X.Org BoD meeting minutes 2020-02-27

[Daniel Vetter]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 1:37 AM Luc Verhaegen <libv at skynet.be> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 03:49:07PM -0500, Lyude Paul wrote:
> >
> > ## Items discussed
> >
> > ITEM: Cloud hosting for freedesktop.org
> > X.org is running out of money, and at the current rate we're losing money we'd
> > need to close CI by May or June this year in order to keep operating. Google
> > offered to hire someone to admin fd.o so long as they get to pick who it is,
> > board votes to approve. Board also votes to approve sending out announcement
> > asking for sponsors onto the mailing lists ASAP.
> > ACTIONS: Daniel Vetter to draft announcement asking for sponsors onto mailing
> > lists.
> > STATUS: Pending
>
> So this was what it was all about then. Money.
>
> I knew there was something fishy when the mighty few of fd.o wanted to
> go down this path.
>
> I had hoped that we would gain transparency and oversight on how fd.o
> was run. To me, and the gitlab conversion of radeonhd was another
> smashing example (one in a long row of sordid actions or... fortunate
> inactions?), there was no increase in transparency or oversight in the
> dealings of fd.o in the year or so that this change was decided.
>
> How much was xorg burning through each year before fd.o?
>
> When this fd.o merge thing was proposed to the xorg members, did we at
> all get told about this extra cost now falling onto the x.org
> foundation? Did we get told about the extent of these costs?
>
> Pretty f-ing shameless stuff.

Seriously no.

The _entire_ growth here happened under the X.org's boards overwatch,
roughly in the past year. fd.o had a budget of roughly zero (including
when we started gitlab.fd.o) with quite considerable financial
reserves.
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch