[Ofa_boardplus] Jason's draft preso to the Linux Plumbers' Conference

[Jim Ryan]

I have to offer a big mea culpa. I repeatedly and incorrectly bundle
interop testing and the logo program. Under the worst of conditions it
starts needless debates, including some elements of this thread. I'm very
sorry, and I want to quickly add there was much here untainted by my poor
phrasing and of great value.

That said, I want to give full credit to Jason for asking some really
interesting questions and making some great suggestions.

First, Jason, it appears you're working under a misunderstanding which I
think Bill tried to correct, but perhaps he could have used different
words. The interop program is self-funding in the sense the cost of the
testing is borne by participants. The OFA doesn't currently contribute
anything to the cost. Therefore your statement "...the OFA spends almost
50% of its income from the membership on this (debug and logo event)
activity...". Is incorrect. The OFA does serve as a financial safety net in
case there is a shortfall in participation fees, but that's technical and
largely inconsequential.

However, you *ARE* asking interesting questions about the interop program
and there has been consideration recently re whether the OFA should fund
anything, how we could change and improve the program, and so on. Those are
the important discussions I said Susan is leading with close support from
Paul Bowden, chair of the IWG.

Re the logo program being out of date and maybe valueless, I can simply say
two things. I know of vendors for whom this *testing* is extremely
important. I view that info as being confidential so as loathsome as it is
to me, I have to ask you to trust me. Notice I'm not making the same claim
for the logo.

Also, this issue has been discussed for years, and the last solid info I
have -- I'll quickly ack it's a few years old -- is OEMs rely on it and
view it as a cost of doing business for component vendors

This has turned out to be a useful discussion. I'm sorry for wasting some
cycles and will quickly say I've learned from it. I hope some of the
background info I supplied helps and I hope this isn't finished

Jim

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 3:44 PM, Fields, Parks M <parks at lanl.gov> wrote:

>
> > I looked at the lasted hardware list from the last plug fest,
> > and honestly, it is pretty thin and largely obsolete. I don't know
> > what value you are seeing here.
>
>
> I have to say that I have been buying IB hardware since beta SDR and I
> have never once looked at the capability list from the plug fest.
>  I have never paid too much attention to the LOGO
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> > I can't imagine any purchaser or integrator getting anything useful
> > from this list. Have you looked at it? OFA just spent a bunch of money
> > to test a NE020. This is an obsolete, unbuyable card with a known
> > broken kernel driver. It is totally absurd that any time at all was
> > spent on this.  The other hardware isn't much better.
> >
> > As a sort of outside observer, it appears to me the hardware
> > vendor member companies do not see enough value in the activity to
> > even donate latest hardware revisions, so I deeply, deeply, question
> > your assertion that it is 'very important and valuable'.
> >
>
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