[openfabrics-ewg] Tomorrow's teleconference
Jeff Squyres
jsquyres at cisco.com
Mon Oct 23 06:00:46 PDT 2006
(I originally included all the addresses Bill included on the CC, but
the ewg list rejected it because it had too many recipients -- so I'm
re-sending without the CC list)
Bill --
I'm somewhat confused by your mail. You seem to be implying that
there is a movement afoot to usurp the OFA board and/or make OFED be
"the" OFA development trunk. If that impression has been cast, a) I
don't know how that happened, and b) that is not the intent.
I personally think of OFED as the current release mechanism for OFA
-- nothing more, nothing less. The OFA developers continue to
develop on the OpenIB SVN trunks/gits and OFED periodically takes
drops from them. The cross-pollination between the development on
the OFA trunk has been quite good with OFED (i.e., patches from OFED
make it back to the OFA trunk and vice versa). There has not been
any discussion about changing this model.
Cisco proposed the agenda that it did for multiple reasons:
1. We have OFED-specific development issues to discuss (there have
been lots of e-mails about these topics). With OFED 1.2 only a few
months away, we need to discuss a bunch of OFED-specific items *NOW*
so that we can have a nice, smooth release in February (as opposed to
March or April!).
2. Everyone agreed on a recent teleconf that we would have face-to-
face meetings at SC because all the relevant people will be there (I
believe that you were there). The face-to-face/OFED-specific meeting
format was strongly preferred by most (all?) of those who
participated on the call vs. endless e-mails and teleconferences
(i.e., meet at SC and get the majority of the issues discussed/
decided). Because it was an OFED-specific teleconference and we were
discussing OFED-specific issues (particularly in the context of an SC
meeting), my understanding from that call was that this was going to
be an OFED-specific developer's meeting, not a long-term strategy /
"version 2.0" kind of meeting. Perhaps that's where this disconnect
started...?
3. iWARP integration, deciding what "version 2.0" is, ...etc. are
definitely important issues, but these are almost entirely orthogonal
from the outstanding OFED items. Someone (Mellanox?) proposed having
a dual-track meeting to potentially cover more topics in the same
short timespan (1.5 days) -- perhaps that's the way to go? I don't
know about the availability of multiple meeting rooms nor the
availability of relevant individuals to know if this would work or not.
On Oct 23, 2006, at 2:17 AM, Bill Boas wrote:
> Jeff,
>
> Thank you for confirming there is an EWG call tomorrow and for
> putting the
> SC06 Developer Summit o n the agenda.
>
> Also, thank you registering through the Acteva URL - you were the
> first to
> register - thank you!!
>
> Before the call tomorrow I thought it would be worthwhile re-
> stating some
> ground rules or ways that the OpenFabrics Alliance has been working
> so far.
> Of course the ways of working can and should be changed when there is
> correctly level of consensus, If the change falls under the rules
> we, as
> members of OFA, have agreed to follow (i.e Bylaws) then we need to
> conform
> to the rules in order to keep OFA operating correctly
>
> One rule is that the Board has to vote to approve a proposal from a
> member
> for a software stack to become THE OpenFabrics software stack.
> Article 12 of
> the Bylaws has detailed procedure, timing and 2/3rds vote of the
> Board that
> is needed.
>
> You'll remember some of us insisted that we follow the procedures for
> setting up a Working Group leading up to Board approval for the EWG
> and the
> branching of RC1 of OFED from the existing approved OpenFabrics
> stack at
> that time.
>
> Why am being a pain and bringing this up again?
>
> OpenFabrics has to operate to the MUTUAL BENEFIT OF ITS MEMBERS -
> the vote
> of a member's representative is how the member ensures its
> interests are
> being met. AS a member of the Board (and a working group) we all
> understand
> we should ensure that we make decisions and do work primarily for
> thr good
> of our fellow members, our company's self interest comes second, and
> non-members interest come after that. If we don't behave something
> like this
> the Alliance will, over time, breakup. I think we have all seen the
> strength
> in the market and with customers because we are working together
> for the
> interest of our members (perhaps some more end-user customers will
> seriously
> consider joining when they understand that membership is the tool for
> working within the Alliance to get what they want - mutually that is).
>
> I hope you understand the point of understanding this as a preamble to
> tomorrow's discussion.
>
> Some specific points to understand -
>
> 1) the EWG was approved by the Board to take a branch from the
> OpenFabrics
> trunk and "Enterprise- ready" it as much as possible, coordinate its
> distribution with Novel and RedHat, and figure out collaborative
> support
> processes so Enterpise customers have the temerity to use it,
> hopefully in
> production.
>
> 2)The Board did not approve OFED to become the trunk at any time.
> The Board
> could approve that but they haven't yet. If the EWG believes that
> the right
> steps going forward the EWG has to propose in a manner conforming
> to Article
> 12. (BTW this belies the notion that OFA is a developers free for
> all where
> anyone can work on what they want and commit it to the trunk)
>
>
> 3) The DOE PathForward development team comprised the bulk of the
> development resources that got the OF stack to the point where the
> EWG could
> branch for OFED 1.x. And the DOE PathForward has gone on funding
> development
> after that, and will continue for several more months or years. The
> code
> developed has been committed into the OF trunk. The three major DOE
> Weapons
> Labs are members, they have provide funding, as Board members that
> must
> carry some weight in our discussions.
>
> Attached you will find a feature list prepared by the PF team last
> week from
> their perspective as input to the creation of the agenda for the
> Summit.
>
> 4) As OFED has evolved with patches, fixes and features, these need
> to be
> committed the OF trunk and maintained in the trunk so that the next
> branch
> from the OF trunk for OFED does not regress too badly, and contains
> the
> features for the trunk that have been developed and committed by
> developers
> to the trunk that are not yet in OFED.
>
> 5) On the HSIR Financial call we heard an enterprise customer say
> that not
> all what is good for HPC is good for the Enterprise - and obviously
> the
> converse is also true. That comment was followed by the suggestion
> that the
> financial folk should become members to have more influence over what
> development work is done going forward - that didn't seem to be a
> suggestion
> that has achieved much currency yet! Let's hope it will before too
> long!.
>
> My apologies for such a long note, but as we negotiate the agenda
> for the
> Developer Summit these are factors we should all understand and
> weigh in our
> thinking and expressions of opinion/recommendations to our fellow
> members
> and other participants in the call.
>
> We had several discussion back in Feb-march to get EWG and OFED up and
> running and those who have worked on it have done great things.
> I'm swure
> we'll have several discussions over the next few weeks about how to
> move the
> trunk and the OFED branch forward for both the Enterprise and HPC -
> and it
> will work out well in the end because of the talent, understanding
> and good
> will of those working together on it for the membership as a whole.
>
> Bill.
>
> Bill Boas
> VP, Business Development | System Fabric Works
> bboas at systemfabricworks.com | 510-375-8840
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: openfabrics-ewg-bounces at openib.org
> [mailto:openfabrics-ewg-bounces at openib.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Squyres
> Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2006 9:00 AM
> To: Open Fabrics
> Subject: [openfabrics-ewg] Tomorrow's teleconference
>
> Sorry for the short notice of this, but hopefully everyone has the
> time blocked out on their calendar already.
>
> OFED Bi-weekly teleconference
> Date: 23 Oct 2006
> Time: Noon US Eastern, 9am US Pacific, 6pm Israel
> Topic: SC06 OFA meeting agenda
> Phone Numbers: US/Canada: +1.866.432.9903
> India: +91.80.4103.3979
> Israel: +972.9.892.7026
> Other numbers: http://cisco.com/en/US/about/
> doing_business/conferencing/index.html
>
> Bill Boas passed around a strawman agenda about a week ago, and there
> have been some on-list and off-list mails discussing it. There does
> not seem to be consensus yet, so the call tomorrow seems like a
> perfect opportunity to discuss.
>
> --
> Jeff Squyres
> Server Virtualization Business Unit
> Cisco Systems
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> openfabrics-ewg mailing list
> openfabrics-ewg at openib.org
> http://openib.org/mailman/listinfo/openfabrics-ewg
> <OpenFabrics Future Functionality 061020 (3).doc>
>
--
Jeff Squyres
Server Virtualization Business Unit
Cisco Systems
More information about the ewg
mailing list