[dpdk-moving] Minutes from "Moving DPDK to Linux Foundation" call, November 22nd

[dpdk-moving] Minutes from "Moving DPDK to Linux Foundation" call, November 22nd

[O'Driscoll, Tim]

Here are my notes from Tuesday's call. Please feel free to correct any errors or to add additional details.

Attendees: Bruce Richardson (Intel), Dave Neary (Red Hat), Ed Warnicke (Cisco), Francois-Frederic Ozog (Linaro), Greg Curran (Intel), Hemant Agrawal (NXP), Jan Blunck (Brocade), Jerin Jacob (Cavium), Jim St. Leger (Intel), John Bromhead (Cavium), John McNamara (Intel), Keith Wiles (Intel), Matt Spencer (ARM), Mike Dolan (Linux Foundation), Olga Shern (Mellanox), Shreyansh Jain (NXP), Thomas Monjalon (6WIND), Tim O'Driscoll (Intel), Vincent Jardin (6WIND), Yoni Luzon (Mellanox). Note that there may have been others, but as people joined at different times it was difficult to keep track.

Firstly, here are some links to help keep track of things:
Project Charter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x43ycfW3arJNX-e6NQt3OVzAuNXtD7dppIhrY48FoGs/edit
Summary of discussion at Userspace event in Dublin: http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2016-October/049259.html
Minutes of October 31st call: http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/moving/2016-November/000031.html
Minutes of November 8th call: http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/moving/2016-November/000058.html
Minutes of November 15th call: http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/moving/2016-November/000061.html
Current technical governance, including composition of the Tech Board: http://dpdk.org/dev

1. Discussed scope of Technical Board (TB) and Governing Board (GB), as defined in new Section 3 in the charter:
- Name for ??? Board. Mike stated that almost all LF projects use the term Governing Board. While some people still don't like the name there were no strong objections so we decided to proceed with calling this the Governing Board. We do need to ensure that the scope is clearly defined so there's no confusion over what it is/is not responsible for. I've updated the charter to reflect this.
- Ed asked how we resolve disputes between the GB and the TB. Consensus was that if the roles are clearly defined this should never happen as they're responsible for different things. Mike clarified that this hasn't been an issue on other projects.
- Discussed which board should be responsible for approving any exceptions to the IP policy (i.e. licensing changes). Consensus was that we need to consider business aspects when making this decision so it should be the responsibility of the GB. I've updated the charter to move this from the TB to the GB.
- Discussed scope of TB and whether it also oversees smaller sub-projects like Pktgen and SPP. Consensus was that TB does not cover these sub-project (identified as "Apps" in http://dpdk.org/browse/). I'll add text to the charter to clarify this.
- Discussed which board approves requests for new sub-projects. Both technical and non-technical aspects need to be considered. Agreed that the GB will define the non-technical items that need to be considered (an example might be "the new sub-project has no or minimal impact on the DPDK project budget") and that the approval will then be done by the TB. Until such time as these non-technical criteria are defined, the GB will approve after approval from the TB. This is just an interim measure though. I've updated the charter to reflect this.
- Discussed whether the GB should define high-level goals for the project that the TB is responsible for implementing. This could include things like the need for LTS releases, quality expectations etc. We didn't conclude on this, but the consensus seems to be that this should be within the scope of the TB.

2. How do we move faster?
- These are good discussions, but we are making slow progress.
- Agreed that we need to make more progress in between meetings via discussion on the mailing list and comments on the charter. Issues specifically relating to the charter should be added as comments to the doc. Any broader issues should be raised on the mailing list.


Next Meeting:
Tuesday November 29th at 3pm GMT, 4pm CET, 10am EST, 7am PST. Suggestion from Matt is that we focus on specific comments that have been added in advance to the charter doc rather than allowing random issues to be brought up in the meeting. This should encourage people to review the doc and comment in advance of the meeting. We'll try this for next week's meeting.