AB Meeting/March 2015 Minutes

Off-line votes on RESOLUTIONs post meeting

• Susie Li (Intel)
• Chris Schlaeger (AWS)

Attendees

Lars Kurth (chair)
Laura Kempke (LF)
Sarah Conway (LF)

Sherry Hurwitz (AMD)
Antony Messerli (Rackspace) , Paul Voccio (Rackspace)
Daniel Kiper (Oracle), Konrad Wilk (Oracle) 
Mark Hinkle (Citrix), James Bulpin (Citrix) 
Philippe Robin (ARM)

2 member companies short of a quorum 

Agenda

Membership Status

Identify prospects for new STARTUP class as we have the contracts approved (who should we target & who will follow up with whom)

New Startup member(s) : Bromium have indicated that they want to join under the new membership level

RESOLUTION to accept Bromium as Startup member

Lars: Any objections on the call? 

Daniel: the text in section (also see http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/AB_Votes/STARTUP_membership_class#Text_in_revised_Project_Charter_.28Feb_2015.29_-_Agreed) 
is not written in good manner and not clear

Mark: Agrees that it is not clear whether the text requires that "The first and each subsequent Advisory Board seat requires at least 5 new Startup class members." as 
in the proposed resolution sent out by Mike Woster

Laura: believes that Bromium cannot get voting rights until we have 5 additional members

Lars/Laura dig up text from Charter

F. Membership Levels The Xen Project Advisory Board has two levels of membership: 

1. Governing Members appoint a voting representative to the Advisory Board, with full participation rights in all Xen Project activities. 

2. Startup Members will annually elect one (1) Voting Representative per every five (5) Startup Members, limited to at most three (3) Voting Representatives, to represent 
the Startup Members as a voting member of the Advisory Board. All Startup Members may participate in all meetings of the Advisory Board and Xen Project activities, but 
only the Voting Representatives shall be counted towards a quorum and entitled to vote on matters before the Advisory Board. Startup Members applications will be 
accepted only upon a majority vote of the Advisory Board. If during an annual term, an additional five (5) Startup Members are accepted, the Advisory Board may choose to 
hold an election for an additional Voting Representative.

Mark: the text doesn't explicitly say that we need at least 5 members to vote. What happens in the case if we have 5, and then one drops during the year.

Laura: we could add a section to clarify this

Sherry: Sherry is a little puzzled about the concern with the phrasing above. But fine if we want to clarify the text. 

Lars: Also does not understand the concern. 

Laura: we can accept Bromium based on the vote under the provision that Bromium cannot get a board seat until an additional 4 startup members join

Daniel: Also agrees. This is the best solution, as otherwise we are going to be blocked again for a while

Lars: the difference between wiki and the charter is that I didn't want to delete historical votes. The confusion on 10 vs. 5 came from the fact that the original wiki page did 
not make clear that the initial vote for the RESOLUTION had not passed and that there was discussion in subsequent board meetings to modify it.

Mark: Is it clear to Bromium that Bromium will not automatically get voting rights until we have 4 other Startup members

Lars: I believe so. But I can double check.

ACTION Lars: make this clearer in the wiki and refer to the text in the charter that we approved in Feb 
(done – see http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/AB_Votes/STARTUP_membership_class)

RESOLUTION partly passed (we still need an additional two votes by members who have not attended the meeting)

Additional votes in favour by

• Susie Li (Intel)
• Chris Schlaeger (AWS)

CARRIED

[ASIDE (Lars): 

Having gone through the text in more detail, the practical implication of walking through the text in my view is that

* We would hold a vote for one or several Startup Voting representative at the beginning of the year (say in January or February), *if and only if* there are at 
least 5 members in the Startup class. If there are several multiples of 5, the election would be for several members, up to the maximum limit of 3.
* If there are not 5 (or several multiples) of 5 Startup members, there is no election and thus no voting right for *any* new Startup member. Otherwise Startup 
members can participate in all other project activities.
* If during the year the condition for a new Voting Representative is met, the Advisory Board would *have to agree to hold* an election (aka it is not triggered 
automatically). At this time we would have to agree on length of term, etc.
* On the concern raised by Mark: some Startup members could disappear during the year and invalidate the requirement of an election that was held in the 
past. This was raised from a fairness perspective. Technically, there would be several situations
** A Startup member could go out of business but has paid their membership dues : in this case there is no fairness issue in my view
** Technically members can only cancel membership in December: cancellations afterwards are void. Thus, 
** The only possible issue is that a Startup member does not cancel, but does not pay their membership dues. And for that reason the board may decide to 
remove that member from the board. This could be clarified, but is not a concern at this stage. So this should not affect Bromium and should not affect getting 
started with the new membership class. In my view, it would be unfair though if an elected representative would be punished for a member company not 
honouring their membership agreement. We could avoid this situation, by having the election after the Net date of invoices and requiring that members have paid 
their dues on time. 

So from my perspective, the charter does reflect what we originally intended. We would still have to work out some conventions around elections though.

@Laura: can you discuss with your team at the Linux Foundation whether this is how the text was intended and maybe give some details on the boundary case raised by Mark.
]

Other Startup member

* Reached out to Cloudius Systems : does not have the funds
* Other candidates? Galois, smaller hosting providers, etc. - Lars could put together a hit list. Input from others is welcome.

Regular membership

* Alibaba has asked for more information regarding membership 
** This was sent today

RESOLUTION: CA membership

* CA cancelled their membership as it stopped the Xen based AppLogic product line : do we cancel the invoice and remove CA of the membership list 
(RESOLUTION proposal YES)?

Someone (I think it was Sherry): raised the question whether CA followed due process and whether the cancellation is thus valid

LAURA: Notice from CA was not received by Dec 1st, the notice was received Jan 11 2015 – thus technically the cancellation is not valid
LAURA: LF have gone back and asked for payment in 2015. But CA have not responded to this.

LARS: asked whether we should cancel the CA invoice and void CA membership

There were several objections (I think it was Sherry and Mark)

ACTION LAURA: continue to chase CA

LARS suggests the following RESOLUTION

RESOLUTION: to take CA off the website and PR footer until CA have paid their membership dues

RESOLUTION partly passed (we still need an additional two votes by members who have not attended the meeting)

Additional votes in favour by

• Susie Li (Intel)
• Chris Schlaeger (AWS)

CARRIED

Lars: There is no impact on Quorum 
* Full members 13 => 12 
* Quorum remains at 7

Budget

I received the 2014 Financial report 

ISSUES: When I received the report, I noticed some significant mismatches between what has been approved and what has been spent. Working through these 
with the LF before forwarding and mapping against 2014 and 2015 budgets

* Some items, such as legal fees in the order of $1040 have been incurred, but not been approved by the board
* Some items which were approved, such as HW for the COLO are missing
* Some income has not been recognised

Laura: LF is tracking down the final items. Some of the areas where there were questions I have answers for already, e.g. related to pro-rating membership. 

Laura: will send updated info in one piece to Lars as soon as we investigated all issues

Security Vulnerabilities & New Process post-mortem

Sarah suggested a pre-canned media response in future such that we don't have to do crisis management

SARAH: There seems to be a better understanding of the process by the press. This time round we got only one inquiry from the press. Generally the coverage was 
more positive. Having a pre-canned statement would be helpful. Of course it is clear that we can't disclose details of a vulnerability under embargo or arrange 
interviews during the time of the embargo

LARS: There is no reason why we can't pro-actively put this together

ACTION (Sarah) to work with Lars on a statement to be approved by the board

LARS: Any other topics to discuss?

Collaboration around a hot patching solution for the project

ANTONY: Rackspace wants to invest into hot patching functionality. We are willing to and would love to work with others on that project to develop a standard solution.

LARS: Thanks Rackspace

LARS: Notes that every single time there is PR related to SECURITY ISSUES the pre-disclosure grows somewhat. This increases the risk of a leak that leads to damage to 
all. A hot patching solution would avoid the press coverage, which appears to be triggered by cloud reboots, and thus growth of the pre-disclosure list. So apart from a 
common solution which should benefit all from a technical perspective, it would also reduce the risk of a vulnerability getting put onto the wild.

KONRAD: Oracle is also planning to work on this item - has already added this as an item to be discussed at the Hackathon.

LARS: Isn't k-splice different from the direction the kernel is taking

KONRAD: Oracle has k-splice already – somewhat different to where the kernel is going, but technology is similar enough to be used as a baseline.

LARS: Agrees that the topic is to technical for the board meeting

ANTONY: Trying to find out internally whether we can join the Hackathon 

JAMES: Interested, but has no capacity to do any work on live patching right now

KONRAD: We can also have a discussion off-line. 

LARS: We do know from public statements that AWS have a solution (not currently on the call). 

LARS: We also know from publicly available information that Alibaba has an implementation (and key people within Alibaba will be at the Hackathon)

LARS: If we can't get everyone together at the Hackathon, we could try and get everyone onto a call or try to dial in some folks during the Hackathin session. 

ACTION LARS: Monitor attendee list and look at alternative options

RESOLUTION: Xen Summit

RESOLUTION
* Proposal to do joint social event and afternoon Hackathon / BoFs with KVM Forum on 2nd day of the event (needs ratifying via a RESOLUTION)
* Determine cost of ticket (proposal for RESOLUTION: $200 early bird, $250 later)

Daniel: asks for the rationale raising the ticket price

Lars: Event costs are going up significantly at the moment. Also, the project had to subsidise events more than I anticipated. So this is partly about saving costs. 
Increasing the price closer to the event end, improves planning. Also $99 is too low compared with say KVM forum

Sherry: liked the $99, but won't object

SARAH: KVM Forum costs $375, $475, $575 depending on when people register

RESOLUTION partly passed (we still need an additional two votes)

Additional votes in favour by

• Susie Li (Intel)
• Chris Schlaeger (AWS)

CARRIED

* Travel budget for Uma Sharma (OPW) in the order of $1K to be approved by Lars 

No objections: thus approved under funding rules

Other Updates

Hackathon

38 people registered so far, we have space for 12 more

COLO Update

Lars: Extra HW motherboards for AMD chips needed. If under $1.5K approval limit, anyone object if I approve?

Lars: Fund two extra motherboards of 2 x  229.00 + SALES TAX to be approved by Lars

No objections: thus approved under funding rules

SHERRY: Are you ordering two motherboards. 

LARS: Motherboards will be ordered straight after the meeting

SHERRY: Then I can send the CPU's to Allnet

LARS: Yes

ACTION (SHERRY): will send CPUs to Boston

Lars: ETA for partially going live: last week of March (possibly slipping into first week of April) - we would go live with a few test machines that are not yet up and 
running, but we would be in better shape than we are now

OpenStack CI loop

LARS: Have http://jenkins.openstack.xenproject.org/ & http://zuul.openstack.xenproject.org/ running

LARS: But have intermittent test failures that prevent us from automatically voting on Nova patches on Xen+LIBVIRT patches. 

LARS: Currently tests failing intermittently 20% of the time

LARS: The issues are too frequently to get into the next quality group. Currently investigating the issues.

AOB

None