kernel Summit in India is not realistic.

I did reply to you for your response on Jan 24th. I did ask in that -
when is the deadline date to decide about the location?

> As Dirk has pointed out, the Kernel Summit is a little unusual
> compared to events such as FOSDEM or FISL, where there are 4000-5000
> attendees, and the emphasis is on the power of a large number of
> people in the OSS community.  The Kernel Summit is a very different
> event, in that it is by-invitation with less than 100 people.  The
> whole point is to get the top contributors together to be able to talk
> amongst themselves in a high bandwidth environment.  You can't do that
> amongst a crowd of 800, never mind 2000 or 4000.

I do understand this & the objectives of the KS. I did mean whether is
it possible FOSS.in could be used or not after KS (you've said Kernel
developers would stick for 2-3 days in the location. Once the KS is
over, developers can take the stage of FOSS.in to interact with people
or hold a talk or whatever. I didn't put this point clearly, my
mistake.

> So the only reason why any organization would be willing to pay so
> that top contributors would come to some country like India would be
> if to attract visibility and excitement to some big conference or
> other big OSS/Linux initiative that happened right after the kernel
> summit.  But quite frankly, I personally wouldn't consider it a wise
> use of money; it would cost a heck of a lot of money and there are
> plenty of other, more cost effective ways to promote a big OSS
> conference in India.

I didn't understand your statement - some country like India! MIT has
Media Labs Asia in India. MIT selected India for the $100 Linux Laptop
project. Airbus & Boeing are in India. You are my fellow employee &
senior to me, IBM has India Research Labs!  Many corporates do promote
conferences here, sometimes cost need not to be a deciding factor at
all when quality comes first!  Anway, am yet to get a positive signal
from my Bosses.

> And if there's no business case for the Indian government or some
> local Indian companies to pay to fly all of the KS attendees to India,
> why in the world do you think that companies like HP, Intel, IBM, Red
> Hat, Novell, etc. will pay for their employees to travel to the Kernel
> Summit?  They don't have even less of the incentive than the local
> Indian companies/government to do so!  Maybe during the dot-com
> madness of the late 1990's, when people spent money like crazy on
> things that made no business sense whatsoever, but those days are long
> gone.  Money doesn't grow on trees any more, if it ever did.

Regarding getting funding from Indian Govt, have decided to write
personally to President of India, Dr. Kalam & to Minister for
Information Technology (this is as individual capacity). I hope
something happens on this...will try my best (this is a time consuming
process). I do know about why corporates fund the employees (I didn't
say anything -ve about this).

> The main reason why we are trying a one-year experiment in Cambridge
> is because approximately 1/3rd of the KS attendees are from Europe.
> At the moment I believe we have exactly one person from India, who has
> been selected through her own merit, to attend the Kernel Summit.  So
> does it make sense to fly everyone else to India?  It doesn't seem so
> to me!

I have never mentioned any objections for other locations, plus I do
understand the Geographical factors. Yep, I do know her, she is my
fellow employee and a senior like you ;-)

> So the real answer to how do get the Kernel Summit to happen in India?
> Bring a very large number of developers together in India.  Get them
> to work really hard, encourage them to participate on LKML, and
> produce lots of useful patches.  Eventually, some of them will do
> enough good work that they will be recognized as maintainers of key
> subsystems.  When there are 25-30+ people from India who have done
> enough for the Linux kernel community and risen to be recognized as
> top contributors in the Linux world such that they are invited to the
> Kernel Summit on their own merits, I'm sure there a Kernel Summit in
> India would very quickly follow.

This is quite interesting to me. I wanted to understand here, is
contributing on LKML (patches) is the ONLY criteria for holding a
Kernel Summit? There might be 25-30 people from India on LKML, but
they are scattered around the globe ;-). Anyway, to see 30 good &
right people based in India contributing on LKML might take another
2-3 years more :(  But, I will start this with me...

> Still, if someone wants to pay a vast quantity of money to pay travel
> for all so that the KS can be held in some exotic location (especially
> if it's Waikiki beach, or Aspen Colorado during the skiing season),
> I'm sure people will be willing to listen.  But realistically, it just
> doesn't make sense, so it's not likely someone would make us such an
> offer.  (Unless perhaps in some conspiracy theory scenario where
> Microsoft pays $$$ to some VC company to sponsor an event in Moskow,
> and then contracts out to the KGB to fill the meeting room with an
> aerosolized powder of Polonium 210 to kill off all of the top Linux
> developers in one fell swoop.  But that sort of thing only happens in
> spy novels.  :-)

I don't think even in a spy novel FSB (ex-KGB) can become a hand in a
glove for Microsoft ;-)


>
>                                                 - Ted

Thanks,

~Akula2

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Adrian Bunk]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 10:28:49PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
>...
> Still, if someone wants to pay a vast quantity of money to pay travel
> for all so that the KS can be held in some exotic location (especially
> if it's Waikiki beach, or Aspen Colorado during the skiing season),
> I'm sure people will be willing to listen.  But realistically, it just
> doesn't make sense, so it's not likely someone would make us such an
> offer.  (Unless perhaps in some conspiracy theory scenario where
> Microsoft pays $$$ to some VC company to sponsor an event in Moskow,
> and then contracts out to the KGB to fill the meeting room with an
> aerosolized powder of Polonium 210 to kill off all of the top Linux
> developers in one fell swoop.  But that sort of thing only happens in
> spy novels.  :-)

The Caribbean is also a nice place for a conference, and it might fit 
your geographic criteria better than Moscow. And if your president gets 
convinced that Linux is terrorism against Microsoft, there's a nice 
US-controlled venue on Cuba.  ;-)

> Regards,
> 						- Ted

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[H. Peter Anvin]

Alan Cox wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 01:47:45PM -0600, Scott Preece wrote:
>> Hmm - Sounds like it needs to go to Halifax! [I was going to suggest
>> Reykjavik, but was surprised to see it was in the same time zone as
>> the UK.]
> 
> Reykjavik is a fantastic place with some truely wonderful Linux folks. As to
> the timezone, well winter is mostly dark, summer is mostly light so time 
> zones don't matter 8)

Reykjavik is also quite easy to travel to from USA and Europe.  From 
elsewhere, it generally means going through one of those locales.

One major benny is that Icelandair lets you treat up to a week in 
Iceland as a "stopover" of a longer trip.

	-hpa

RE: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Luck, Tony]

> Long term it may make sense for us to give ourselves plenty of
> planning slop of more like 24 months, so if one location doesn't work
> out we have time to work out another one.

That looks way too conservative.  If kernel summit had 500+ attendees, I
can see why you'd need a such long lead time.  But at around 80 people we
fit into a middle sized meeting room at any hotel with conference facilities.
Booking something that size doesn't need two years notice (unless you
happen to conflict with some other huge event in the same city).
Plus if a local team is going to flake on you, chances are high that you
won't find out until <6 months before the event ... so the 2 year plan
wouldn't help at all.

-Tony

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

Theodore Tso wrote:
> <Footnote> FYI, the anticipated rooms costs at Cambridge will be 60-70
> pounds, and this is for single rooms with private baths --- and just
> two weeks ago I needed to tell this to sooth a worried corporate
> budget maven that combined with cheaper flights to Amsterdam and then
> flying Ryan Air to Stansted, that no really, holding a KS outside the
> North America wouldn't break their travel budget.

Well just a footnote here, but anyone doing that kind of connection for
a meeting is clearly ready for the rubber padded hospital ... but thats
besides the point here. Fact is that as long as the meeting starts
before ~ June 15 or after September 15, avoiding the peak season,
airfare aren't that bad. It's the insanity of running OLS during July
that really kicks people's travel budgets in the shins ..... Outside of
this peak season they tend to drop by 30-50%.

Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007, Jes Sorensen wrote:

> Theodore Tso wrote:
>> <Footnote> FYI, the anticipated rooms costs at Cambridge will be 60-70
>> pounds, and this is for single rooms with private baths

With this daily taxes, you can go to a good resort in Brazil (breakfast 
and maybe lunch included) if you organize the event to not be on 
Jul/Jan/Feb.

Probably, such event can be organized by professionals on about 6 months 
before it, at least in Brazil. To be conservative, it should be programmed 
by August of the previous year, to allow companies that may help founding 
the event to reserve some money on their budget.

So, if the event would happen on September, IMHO, the better would be 
to programm it about 14-12 months before it, just due to budget issues.

-- 
Cheers,
Mauro Carvalho Chehab
http://linuxtv.org
mchehab@infradead.org

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Greg Ungerer]

Dave Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:06:17AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
>  > Then there is the issue of architectures, at least in my book KS should
>  > focus on the ones that are really live and not in maintenance mode.
>  > x86_64, x86_32, PPC, ia64, ARM seems to be the driving ones these days,
>  > m68k, Sparc32, and others, somewhat less so .....
> 
> Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
> sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.

Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.

Regards
Greg



------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Ungerer  --  Chief Software Dude       EMAIL:     gerg@snapgear.com
SnapGear -- a Secure Computing Company      PHONE:       +61 7 3435 2888
825 Stanley St,                             FAX:         +61 7 3891 3630
Woolloongabba, QLD, 4102, Australia         WEB: http://www.SnapGear.com

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Greg Ungerer]

Dave Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:06:17AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
>  > Then there is the issue of architectures, at least in my book KS should
>  > focus on the ones that are really live and not in maintenance mode.
>  > x86_64, x86_32, PPC, ia64, ARM seems to be the driving ones these days,
>  > m68k, Sparc32, and others, somewhat less so .....
> 
> Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
> sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.

Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.

Regards
Greg



------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Ungerer  --  Chief Software Dude       EMAIL:     gerg@snapgear.com
SnapGear -- a Secure Computing Company      PHONE:       +61 7 3435 2888
825 Stanley St,                             FAX:         +61 7 3891 3630
Woolloongabba, QLD, 4102, Australia         WEB: http://www.SnapGear.com

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dave Jones]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:30:56PM +1000, Greg Ungerer wrote:
 > 
 > Dave Jones wrote:
 > > On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:06:17AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
 > >  > Then there is the issue of architectures, at least in my book KS should
 > >  > focus on the ones that are really live and not in maintenance mode.
 > >  > x86_64, x86_32, PPC, ia64, ARM seems to be the driving ones these days,
 > >  > m68k, Sparc32, and others, somewhat less so .....
 > > 
 > > Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
 > > sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.
 > 
 > Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
 > for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
 > contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.

Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.

		Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Greg Ungerer]

Dave Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:30:56PM +1000, Greg Ungerer wrote:
>  > 
>  > Dave Jones wrote:
>  > > On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:06:17AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
>  > >  > Then there is the issue of architectures, at least in my book KS should
>  > >  > focus on the ones that are really live and not in maintenance mode.
>  > >  > x86_64, x86_32, PPC, ia64, ARM seems to be the driving ones these days,
>  > >  > m68k, Sparc32, and others, somewhat less so .....
>  > > 
>  > > Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
>  > > sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.
>  > 
>  > Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
>  > for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
>  > contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.
> 
> Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
> any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.

Yep. IIRC the CPU architects panel was all x86/x86_64/ppc too wasn't it?


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Ungerer  --  Chief Software Dude       EMAIL:     gerg@snapgear.com
SnapGear -- a Secure Computing Company      PHONE:       +61 7 3435 2888
825 Stanley St,                             FAX:         +61 7 3891 3630
Woolloongabba, QLD, 4102, Australia         WEB: http://www.SnapGear.com

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Greg Ungerer]

Dave Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:30:56PM +1000, Greg Ungerer wrote:
>  > 
>  > Dave Jones wrote:
>  > > On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:06:17AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
>  > >  > Then there is the issue of architectures, at least in my book KS should
>  > >  > focus on the ones that are really live and not in maintenance mode.
>  > >  > x86_64, x86_32, PPC, ia64, ARM seems to be the driving ones these days,
>  > >  > m68k, Sparc32, and others, somewhat less so .....
>  > > 
>  > > Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
>  > > sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.
>  > 
>  > Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
>  > for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
>  > contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.
> 
> Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
> any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.

Yep. IIRC the CPU architects panel was all x86/x86_64/ppc too wasn't it?


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Ungerer  --  Chief Software Dude       EMAIL:     gerg@snapgear.com
SnapGear -- a Secure Computing Company      PHONE:       +61 7 3435 2888
825 Stanley St,                             FAX:         +61 7 3891 3630
Woolloongabba, QLD, 4102, Australia         WEB: http://www.SnapGear.com

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Paul Mundt]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 02:01:07PM +1000, Greg Ungerer wrote:
> Dave Jones wrote:
> >Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
> >any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.
> 
> Yep. IIRC the CPU architects panel was all x86/x86_64/ppc too wasn't it?
> 
Similarly, it would be nice if we could avoid marketing oriented CPU
roadmap presentations this year, before any other vendors start
getting ideas..

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dave Jones]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 02:01:07PM +1000, Greg Ungerer wrote:
 
 > >  > > Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
 > >  > > sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.
 > >  > 
 > >  > Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
 > >  > for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
 > >  > contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.
 > > 
 > > Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
 > > any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.
 > 
 > Yep. IIRC the CPU architects panel was all x86/x86_64/ppc too wasn't it?

I thought there was coldfire mentioned too, or maybe my memory is
playing tricks on me.  Maybe I'm misremembering the ppc bit.

		Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Greg Ungerer]

Dave Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 02:01:07PM +1000, Greg Ungerer wrote:
>  
>  > >  > > Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
>  > >  > > sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.
>  > >  > 
>  > >  > Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
>  > >  > for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
>  > >  > contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.
>  > > 
>  > > Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
>  > > any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.
>  > 
>  > Yep. IIRC the CPU architects panel was all x86/x86_64/ppc too wasn't it?
> 
> I thought there was coldfire mentioned too, or maybe my memory is
> playing tricks on me.  Maybe I'm misremembering the ppc bit.

Your right, the person from Freescale did mention it.



------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Ungerer  --  Chief Software Dude       EMAIL:     gerg@snapgear.com
SnapGear -- a Secure Computing Company      PHONE:       +61 7 3435 2888
825 Stanley St,                             FAX:         +61 7 3891 3630
Woolloongabba, QLD, 4102, Australia         WEB: http://www.SnapGear.com

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 LinuxKernel Summit

[Dirk Hohndel]

On 1/29/07 8:10 PM, "Dave Jones" <davej@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
>>>>> Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
>>>>> sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.
>>>> 
>>>> Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
>>>> for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
>>>> contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.
>>> 
>>> Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
>>> any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.
>> 
>> Yep. IIRC the CPU architects panel was all x86/x86_64/ppc too wasn't it?
> 
> I thought there was coldfire mentioned too, or maybe my memory is
> playing tricks on me.  Maybe I'm misremembering the ppc bit.

I believe we had AMD, Freescale and Intel last year, no PPC.

/D

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 LinuxKernel Summit

[Dirk Hohndel]

On 1/29/07 8:22 PM, "Greg Ungerer" <greg_ungerer@securecomputing.com> wrote:
>>> Yep. IIRC the CPU architects panel was all x86/x86_64/ppc too wasn't it?
>> 
>> I thought there was coldfire mentioned too, or maybe my memory is
>> playing tricks on me.  Maybe I'm misremembering the ppc bit.
> 
> Your right, the person from Freescale did mention it.

Oops yeah. Hit send to early. The presenter from Freescale spoke about PPC
as well.

/D

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dave Jones]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:08:26PM +0900, Paul Mundt wrote:
 > On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 02:01:07PM +1000, Greg Ungerer wrote:
 > > Dave Jones wrote:
 > > >Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
 > > >any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.
 > > 
 > > Yep. IIRC the CPU architects panel was all x86/x86_64/ppc too wasn't it?
 > > 
 > Similarly, it would be nice if we could avoid marketing oriented CPU
 > roadmap presentations this year, before any other vendors start
 > getting ideas..

It might be worth putting together a list of do's and don'ts for the
CPU architects if we have a panel again this year (and its usually
a fairly popular session, so I'd be surprised if it got dropped).
something along the lines of

Do:
- Detail what new features next-gen cpu out in Q1'08 will have
  that we may need to care about
- Ask for input on what features _we_ would like in CPUs in Q1 2010
- Tell us how we're taking advantage of things before that other OS,
  it makes us happy ;)

Don't:
- Waffle about process shrink roadmaps.
  Whilst it's good to hear, it doesn't affect the code we write.
- Moves to new substrates are fascinating to CPU manufacturers,
  not so much for kernel engineers.
- If something can't be discussed other than under NDA, don't
  bother bringing it up.  Those interested will likely find
  out about it through their employers anyway.
  This came up last year with a number of "we can't tell you"
  reponses, which made one presentation almost worthless.
  or perhaps it was particularly "we can't tell hch" :-)

Any others?

		Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

Dave Jones wrote:
>  > Then there is the issue of architectures, at least in my book KS should
>  > focus on the ones that are really live and not in maintenance mode.
>  > x86_64, x86_32, PPC, ia64, ARM seems to be the driving ones these days,
>  > m68k, Sparc32, and others, somewhat less so .....
> 
> Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
> sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.

Hi Dave,

I'm not too bothered about the subjects, but rather the issue that we
keep seeing this strict "only this small group, which defines the most
important people in the community" thing. Thats where I think the
current model fails, even if someone has done a lot of work all over
Linux for years, doesn't mean said people are the ones driving things
this year.

Personally I think Andrew's suggestion is really good, turning it more
towards the traditional conference means people who have something they
want to say are more likely to push for things. If one doesn't have
something to say, then going to the KS is probably not the right thing.

> One of the problems with this approach is sometimes we don't know about
> subjects that become important to us all until the last minute, and
> others that seem important now will become moot by the time the summit comes around.

Thats true, and there should certainly be space for new subjects coming
in on short notice. However, I would suggest that at least a significant
portion of the summit applies this requirement. Most of the more
important issues are architectural and it's often not something that
shows up last minute.

> So far though, there's been nothing proposed at all, so feel free
> to throw your hat in the ring, if nothing else, it'll kickstart
> the process.

Actually I'm in the process of investigating launching a mini summit
cabal, which I think would cover most of my current issues :)

Cheers,
Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

Greg Ungerer wrote:
> Dave Jones wrote:
>> Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
>> sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.
> 
> Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
> for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
> contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.

Which is good, provided that non-mmu work is actively driving some of
the decisions in mainline. Given that I don't follow the non-mmu work
at all, I don't have a feel for whether that is the case, but I could
imagine that it would have some impact that needs to be taken into
account at times. My worry is for spending time and slots on things /
people dealing with classic architectures which are no longer being
manufactured and are only being maintained in catch-up mode.

Cheers,
Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Andi Kleen]

> Next is the issue of subjects. Last year the final list came out a few
> days before the summit started, making it impossible for people who were
> not attending the summit to prepare material for those attending to
> present/include on their behalf.

I think you completely miss the point of KS here. It is not the venue for someone
presenting long material on something and "selling" it, but for free
discussion on specific topics.  That is why the invitee list is so
closely controlled to make sure these productions are productive.

If there are any presentations they should be very short and merely be a 
quick intro -- anything elaborate is not really welcome. That's quite different 
from other conferences.

-Andi

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Andi Kleen]

On Tuesday 30 January 2007 04:41, Dave Jones wrote:

> Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
> any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.

No IA64 stuff that I can remember. And there was a presentation on PPC.

But that was planned to be differently with more focus on embedded, 
unfortunately the comittee didn't manage to find more embedded CPU 
people in time.

My personal preference would be to go for a chipset panel this year
instead. Chipsets seem to impact kernels much more than CPUs.

-Andi

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[James Bottomley]

On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 05:51 +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> > So far though, there's been nothing proposed at all, so feel free
> > to throw your hat in the ring, if nothing else, it'll kickstart
> > the process.
> 
> Actually I'm in the process of investigating launching a mini summit
> cabal, which I think would cover most of my current issues :)

Actually, perhaps we should track these more closely.  At the moment we
have mini summits in

Networking
Wireless
Filesystems
Storage
Power Management

And probably several others I can't remember.  Right at the moment, the
organisation and funding for all of these is completely ad-hoc, so if
mini summits are the way to go, it would certainly be better to move
them on to a more templated basis (so anyone wishing to organise one
would know whom to go to for these things).

James

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dave Jones]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 05:51:00AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:

 > I'm not too bothered about the subjects, but rather the issue that we
 > keep seeing this strict "only this small group, which defines the most
 > important people in the community" thing.

I don't think it's intentionally meant to come across that way.
Not being invited to kernel-summit shouldn't be interpreted as
"you're not good enough" in any way or form.

 > Thats where I think the
 > current model fails, even if someone has done a lot of work all over
 > Linux for years, doesn't mean said people are the ones driving things
 > this year.

Right. I see your point, and attendance shouldn't be solely down to
a "what have you done for me lately?" decision, which is why there are
additional criteria.  That still doesn't make the process perfect,
but we're open to good solutions to solve the problem of trying to
pick 80 or so people out of the hundreds of developers that make
the first pass.

When Jon posted how the selection process worked last year a few people
(yourself included iirc) brought up concerns, but it seems no-one
has any real answers on how to improve things beyond the status quo.

It hasn't gotten easier by us shrinking in size slightly each year too.
This has both positive and negative points.  Yes, more people are going
to get left out, but there's a point where so many voices in a room
just becomes uncontrollable, especially when it's a room full of
people with strong opinions.  A number of people mentioned last year
that the level of interaction during the sessions seemed higher than
ever, with less people staring at laptops, and actually getting involved
in what was happening in the room.  I strongly believe that the lower
head count was responsible for this.

The one solution (well, in part) to the lower headcount last year was
the addition of the mini-summits.  If we had invited all the power management
guys, all the networking guys, all the wireless guys etc etc we would
probably have doubled in size.  In future I wouldn't be surprised if
these specialised summits happen more often.

Perhaps one day even negating the need for kernel summit at all
(unless it becomes two days of wrap ups and cpu architect roadmaps),
well, maybe not, but hopefully it'll help at least partially address
the concerns of developers who didn't get to be at the kernel summit.

 > Personally I think Andrew's suggestion is really good, turning it more
 > towards the traditional conference means people who have something they
 > want to say are more likely to push for things.

It may indeed have merit.

		Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dave Jones]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 06:11:18AM +0100, Andi Kleen wrote:
 > On Tuesday 30 January 2007 04:41, Dave Jones wrote:
 > 
 > > Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
 > > any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.
 > 
 > No IA64 stuff that I can remember. And there was a presentation on PPC.
 > 
 > But that was planned to be differently with more focus on embedded, 
 > unfortunately the comittee didn't manage to find more embedded CPU 
 > people in time.

given we barely had enough time for freescale, perhaps that was
for the best.

 > My personal preference would be to go for a chipset panel this year
 > instead. Chipsets seem to impact kernels much more than CPUs.

That could be interesting. I wonder if its worth doing both ?
Depends if enough people are bored with CPU panels I guess :)

		Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

Dave Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 05:51:00AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
>  > I'm not too bothered about the subjects, but rather the issue that we
>  > keep seeing this strict "only this small group, which defines the most
>  > important people in the community" thing.
> 
> I don't think it's intentionally meant to come across that way.
> Not being invited to kernel-summit shouldn't be interpreted as
> "you're not good enough" in any way or form.

True, but unfortunately the KS has gotten itself a real bad reputation
for being a closed club of the same people meeting year after year.
If this is warranted or not is open to discussion, but at least thats
the general message I get when I talk to people and the subject of KS is
brought up.

> When Jon posted how the selection process worked last year a few people
> (yourself included iirc) brought up concerns, but it seems no-one
> has any real answers on how to improve things beyond the status quo.

In this case I think Andrew's suggestion of trying to twist it more
towards the traditional conference style would be worth investigating.

The other issue here is that at least historically it has felt a bit
like pounding sand when anyone trying to state that the summit wasn't
working too well as it has been operating the last couple of years.

> It hasn't gotten easier by us shrinking in size slightly each year too.
> This has both positive and negative points.  Yes, more people are going
> to get left out, but there's a point where so many voices in a room
> just becomes uncontrollable, especially when it's a room full of
> people with strong opinions.  A number of people mentioned last year
> that the level of interaction during the sessions seemed higher than
> ever, with less people staring at laptops, and actually getting involved
> in what was happening in the room.  I strongly believe that the lower
> head count was responsible for this.

Well laptops are a problem, but I think some of this can be addressed
mostly at the on-site level. The other problem is often that people are
not interested or prepared for a given subject and therefore ignore it.
I think the requirement of having an abstract submitted in advance could
help here too.

> The one solution (well, in part) to the lower headcount last year was
> the addition of the mini-summits.  If we had invited all the power management
> guys, all the networking guys, all the wireless guys etc etc we would
> probably have doubled in size.  In future I wouldn't be surprised if
> these specialised summits happen more often.

Even the mini summits have the problem of being selective and some
projects are more likely to be included than others. For some projects
it's a lot more clear that there's a specific lead on it, whereas
others, such as file systems it's many very different projects in
parallel with different requirements.

That said, I think using the KS as more of an overall architecture
handling summit and leaving more specifics to the mini summits is a
good way to go.

Cheers,
Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

Andi Kleen wrote:
>> Next is the issue of subjects. Last year the final list came out a few
>> days before the summit started, making it impossible for people who were
>> not attending the summit to prepare material for those attending to
>> present/include on their behalf.
> 
> I think you completely miss the point of KS here. It is not the venue for someone
> presenting long material on something and "selling" it, but for free
> discussion on specific topics.  That is why the invitee list is so
> closely controlled to make sure these productions are productive.

Last year the subject of DMA engines was put up, however most of the
people interested in the subject weren't even invited. In that case
there's really little concrete that can come out of the discussion.

Expecting everyone to sit down and get the full picture of a subject
in 5 minutes is unrealistic and will not lead to very useful outcome.

> If there are any presentations they should be very short and merely be a 
> quick intro -- anything elaborate is not really welcome. That's quite different 
> from other conferences.

Of course, thats why I suggested more like an abstract published in
advance, like why is this subject worthy and what would the person
like to achieve by having it discussed. Hopefully with some technical
ideas included.

Cheers,
Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Andi Kleen]

> Last year the subject of DMA engines was put up, however most of the
> people interested in the subject weren't even invited. In that case
> there's really little concrete that can come out of the discussion.

Nobody claimed the committee was perfect. Shit happens.
There were also plenty of productive discussions.

> Expecting everyone to sit down and get the full picture of a subject
> in 5 minutes is unrealistic and will not lead to very useful outcome.

If they never heard of the issue before they are unlikely to 
be useful in the discussion even after an hour of talk. That is not
how it works again.

> Of course, thats why I suggested more like an abstract published in
> advance, like why is this subject worthy and what would the person
> like to achieve by having it discussed. Hopefully with some technical
> ideas included.

Abstract of a discussion? Interesting concept.  Maybe.

If you mean abstract of a talk then I think you're wrong.

Not sure that abstract of a discussion thing would really work though.
It seems a bit contradicting in itself.

-Andi

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

Andi Kleen wrote:
> Abstract of a discussion? Interesting concept.  Maybe.
> 
> If you mean abstract of a talk then I think you're wrong.
> 
> Not sure that abstract of a discussion thing would really work though.
> It seems a bit contradicting in itself.

I was thinking more an abstract as in something that should provide a
short summary of the problem and why it should be discussed at KS.
I don't think papers etc. would do any good at this level. Something
specifically targetted at KS.

Cheers,
Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Paul Mundt]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 06:11:18AM +0100, Andi Kleen wrote:
> On Tuesday 30 January 2007 04:41, Dave Jones wrote:
> > Right, other than during the CPU architects panel, I don't remember
> > any non x86/ia64/ppc stuff being brought up at all.
> 
> No IA64 stuff that I can remember. And there was a presentation on PPC.
> 
> But that was planned to be differently with more focus on embedded, 
> unfortunately the comittee didn't manage to find more embedded CPU 
> people in time.
> 
It might be interesting to have a more condensed CPU panel, something
like the OLS lightning talks. Gather a larger number of vendors, and give
each a small window to bring up the most relevant issues for them in the
future, while also allowing for some feedback and Q&A.

It would be nice to get more input from CPU architects, but only if it's
possible to keep it entirely technical and moving along without anyone
having to hurry their window of time due to someone else overstepping
theirs. If they only have a small window to present their concerns, I
think we'll see a lot of the fluff (as itemized by davej) go away.

As soon as a vendor starts rambling on about value-added IP blocks, we've
already lost..

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Muli Ben-Yehuda]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 06:51:51AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:

> Last year the subject of DMA engines was put up, however most of the
> people interested in the subject weren't even invited. In that case
> there's really little concrete that can come out of the discussion.

Likewise IOMMUs.

I think Andrew's suggestion of adding a CFP phase to KS is excellent -
get some new blood in the room and spice up the discussion.

Cheers,
Muli

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dave Jones]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 08:43:12AM +0200, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
 > On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 06:51:51AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
 > 
 > > Last year the subject of DMA engines was put up, however most of the
 > > people interested in the subject weren't even invited. In that case
 > > there's really little concrete that can come out of the discussion.
 > 
 > Likewise IOMMUs.
 
There were a number of people there last year who understood IOMMUs
and could easily talk at length about them if able to do so.
iirc, you were also invited, but were unable to travel due to
bad things falling from the sky in Israel at the time ?

 > I think Andrew's suggestion of adding a CFP phase to KS is excellent -
 > get some new blood in the room and spice up the discussion.

I don't see anything that really precludes the idea. Or even the
notion of both that and some of the old format for some of the
sessions.

		Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Muli Ben-Yehuda]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 02:18:16AM -0500, Dave Jones wrote:

>  > Likewise IOMMUs.
>  
> There were a number of people there last year who understood IOMMUs
> and could easily talk at length about them if able to do so.  iirc,
> you were also invited, but were unable to travel due to bad things
> falling from the sky in Israel at the time ?

That was OLS, not KS. Also, that's not the impression I got from
reading the lwn.net summary (and I know several IOMMU people such as
Olof were not invited... I think it was just jejb and ak?).

Cheers,
Muli

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 LinuxKernel Summit

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Tuesday 30 January 2007 05:24, Dirk Hohndel wrote:
> 
> > I thought there was coldfire mentioned too, or maybe my memory is
> > playing tricks on me.  Maybe I'm misremembering the ppc bit.
> 
> I believe we had AMD, Freescale and Intel last year, no PPC.

Freescale's bigger CPUs are all PPC, although they also have stuff
like coldfire, which is not.

	Arnd <><

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Oleg Verych]

> From: Theodore Tso
> Newsgroups: gmane.linux.kernel
> Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:28:49 -0500

[]
> I did give you a response.  Find a way to pay for 80+ kernel summit
> invitees to travel to India (preferably in business class :-), and
> we'll talk.  That's not realistic?  Well, then perhaps having the
> concept of holding Kernel Summit in India is not realistic.

Rather, than "business class ;-)", i whould like to see comments about
good quality video coverage of the KS, which (KS) is that, as you
described here:

> As Dirk has pointed out, the Kernel Summit is a little unusual
> compared to events such as FOSDEM or FISL, where there are 4000-5000
> attendees, and the emphasis is on the power of a large number of
> people in the OSS community.  The Kernel Summit is a very different
> event, in that it is by-invitation with less than 100 people.  The
> whole point is to get the top contributors together to be able to talk
> amongst themselves in a high bandwidth environment.  You can't do that
> amongst a crowd of 800, never mind 2000 or 4000.

Even if dot.coms days are over and money aren't falling from skies
(growing on trees), this would be the best thing to do in first place.

Even for your memory, IMHO, as have read this thread below.

I wish you will care about this, wherever you will meet this time.

Thanks.

____

hunting on open source developers (Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit)

[Oleg Verych]

> From: Theodore Tso
> Newsgroups: gmane.linux.kernel
> Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:28:49 -0500
[]
> (Unless perhaps in some conspiracy theory scenario where Microsoft pays
> $$$ to some VC company to sponsor an event in Moskow, and then
> contracts out to the KGB to fill the meeting room with an aerosolized
> powder of Polonium 210 to kill off all of the top Linux developers in
> one fell swoop.  But that sort of thing only happens in spy novels.
> :-)

BTW, after some information was published here

                    <http://www.iowaconsumercase.org/>

i don't think it's funny or "only happens in spy novels"...

____

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dave Airlie]

> Rather, than "business class ;-)", i whould like to see comments about
> good quality video coverage of the KS, which (KS) is that, as you
> described here:
>

KS isn't a conference that lends itself to recording ppl a lot of
people seem to think it is like a mini-OLS or mini-LCA, it is more
discussion based (or at least should be...), it isn't held in a
lecture theatre, people aren't meant to do slides beyond talking
points....

It mainly involves ppl sitting around tables talking about stuff with
some mics... I think we could hold KS as an open non-invite event if
it wasn't attached to a major conference and was held somewhere no-one
wants to go :-)

Dave.

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 11:34:21PM -0500, Dave Jones wrote:
> It might be worth putting together a list of do's and don'ts for the
> CPU architects if we have a panel again this year (and its usually
> a fairly popular session, so I'd be surprised if it got dropped).
> something along the lines of

Count my vote for dropping the cpu panels session.  It's been far
too marketing oriented, and all of the companies have far more interesting
meetings of their own where thos caring about a particular architecture
(and that includes much more than just the cpu!) can have usefull discussions.

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 11:11:54PM -0600, James Bottomley wrote:
> Networking
> Wireless
> Filesystems
> Storage
> Power Management
> 
> And probably several others I can't remember.  Right at the moment, the
> organisation and funding for all of these is completely ad-hoc, so if
> mini summits are the way to go, it would certainly be better to move
> them on to a more templated basis (so anyone wishing to organise one
> would know whom to go to for these things).

One thing that might have made these mini-summits so successull might
have been the ad-hoc setup without much corporate or organizational
involvement.  I'm looking forward to see if we can keep this spirit
despite the Usenix involvement for the next FS/Storage summit.

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Oleg Verych]

> From: "Dave Airlie"
> Newsgroups: gmane.linux.kernel
> Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit
> Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:44:49 +1100
[]
>> Rather, than "business class ;-)", i whould like to see comments about
>> good quality video coverage of the KS, which (KS) is that, as you
>> described here:
>>
>
> KS isn't a conference that lends itself to recording ppl a lot of
> people seem to think it is like a mini-OLS or mini-LCA, it is more
> discussion based (or at least should be...), it isn't held in a
> lecture theatre, people aren't meant to do slides beyond talking
> points....

1. To setup quality coverage, is hard and (i think) expensive (news media
company needed). Hackers with webcams, where nothing can be seen and
heard, isn't that i expect in the 21th century, the century of the
telecommunication.

2. It's believed to be "high bandwidth" discussion, and i think it's much
better, than slides, talk, (?wtf was in)Q/(here's your)A. Because this
may obligate you to think fast, to think what you (invited person) say,
and say what you think.

3. As for everyone, who listen English speech only in Hollywood
movies (yea, that's me, and i'm writing this to you now ;), such kind of
conversation with fights, debates, etc. is a worth material. (I don't
want to compare this to _some_ scientific confs, where people reading
their mouney-has-been-spent-OK reports).

> It mainly involves ppl sitting around tables talking about stuff with
> some mics... I think we could hold KS as an open non-invite event if
> it wasn't attached to a major conference and was held somewhere no-one
> wants to go :-)

4. If there will be good ideas and real items for TODOs, technical
details, fun, etc. why not to share it? Do you have something to hide, or
you think, after seeng that, some employer will shrink somebody's travel
budget (:?

I think Linux Kernel has just became mature, as its long-time developers
have. And i think, mini/maxi conferences must become more mature ether.

And donig paper work here, like slides, abstracts, articles, isn't a
first requirement (again, after the end of the Cold War, cheap PC,
Microsoft Word in the Windows, the most scientific work had finallt
became A Paper Work (patent pending)). AFAIK Linus doen't like this
either, rather than to (verbally) discuss things.

Maybe [1] isn't that companies, like Red Hat, will like to do,
because, this is part of their paid business, but [2]-[4] may have
more weight against this.

> Dave.

____

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Theodore Tso]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 11:11:54PM -0600, James Bottomley wrote:
> And probably several others I can't remember.  Right at the moment, the
> organisation and funding for all of these is completely ad-hoc, so if
> mini summits are the way to go, it would certainly be better to move
> them on to a more templated basis (so anyone wishing to organise one
> would know whom to go to for these things).

Well, Usenix has offerred to provide logistical support for some
mini-summits if anyoen wants to take them up on it.  Using some of the
sponsorship money from last year, we've proposed to make some hotel
conference rooms right before OLS available if anyone wants to do a
10-30 person mini-summit in Ottawa.

Is there any interest?

						- Ted

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 08:30 -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 11:11:54PM -0600, James Bottomley wrote:
> > And probably several others I can't remember.  Right at the moment, the
> > organisation and funding for all of these is completely ad-hoc, so if
> > mini summits are the way to go, it would certainly be better to move
> > them on to a more templated basis (so anyone wishing to organise one
> > would know whom to go to for these things).
> 
> Well, Usenix has offerred to provide logistical support for some
> mini-summits if anyoen wants to take them up on it.  Using some of the
> sponsorship money from last year, we've proposed to make some hotel
> conference rooms right before OLS available if anyone wants to do a
> 10-30 person mini-summit in Ottawa.
> 
> Is there any interest?

Martin was looking into organising the VM summit thereabouts.

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Paul Mundt]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 08:30:00AM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 11:11:54PM -0600, James Bottomley wrote:
> > And probably several others I can't remember.  Right at the moment, the
> > organisation and funding for all of these is completely ad-hoc, so if
> > mini summits are the way to go, it would certainly be better to move
> > them on to a more templated basis (so anyone wishing to organise one
> > would know whom to go to for these things).
> 
> Well, Usenix has offerred to provide logistical support for some
> mini-summits if anyoen wants to take them up on it.  Using some of the
> sponsorship money from last year, we've proposed to make some hotel
> conference rooms right before OLS available if anyone wants to do a
> 10-30 person mini-summit in Ottawa.
> 
> Is there any interest?
> 
I think there's enough of relevance for an embedded mini-summit this
year, particularly as it's not clear that there's going to be a power
management summit this year (though of course there are many other
topics to be looked at, too). Does that count?

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Alan]

> Don't:
> - Waffle about process shrink roadmaps.

Buy a graphics company, continue blocking 2D support and expect anyone to
even care about your hardware ... ?

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[James Bottomley]

On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 09:29 +0200, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 02:18:16AM -0500, Dave Jones wrote:
> >  > Likewise IOMMUs.
> >  
> > There were a number of people there last year who understood IOMMUs
> > and could easily talk at length about them if able to do so.  iirc,
> > you were also invited, but were unable to travel due to bad things
> > falling from the sky in Israel at the time ?
> 
> That was OLS, not KS. Also, that's not the impression I got from
> reading the lwn.net summary (and I know several IOMMU people such as
> Olof were not invited... I think it was just jejb and ak?).

Most of the useful IOMMU discussion happened at OLS anyway in the
various virtualisation talks.  I would expect that if there's a
virtualisation mini summit going on that these would again be discussed
there.

I suppose on a side note, in spite of the fact that the virtualisation
summit has identified IO as the major discussion area, no virtualisation
people actually signed up for the Filesystem and IO summit ...

James

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[James Bottomley]

On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 10:30 +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 11:34:21PM -0500, Dave Jones wrote:
> > It might be worth putting together a list of do's and don'ts for the
> > CPU architects if we have a panel again this year (and its usually
> > a fairly popular session, so I'd be surprised if it got dropped).
> > something along the lines of
> 
> Count my vote for dropping the cpu panels session.  It's been far
> too marketing oriented, and all of the companies have far more interesting
> meetings of their own where thos caring about a particular architecture
> (and that includes much more than just the cpu!) can have usefull discussions.

Well, OK, but the next question is that is some form of panel of
outsiders still a useful feature?

Previous panels we've done have been:

      * Device Drivers - Inputs from vendors trying to get code into the
        kernel.  I had feedback that this was reasonably useful; the
        problem is that it tends to be composed of vendors already
        making a big effort on the open source process and not the ones
        (like graphics) who aren't.
      * Customer Panel - inputs from various users deploying linux in
        their enterprises.  This did tend to degenerate quickly to a
        list of requirements.

The one everyone seems to want is chipsets, so is this the one we want
to shoot for this year?

James

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Randy Dunlap]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:48:45 -0600 James Bottomley wrote:

> On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 10:30 +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 11:34:21PM -0500, Dave Jones wrote:
> > > It might be worth putting together a list of do's and don'ts for the
> > > CPU architects if we have a panel again this year (and its usually
> > > a fairly popular session, so I'd be surprised if it got dropped).
> > > something along the lines of
> > 
> > Count my vote for dropping the cpu panels session.  It's been far
> > too marketing oriented, and all of the companies have far more interesting
> > meetings of their own where thos caring about a particular architecture
> > (and that includes much more than just the cpu!) can have usefull discussions.
> 
> Well, OK, but the next question is that is some form of panel of
> outsiders still a useful feature?
> 
> Previous panels we've done have been:
> 
>       * Device Drivers - Inputs from vendors trying to get code into the
>         kernel.  I had feedback that this was reasonably useful; the
>         problem is that it tends to be composed of vendors already
>         making a big effort on the open source process and not the ones
>         (like graphics) who aren't.
>       * Customer Panel - inputs from various users deploying linux in
>         their enterprises.  This did tend to degenerate quickly to a
>         list of requirements.
> 
> The one everyone seems to want is chipsets, so is this the one we want
> to shoot for this year?

As usual, "it depends" on the content.  Can we provide them with
sufficient instructions/guidance so that the listeners get the content
that is desired instead of just some pseudo-marketing or requirements
list?  Any of those panels (Customer or CPU) could have been good or bad.


---
~Randy

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[James Bottomley]

On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 08:53 -0800, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> As usual, "it depends" on the content.  Can we provide them with
> sufficient instructions/guidance so that the listeners get the content
> that is desired instead of just some pseudo-marketing or requirements
> list?  Any of those panels (Customer or CPU) could have been good or
> bad.

This is a really nasty problem.  By and large, only organisations who
are active participants in the Linux community are happy sending their
technical architects ungaurded to a developer summit (like we get for
the CPU panel).  The objective is always to get technical (not
marketing) people who haven't been frightened into silence by their
legal department and, if people want chipsets, that's what we'll try to
do ... it just takes a lot of persuasion, so the earlier we start ...

James

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 11:10:57AM -0600, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 08:16 +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> > I don't have an issue with the fact there are sponsors, however I think
> > KS is important enough and sponsors are aware of this, that selling
> > seats to sponsors shouldn't be necessary.
> 
> So SGI will undertake to step up and sponsor KS this year without a
> guaranteed slot?

This only works if everyone gets that treatment.  It can work -- look
at Eben getting funding for the SFLC with no sponsor representation.
However, you might expect sponsors trying to influence selection in
other ways -- for example, pushing to have their employees as members
of the program committee.

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[James Bottomley]

On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 10:27 -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> This only works if everyone gets that treatment.  It can work -- look
> at Eben getting funding for the SFLC with no sponsor representation.
> However, you might expect sponsors trying to influence selection in
> other ways -- for example, pushing to have their employees as members
> of the program committee.

Not necessarily ... you can also work on a group by persuading one
person to exhibit the desired behaviour and then going around all the
others asking them if they'd like to follow suit.

James

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Luck, Tony]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 07:11:34AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> > Not sure that abstract of a discussion thing would really work though.
> > It seems a bit contradicting in itself.
> 
> I was thinking more an abstract as in something that should provide a
> short summary of the problem and why it should be discussed at KS.
> I don't think papers etc. would do any good at this level. Something
> specifically targetted at KS.

If you really want to get people up to speed on a topic, then you need
a bibliography - which in practice may just be a few links to articles on
the h/w involved, research papers on the s/w techniques, or just to
previous mailing list discussions (especially if these were on a
special topic list rather then on LKML).  That would give people whose
interest is piqued by the abstract a starting point to learn a bit
more before the summit so there can be an informed discussion.

-Tony

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

James Bottomley wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 08:16 +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
>> I don't have an issue with the fact there are sponsors, however I think
>> KS is important enough and sponsors are aware of this, that selling
>> seats to sponsors shouldn't be necessary.
> 
> So SGI will undertake to step up and sponsor KS this year without a
> guaranteed slot?

I didn't realize that all your postings to this list were the official
views of Steeleye?

I can't say what SGI will do on this, I'm an engineer not a manager,
I can however suggest to them that they do. As Willy said, if it was
an even playing field it would probably be a lot more likely they would,
compared to how it is today.

Cheers,
Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Greg Ungerer]

Jes Sorensen wrote:
> Greg Ungerer wrote:
>> Dave Jones wrote:
>>> Again, I don't recall us spending any time at all discussing m68k, or
>>> sparc, whilst the others you mention were well represented.
>>
>> Well, others where represented, I was there looking after non-mmu m68k
>> for example (and other general non-mmu stuff). There just wasn't much
>> contentious stuff in that space that needed wider discussion.
> 
> Which is good, provided that non-mmu work is actively driving some of
> the decisions in mainline. Given that I don't follow the non-mmu work
> at all, I don't have a feel for whether that is the case, but I could
> imagine that it would have some impact that needs to be taken into
> account at times.

Exactly.


> My worry is for spending time and slots on things /
> people dealing with classic architectures which are no longer being
> manufactured and are only being maintained in catch-up mode.

Agreed, but I haven't seen that in the past. The CPU panel at least
has always covered current (and future) hardware.

Regards
Greg

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[James Bottomley]

On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 22:24 +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote: 
> James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 08:16 +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> >> I don't have an issue with the fact there are sponsors, however I think
> >> KS is important enough and sponsors are aware of this, that selling
> >> seats to sponsors shouldn't be necessary.
> > 
> > So SGI will undertake to step up and sponsor KS this year without a
> > guaranteed slot?
> 
> I didn't realize that all your postings to this list were the official
> views of Steeleye?

That would make two of us then.

> I can't say what SGI will do on this, I'm an engineer not a manager,
> I can however suggest to them that they do. As Willy said, if it was
> an even playing field it would probably be a lot more likely they would,
> compared to how it is today.

OK, but what I'm trying to get across is that saying "get rid of the
sponsored places" isn't really useful without a suggestion of how to
raise the necessary cash.  Saying "I talked to SGI and they'd be willing
to forgo their sponsored attendees if everyone else did" might get us
somewhere...

James

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Matt Domsch]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 08:30:25AM -0800, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:16:21 +0100 Jes Sorensen wrote:
> 
> > James Bottomley wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 01:06 +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> > >> The last couple of years there's been roughly 13 seats sold to sponsors,
> > >> which is somewhere in the order or 15%. Even if we assume that say 50%
> > >> of those seats have been given to relevant participants, thats still a
> > >> lot of waste.
> > > 
> > > The sad fact is that putting on a summit costs money.  If the attendees
> > > themselves don't pay then it has to come from somewhere.  The current
> > > funding mechanism is open for discussion, like the agenda ... what did
> > > you have in mind?
> > 
> > I don't have an issue with the fact there are sponsors, however I think
> > KS is important enough and sponsors are aware of this, that selling
> > seats to sponsors shouldn't be necessary.

As one who regularly fills a sponsor slot (though I have also gotten
an invitation on merit in the past), I don't believe the sponsor slot
people detract from the sessions.  Most of the time we keep quiet,
occasionally offering our insights or challenges.  Jonathan's writeups
are fantastic, but it doesn't really compare with being there and
participating in discussions, either hallway or main room.  Besides
consuming oxygen, what's the real concern here?

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

Matt Domsch wrote:
> As one who regularly fills a sponsor slot (though I have also gotten
> an invitation on merit in the past), I don't believe the sponsor slot
> people detract from the sessions.  Most of the time we keep quiet,
> occasionally offering our insights or challenges.  Jonathan's writeups
> are fantastic, but it doesn't really compare with being there and
> participating in discussions, either hallway or main room.  Besides
> consuming oxygen, what's the real concern here?

Hi Matt,

I don't think sponsor slots per se are damaging, the problem is that
they take up a seat. Combined with this fanatic 'we must only allow our
favorite 80 elite people into the room' idea. In this situation sponsor
slots are costly and often a waste at the technical level. Same goes
with having 12 committee members for an 80 seat summit, but nobody
seems to like to talk about that issue :)

Cheers,
Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 10:48:45AM -0600, James Bottomley wrote:
> Well, OK, but the next question is that is some form of panel of
> outsiders still a useful feature?
> 
> Previous panels we've done have been:
> 
>       * Device Drivers - Inputs from vendors trying to get code into the
>         kernel.  I had feedback that this was reasonably useful; the
>         problem is that it tends to be composed of vendors already
>         making a big effort on the open source process and not the ones
>         (like graphics) who aren't.
>       * Customer Panel - inputs from various users deploying linux in
>         their enterprises.  This did tend to degenerate quickly to a
>         list of requirements.
> 
> The one everyone seems to want is chipsets, so is this the one we want
> to shoot for this year?

chipsets is probably more interesting than cpus, yes.  Most useful would
be other open source projects and their requirements/wishes from the kernel,
but we're already discussing that elsewhere in this maze of threads..

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Dave Jones]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 03:21:35AM +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:

 > with having 12 committee members for an 80 seat summit, but nobody
 > seems to like to talk about that issue :)

If it makes you feel better, I'll stand down as a PC member, and
attempt attendance on merit.   I'm seriously tired of the allegations
that there's underhand things going on.

Between this, and the constant nagging from some community members
to find out if they'd made the cut (nearly EVERY DAY for a month),
I sometimes wonder why I volunteered.  Perhaps because like others
on the PC, I felt it wasn't fair to burden Ted with all the workload.

Remember that we're all volunteers here, and the suggestion that
we're all doing it just to ensure attendance is just unfair.

All the PC committee members last year were on the same voting sheet
as everyone else. Theoretically, I could have given low votes to
Andi, Ted and everyone else on the PC, but that would be ridiculous
given the work they do, and the value they've added to previous summits.

		Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

Dave Jones wrote:
> If it makes you feel better, I'll stand down as a PC member, and
> attempt attendance on merit.   I'm seriously tired of the allegations
> that there's underhand things going on.

Dave,

I'm sorry you feel that way, that is not the intention of it. I raise
the issue of the number of members, and particularly the fact that seats
are sold off to sponsors to the level they are. If we didn't
continuously get touted that this has to be restricted to death to the
point of being constructive this wouldn't be a problem, but thats where
it is.

Gerrit mentioned that half the committee shows up to be dead weight when
it comes down to the crunch at the end, so if this is the case, does it
really make sense to keep said members on the committee? LCA had how
many proposals? they handled it with a 7-8 member group I believe, and
yes I know Rusty did bitch about having to read a couple of hundred
papers, but they did pretty darn well.

> All the PC committee members last year were on the same voting sheet
> as everyone else. Theoretically, I could have given low votes to
> Andi, Ted and everyone else on the PC, but that would be ridiculous
> given the work they do, and the value they've added to previous summits.

If a person on the committee qualifies under the technical requirements
decided upon by the committee, then obviously that person should be
invited too.

Cheers,
Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Jes Sorensen]

Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> Some of those people have a role other than developing patches. This
> is not like stock in a public company where one patch == one vote. The
> important part is to make sure that the attendee list covers the people
> that have an desire to contribute. Sometimes there are people
> who aren't contributing to mainline kernel, but instead are off doing
> there own thing and need to be heard. How can we cause more interest?

Stephen,

I totally agree with this. I am trying to raise the issues because I
hear a lot of dissent from various places.

Cheers,
Jes

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Alan]

> If it makes you feel better, I'll stand down as a PC member, and
> attempt attendance on merit.   I'm seriously tired of the allegations
> that there's underhand things going on.

There's only once voice I can hear moaning about the process. The same
voice I seem to remember moaning about for the past few years.

Alan

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Gerrit Huizenga]

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:49:11 +0100, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> 
> Gerrit mentioned that half the committee shows up to be dead weight when
> it comes down to the crunch at the end, so if this is the case, does it
> really make sense to keep said members on the committee? LCA had how
> many proposals? they handled it with a 7-8 member group I believe, and
> yes I know Rusty did bitch about having to read a couple of hundred
> papers, but they did pretty darn well.

I believe in that same post, I pointed out that throughout the prep
period, all members *did* have a valuable contribution.  Don't use half
the info to make a point, please.

And for paper & proposal reviews, also having been on the OLS program
committee for several years, I can guarantee you that these are two different
birds.  Paper proposals are more static, have a more or less intrinsic
value that you can assess at a single reading.  KS is *much* more dynamic,
and would be just another conference if it weren't.  KS is about current
issues, and actions to address those issues.  The *actions* part is a lot
harder than the paper reading portion.  Don't confused KS with a conference;
it is a workshop for a very, very large, very very active project.

gerrit

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[H. Peter Anvin]

Gerrit Huizenga wrote:
> Don't confused KS with a conference;
> it is a workshop for a very, very large, very very active project.

... and *growing*, which is the real issue I think.

Something that might make sense for KS is to have multiple sessions 
(perhaps replacing some or all of the "mini-summits" that have cropped 
up) combined with some bigger, overall sessions.  At least that way 
there would be more cross-pollination between the various groups than if 
we eventually end up meeting everywhere.

That's of course only practical if KS is separated from any other 
conference (like OLS.)

	-hpa

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Gerrit Huizenga]

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:30:43 PST, "H. Peter Anvin" wrote:
> Gerrit Huizenga wrote:
> > Don't confused KS with a conference;
> > it is a workshop for a very, very large, very very active project.
> 
> ... and *growing*, which is the real issue I think.
> 
> Something that might make sense for KS is to have multiple sessions 
> (perhaps replacing some or all of the "mini-summits" that have cropped 
> up) combined with some bigger, overall sessions.  At least that way 
> there would be more cross-pollination between the various groups than if 
> we eventually end up meeting everywhere.
> 
> That's of course only practical if KS is separated from any other 
> conference (like OLS.)

Are you thinking something like "core VM/scheduler/locking/etc." as one set of
not-quite-so-mini-summit, and a "block IO/storage drivers/filesystems" as another,
"arch maintainers" as another, and "all the nutty drivers and their writers" as
perhaps a fourth?  In other words, some semi-logical grouping of issues
each as more free floating meetings?  Or did I miss your suggestion?

Easy on the judgement on practicality, btw.  For instance, FAST is going
to try to do some part of one of these - possibly larger than a networking
mini-summit in scope but otherwise with similar goals.

I think there are some options to consider for hosting some targetted
working meetings in some of these areas, including the examples already
given for some mini-summits.  Some sponsors might help set up mini-summits
(and some have in the psat), including considering the Linux Foundation as
they do with the Desktop Architects Meeting (my favorite DAM meeting!).

The challenge is to figure out what people want to have happen, the see if
we can make it happen.

gerrit

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 LinuxKernel Summit

[Dirk Hohndel]

On 1/31/07 3:30 PM, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:

> Gerrit Huizenga wrote:
>> Don't confused KS with a conference;
>> it is a workshop for a very, very large, very very active project.
> 
> ... and *growing*, which is the real issue I think.
> 
> Something that might make sense for KS is to have multiple sessions
> (perhaps replacing some or all of the "mini-summits" that have cropped
> up) combined with some bigger, overall sessions.  At least that way
> there would be more cross-pollination between the various groups than if
> we eventually end up meeting everywhere.
> 
> That's of course only practical if KS is separated from any other
> conference (like OLS.)

I have discussed this idea with a few people in the past. One could organize
a set of interlocking / overlapping mini summits and end with a joint day
for everyone. This would almost certainly create some idle time for almost
every attendee - but obviously that can be filled by a hack fest or
something.

I don't think this could be organized for September (actually, I don't know
how firm the contracts with the facilities are at this point), but certainly
something we could plan for next year. One nice side-effect would be to
allow for an overall larger group - you could have 30-40 people per "track"
and maybe 100-120 total. Yes, this makes the conversation on the last day
harder, but it would still stay productive and interactive for the most
part.

/D

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit

[Len Brown]

On Tuesday 30 January 2007 08:30, Theodore Tso wrote:

> Well, Usenix has offerred to provide logistical support for some
> mini-summits if anyoen wants to take them up on it.  Using some of the
> sponsorship money from last year, we've proposed to make some hotel
> conference rooms right before OLS available if anyone wants to do a
> 10-30 person mini-summit in Ottawa.
> 
> Is there any interest?

Yes, suspect that a day attached to OLS may make a good power-management summit day.

-Len

Re: +1 4 cz (Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit)

[James Simmons]

Has the place for the KS been decided? If not I like to suggest switzerland. 

> On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 07:18:46PM +0000, Oleg Verych wrote:
> 
> > >> Ditto..
> > >> 
> > >> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
> > >> else different this time - perhaps *Czech Republic*, or somewhere else more
> > >> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
> > >
> > > This is my position as well.
> > > 
> > > For the first time in many years I'm strongly considering actually
> > > going to the kernel summit, however if it goes back to Ottawa I
> > > definitely will stop going again.
> > 
> > It would be interesting. Thank you Alan, David!
> 
> I (and SUSE/Novell) would be happy to help organizing the Kernel Summit
> in Czech Republic.
> 
> 

Re: +1 4 cz (Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit)

[Vojtech Pavlik]

On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 07:29:09PM +0000, James Simmons wrote:
> 
> Has the place for the KS been decided? If not I like to suggest switzerland. 
> 
> > On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 07:18:46PM +0000, Oleg Verych wrote:
> > 
> > > >> Ditto..
> > > >> 
> > > >> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
> > > >> else different this time - perhaps *Czech Republic*, or somewhere else more
> > > >> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
> > > >
> > > > This is my position as well.
> > > > 
> > > > For the first time in many years I'm strongly considering actually
> > > > going to the kernel summit, however if it goes back to Ottawa I
> > > > definitely will stop going again.
> > > 
> > > It would be interesting. Thank you Alan, David!
> > 
> > I (and SUSE/Novell) would be happy to help organizing the Kernel Summit
> > in Czech Republic.
 
I didn't get any response yet to my proposal.

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
Director SuSE Labs

Re: +1 4 cz (Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit)

[James Simmons]

> On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 07:29:09PM +0000, James Simmons wrote:
> > 
> > Has the place for the KS been decided? If not I like to suggest switzerland. 
> > 
> > > On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 07:18:46PM +0000, Oleg Verych wrote:
> > > 
> > > > >> Ditto..
> > > > >> 
> > > > >> Definitely disagree with that. I'd like to see the conference somewhere
> > > > >> else different this time - perhaps *Czech Republic*, or somewhere else more
> > > > >> easterly and Linux active (or even Finland...)
> > > > >
> > > > > This is my position as well.
> > > > > 
> > > > > For the first time in many years I'm strongly considering actually
> > > > > going to the kernel summit, however if it goes back to Ottawa I
> > > > > definitely will stop going again.
> > > > 
> > > > It would be interesting. Thank you Alan, David!
> > > 
> > > I (and SUSE/Novell) would be happy to help organizing the Kernel Summit
> > > in Czech Republic.
>  
> I didn't get any response yet to my proposal.

So it is between Britian or the Czech Republic. BTW how long of a train 
ride is to swizterland from CZ. My wife's family lives there.

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: +1 4 cz (Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit)

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 21:10, James Simmons wrote:
> 
> So it is between Britian or the Czech Republic. BTW how long of a train 
> ride is to swizterland from CZ. My wife's family lives there.

Too long. 15 hours according to http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en .
You probably want to take a cheap flight instead.

	Arnd <><

Re: [Ksummit-2007-discuss] Re: +1 4 cz (Re: [Ksummit-2006-discuss] 2007 Linux Kernel Summit)

[Markus Rechberger]

On 2/7/07, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> On Tuesday 06 February 2007 21:10, James Simmons wrote:
> >
> > So it is between Britian or the Czech Republic. BTW how long of a train
> > ride is to swizterland from CZ. My wife's family lives there.
>
> Too long. 15 hours according to
> http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en .
> You probably want to take a cheap flight instead.
>

Isn't there a nighttrain? You could (try to) sleep during the journey.
I'd be interested in Czech too.

Markus

LinuxConf Europe 2007 [was Re: 2007 Linux Kernel Summit]

[Alasdair G Kergon]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 01:17:02PM +0000, Steven Whitehouse wrote:
> Wrt, point (a), UKUUG are moving their UK based Summer Linux conference
> to coincide timewise with the kernel summit. Normally its in the July/August
> time frame. Location probably, but last I heard from Alasdair Kergon not
> certain to be, in Cambridge,
 
Now confirmed - Cambridge, UK - Sunday 2nd to Tuesday 4th September.
(A combined event with Linux-Kongress.)

Extract from the Call for Papers:

  We invite speakers on any aspect of Linux development and use. The
  programme aims to cover a variety of topics, including kernel and
  desktop development, tools, applications, networking, security,
  performance and case-studies of linux deployments. Any topic likely to
  be of interest to Linux developers and enthusiasts will be considered.

  In view of the Kernel Summit following the event, we anticipate
  devoting a significant proportion of the programme to the linux
  kernel. We are also particularly interested in receiving papers that
  focus on the historical development of computing in the Cambridge area. 

  Closing date for abstracts:  20th May 2007

  http://www.linuxconf.eu/cfp/
  http://lists.linuxconf.eu/mailman/listinfo/cambridge-announce

Alasdair
-- 
agk@redhat.com