XSF Discussion - 2012-04-20


  1. Florian

    afternoon all

  2. Florian

    Board meeting in 20?

  3. Florian

    board meeting time?

  4. Florian

    dwd bear?

  5. dwd

    Afternoon.

  6. dwd

    Yes, meeting time.

  7. dwd

    Florian, I think this may be the first meeting we've had across three continents.

  8. Florian

    if bear is here, we're quorate, right?

  9. dwd

    Florian, If he's awake. bear ?

  10. Florian

    haha ... I think you might be right

  11. Kev

    You need to change the bylaws so I count towards quorum, as I'm always here :p

  12. Florian

    heh ...

  13. dwd

    Kev, We can't do that, we need a members meeting.

  14. Florian

    I think that says less about the bylaws than it does about you :)

  15. dwd

    Kev, I think we can allocate ourselves a salary, though. Or at least, we can appoint ourselves into an officer's position and then give ourselves a salary.

  16. Florian

    :)

  17. dwd

    Hi Chris.

  18. cchris434

    hi Chris here

  19. cchris434

    hello!

  20. Florian

    Hi Chris :)

  21. Kev

    I'm happy with handing out salaries as long as I get one.

  22. dwd

    Well, that's certainly quorate.

  23. dwd

    Kev, I bet you wish you could vote, now.

  24. bear is here

  25. dwd

    OK, and now we are four.

  26. Florian

    all good then :)

  27. cchris434

    sorry that I was late

  28. dwd

    So, we don't actually have any real agenda, but stuff has been happening nonetheless.

  29. Florian

    GSoC is one thing

  30. dwd

    Kev, My understanding is that the Summer of Code application went well?

  31. Kev

    We got slots for all the students we wanted marked "Amazing", although none of the ones that were "Nice to have".

  32. Kev

    But as that's already more slots than in the last couple of years we did pretty well.

  33. dwd

    How many is that?

  34. Kev

    7

  35. Florian

    I think that's a nice number

  36. dwd

    OK, so two questions:

  37. dwd

    1) What's the next step?

  38. Kev

    1) Attending the dedup meeting in approximately 3 hours 19 minutes.

  39. dwd

    2) Presumably this means we get 7 x $SOMETHING into the XSF's piggy bank at some point?

  40. dwd

    What's a dedup meeting?

  41. Kev

    If multiple orgs accept the same student it's a dupe.

  42. bear

    some students are accepted by more than one org - dedupe is when they figure out who wins the student

  43. Kev

    These need to be resolved.

  44. Florian

    right

  45. Florian

    do we know of any risks in our case?

  46. Kev

    This will take about 5 minutes, as all the dupes should already have been sorted out between the orgs (ours was, at least).

  47. Kev

    Florian: I've already resolved our only known duplicate.

  48. Florian

    alright :)

  49. Kev

    It's possible for more to occur during the meeting, but this is unlikely to affect us.

  50. Kev

    The next real step is sorting out an appropriate welcome for the students.

  51. Kev

    I'm hoping someone will help with this, as I'll be fairly busy with my own student.

  52. Florian

    appropriate welcome in what sense? A nice mail + blog post?

  53. Florian

    or should we give them XMPP Swag?

  54. Kev

    We typically give them swag, although I think we dropped the ball a bit last year.

  55. Florian

    right ... books for all?

  56. bear

    yes, I messed up the books for last year

  57. bear

    tshirt + books would be nice IMO

  58. Florian

    right

  59. Kev

    But yes, we should make sure they're on the gsoc mailing list, we should make sure they know who to talk to.

  60. Florian

    I was thinking of shirts / hoodies ... but they're locked up at Cisco Diegem

  61. Kev

    I'd like it if someone other than me was a possible contact - at least so my student has a chance to bitch to someone about me.

  62. Florian

    I'd be happy to help

  63. Kev

    Thanks.

  64. bear

    I can help monitor the gsoc xmpp list

  65. Kev

    Thanks.

  66. Florian

    I need to join that :)

  67. Kev

    I note that we did have a bit of an issue this year.

  68. bear

    the stuck-in-moderation issue?

  69. Kev

    louiz' didn't read any of my mails or Carol's emails, and so hasn't started deciding he wants students for poezio until today - which is clearly far too late to be able to do anything about it.

  70. bear

    ah

  71. Kev

    So some poor students haven't got slots through no fault of their own.

  72. Kev

    Other next steps include setting up weekly meetings for all students and mentors in the gsoc room.

  73. bear

    that was hard to wrangle last year - the students were in timezones that made a common meeting hard

  74. Florian

    alright

  75. Florian

    what time worked last year?

  76. Kev

    As for books, I suggest the two XMPP books, pragprog and something on time management.

  77. Kev

    Florian: Typically evening UK time is what we go for, we'll see once we have the students.

  78. Florian

    alright

  79. Kev

    We will also need some blog post, I imagine.

  80. Florian

    on a sidenote: what's the URL / E-mail to subscribe to gsoc?

  81. Kev

    To our gsoc list, you mean?

  82. Florian

    yeah

  83. Florian

    I'm on the Google one

  84. Florian

    Kev: if you send me the info that need to go into the blogpost, I can write one tomorrow at the airport

  85. Kev

    http://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/gsoc

  86. Kev

    Florian: Thanks - but we can't discuss our accepted students until they know themselves, which is Monday :)

  87. bear

    we could use an etherpad to start coordinating student meetings and posts

  88. Florian

    or that :)

  89. bear

    so we all have info on which student is attending and also blogging

  90. Kev

    bear: We should get all the students to set themselves up with blogs and onto planet, too, yeah.

  91. Florian

    gsoc@xmpp.org. You are already subscribed to this mailing list.

  92. Florian

    interesting

  93. Kev

    Congratulations :)

  94. bear

    part of their "Day 1" activities: wiki accounts, blog planet, meeting info, mailing address

  95. Kev

    Ok, so we've got a bunch of stuff to do, but we can't do it until Monday.

  96. Florian

    alright

  97. bear

    actually - we should create a gsoc 2012 wiki page

  98. bear

    and have the students, when known, start filling in info

  99. Kev

    We can sign them up to the mailing list and wiki ourselves, but theother things need their interaction.

  100. dwd

    So aside from approving $MONEY to spend on $BOOKS, does the Board need to do anything here?

  101. Kev

    Is someone willing to offer to sort out bear's list of TODOs above, Monday or Tuesday next week?

  102. bear

    florian - we can meet monday and work out the list

  103. Florian

    bear: sounds good

  104. Kev

    Is that bear and Florian sorting out the student welcome?

  105. bear

    kev - yes

  106. Florian

    yup

  107. Kev

    Marvellous, thanks chaps.

  108. Kev

    I will chase if I remember, once the announcements go out.

  109. dwd

    bear, Florian - that's including the swag, right?

  110. Kev

    dwd: 2) Yes, there will be $3500 available to the XSF towards the end of the year. We'll need to invoice for it. I believe we failed to last year.

  111. bear

    it can

  112. Kev

    For books I suggest we go with the two XMPP books, PragProg and something timemanagementy.

  113. Florian

    alright

  114. Kev

    Assuming we can swallow the cost until the end of the year.

  115. bear

    where I failed last year was in getting addresses for shipping until way to late

  116. dwd

    Kev, Yes, we can.

  117. dwd

    Where is the list of students going to be documented?

  118. bear

    it will be on the xsf's gsoc page

  119. bear

    actually it is, just private

  120. Kev

    dwd: On google-melange.com. I can just tell you who right now if you want - but not in a logged public channel.

  121. Kev

    It's not final until Monday, but it's very nearly a done deal at this point unless the dedup meeting throws us a new dupe.

  122. dwd

    Kev, Sure - it was more of a question of our internal logistics, not because I wanted to know.

  123. Kev

    I note that there wasn't much Board help in ranking students this year.

  124. Kev

    In fact, only Florian signed up.

  125. dwd

    OK, noted.

  126. dwd

    Kev, Anything more on GSoC?

  127. Kev

    And I think that's GSoC covered.

  128. Florian

    great

  129. dwd

    So in summary, Florian and bear are sorting out student welcomes on Monday.

  130. Florian

    yup

  131. bear

    yes

  132. Florian

    I quickly wanted to bring up another thing ...

  133. Florian

    if we're done with GSOC

  134. dwd

    Florian, Shoot.

  135. bear

    did we approve money for books?

  136. Florian

    bear: I think we did

  137. dwd

    bear, In principle - get a proposal together. I'm assuming it'll all come to << what we're getting.

  138. Florian

    right :)

  139. bear

    k, once we have list of students I can find out what cost will be for shipping

  140. Florian

    coolbeans

  141. Florian

    at the Summit in Brussels, we talked about BrowserID and letting XMPP become the standard for it

  142. dwd

    bear, Sure, but if we're getting books, we can ship locally (ie, ship to EU from EU, etc).

  143. dwd

    Florian, Yeah, we discussed a lot in this space and we (meaning I, mostly) haven't followed up much.

  144. Florian

    right

  145. Florian

    I think we should push this as the board

  146. bear

    what is required for pushing?

  147. bear

    internal to moz i'm pushing hard to get some work done on 2 dns srv related bugs

  148. Florian

    good question ... I think just starting conversation with entities such as BrowserID (Mozilla?)

  149. dwd

    bear, Someone who works for Mozilla getting the right (BrowserID + XMPP) folk in a chatroom together, probably.

  150. bear

    to allow js code to make dns questions

  151. bear

    buddycloud folk are already in touch with all the mozilla people

  152. Florian

    ah, cool

  153. Florian

    so maybe get them together too?

  154. bear

    but maybe we need to start having buddycloud have public conversations so mozilla folk have to respond in public

  155. bear

    right now I think it's all via email

  156. dwd

    OK, so the thing to do from a Board perspective is to push these conversations into the public sphere.

  157. bear

    +1

  158. Florian

    +2

  159. cchris434

    +3

  160. bear

    let me ping simon

  161. Florian

    and make sure XMPP becomes the glue for the internet :)

  162. bear

    and ask what he is blocked on

  163. bear

    well, and to also get him to post to the list about it

  164. Florian

    is it worth that we get a SIG ?

  165. bear

    we need to figure out what all the pieces are

  166. dwd

    The problem with SIGs is that we run the risk of them having too small a number of people to keep momentum. I'd rather form SIGs by demand, in general.

  167. Kev

    I agree.

  168. dwd

    My inclination is that if Simon & co are actively driving this, we should let them continue, and support them where we can.

  169. bear

    yes

  170. Florian

    yes, I agree

  171. Florian

    I think we (the XSF) need to push this in the next few months

  172. dwd

    Although pulling the discussion into the public seems like something we should push for, of course.

  173. dwd

    Ah, speak of the Simon.

  174. simon tips his hat.

  175. dwd

    simon, Your discussions with Mozilla - we'd like them to be public, if at all possible. What can we do to help?

  176. simon

    At the moment someone needs to implement a proof of concept. I'll be in Mountain View next week and would like to meet with Ben Adida at Mozilla again.

  177. bear

    i'm sending him an email right now to try and get that done

  178. simon

    There's no secret on progress. I've just exceeded my mental bandwith this month and so nothing has happened.

  179. bear

    more resources at mozilla are being thrown into the persona and identity space

  180. bear

    internally they are gearing up to enter that space as a company

  181. bear

    so now is the time to get under their noses

  182. simon

    I like that Thunderbird has an XMPP stack now and perhaps something could come out of that. From my own opinion I'm really keen on "get a channel, you've got a browserID"

  183. Florian

    right

  184. dwd

    simon, RIght, our aim here (as XSF) is to ensure that XMPP is the identity/browserid solution.

  185. Florian

    for me I see it this way: you have a single ID (a JID), and all your friends are on there

  186. simon

    Ben was really keen on not excluding an XMPP component... but there isn't any demo for that yet.

  187. simon

    momspeak: "My email that I can chat with also enables me to sign into my Etsy account"

  188. bear

    with tbird now doing xmpp - the time is right for other parts of moz to do the same

  189. Florian

    indeed

  190. Florian

    and if you think of identity ... it consists of you (authentication) and your network (your roster)

  191. simon

    Bear: how will mozilla be spinning up XMPP hosting?

  192. Florian

    and we have notifications sorted

  193. bear

    email sent to ben and david ascher about your being in MV

  194. Florian

    as we can do push

  195. dwd

    So, we really need a tech demo done, you think?

  196. bear

    yes

  197. dwd

    .

  198. Florian

    hmm, would it be worth spending some money on doing that?

  199. bear

    I haven't pushed for moz running their own xmpp - I think the ops folks are scared of it by lack of knowledge

  200. Florian

    bear: they should contact a third party :)

  201. bear

    the last one they tried was ejabberd

  202. simon

    Mozilla should just make a nice sign-up process that can spin you offto other known providers. (heck, they don't host email either).

  203. simon shudders.

  204. bear

    they don't host it *yet*

  205. simon

    It's a problem we have with bc too. The next version will help a user choose a good domain.

  206. bear

    email hosting was the biggest problem for tbird also

  207. bear

    people downloaded it expecting to get an email address

  208. simon

    that still doesn't mean they need to get one from Mozilla.

  209. bear

    true

  210. bear

    they also thought to host sync offsite - until they realized none existed that had the privacy policy that was likeable to moz

  211. bear

    so they had to create sync servers

  212. bear

    the issue with xmpp is that once it is part of the browser then they need xmpp servers that can handle 40 million users

  213. Florian

    bear: they should drop us a line :)

  214. bear

    "us" being flosoft?

  215. simon

    it's called gtalk.

  216. dwd

    bear, Or else we need a protocol that allows distributed fedreated signup.

  217. Florian

    bear: yeah, sorry .. I'll stop self promoting :)

  218. bear

    florian - no - was just wanting to be clear - keep self promoting :)

  219. bear

    for a brief moment I thought you meant xsf

  220. bear

    can gtalk be used for non-gmail signups?

  221. dwd

    bear, No, not really.

  222. bear

    because the browserid would be their xmpp jid - for it to really be federated

  223. dwd

    bear, But in any case, sign-up is a technical problem.

  224. bear

    agreed

  225. dwd

    So back to where I was before my DSL dropped, I'm wondering if there's likely to be someone we could throw a bounty to, to get the tech demo written.

  226. dwd

    I think it's an area where, if XMPP got a foothold, we'd massively increase XMPP deployment and use, and that seems somethign worth spending actual cash on.

  227. bear

    agreed

  228. bear

    we would need an xmpp server that groks the server side browserid implementation

  229. Florian

    agreed

  230. Zash

    Yay world domination!

  231. dwd

    bear, Yeah, we need a protocol too, or at least a strawman for one.

  232. Zash

    dwd: Write down what you described at the summit?

  233. dwd

    Zash, Yeah, although my solution had an XMPP address for the website. But yeah, we could do something here.

  234. bear

    can we continue on list for this - I need to run

  235. dwd

    bear, Yeah - assuming we're happy in principle to spend some cash here, let's raise it on the members list?

  236. Florian

    I can send a quick summary of where we're at with BrowserID to the list

  237. Florian

    list, being board first?

  238. bear

    I think if we can get a small focused project idea - yes

  239. Florian

    and we can decide what we can do?

  240. bear

    or even an incremental list of tech demos

  241. Florian

    XMPP as ID for everyone in the world ... I'd be more than happy to spend money on that

  242. Ashley

    since i was late, we're describing something for GSOC or just more general purpose?

  243. dwd

    Florian, That has been duly noted.

  244. dwd

    Ashley, General purpose, in this case.

  245. Ashley

    ok, cool & interesting!

  246. dwd

    Right - Next meeting - was this time OK for everyone?

  247. Florian

    I like this time

  248. bear

    this time was very good

  249. Ashley

    yes, was good for me, but did it ever get added to the ical?

  250. dwd

    Then this time next week, OK?

  251. dwd

    Ashley, Erm. Possibly not.

  252. Kev

    Was this meeting arranged on the members list? It's possible I missed it, but I didn't see it announced.

  253. Ashley

    i think it was on the board list

  254. Florian

    yeah, I think board only

  255. dwd

    Kev, No, this is also true - I arranged it on the board list.

  256. Kev

    I vaguely remember a discussion about the members list being used by Board for everything that didn't need to be out of camera.

  257. bear

    are we moving to fridays then?

  258. Florian

    but yeah, let's push it to Members list

  259. Florian

    bear, I'd +1 that

  260. bear

    +1 for fridays also

  261. Florian

    not that it matters to me ... everyday is sunday :)

  262. dwd

    bear, Seems that way, unless there's objections.

  263. bear

    my wed is just way to busy lately

  264. cchris434

    I am good with that

  265. Ashley

    +1 on fridays for me

  266. dwd

    OK, so same time next week, I'll announce it on members and do the ical thing.

  267. Florian

    Friday 1530 UTC it is :)

  268. bear

    +1

  269. Ashley

    great, thx!

  270. simon

    If anyone is interested in how bc is planning on doing a distributed sign-up this is the current plan: http://postimage.org/image/6shnsv2k1/

  271. Ashley

    tho, next friday i'll be traveling and may not be able to make it

  272. dwd

    I think we're done - anyone anything further?

  273. cchris434

    I am good, thank you

  274. Florian

    +1 for ending this :)

  275. Kev

    Not from the peanut gallery.

  276. bear

    +1 for adjourn

  277. dwd

    See you all on the list, then. :-)

  278. bear

    thanks all

  279. cchris434

    ciao

  280. Florian

    great meeting guys! thanks all!

  281. bear

    simon - davida says he can meet later in week

  282. simon

    Awesome! I'll shoot him an email.