X.Org BoD meeting minutes 2020-02-27

[Daniel Vetter]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 7:06 PM Lucas Stach <l.stach at pengutronix.de> wrote:
>
> On Fr, 2020-02-28 at 18:21 +0100, Daniel Vetter 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
> > 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).
>
> Can you point me to the vote? Maybe I'm totally blind, but I can't seem
> to find any vote on those expenses.
>
> The only trace of a rough ballpark figure for gitlab hosting expenses
> was in some board meeting IRC logs [1] where the number of 30k/year was
> floated. Even board members seemed to be surprised by this number.

We've had a few threads on board@ but I checked, and we seem to have
indeed dropped the formal vote on this somehow. Was quite a busy time
with xdc19 papers committee and our favorite xdc20 proposal folding,
plus everyone on vacation.

But that was on my secretary watch and definitely shouldn't have happened :-(

> > 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.
>
> I didn't expect a solid budget, but at least some lump sum approval,
> like we are usually seeing in the meeting summaries for other expenses
> like XDC venue costs, etc.
>
> 30k/year is double the total X.Org expenses for 2018, so I'm really
> surprised to see such large spending flying this low under the radar.

Please note that we've just had a very successful xdc18 with a massive
surplus and opted to double the sponsoring amounts for xdc19 (to
rather great success). So 30k is definitely a lot for the old pre-spi
X.org, but the entire point of the SPI merger was to get sponsors on
board for hard money (not just in-kind donations and stuff), and that
worked out really well. 30k wasn't something we could just pay
forever, but easily something we could pay for a year if Google drops
and we'd need to find someone else.
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch