X.Org BoD meeting minutes 2020-02-27

[Daniel Vetter]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 6:21 PM Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter at ffwll.ch> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 11:46 AM Lucas Stach <l.stach at pengutronix.de> wrote:
> >
> > On Fr, 2020-02-28 at 08:39 +0100, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
> > The main problem here is the entire lack of transparency. How much did
> > the fd.o merger contribute to the X.Org foundation reserves? Where was
> > the decision made how to use those funds?
>
> Super rough sketch, from the top of my head, I didn't check the
> numbers but should be roughly accurate. Back when I started on the
> board we had about 30k funds. Iirc fd.o brought in something around
> 10k. Current (Jan this year, Feb hasn't ended yet) balance is 75k.
>
> So we've very much sunk the ship the past few years, I do think the

_not_ sunk the ship ofc :-)

> board has been rather financially responsible. Before this fd.o thread
> here the most common critique I've actually heard is people being
> unhappy with us hoarding too much money, but the board made clear
> decisions to keep sufficient amounts of cash reserves in case sponsors
> suddenly disappear, or something else unplanned happened.
>
> The other bit to keep in mind is that the real growth in fd.o only
> really started in Oct/Nov last year, and was for a bit hidden by
> Google's donation of 30k credits. Combine that with everyone's just a
> volunteer it took us maybe 1-2 months longer to realize the current
> burn rate than if we'd have professional staff and admins. It happens,
> but since we know we're volunteers and so something things take
> longer, that's why we have the hefty cash flow reserve after all.
>
> Also note that the limit we've set is a bit short of 50k, That'll be
> plenty enough to run X.org (with fd.o and XDC) for quite a while even
> if suddenly all sponsors disappear too.
>
> > I'm totally on-board with the X.Org foundation sponsoring and thus
> > providing solid hosting for the projects on fd.o, it just seems to me
> > that there was no discussion about the amount of money X.Org is willing
> > to spend on this (at least I don't remember any board voting on this).
> > Currently it seems that the fd.o hosting is kind of a "whatever it
> > costs to keep things running" expense.
>
> Iirc we've lump sum approved all existing fd.o expenses and running
> operations after the merger, and gitlab was on there already (in the
> relevant board@ threads at least). But yeah we've not done a proper
> budget, like we've pretty much never done any solid budgeting for
> anything ever - we where small enough for that to really not matter.
> But solid budgeting for hosting needs solid data about usage, which
> means we need to have admins work on improved logging and analysis.
> Which brings us back that it's all volunteer run, so will be slow
> going to get there. But we're working on it.
> -Daniel
> --
> Daniel Vetter
> Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
> +41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch



-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch