On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 10:51:39PM -0500, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > On Fri, Feb 07, 2020 at 02:03:33PM -0800, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > > On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 09:25:20PM -0800, Darrick J. Wong wrote: > > > It turns out that this system doesn't scale very well either. Even with > > > three maintainers sharing access to the git trees,,, > > > > I think the LSFMMBPF conference is part of the problem. With the best of > > intentions, we have set up a system which serves to keep all but the most > > dedicated from having a voice at the premier conference for filesystems, > > memory management, storage (and now networking). It wasn't intended to > > be that way, but that's what has happened, and it isn't serving us well > > as a result. > > > > ... > > > > This kills me because LSFMM has been such a critically important part of > > Linux development for over a decade, but I think at this point it is at > > least not serving us the way we want it to, and may even be doing more > > harm than good. I think it needs to change, and more people need to > > be welcomed to the conference. Maybe it needs to not be invite-only. > > Maybe it can stay invite-only, but be twice as large. Maybe everybody > > who's coming needs to front $100 to put towards the costs of a larger > > meeting space with more rooms. > > One of the things that I've trying to suggest for at least the last > year or two is that we need colocate LSF/MM with a larger conference. > In my mind, what would be great would be something sort of like > Plumbers, but in the first half of year. The general idea would be to > have two major systems-level conferences about six months apart. > > The LSF/MM conference could still be invite only, much like we have > had the Maintainer's Summit and the Networking Summit colocated with > Plumbers in Lisbon in 2019 and Vancouver in 2018. But it would be > colocated with other topic specific workshops / summits, and there > would be space for topics like what you described below: > > > There are 11 people on that list, plus Jason, plus three more than I > > recommended. That's 15, just for that one topic. I think maybe half > > of those people will get an invite anyway, but adding on an extra 5-10 > > people for (what I think is) a critically important topic at the very > > nexus of storage, filesystems, memory management, networking and graphics > > is almost certainly out of bounds for the scale of the current conference. > > After all, this is *precisely* the scaling problem that we had with > the Kernel Summit. The LSF/MM summit can really only deal with > subjects that require high-level coordination between maintainers. > For more focused topics, we will need a wider set of developers than > can fit in size constraints of the LSF/MM venue. <nod> > This also addresses Darrick's problem, in that most of us can probably > point to more junior engineers that we would like to help to develop, > which means they need to meet other Storage, File System, and MM > developers --- both more senior ones, and other colleagues in the > community. Right now, we don't have a venue for this except for > Plumbers, and it's suffering from bursting at the seams. If we can > encourage grow our more junior developers, it will help us delegate > our work to a larger group of talent. In other words, it will help us > scale. Agreed. The other downside of Plumbers is that there often isn't a storage/fs track associated with it, which in the past has made getting funding for my own participation very difficult. If I have to choose between LSFMM and Plumbers, LSF probably wins. > There are some tradeoffs to doing this; if we are going to combine > LSF/MM with other workshops and summits into a larger "systems-level" > conference in the first half of the year, we're not going to be able > to fit in some of the smaller, "fun" cities, such as Palm Springs, San > Juan, Park City, etc. > > One of the things that I had suggested for 2020 was to colocate > LSF/MM/BPF, the Kernel Summit, Maintainer's Summit, and perhaps Linux > Security Symposium to June, in Austin. (Why Austin? Because finding > kernel hackers who are interested in planning a conference in a hands > on fashion ala Plumbers is *hard*. And if we're going to leverage the > LF Events Staff on short notice, holding something in the same city as > OSS was the only real option.) I thought it made a lot of sense last > year, but a lot of people *hated* Austin, and they didn't want to be > anywhere near the Product Manager "fluff" talks that unfortunately, > are in large supply at OSS. So that idea fell through. > > In any case, this is a problem that has been recently discussed at the > TAB, but this is not an issue where we can force anybody to do > anything. We need to get the stakeholders who plan all of these > conferences to get together, and figure out something for 2021 or > maybe 2022 that we can all live with. It's going to require some > compromising on all sides, and we all will have different things that > we consider "must haves" versus "would be nice" as far as conference > venues are concerned, and as well as dealing with financial > constraints. > > Assuming I get an invite to LSF/MM (I guess they haven't gone out > yet?), I'd like to have a chance to chat with anyone who has strong > opinions on this issue in Palm Springs. Maybe we could schedule a BOF > slot to hear from the folks who attend LSF/MM/BPF and learn what > things we all consider important vis-a-vis the technical conferences > that we attend? It seems like Future of LSF Planning has enough interest for its own BOF, yes. I'd attend that. :) --D > Cheers, > > - Ted
