[OE-core] OpenEmbedded TSC Meeting Minutes 2020-03-17

[Paul Eggleton]

OpenEmbedded Technical Steering Committee (TSC) Meeting Minutes 2020-03-17
==========================================================================

Meeting was held in #oe-tsc on Freenode; channel access public.

Present:
- Richard Purdie (RP)
- Joshua Watt (JPEW)
- Bruce Ashfield (zeddii)
- Paul Eggleton (bluelightning)
Apologies:
- Martin Jansa (JaMa)

Summary:
* Need to think about ways to encourage contributions
  - Make contributions more visible? (see also last meeting's discussion)
    - Include contributor names in release notes
  - Response emails to patches / when patch merged?
  - Ideas / discussion around any barriers to contributing and removing them very welcome


Full meeting long
-----------------

[11:01] <bluelightning> I presume we are meeting now?
[11:02] <JPEW> That's the plan
[11:03] <JPEW> JaMa doesn't appear to be online, and RP is currently away
[11:03] <JPEW> I forgot to send out a reminder today
[11:04] <bluelightning> I have just pinged RP - I could also text him
[11:10] <RP> Hi, I'm here now, sorry I'm late
[11:10] <bluelightning> no worries
[11:10] <bluelightning> do we have zeddii?
[11:11] <JPEW> Not sure. He was on earlier today
[11:15] <RP> Is there an agenda?
[11:15] <RP> I must admit I got M3 built and kind of went and "collapsed" ;-)
[11:16] <JPEW> I'm not aware of anything
[11:16] <RP> I did have one item the YP TSC asked me to raise
[11:16] <RP> Sorry for not officially adding it to the wiki etc
[11:16] <zeddii> here. sorry, I was supposed to be on vacation this week, so I removed the meeting from my calendar.
[11:17] <RP> Basically, it was to ask the OC TSC to consider the resourcing situation we have and to consider what we could do about it.
[11:17] <JPEW> zeddii: No problem, we just started
[11:17] <RP> There are various bodies that are thinking about it (YP TSC, YP board, OE board) but the OE TSC probably also needs to give it some thought
[11:19] <JPEW> RP: Ya, make sense.
[11:20] <JPEW> Are there any identified reasons why people don't contribute?
[11:22] <RP> JPEW: In general the pattern seems to be employers expecting someone else to do the core work
[11:22] <RP> Some things don't have clear return on investment too
[11:22] <zeddii> agreed. and agreed.
[11:22] <JPEW> which things?
[11:23] <bluelightning> anything that is mostly refactoring I would imagine
[11:23] <RP> JPEW: build failure triage (SWAT), bug triage
[11:23] <RP> things where its day to day monitoring without direct line of sight to a problem they themselves see
[11:23] <zeddii> and even things like why a reference kernel, when they don’t use it directly.
[11:23] <RP> zeddii: right
[11:24] <RP> also, new feature development like hashequiv
[11:24] <RP> or as bluelightning says, refactoring or new architectural work
[11:25] <zeddii> yup.
[11:28] <zeddii> I assume that I either got disconnected, or we are all deep in thought.
[11:28] <JPEW> zeddii: The latter :)
[11:29] <RP> I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and I'm not sure what we can do
[11:29] <zeddii> the problem is that  only OSVs really care about “credibility” in the community. if you know what I mean.
[11:29] <JPEW> Aside from employeer expectations, any other reasons why people don't participate?
[11:29] <RP> We have made some changes like newcomer bugs. I also need to send out some kind of summary of the challenges to the wider community. I'm still working on that
[11:30] <RP> JPEW: there is probably a knowledge barrier too
[11:30] <zeddii> I could volunteer some of my time to help someone that actually picked up a new comer bug, but I think that’s probably just a drop in the ocean.
[11:30] <RP> JPEW: even some of our regular contributors think of bitbake as a blackbox, you're one of the few who doesn't
[11:30] <JPEW> zeddii: Not necessarily if you can help someone get interested, it pays dividends :)
[11:31] <RP> zeddii: lots of small things do grow over time, I am trying to encourage people. Not all will work out but its great to see when people do grow
[11:32] <zeddii> that’s what I was wondering, are none of them being picked up, since newcomers don’t know where to start. maybe pairing them up with someone to office advice can help. but maybe that  has already been tried (and yes, I know that pulls more time from people that don’t have it, etc).
[11:32] <zeddii> I’m throwing my hat into the ring for that. but that implies someone is looking for that kind of help.
[11:32] <JPEW> zeddii: That's a good idea. I'd be willing to advise someone fixing a bug also (newcomer or otherwise)
[11:32] <RP> zeddii: we're seeing poor take up despite what I thought was a good spectrum of bugs there
[11:33] <JPEW> Perhaps more of a visibility problem?
[11:33] <RP> I would note that the we lack YP advocacy people atm too :(
[11:33] <RP> visibility is definitely part of it
[11:34] <JPEW> It's hard being on the inside looking out and trying to figure out how visible you are sometimes
[11:34] <bluelightning> the newcomer doc on the YP wiki is pretty good I think, but that assumes people find that
[11:35] <bluelightning> I did just get to it by googling "yocto project contribute"
[11:36] <JPEW> Hmm, is it pretty easy to identify new contributers on the ML?
[11:37] <RP> JPEW: for a person or for a machine?
[11:38] <JPEW> person (email address)
[11:38] <zeddii> I’m thinking more of companies that use OE, not end users. since getting contributions from each category is quite a different thing.
[11:40] <JPEW> zeddii: Sure, but having people in the company that are involved anyway helps
[11:40] <JPEW> sometimes :eyeroll:
[11:40] <RP> JPEW: I mean its easy for a computer to look at an email and see if they've had a patch merged before
[11:42] <JPEW> RP: Right. Would it be bad form to send them a message "welcome to the community" message? I've not been doing OSS very long, so I don't know all the edicate
[11:42] <JPEW> Thanks for your patch! Here's some other ways you can get involved...
[11:42] <RP> JPEW: if they were new to OE but an experienced OSS contributor it may seem patronising :/
[11:42] <bluelightning> I think it might be nice - you could include "if you don't get a reply in x days here's what to do"
[11:43] <bluelightning> I wouldn't find it patronising if I was joining a new project, others may differ possibly
[11:43] <bluelightning> I know I've struggled when joining other projects, people sort of expect you to know what to do / where to look and that's not always easy even if you're experienced with OSS, every project is different
[11:44] <zeddii> yah. is it a get started issue, credit issue, or lack of mapping to ROI issue .. hard to say, since we don’t even have that info :(
[11:45] <JPEW> zeddii: Hard to operate effectively without data
[11:45] <RP> I don't have an objection to it
[11:45] <JPEW> When do the other TSC's meet
[11:46] <RP> By the time they sent a contribution they're already part way there though, we may need to find new contributors as well
[11:46] <RP> JPEW: you mean the YP TSC?
[11:46] <JPEW> Ya
[11:47] <RP> zeddii: the "data" I have says all the above
[11:47] <zeddii> I jokingly say that with all of the users of OE, and a fairly narrow set of contributors, I assume that means that they have no issues. which I can’t imagine is the case.
[11:47] <RP> JPEW: YP TSC meets after the engineering sync tomorrow
[11:47] <RP> zeddii: most of my data is reading the mailing lists and social media posts from users, new and experienced
[11:49] <JPEW> OK. Maybe we can draft up a skeleton e-mail and all look it over (maybe the YP TSC too)
[11:49] <zeddii> non-corporate contributions are hard to capture, since they are likely elsewhere for many high level applications.
[11:50] <RP> JPEW: another thing may be a "your patch has merged" email from patchwork
[11:50] <JPEW> RP: Ya that would be good too
[11:50] <zeddii> I mean, it would be nice if we went to openembedded.org and saw some logo’s, but I suppose that collides with YP very quickly. and you get a logo if you have a patch in the release ;)
[11:51] <RP> I also have no objection to that but it needs someone else to own and drive it
[11:51] <zeddii> that @gmail.com company could get a big logo!
[11:51] <bluelightning> patch merged reports was something that was supposed to be added to patchwork a long time ago, unfortunately due to various reasons it never got done :/
[11:51] <RP> bluelightning: one idea that did get talked about but probably ironically, not with you was a list of contributors to the release
[11:52] <bluelightning> hmm, yes, I think maybe it did get mentioned somewhere
[11:52] <zeddii> I thought it was a good idea, since then large and small could see their name in “print” along with a release.
[11:52] <RP> (ironically as bluelightning ends up writing the release notes)
[11:52] <zeddii> but again, time. I can help with that when the time comes.
[11:53] <bluelightning> at least as far as commits go there are various git stats analysis tools that might be helpful (and don't involve us writing additional code)
[11:53] <RP> zeddii: the time for that one is now, release is in weeks!
[11:53] <bluelightning> although yes it would be good to have the info actually in the notes... that should be pretty easy for me to do
[11:53] <zeddii> I mean, I get an email from the kernel once and a while trying to figure out who I work for, since @gmail.com …. so there’s some mappings that can be done on that front as well.
[11:54] <RP> bluelightning: you can integrate if someone helps too! :)
[11:54] <zeddii> bluelightning: if there’s something you think I can do for that, I can help.
[11:54] <bluelightning> zeddii: thanks - I'll keep that in mind
[11:55] <zeddii> I’ll go look at the other release notes to see if I can think of anything else that might be interesting to add.
[11:55] <zeddii> i.e. if a release mentioned some steps forward in a vertical that interested some companies, they might be interested to help more in the future, etc. hard to say if its even possible to do that, but its an idea.
[11:58] <JPEW> There might be more we could do at conferences and such also... although thats not useful in the short term
[11:59] <RP> some kind of metrics/lists focused on "first contributions from" might be interesting
[12:03] <JPEW> Any other topics?
[12:03] <RP> Not from me
[12:03] <JPEW> I'll put this one on the list for next month so we can see if there are any more ideas in the meantime
[12:04] <JPEW> And I'll try to draft some example e-mails
[12:04] <RP> If people do have ideas, please do feel free to share. I think the project has some challenges ahead (as does the world at large atm :( )
[12:06] <JPEW> OK, supper time for me.
[12:06] <JPEW> Bye all
[12:07] <bluelightning> I'll send out the minutes
[12:08] <JPEW> Thanks. Don't forget to link on the wiki: https://www.openembedded.org/wiki/TSC
[12:08] <bluelightning> ah yes thanks for the reminder, I think I missed that the last couple of times
[12:09] <RP> Thanks all!