XSF Discussion - 2012-11-20


  1. Arc Riley

    I'm getting strange messages from gajim informing me that I failed to create this room.. :-/

  2. bear

    odd

  3. Arc Riley

    i really need to spend some time getting my netbook back into a stable state, but google code-in has been eating most my time

  4. Arc Riley

    http://gci.copyleftgames.org/

  5. bear

    yikes, that is one busy project

  6. Arc Riley

    it hasn't even started yet and the army of eager highschool students have already started marching on us lol

  7. Arc Riley

    so the board meeting is here, correct?

  8. bear

    yes

  9. Kev

    Arc: Note that I've not even suggested the XSF would want to participate in GCI.

  10. Kev

    GSoC is plenty of work - I think anyone doing GCI must be supremely massochistic.

  11. arcriley

    Kev, clearly we haven't met :-)

  12. arcriley

    I was Python Software Foundation's sole org admin for 5 years, with 30-40 students a year, plus have done GHOP/GCI.

  13. arcriley

    that said if any mentors under the XSF would want to pitch a task or two into our pool I'm totally fine with that. We have a few xmpp tasks in our pool already, the more the merrier

  14. arcriley

    each task actually takes very little work. its in their vast numbers that mentoring them gets tiring.

  15. Kev

    Right. It's at least not like GSoC.

  16. Kev

    But equally, it's not like GSoC :)

  17. arcriley

    exactly, if you get a bad student, you only need to deal with them for a day or two, not all summer.

  18. arcriley

    i should note that we've gotten more long term contributors from GHOP/GCI than GSoC I think. PSF even picked up a guy who's now one of perhaps the top 3 python-dev core developers through GHOP and has served as release manager now for several versions of Python

  19. Kev

    I find that surprising.

  20. Kev

    But maybe I shouldn't.

  21. arcriley

    Benjamin Peterson, he was 14 participating in GHOP, and he's now been a GSoC mentor 3 times in addition to all his work with python-dev

  22. arcriley

    for every gci/gsoc horror story there's a story like that. i've had terrible, soul-sucking students just like anyone else, and felt like I never wanted to do the program again, but then there's the gems that make me glad I do

  23. Kev

    Swift, in particular, had an exceptionally good GSoC this year from a code produced point of view.

  24. Kev

    We shall see, longer term.

  25. arcriley

    I don't worry as much about the code produced during the program, I'm more interested to see if the students stick around. As a general rule students tend to use more mentor energy than it'd take them to write the same thing, but they're an investment in the community's future

  26. Kev

    Yes.

  27. Kev

    But it's a step thing.

  28. Kev

    A student who can't produce code is unlikely to be useful longer term writing code for the project (not impossible, but unlikely)

  29. Kev

    Students producing great work over the summer with minimal supervision is a good sign that you want those students to stay on (but not necessarily that they will).

  30. arcriley

    I don't know, we've had some mediocre students that stayed involved and got better.

  31. arcriley

    Its like in rugby - we get guys all the time who show up in incredible shape and natural talent, but never put the work in. And then we get guys who show up completely out of shape, never played any sport before, but dedicate themselves to the club and improving as a player. Most coaches will tell you they'll trade 20 of the prior for one of the latter anyday. I feel the same way with students.

  32. arcriley

    we had a GHOP student, who we actually gave PSF's grand prize to, who was frankly amazing - in a few days he completed more than half a failed GSoC students project from the previous summer, he optimized our rendering code, etc etc - but we never saw him again.

  33. arcriley

    then we had another student who, first thing, asked what application he should use to edit code, needed help with almost everything, and two years later he was still involved and became a gsoc mentor. He wasn't the best coder in the world but he did a ton of work.

  34. Jef

    People commited to free software will stay and make good contributions regardless of their technicall experience

  35. Jef

    but sometimes life happens and people get busy with other stuff

  36. arcriley

    that process of struggle and learning, I think, is actually kinda important for building up that commitment to the project

  37. Jef

    the important thing is letting people who want to work, work.

  38. Kev

    "hen we had another student who, first thing, asked what application he should use to edit code, needed help with almost everything, and two years later he was still involved and became a gsoc mentor. He wasn't the best coder in the world but he did a ton of work."

  39. Kev

    But he made progress?

  40. arcriley

    yep

  41. Kev

    I'm not suggesting people never learn - but that students who enter GSoC and leave GSoC without having made any significant improvement or achievement are unlikely to be long-term contributors.

  42. arcriley

    i can agree with that

  43. arcriley

    oh hey what ever happened with the xmpp browserid initiative i see in the xsf blog

  44. arcriley

    im actually friends with the engineering lead on mozilla browserid, ive debated this with him several times

  45. Kev

    I think that fizzled out, it wasn't something I was remotely involved in.

  46. Kev

    I think Dave and Bear? were leading that.

  47. Jef

    it isn't like OpenID?

  48. bear

    dave has worked on it and &yet is also working on some tools to help with that

  49. Jef

    oh :P sounds nice

  50. Kev

    bear: It's ongoing? In that case maybe a blog post or mail about progress might be in order. I'd thought it dead.

  51. bear

    hmm, good point - it has been a while

  52. arcriley

    Jef, except supported by the browser, and doesnt require telling the identity server who you're authenticating with

  53. Kev

    But I didn't get to go to the summit, so I grant the cool kids could all know everything.

  54. bear

    :)

  55. arcriley

    thats their big issue with xmpp - they dont want central identity providers like google to track where you're logging in to. they're using cert signing to be able to do that

  56. Kev

    bear: No, definitely :( - I really wanted to go.

  57. Florian

    T-15m?

  58. arcriley

    yea

  59. Florian

    coolbeans

  60. bear

    I know you wanted to be there - I was glad that we took good notes and even streamed a good portion of it

  61. Kev

    Yeah, I wasn't even able to view the streams. Irritating.

  62. Jef

    I have a question....

  63. bear

    I keep thinking we need to get an internal dogfood project going - should be no reason why the XSF can't write XMPP tools that do video conferencing

  64. arcriley

    i love that gci for us has become a great opprotunity to teach game devs about xslt. we're using xml to store task data and xslt to convert to xhtml5 or google's csv bulk upload format

  65. Kev

    This is something in which I have some interest (being a remote worker).

  66. Kev

    The problem is that I lack any relevant knowledge about streaming, so I'm not in a particularly good position to do much about it.

  67. bear

    (same reason here)

  68. arcriley

    bear, +1 to dogfood projects, that's been the driving motivation for us to finally get jingle/opus voice chat going in our engine, so we can voice chat while remote pair programming on the engine

  69. Kev

    If I knew how to do it I'd be inclined to write a muxing component in Swiften and put support into Swift.

  70. bear

    we need to get a faq/howto for jingle stuff so us "normal" devs can use it

  71. Kev

    I /really/ want to get VV into Swift.

  72. bear

    I finally made the switch to Swift - now that message archiving is in place

  73. Kev

    Excellent - self-built presumably?

  74. bear

    not yet - working on that - using the osx install right now

  75. Kev

    So you don't have message history then, do you?

  76. bear

    my $dayjob has me very busy with ops related stuff

  77. Kev

    Or did I run off a package for you?

  78. bear

    I was typing that question :P - as I did not see any mention of it in the UI

  79. Kev

    I'm happy to run off a package for you, hang on.

  80. bear

    \o/

  81. Kev

    I just need to do some git tagging to persuade it not to call it something confusing.

  82. Kev

    I'll do a build off the 3.0 branch. I'm sure you want emoticons and nicer status setting.

  83. bear

    ta

  84. Jef

    question: do any of you think it is plausible to substitude git for wikis, when tracking xeps in the xsf?

  85. Kev

    Jef: I don't.

  86. Jef

    why

  87. Jef

    git has a big learning curve compared to wikis

  88. Jef

    git is made for code, not documents, wikis are for documents

  89. Kev

    Git is made for source code - it works just as well for source code for documents as it does source code for applications.

  90. Kev

    (It also works just as well on plenty of things that aren't source, but anyway...)

  91. arcriley

    we use mercurial with a xsltproc server-side hook quite nicely, its worked fine so far

  92. Kev

    But the learning curve isn't much of an argument against Git, I think - no-one (apart from Peter) really needs to use Git.

  93. arcriley

    then again back to "eating your own dogfood", use pubsub

  94. Kev

    arcriley: I'm not convincd on that one.

  95. Kev

    XEPs aren't really pubsub data.

  96. arcriley

    how so

  97. Kev

    And we don't have a XEP for doing long-term data storage with diffs between versions.

  98. arcriley

    its been a few weeks since i looked but doesnt the core pubsub xep (0060 iirc) cover versions?

  99. bear

    pubsub would be for change notification IMO - the XEP should be in long term store and outside of the scope of XMPP IMO

  100. Kev

    That build's uploading for you now, I'll send you a URL in a moment.

  101. bear

    thanks

  102. arcriley

    bear: yea software implementation doesnt need an xep

  103. bear

    so, are we missing anyone? it's close to start time

  104. arcriley

    the question would be whether pubsub itself provides the ability to look back over a node's earlier versions, and I'm pretty sure it does

  105. arcriley

    is Ashley and Jason here?

  106. bear

    hmm, for some reason my contact list is suspiciously empty

  107. bear

    k, we can wait a bit before starting to give them a chance - can someone ping them

  108. Kev

    I don't /think/ I have either in my roster.

  109. arcriley

    me either

  110. bear

    I thought I did - but they are showing up as offline

  111. Kev

    I thought I had Ashley, but if I do he's not online. I don't have Jason.

  112. bear

    oh poo - I bet my prosody ssl cert is expired

  113. bear

    so s2s is failing

  114. bear

    asroach@gmail.com is ashley

  115. Kev

    That shouldn't cause s2s to fail.

  116. arcriley

    actually i have them both via G+ but neither are online

  117. bear

    even your contact entry is showing as offline

  118. Kev

    No-one actually does cert validation.

  119. Kev

    Tried sending them a mail?

  120. arcriley

    i'll try pinging them both on G+, if they are online they'll see an alert pop up on a search :-/

  121. bear

    same

  122. Kev

    Unless they're like me, and do all searching from a browser that never logs into anything :)

  123. arcriley

    I think you're a unique case tho Kev :-)

  124. Kev

    Possibly. It's protection against a) browser vulnerabilities and b) Facebook/Twitter 'virus' type things

  125. bear

    I tend to do my searches on a non-logged in browser also

  126. bear

    because I have to have 3 browsers open for various gmail/gapp stuff

  127. bear

    (not that it's obvious why I'm connecting those to facts :)

  128. Kev

    FF for everything that needs me to log in, Chrome for a few things that don't, but that I like to keep open, and an incognito window in Chrome for day-to-day usage that's transient.

  129. arcriley

    we should really have each other's phone numbers for cases like this

  130. Kev

    I note that you do have quorum :)

  131. bear

    yea, I was going to wait to 15 after before starting

  132. bear

    we can at least get basics out of the way - and then post to the board list if we have to decide on board chair (if there is anyone else who wants to have a crack at it besides me)

  133. arcriley

    bad way to start a new board tho, with 2/5ths absent

  134. bear

    :)

  135. arcriley

    bear I haven't seen a sign that anyone else is interested in the role

  136. Kev

    FWIW, I think it'd be reasonably bad form to vote on a chair with 2/5 not absent.

  137. bear

    sorry -did not mean to imply voting - just announcing to the list if any want the job

  138. bear

    and make it the first agenda item for next meeting

  139. Kev

    But you need a Chair, and if 3/5 of you is all that's around, you pretty much have to.

  140. Kev

    Heh.

  141. Kev

    Two-part message with two long between the parts, sorry.

  142. bear

    ok, it's 15 after - shall we start this?

  143. Kev

    2/5 not absent? 2/5 not present. Idiot fingers.

  144. Kev shuts up.

  145. bear

    lol

  146. arcriley

    to be serious and not at all in the spirit of judgement or blame, but if either of them were interested in the role, they would be here.

  147. bear

    the first couple of meetings are always tough - they have to get used to the fact there is a meeting

  148. bear

    ok, as it has been pointed out - we do have a quorum to start the meeting - shall we start?

  149. arcriley

    yes.

  150. bear

    florian?

  151. Florian

    oh, completely missed this :)

  152. Florian

    I'm here :)

  153. bear

    ok, so yes - we do have a quorum - let's start

  154. bear

    there is probably a more formal way to do this... but... Welcome to the 2013 XSF Board

  155. bear

    we have present Florian, Arc and Mike and missing is Ashley and Jason

  156. bear

    the only required things we have to do is elect a chair and decide on meeting dates

  157. Florian

    indeed

  158. bear

    I would like to suggest that we find out who wants to run for Chair and put that to the list and vote on it next meeting

  159. bear

    any reason to not do that?

  160. arcriley

    depends on frequency of meetings

  161. Florian

    normally the meetings are weekly

  162. bear

    my personal approach is to have weekly or bi-weekly meetings that are short and simple

  163. Florian

    weekly makes it easier to remember :)

  164. bear

    the council meets weekly - but the board topics are much less frequent

  165. arcriley

    cool, then i think that's a reasonable proposal

  166. bear

    what day does the tech council meet?

  167. Kev

    Wednesday 1600 UK time, generally.

  168. bear

    any reason to not meet just before or after the tech council - to aid with those who like to participate in both?

  169. arcriley

    do tech meetings run overtime?

  170. Kev

    Council? Not when I'm chair. Don't know who will be this year.

  171. bear

    yea, kev runs a very tight ship

  172. Florian

    :)

  173. Kev

    (FWIW, realising I have no say, I like the idea of regular Board meetings at predictable times, given that us plebs can't read the mailing list to know what you arrange)

  174. bear

    1500 UTC is 1000 east coast time - how does that work for you Arc if we have it at 1030

  175. arcriley

    florian you wrote to the list that anything after 7pm your time would work well for you?

  176. bear

    :) - yes, having a weekly habit is good

  177. bear is using http://everytimezone.com/#2012-11-20,180,6be to figure this shit out

  178. Florian

    well, I can do earlier :)

  179. arcriley

    daytime my schedule is extremely open, that's fine with me

  180. Florian

    just between 6-7 is bad :)

  181. bear

    it's much more likely I will be awake at 1030 my time than 0930 ;)

  182. Florian

    :)

  183. bear

    ok, so first item is that I'll mail to the board list that the next meeting (and after) will be at 1530 UTC Wednesdays

  184. bear

    and if someone objects, then they can come to the meeting to object

  185. Kev

    Can you also please copy embers@?

  186. bear

    sure can

  187. Kev

    Heh. members.

  188. Kev

    Thanks.

  189. bear

    ok, any further conversation on meeting date/time?

  190. Florian

    I don't think so

  191. bear

    k, on to next item: board chair

  192. bear

    is anyone wanting to put their name into the virtual hat for consideration

  193. bear

    I would like to be considered

  194. arcriley

    i second the nomination for bear

  195. Florian

    hmm, tempted :)

  196. Florian

    but I second bear :)

  197. bear kicks florian under the table

  198. Florian

    :D

  199. arcriley

    florian don't do it, its a trap, a bear trap.

  200. Florian

    haha

  201. bear tries to look all mean

  202. Florian

    like I said, I second bear :)

  203. arcriley

    i do believe that's not just quorum but a majority of the board right there

  204. bear

    ok, I'll post to the list that my name is on the list for chair - do we want to vote now or be more polite than required and give the missing folk a chane to suggest?

  205. bear

    s/chane/chance/

  206. Florian

    Will it change anything

  207. arcriley

    nope. i say we vote now.

  208. bear

    probably not

  209. Florian

    +1

  210. Kev

    If Florian, Arc and Bear are intending backing Bear...

  211. bear

    then let's vote - if something is amiss Peter will let us know and we can cover it next week

  212. Florian

    sounds good

  213. bear

    vote for bear as Chair please

  214. bear

    +1

  215. Florian

    +1

  216. arcriley

    +1

  217. bear

    ok, done - thanks

  218. bear

    I'll add that to the minutes

  219. Florian

    all hail bear

  220. bear

    \o/

  221. arcriley

    the poor fool...

  222. bear

    bow before Zod!

  223. Florian

    :D

  224. arcriley

    congrats to our volunteer cat herder!

  225. bear

    k, that covers all that I know we are required to do - anything else that we want to cover?

  226. Florian

    hmm ... maybe FOSDEM?

  227. bear

    (if not then I'm all for calling the meeting done at 30 minutes to get started on a good habit)

  228. Florian

    but I'd say let's put it on the agenda for next week

  229. bear

    florian - can you put a list of items together for fosdem and send that to the list

  230. bear

    so we can add it to the agenda

  231. Florian

    will do

  232. Kev

    I'd like to bring up my annual grip that the Board mailing list actions should be public, but there's always next meeting to tell me I'm wrong.

  233. arcriley

    bear as our new chair can you send an email to the board list 24 hours before the next meeting to remind everyone?

  234. bear

    arc - I will be posting the call for agenda changes the day before - so yea

  235. Kev

    Annual *gripe*. Good grief fingers, get it in gear.

  236. bear

    ok, I don't see any action items to continue the meeting - (not ignoring kev's point, just know we will cover it next week)

  237. Florian

    sounds good :)

  238. bear

    ok, motion to end - second?

  239. Florian

    +1

  240. arcriley

    seconded.

  241. bear

    done - and thanks for attending everyone

  242. bear

    I'll work up the meeting minutes and post to the blog, members@ and board@ lists

  243. Kev

    So far I have a higher attendance at Board meetings than is average for Board members. Hoorah :)

  244. Florian

    :)

  245. bear

    I'll also send an email to peter so he can add it to the calendar

  246. arcriley

    Kev, careful you'll get yourself nominated for the board next year

  247. bear

    :)

  248. Florian

    :D

  249. Kev

    arcriley: I *believe* my attendance has been higher than the average for Board for the last few years :)

  250. bear

    it has been for the 3 (or 4?) years I've been on the board

  251. bear waves and goes off to do $dayjob tasks

  252. bear

    thanks all

  253. Florian

    thanks guys :)

  254. arcriley

    WAH-WAH

  255. arcriley

    Ashley, you have perfect timing

  256. Ashley

    i noticed that :)

  257. Ashley

    drat

  258. Ashley

    did the ical ever get updated?

  259. arcriley

    idk i dont use ical

  260. Ashley

    http://xmpp.org/calendar/

  261. Ashley

    well, it's just a subscription. no biggie, but would be helpful for next time. i can bug stpeter on it

  262. Kev

    Thanks for the minutes Bear.

  263. Ashley

    and the everytimezone, that's helpful!

  264. bear

    I do love that site

  265. Kev

    Out of interest, why's the marker for 1500Z on there?

  266. Kev

    Ah.

  267. Kev

    bear: That's 30minutes /before/ Council, not 30mins after :)

  268. bear

    doh!

  269. Kev

    1600UK for Council.

  270. Kev

    (1600UTC in winter, 1500UTC in summer)

  271. bear

    so the council meets at 1600UTC?

  272. Kev

    In winter, yes.

  273. Kev

    It generally meets at 1600 whatever the UK local time is.

  274. bear

    k, then I had the right time, just not the right relativeness

  275. bear

    as long as the time peter adds to the calendar is correct :)