[gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[William Hubbs]

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All,

two weeks from today (2021-05-09)  the Gentoo Council will meet
at 19:00 utc in the #gentoo-council channel on freenode.

Please respond to this message with any items you would like us to
discuss or vote on. The agenda will be sent to this list a week from now
(2021-05-02).

Thanks much,

William


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Michał Górny]

On Sun, 2021-04-25 at 14:01 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> All,
> 
> two weeks from today (2021-05-09)  the Gentoo Council will meet
> at 19:00 utc in the #gentoo-council channel on freenode.
> 
> Please respond to this message with any items you would like us to
> discuss or vote on. The agenda will be sent to this list a week from now
> (2021-05-02).
> 

I'd like to request the Council to set up dates for:

a. removing SHA512 hash from ::gentoo Manifests (leaving BLAKE2B
as the only hash) [1]

b. removing flat layout from official Gentoo mirrors [2]

[1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=784710
[2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=784713

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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Am Sonntag, 25. April 2021, 21:01:03 CEST schrieb William Hubbs:
> All,
> 
> two weeks from today (2021-05-09)  the Gentoo Council will meet
> at 19:00 utc in the #gentoo-council channel on freenode.
> 
> Please respond to this message with any items you would like us to
> discuss or vote on. The agenda will be sent to this list a week from now
> (2021-05-02).

I'd like to kick off a discussion whether LTO should be considered "supported". With that I essentially mean that bugs involving LTO should be considered valid, and fixes (be it only stripping -flto from flags, or similar solutions) should be committed to the tree.

I would like to clarify this before possibly suggesting an initiative to make the Gentoo repository LTO-safe (similar to what we did years ago with --as-needed). 

Background is, just about every binary distribution out there builds with LTO by default now. It's not so great if we then keep telling people "LTO is dangerous".

Cheers,
Andreas

(Yes I'm aware of the LTO overlay. It may be a great source.)

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer
(council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Sam James]

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> On 27 Apr 2021, at 19:56, Andreas K. Huettel <dilfridge@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> I'd like to kick off a discussion whether LTO should be considered "supported". With that I essentially mean that bugs involving LTO should be considered valid, and fixes (be it only stripping -flto from flags, or similar solutions) should be committed to the tree.
> 

Forgive me for giving a tiny bit of unstructured opinion about USE=lto, before I dive into the actual proposal:

1) I’m really happy to use LTO whenever it is supported upstream (just like -O3, etc) but I don't use it out of thin air.

2) For that reason, I personally like it when USE=lto exists even when no specific build system hacks are required (because it tells me “upstream will help with bugs” and so on) but I completely understand this is
  a bit at odds with what we usually do, and therefore is something I just need to get used to not having.

Of course, this problem goes away if we’re going to generally encourage tinderboxes and general LTO usage, just like we did with as-needed.

> I would like to clarify this before possibly suggesting an initiative to make the Gentoo repository LTO-safe (similar to what we did years ago with --as-needed).

I’d be interested in if slyfox or Soap had any input on heuristics to help determine if something is likely to be unsafe. LTO is really good at “provoking” undefined behaviour. Build completing means very little in terms of success here.

I don’t really want to go around running UBSAN on everything to know it’s safe to use it. Polynomial-C mentioned data corruption at runtime with some packages in #gentoo-dev the other day too (this kind of experience is very real and we need to mitigate it).

Obviously that would be a good candidate for stripping out LTO, but how are we supposed to notice this stuff if it only happens under certain circumstances?

My rough plan would be:
- Coordinate via e.g. wiki pages (and IRC as usual)
- *Strong* focus on packages with test suites so that we can get some idea of whether it’s working correctly with LTO. Let’s ignore those without tests in the first round(s).
- Provide some rough documentation for developers on how to build with UBSAN which we can use at least for critical applications
- For codebases which are known to be “rough” (and we would include feedback from the LTO overlay [0] here), we’d possibly filter LTO flags proactively (at least if they’re critical packages).

> 
> Background is, just about every binary distribution out there builds with LTO by default now. It's not so great if we then keep telling people "LTO is dangerous".

Right. Fedora are doing this and Clear Linux has been doing this for a very long time too. What I find interesting is that I’ve never actually come
across any patches in either to fix LTO issues, which either means I’m (un)lucky or they’re not hitting issues so often?

Obviously, we end up hitting more than other people because of often exotic configurations on the user side, but it is what it is.

This is one of those situations where reaching out to some folks we know in other distros for some (unstructured) thoughts might not be a bad idea - just
to find out some e.g. heads up on problematic codebases.

Best,
sam

[0] https://github.com/InBetweenNames/gentooLTO

> 
> Cheers,
> Andreas
> 
> (Yes I'm aware of the LTO overlay. It may be a great source.)
> 
> --
> Andreas K. Hüttel
> dilfridge@gentoo.org
> Gentoo Linux developer
> (council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[David Seifert]

On Wed, 2021-04-28 at 01:56 +0100, Sam James wrote:
> 
> 
> > On 27 Apr 2021, at 19:56, Andreas K. Huettel <dilfridge@gentoo.org>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > I'd like to kick off a discussion whether LTO should be considered
> > "supported". With that I essentially mean that bugs involving LTO
> > should be considered valid, and fixes (be it only stripping -flto
> > from flags, or similar solutions) should be committed to the tree.
> > 
> 
> Forgive me for giving a tiny bit of unstructured opinion about
> USE=lto, before I dive into the actual proposal:
> 
> 1) I’m really happy to use LTO whenever it is supported upstream (just
> like -O3, etc) but I don't use it out of thin air.
> 
> 2) For that reason, I personally like it when USE=lto exists even when
> no specific build system hacks are required (because it tells me
> “upstream will help with bugs” and so on) but I completely understand
> this is
>   a bit at odds with what we usually do, and therefore is something I
> just need to get used to not having.
> 
> Of course, this problem goes away if we’re going to generally
> encourage tinderboxes and general LTO usage, just like we did with as-
> needed.
> 
> > I would like to clarify this before possibly suggesting an
> > initiative to make the Gentoo repository LTO-safe (similar to what
> > we did years ago with --as-needed).
> 
> I’d be interested in if slyfox or Soap had any input on heuristics to
> help determine if something is likely to be unsafe. LTO is really good
> at “provoking” undefined behaviour. Build completing means very little
> in terms of success here.
> 
> I don’t really want to go around running UBSAN on everything to know
> it’s safe to use it. Polynomial-C mentioned data corruption at runtime
> with some packages in #gentoo-dev the other day too (this kind of
> experience is very real and we need to mitigate it).
> 
> Obviously that would be a good candidate for stripping out LTO, but
> how are we supposed to notice this stuff if it only happens under
> certain circumstances?
> 
> My rough plan would be:
> - Coordinate via e.g. wiki pages (and IRC as usual)
> - *Strong* focus on packages with test suites so that we can get some
> idea of whether it’s working correctly with LTO. Let’s ignore those
> without tests in the first round(s).
> - Provide some rough documentation for developers on how to build with
> UBSAN which we can use at least for critical applications
> - For codebases which are known to be “rough” (and we would include
> feedback from the LTO overlay [0] here), we’d possibly filter LTO
> flags proactively (at least if they’re critical packages).
> 
> > 
> > Background is, just about every binary distribution out there builds
> > with LTO by default now. It's not so great if we then keep telling
> > people "LTO is dangerous".
> 
> Right. Fedora are doing this and Clear Linux has been doing this for a
> very long time too. What I find interesting is that I’ve never
> actually come
> across any patches in either to fix LTO issues, which either means I’m
> (un)lucky or they’re not hitting issues so often?
> 
> Obviously, we end up hitting more than other people because of often
> exotic configurations on the user side, but it is what it is.
> 
> This is one of those situations where reaching out to some folks we
> know in other distros for some (unstructured) thoughts might not be a
> bad idea - just
> to find out some e.g. heads up on problematic codebases.
> 
> Best,
> sam
> 
> [0] https://github.com/InBetweenNames/gentooLTO
> 
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Andreas
> > 
> > (Yes I'm aware of the LTO overlay. It may be a great source.)
> > 
> > --
> > Andreas K. Hüttel
> > dilfridge@gentoo.org
> > Gentoo Linux developer
> > (council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)
> 

My corollary from this discussion is: if we decide to support LTO, why
not also -O3?

Fundamentally, the issue with LTO vs as-needed is that the former
triggers failures at runtime, whereas the latter always manifests at
link-time. Fixing LTO in general is much more involved, requires more
knowledge of C/C++, and requires knowledge of sanitizer instrumentation
and what not. Finally, it might expose a number of insidious security
vulnerabilities.

The activation energy for getting this working in most of the tree will
be an order of magnitude greater than for as-needed, and people should
keep this in mind.

David

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Joonas Niilola]

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On 27.4.2021 21.56, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 25. April 2021, 21:01:03 CEST schrieb William Hubbs:
>> All,
>>
>> two weeks from today (2021-05-09)  the Gentoo Council will meet
>> at 19:00 utc in the #gentoo-council channel on freenode.
>>
>> Please respond to this message with any items you would like us to
>> discuss or vote on. The agenda will be sent to this list a week from now
>> (2021-05-02).
> I'd like to kick off a discussion whether LTO should be considered "supported". With that I essentially mean that bugs involving LTO should be considered valid, and fixes (be it only stripping -flto from flags, or similar solutions) should be committed to the tree.

I don't use lto, but been wondering when would be a good time to provide
a stage3-lto installation media. Reasoning is similar to yours.

-- juippis

>
> I would like to clarify this before possibly suggesting an initiative to make the Gentoo repository LTO-safe (similar to what we did years ago with --as-needed). 
>
> Background is, just about every binary distribution out there builds with LTO by default now. It's not so great if we then keep telling people "LTO is dangerous".
>
> Cheers,
> Andreas
>
> (Yes I'm aware of the LTO overlay. It may be a great source.)
>



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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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> Please respond to this message with any items you would like us to
> discuss or vote on. The agenda will be sent to this list a week from
> now (2021-05-02).

There's rumors going around that Agostino's tinderbox basically 
already burned through our entire 2021 AWS Open Source credit budget 
and has overdrawn it significantly.

Independent of whether this rumor is true or not, I would like to 
discuss
* how we can avoid such a situation in the future, 
* and how we can fairly handle the distribution of limited infra 
resources that may end up costing us money

Cheers,
Andreas

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer
(council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Marek Szuba]

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> Please respond to this message with any items you would like us to
> discuss or vote on. The agenda will be sent to this list a week from
> now (2021-05-02).

Further to the suggestion to discuss the status of LTO support in Gentoo 
(sorry about not replying to that message directly, turns our I must 
have already deleted it), something to keep in mind while comparing 
ourselves to binary distros which already enable LTO: whereas in their 
respective cases the build hosts can if needed be configured in highly 
specific fashion (i.e. with some tools built without LTO in order to 
work around quirks in compilation procedures of other packages, while 
still using LTO to build general-availability packages of the same 
tools), in case of source distributions like Gentoo the build and the 
runtime environment are by definition one and the same. Therefore, LTO 
might still well be dangerous for us even if it no longer is for them.

-- 
Marecki


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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Hi,

On 2021-05-01 17:14, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> There's rumors going around that Agostino's tinderbox basically
> already burned through our entire 2021 AWS Open Source credit budget
> and has overdrawn it significantly.
> 
> Independent of whether this rumor is true or not, I would like to
> discuss
> * how we can avoid such a situation in the future,
> * and how we can fairly handle the distribution of limited infra
> resources that may end up costing us money

Is this really a topic for council?

Isn't foundation an independent body and if someone requests funding 
from foundation and will get it approved...

Or in other words: Can council veto against funding requests the 
foundation received and wants to approve?

If not, I really see nothing to discuss for council and non-foundation 
members. It's their money...


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
fpr: C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Michał Górny]

On Sun, 2021-05-02 at 21:07 +0200, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2021-05-01 17:14, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > There's rumors going around that Agostino's tinderbox basically
> > already burned through our entire 2021 AWS Open Source credit budget
> > and has overdrawn it significantly.
> > 
> > Independent of whether this rumor is true or not, I would like to
> > discuss
> > * how we can avoid such a situation in the future,
> > * and how we can fairly handle the distribution of limited infra
> > resources that may end up costing us money
> 
> Is this really a topic for council?
> 
> Isn't foundation an independent body and if someone requests funding 
> from foundation and will get it approved...
> 
> Or in other words: Can council veto against funding requests the 
> foundation received and wants to approve?
> 
> If not, I really see nothing to discuss for council and non-foundation 
> members. It's their money...
> 
> 

If that is how you want things to be, then I suppose that the Council
should issue an official info that users donating towards Gentoo should
note that an arbitrary organization 'far the advancement and education
and promotion of software development in an open environment' will do
whatever they want with the money without being concerned about
the goals set forth by the Council.


-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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On 2021-05-02 22:22, Michał Górny wrote:
> If that is how you want things to be, then I suppose that the Council
> should issue an official info that users donating towards Gentoo should
> note that an arbitrary organization 'far the advancement and education
> and promotion of software development in an open environment' will do
> whatever they want with the money without being concerned about
> the goals set forth by the Council.

I am curious. Sounds like you have a problem with foundation and how 
they decided to spend their money and are handling funding request in 
general or the AWS credits in particular. Because you are part of the 
foundation, may I ask if you brought your 'disagreement' to their attention?


PS: Please don't make the mistake and take my unwillingness to accept 
this agenda item for upcoming council meeting as a show of solidarity 
with the foundation's decisions -- I am not a member of foundation and I 
haven't commented their decisions (yet). But I know the legal authority 
that the council has in detail -- zero. That's a fact. And I think it 
helps nobody to give them the impression council or any other body could 
do anything about it. Imagine people would assume that now, they must be 
*really* disappointed once they learn the hard way that foundation is an 
independent body. That said, the ball is in half of the foundation's 
playing field and no one other than the foundation can play it. However, 
I am not sure if they are on the field/playing a game at all. That's why 
I asked the question if you brought your disagreement to their attention...


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
fpr: C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Michał Górny]

On Mon, 2021-05-03 at 17:03 +0200, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> On 2021-05-02 22:22, Michał Górny wrote:
> > If that is how you want things to be, then I suppose that the Council
> > should issue an official info that users donating towards Gentoo should
> > note that an arbitrary organization 'far the advancement and education
> > and promotion of software development in an open environment' will do
> > whatever they want with the money without being concerned about
> > the goals set forth by the Council.
> 
> I am curious. Sounds like you have a problem with foundation and how 
> they decided to spend their money and are handling funding request in 
> general or the AWS credits in particular. Because you are part of the 
> foundation, may I ask if you brought your 'disagreement' to their attention?
> 

My problems with the Foundation are rather known and not really relevant
here.  My point is that the Council defines the technical direction of
Gentoo, and in the end the Council should be making decisions as to what
projects should be funded or not.  Given that the Foundation is working
towards moving to an umbrella, the Council will eventually have to make
this kind of decisions, so it wouldn't hurt if they started taking some
responsibility today.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[William Hubbs]

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On Sun, May 02, 2021 at 09:07:11PM +0200, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2021-05-01 17:14, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > There's rumors going around that Agostino's tinderbox basically
> > already burned through our entire 2021 AWS Open Source credit budget
> > and has overdrawn it significantly.
> > 
> > Independent of whether this rumor is true or not, I would like to
> > discuss
> > * how we can avoid such a situation in the future,
> > * and how we can fairly handle the distribution of limited infra
> > resources that may end up costing us money
> 
> Is this really a topic for council?
> 
> Isn't foundation an independent body and if someone requests funding 
> from foundation and will get it approved...
> 
> Or in other words: Can council veto against funding requests the 
> foundation received and wants to approve?
 
 The way I see it is, if the council wants funding for something they
 can request it from the foundation, but I don't think they can direct
 the foundation not to fund something someone else requests.

Also, given Antarus' response in the thread, I'm not sure there is
anything for council to discuss.

Thanks,

William


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Michał Górny]

On Sun, 2021-05-02 at 22:22 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Sun, May 02, 2021 at 09:07:11PM +0200, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On 2021-05-01 17:14, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > > There's rumors going around that Agostino's tinderbox basically
> > > already burned through our entire 2021 AWS Open Source credit budget
> > > and has overdrawn it significantly.
> > > 
> > > Independent of whether this rumor is true or not, I would like to
> > > discuss
> > > * how we can avoid such a situation in the future,
> > > * and how we can fairly handle the distribution of limited infra
> > > resources that may end up costing us money
> > 
> > Is this really a topic for council?
> > 
> > Isn't foundation an independent body and if someone requests funding 
> > from foundation and will get it approved...
> > 
> > Or in other words: Can council veto against funding requests the 
> > foundation received and wants to approve?
>  
>  The way I see it is, if the council wants funding for something they
>  can request it from the foundation, but I don't think they can direct
>  the foundation not to fund something someone else requests.
> 
> Also, given Antarus' response in the thread, I'm not sure there is
> anything for council to discuss.
> 

Does 'being not sure' authorize you to arbitrarily decide to skip agenda
items from the community?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021, Michał Górny wrote:

> On Sun, 2021-05-02 at 22:22 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
>> The way I see it is, if the council wants funding for something they
>> can request it from the foundation, but I don't think they can direct
>> the foundation not to fund something someone else requests.
>> 
>> Also, given Antarus' response in the thread, I'm not sure there is
>> anything for council to discuss.

> Does 'being not sure' authorize you to arbitrarily decide to skip
> agenda items from the community?

I don't read William's reponse in such a way. The Council can still
discuss the issue, and the Foundation may or may not listen.

Ultimately it is up to them how they want to spend their money.
I believe that part is clear.

Ulrich

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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Michał Górny]

On Mon, 2021-05-03 at 11:15 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > > > On Mon, 03 May 2021, Michał Górny wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 2021-05-02 at 22:22 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> > > The way I see it is, if the council wants funding for something
> > > they
> > > can request it from the foundation, but I don't think they can
> > > direct
> > > the foundation not to fund something someone else requests.
> > > 
> > > Also, given Antarus' response in the thread, I'm not sure there is
> > > anything for council to discuss.
> 
> > Does 'being not sure' authorize you to arbitrarily decide to skip
> > agenda items from the community?
> 
> I don't read William's reponse in such a way. The Council can still
> discuss the issue, and the Foundation may or may not listen.
> 
> Ultimately it is up to them how they want to spend their money.
> I believe that part is clear.

However the response is to be read, there's no item for this
in the agenda.  So it's pretty much a single Council member individually
deciding what Council discusses or not.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[William Hubbs]

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On Mon, May 03, 2021 at 12:39:21PM +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> On Mon, 2021-05-03 at 11:15 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > > > > On Mon, 03 May 2021, Michał Górny wrote:
> > 
> > > On Sun, 2021-05-02 at 22:22 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> > > > The way I see it is, if the council wants funding for something
> > > > they
> > > > can request it from the foundation, but I don't think they can
> > > > direct
> > > > the foundation not to fund something someone else requests.
> > > > 
> > > > Also, given Antarus' response in the thread, I'm not sure there is
> > > > anything for council to discuss.
> > 
> > > Does 'being not sure' authorize you to arbitrarily decide to skip
> > > agenda items from the community?
> > 
> > I don't read William's reponse in such a way. The Council can still
> > discuss the issue, and the Foundation may or may not listen.
> > 
> > Ultimately it is up to them how they want to spend their money.
> > I believe that part is clear.
> 
> However the response is to be read, there's no item for this
> in the agenda.  So it's pretty much a single Council member individually
> deciding what Council discusses or not.

You know that in the past some things that have come up on the call for agenda
items thread have not ended up on the agenda.

As was already said, any discussion we do around this doesn't really
matter since we do not control financial issues for the distro.

William


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Michał Górny]

On Mon, 2021-05-03 at 09:31 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Mon, May 03, 2021 at 12:39:21PM +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> > On Mon, 2021-05-03 at 11:15 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Mon, 03 May 2021, Michał Górny wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Sun, 2021-05-02 at 22:22 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> > > > > The way I see it is, if the council wants funding for something
> > > > > they
> > > > > can request it from the foundation, but I don't think they can
> > > > > direct
> > > > > the foundation not to fund something someone else requests.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Also, given Antarus' response in the thread, I'm not sure there is
> > > > > anything for council to discuss.
> > > 
> > > > Does 'being not sure' authorize you to arbitrarily decide to skip
> > > > agenda items from the community?
> > > 
> > > I don't read William's reponse in such a way. The Council can still
> > > discuss the issue, and the Foundation may or may not listen.
> > > 
> > > Ultimately it is up to them how they want to spend their money.
> > > I believe that part is clear.
> > 
> > However the response is to be read, there's no item for this
> > in the agenda.  So it's pretty much a single Council member individually
> > deciding what Council discusses or not.
> 
> You know that in the past some things that have come up on the call for agenda
> items thread have not ended up on the agenda.

Past violations are not an excuse.

> As was already said, any discussion we do around this doesn't really
> matter since we do not control financial issues for the distro.
> 

With that attitude you may as well say that devs don't have to listen to
the Council and disband it altogether.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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> > 
> > Is this really a topic for council?
> > 

Yes. Please add it to the agenda.


-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer
(council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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> Is this really a topic for council?
> 
> Isn't foundation an independent body and if someone requests funding
> from foundation and will get it approved...

Given that I still see it as my agenda to eventually 

* get rid of the foundation
* move our assets to an umbrella
* and have only one elected body (the council) deciding,

mostly to have clear lines of responsibility and less potential for 
infighting, 

yes, definitely.

(Also, some of the current foundation officers got elected with more 
or less the same plan. :)

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer
(council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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On 2021-05-03 15:55, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
>> Is this really a topic for council?
>>
>> Isn't foundation an independent body and if someone requests funding
>> from foundation and will get it approved...
> 
> Given that I still see it as my agenda to eventually
> 
> * get rid of the foundation
> * move our assets to an umbrella
> * and have only one elected body (the council) deciding,
> 
> mostly to have clear lines of responsibility and less potential for
> infighting,
> 
> yes, definitely.
> 
> (Also, some of the current foundation officers got elected with more
> or less the same plan. :)

But all of this concerns a potential future -- not today.

And before any of this can happen, foundation must come up with the 
first move and declare such a plan in general (I think they were working 
on this and started to evaluate possibilities but after some umbrella 
organizations rejected their requests the process became stale).

My point is, discussions should happen in public, on mailing list.

If there is something for council meeting, i.e. a possible motion, this 
must be discussed on mailing list first and shouldn't get created during 
a meeting. So having just a discussion during meeting without a clear 
goal/defined end, is likely a waste of time as agenda item.

If you just want to talk about this for some reason and don't plan to 
bring forward a motion or something, please move this to open floor 
which will allow non-council member to join and others to leave because 
it isn't part of the mandatory meeting anymore.


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
fpr: C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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> But all of this concerns a potential future -- not today.
> 
> And before any of this can happen, foundation must come up with the
> first move ... (blablabla)

> My point is, discussions should happen in public, on mailing list.

This has been discussed for ages, and pointless reiteration should 
also not be our main occupation.

Also, "first moves" have long since been taken (and we have regularly 
discussed these or at least mentioned these during council sessions).

Please don't go the "we are not responsible for anything" route, 
that's the fastest way to obstruct any productivity.


-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer
(council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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On 2021-05-03 17:04, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> Please don't go the "we are not responsible for anything" route,
> that's the fastest way to obstruct any productivity.

Well, I don't know what we will discuss and what will be the outcome. 
But imagine we would all agree and send a request to foundation to stop 
spending AWS credits for X immediately.

Foundation has to reject this request by law because such a request must 
come from a natural person.

So maybe you will re-send this request as dilfridge (like you are listed 
as foundation member). ulm, williamh, mattst88 will support that. 
gyakovlev, slyfox and me cannot because we aren't foundation members.

But this will be a normal request. You cannot use any kind of "council 
power" even if all council members, who are representing the Gentoo 
developer community, voted for this during meeting. I.e. this has to 
follow foundation procedural which isn't aware of a construct like 
"council". It has no meaning for foundation according to their charter.

My point is: I don't understand why you try to bring this to council 
where we can do absolute nothing about it when you as foundation member 
could (and should) bring this up in foundation where you can change it.


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
fpr: C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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Am Montag, 3. Mai 2021, 17:31:03 CEST schrieb Thomas Deutschmann:
> On 2021-05-03 17:04, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > Please don't go the "we are not responsible for anything" route,
> > that's the fastest way to obstruct any productivity.
> 
> Well, I don't know what we will discuss and what will be the
> outcome. But imagine we would all agree and send a request to
> foundation to stop spending AWS credits for X immediately.
> 
> Foundation has to reject this request by law because such a request
> must come from a natural person.

Seriously, if the council would send a polite and friendly request to 
the foundation, and the trustees would outright refuse it only for 
that formal reason, I would consider that hostile and unconstructive 
behavior. Law doesn't come in because the trustees themselves can 
introduce motions.

We should try to work together. 

If some of us don't do that, we need to find a better solution for 
Gentoo. That's why (following the ugly debates around Ian) I want a 
single elected body to be responsible.

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer
(council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Alec Warner]

On Mon, May 3, 2021 at 8:48 AM Andreas K. Huettel <dilfridge@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Am Montag, 3. Mai 2021, 17:31:03 CEST schrieb Thomas Deutschmann:
> > On 2021-05-03 17:04, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > > Please don't go the "we are not responsible for anything" route,
> > > that's the fastest way to obstruct any productivity.
> >
> > Well, I don't know what we will discuss and what will be the
> > outcome. But imagine we would all agree and send a request to
> > foundation to stop spending AWS credits for X immediately.
> >
> > Foundation has to reject this request by law because such a request
> > must come from a natural person.
>
> Seriously, if the council would send a polite and friendly request to
> the foundation, and the trustees would outright refuse it only for
> that formal reason, I would consider that hostile and unconstructive
> behavior. Law doesn't come in because the trustees themselves can
> introduce motions.
>
> We should try to work together.

+1, if I did not make this clear in our IRC conversation; I want to
make it clear now.

-A

>
> If some of us don't do that, we need to find a better solution for
> Gentoo. That's why (following the ugly debates around Ian) I want a
> single elected body to be responsible.
>
> --
> Andreas K. Hüttel
> dilfridge@gentoo.org
> Gentoo Linux developer
> (council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, May 3, 2021 at 11:48 AM Andreas K. Huettel <dilfridge@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Am Montag, 3. Mai 2021, 17:31:03 CEST schrieb Thomas Deutschmann:
> > On 2021-05-03 17:04, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > > Please don't go the "we are not responsible for anything" route,
> > > that's the fastest way to obstruct any productivity.
> >
> > Well, I don't know what we will discuss and what will be the
> > outcome. But imagine we would all agree and send a request to
> > foundation to stop spending AWS credits for X immediately.
> >
> > Foundation has to reject this request by law because such a request
> > must come from a natural person.
>
> Seriously, if the council would send a polite and friendly request to
> the foundation, and the trustees would outright refuse it only for
> that formal reason, I would consider that hostile and unconstructive
> behavior. Law doesn't come in because the trustees themselves can
> introduce motions.

Aside from that, there is no legal requirement that somebody outside
the Trustees put in a request for anything before the Trustees can
act, natural persons or otherwise.  With the exception of some of the
provisions in the bylaws for actions by members without the Trustees I
don't think the Trustees are even legally required to respond to any
request they receive.  Legally the Trustees more-or-less exist in a
vacuum, and if they want to solicit outside input for how things are
run that is up to them.

Of course in practice the expectation is that they're responsive to
the needs of the Gentoo developer community.  Legally though the
Foundation can do whatever it wants, which of course is part of why we
tend to run into these sorts of discussions.

I do agree with the sentiment that it is better to use AWS credits
than just let them expire, but it probably also makes sense to
evaluate how things are going, and consider if we could tweak things
so that we don't have an uber-tinderbox that burns through $25k in six
months, and then no AWS services or tinderboxing for six months at all
because, wow, that went fast.  I mean, maybe it wouldn't hurt to
figure out how we managed to burn through $14k in CPU in a few months.
Maybe it didn't cost us anything out-of-pocket but at that rate it
means those services can't be sustained yearlong, and obviously it is
costing Amazon something - I'm not sure they REALLY want us to burn as
much of their cash as we can manage in the last time possible.  If
nothing else I can only imagine the CO2 emissions...

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Sam James]

> On 3 May 2021, at 16:48, Andreas K. Huettel <dilfridge@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>> [snip]
> 
> Seriously, if the council would send a polite and friendly request to 
> the foundation, and the trustees would outright refuse it only for 
> that formal reason, I would consider that hostile and unconstructive 
> behavior. Law doesn't come in because the trustees themselves can 
> introduce motions.
> 
> We should try to work together. 
> 
> If some of us don't do that, we need to find a better solution for 
> Gentoo. That's why (following the ugly debates around Ian) I want a 
> single elected body to be responsible.
> 

That, and generally, you don’t go straight to legal solutions.

I think we’re worrying about a non-problem (some hypothetical
legal dispute(!?)). The council
Is free to discuss what it likes. Someone has raised the issue,
so why not?

Reminder that none of us are lawyers and the council’s job
is to debate things. Let’s not be shy about it doing that.

> -- 
> Andreas K. Hüttel
> dilfridge@gentoo.org
> Gentoo Linux developer
> (council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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On 2021-05-03 20:12, Sam James wrote:
> I think we’re worrying about a non-problem (some hypothetical
> legal dispute(!?)). The council
> Is free to discuss what it likes. Someone has raised the issue,
> so why not?
> 
> Reminder that none of us are lawyers and the council’s job
> is to debate things. Let’s not be shy about it doing that.

No, this is wrong.

During a council meeting, only council members should speak. Everyone 
else has to wait for the open floor at the end.

Therefore, to allow others to participate, any discussion should happen 
before meeting on public mailing list to allow *everyone* to participate.
Having an exclusive discussion between 7 people is really not the idea 
of the council. That said, creating a motion during meeting when nobody 
else had the chance to comment on before because nobody knew the motion 
before, is strongly discouraged.

That's why I am proposing to move this to open floor...

I also want to remind us of the fact that we agreed during constitution 
to have focused meetings [1] and I believe an open agenda item like this 
discussion where we can do nothing goes against focused meetings.


[1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20200719.txt


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
fpr: C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5


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Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Sam James]

> On 3 May 2021, at 20:19, Thomas Deutschmann <whissi@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2021-05-03 20:12, Sam James wrote:
>> I think we’re worrying about a non-problem (some hypothetical
>> legal dispute(!?)). The council
>> Is free to discuss what it likes. Someone has raised the issue,
>> so why not?
>> Reminder that none of us are lawyers and the council’s job
>> is to debate things. Let’s not be shy about it doing that.
> 
> No, this is wrong.
> 

Which part is actually wrong…? I’m saying that we don’t need to worry about strange non-legal issues
in order for the council to discuss or debate a topic.

> During a council meeting, only council members should speak. Everyone else has to wait for the open floor at the end.
> 
> Therefore, to allow others to participate, any discussion should happen before meeting on public mailing list to allow *everyone* to participate.
> Having an exclusive discussion between 7 people is really not the idea of the council. That said, creating a motion during meeting when nobody else had the chance to comment on before because nobody knew the motion before, is strongly discouraged.

Right, of course.

> 
> That's why I am proposing to move this to open floor...
> 
> I also want to remind us of the fact that we agreed during constitution to have focused meetings [1] and I believe an open agenda item like this discussion where we can do nothing goes against focused meetings.
> 

I’m not sure where we’re disagreeing here?

(Also, I always interpreted “open floor” as “council members may discuss anything, not worrying about the agenda” - not anyone can speak, but that may have been wrong.)

> 
> [1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20200719.txt
> 
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
> fpr: C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5
> 

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Alec Warner]

On Sun, May 2, 2021 at 12:07 PM Thomas Deutschmann <whissi@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On 2021-05-01 17:14, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > There's rumors going around that Agostino's tinderbox basically
> > already burned through our entire 2021 AWS Open Source credit budget
> > and has overdrawn it significantly.
> >
> > Independent of whether this rumor is true or not, I would like to
> > discuss
> > * how we can avoid such a situation in the future,
> > * and how we can fairly handle the distribution of limited infra
> > resources that may end up costing us money
>
> Is this really a topic for council?
>
> Isn't foundation an independent body and if someone requests funding
> from foundation and will get it approved...
>
> Or in other words: Can council veto against funding requests the
> foundation received and wants to approve?
>
> If not, I really see nothing to discuss for council and non-foundation
> members. It's their money...


I tend to say the same thing every year[0] but I will repeat what I
wrote in my 2020 president's letter[1]

---
Thirdly, I want to discuss the spending of Gentoo Foundation’s capital. We
end fiscal 2020 with an excess of $140,000 in cash equivalents (cash on
hand, paypal, etc.) This is a significant pile of capital that we could
deploy in support of the Gentoo community. In the past, the board was
essentially unwilling to spend large amounts of capital due to the unknown
tax liabilities that the Foundation faced in previous years. However since
we have since resolved those liabilities we are in a stronger position to
fund new programs. However, it’s unclear exactly how we should deploy this
capital. I again implore the community to suggest ways that the money can
be put to good use in order to facilitate the mission of Gentoo and to
further its development.
---

The foundation is nominally prohibited from spending money itself (as
doing so may 'set the direction of gentoo development' or otherwise
have undue influence on the project.) The Foundation relies on people
to file funding requests; the Foundation itself only has 3 programs:
Infrastructure (to fund Gentoo infrastructure operations), Nitrokey
(to fund keys for developers) and Foundation Operations (almost all of
this to pay for our CPA and fees necessary to operate the Foundation.

Please file funding requests if you want things funded. If you think
we should work with the council to decide what things to fund I'm
happy to discuss with them any and all items.

-A

[0] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/f86654c9350cceecdec7fda93cb27aca
[1] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-nfp/message/a5bc711fddc853cb8344c8dfd1337b3a



>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
> fpr: C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5
>

Re: [gentoo-project] call for agenda items -- council meeting 2021-05-09

[Alec Warner]

On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 8:14 AM Andreas K. Huettel <dilfridge@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> > Please respond to this message with any items you would like us to
> > discuss or vote on. The agenda will be sent to this list a week from
> > now (2021-05-02).
>
> There's rumors going around that Agostino's tinderbox basically
> already burned through our entire 2021 AWS Open Source credit budget
> and has overdrawn it significantly.

Practically speaking I manage the AWS budget. If you are unhappy with
how it's allocated; feel free to follow up with me. Developers who use
AWS don't get a ton of say in the spending; I decide how much money we
have, how many machines to buy, how big they are, etc. Developers
can't even see their own cost usage.

>
> Independent of whether this rumor is true or not, I would like to
> discuss
> * how we can avoid such a situation in the future,
> * and how we can fairly handle the distribution of limited infra
> resources that may end up costing us money

Ack, so I'll respond with the same things I said on IRC (hopefully, haha.)

The AWS program runs November 2020 - November 2021. We were provided
25,000$ in credits; these are promotional credits so we cannot do
things like use Cost Savings Plans or Reserved Instances (two ways to
reduce cost on AWS.)

This is our second year in the program. In the first year we spent
very little of the budget (I think under 5000$) and I viewed this as
something of a failure; we should be in a position to use more of the
budget. When the program was renewed in November I wanted to spend
more of the budget.

When the plan restarted I gave folks more VMs that were bigger; with
the idea that we would both track utilization (are the VMs being used)
and cost (are we on track to spend well.)
Current program state is as follows:
 - We fund 4 VMs.
 - We have spent 14,200 of 25,000 credits.
 - We are 5/7ths through the 12 month program (it ends Nov 31 2021)
 - We have 10,800 credits left, for 7 months.

The plan then:
 - At our current spend, we will run out of credits.
 - 7 / 10,800 ~= 1500$ / mo average spend we need to hit.
 - Our current spend is ~$4000 / mo.
 - We have to cut our spending significantly.

The risk:
 - We could run out of credits and incur costs. Assuming we did
nothing, we spend approximately 4000$ a month. We have 7 months left;
so that is 28000$ - 10800 (our remaining credits) leaves us with a
bill of about 18000$.
 - We could end up not getting the program renewed at the end of the
cycle, and never get additional credits.

Both of these would likely result in us needing to relocate services
to other providers. It's a known risk (and we have other onPrem
providers that we have similar risks for.) I suspect practically we
would rent hardware from OVH or Hetzner and migrate services to those.
Unlike AWS, those providers cost money; which is one reason why we
would prefer to spend the AWS credits instead.

For specific projects using the credits we could likely self-fund a
physical machine. These machines are  not free (folks were estimating
something like 60 euro a month to lease one.) My map here is "I'd
rather spend AWS credits than pay 60 euro a month." If the credits run
out or we don't get renewed in the program for 2022 we can talk about
other options. Maybe we should lease a machine for stage building (as
an example.)

My process for resource allocation:
 - We currently have more resources than needs. While this is not true
of AWS credits specifically; it is true of money in general.
 - This leads us to a low barrier for resource allocation. There is
not scarcity, so the process to get resources is not intended to be
much of a barrier.
 - Once there is scarcity, we will have different conversations.

One risk I have heard is "why don't you reserve some of the credits
for if something cool comes up?" or "how would we fund some cool new
idea?" and the answer is "with actual money." The Foundation has
enough money[0] to weather most of the bad outcomes (e.g. we could
fund AWS for a month while we migrate away, we could buy hardware, we
could rent hardware, etc. etc.)

I consider the AWS credits as part of our cash-like reserves. We are
spending them first because they expire and because they are not
actually cash. We still have more cash than expenses; so in general I
don't see a ton of pressure on Foundation expenses (and thus there is
not intended to be a complex process for spending money[1].)

I hope this helps; please follow up with me if you have additional
questions or concerns.

-A

[0] We paid our taxes for the past few years and we have already filed
our 2020 taxes; so there are no known large outstanding obligations.
You can see our 2020 numbers here:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Foundation:Gentoo_Foundation_Finances_FY2020
[1] There is an argument about spending Foundation resources 'well'
(for some definition of that word) and while I empathize with it quite
a bit, currently I don't think Foundation supports development very
much at all; so my thought process is "try to support more development
in general" and if we are not supporting development "well" (e.g. we
think there is waste, etc) we can iterate on that. Get it working
first, optimize second; if you will.

>
> Cheers,
> Andreas
>
> --
> Andreas K. Hüttel
> dilfridge@gentoo.org
> Gentoo Linux developer
> (council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)