Message-ID: <20120725144301.GC3272@tuxdriver.com>
Date:	Wed, 25 Jul 2012 10:43:01 -0400
From:	"John W. Linville" <linville@...driver.com>
To:	Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@...radead.org>
Cc:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>,
	Tech Board Discuss 
	<Tech-board-discuss@...ts.linux-foundation.org>,
	"ksummit-2012-discuss@...ts.linux-foundation.org" 
	<ksummit-2012-discuss@...ts.linux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2012-discuss] Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board
 Elections and Nomination process

On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 02:20:51PM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On 07/06/2012 11:07 AM, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> 
> > On 07/06/2012 06:49 AM, James Bottomley wrote:
> > 
> >> The elections for five of the ten members of the Linux Foundation
> >> Technical Advisory Board[TAB] are held every year. Currently the
> >> election will be at the 2011 Kernel Summit at one of the Joint events
> >> (probably on the Wednesday 29 August) and will be open to all attendees
> >> of the Weeks events (Kernel Summit, LinuxCon and Plumbers).
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Will you please summarize what the TAB has done (i.e.,
> > accomplishments) in the past year?
> > 
> > thanks,
> 
> 
> 
> Was this too much to ask?

No, of course not! :-)

You probably realize that the TAB tends to keep a low profile.  We have
tended to prefer "soft diplomacy" where possible, at least so long as
I've been on the TAB.  I think this is a good policy overall, and it
is conducive to the non-partisan, 'all for the benefit of Linux' nature
of the TAB.  But, it isn't necessarily great for self-promotion...

In general, the TAB does the following:

	-- provides some oversight/assistance/feedback to the KS/LPC
	organizers;

	-- provides feedback to LF staff on event planning;

	-- provides a source of community/technical contacts for LF
	members that want a hand to hold;

	-- provides a pool of 'volunteers' to help the LF fill
	last-minute speaking slots or other random requests;

More specifically, in the past year we reviewed the plans for LF to
take over the kernel.org administration.  We were also quite involved
with the discussions about what services needed to be prioritized
to bring kernel.org back on-line in a timely and secure fashion.
You can also blame us for the 'web of trust' (aka key signing) stuff
from last Fall.  Greg provided a great deal of leadership on all the
kernel.org bits, of course.

Another point of interest during the last year were some discussions
between the TAB and the Software Freedom Conservancy to address some
concerns that had been raised about GPL enforcement, particularly
regarding such enforcement for the kernel.  After some back-and-forth,
I think those issues were mostly addressed in an amicable fashion.

Also during the last year, the TAB has spent a lot of time grappling
with the UEFI secure boot thing and discussing how the Linux community
can influence and/or deal with the ramifications of it.  Some of that
is still on-going, of course.

So, anyway...I think that provides a rough overview of the types of
things the TAB does.  I'm sorry if it lacks some specifics -- there is
a lot of details that really amount to a bunch of long discussions and
talking on the phone.  Still, I think the TAB fulfills an important
role in the community even if it isn't always particularly visible.

Hth!

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville@...driver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.
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