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Upstream Collaboration and Linux Distributions Collaboration - Is that excluded?

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Upstream Collaboration and Linux Distributions Collaboration - Is that excluded?
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The Linux Distributions Working Group @ The Open Mainframe Project
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542
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CC Attribution 2.0 Belgium:
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Debian, openSUSE and Fedora have founded together the Linux Distributions Working Group at the Open Mainframe Project for achieving better support for the mainframe architecture s390x and collaboration for providing solutions. That has been such success, that SUSE, Red Hat, Canonical (Ubuntu), AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux have joint also. The question has poppeed up, whether we should be restrictly open only for all Linux Distributions or should we include also important upstream projects in our Linux Distributions Working Group. In this presentation we will represent the existing benetif for all Linux distributions and go into detail, which (base) upstream projects should be included/invited and why. Finally, we want to receive feedback during the Q&A session with a discussion, how we should proceed with this idea.
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
Thank you, welcome to my presentation. Upstream collaboration and Linux distribution collaboration is well-excluded. In my case, I am representing two projects, OpenSUSE, where I am a member and a representative, and then the OpenMainframe project,
where I am leading the Linux distribution working group with the most important Linux distribution included, who are running on the mainframe. I'm Sarah Kriege, and my agenda is first something about myself, how I came to this topic,
then you should receive a short introduction about the mainframes and the OpenMainframe project, what that is, and what we are providing, then why we have founded the Linux distribution working group, from that we are coming to the topic of the reason why we wanted to collaborate.
And in the last step, I want to tell how we are including upstream projects at the moment, and what we want to achieve. And I want to receive a little bit of feedback in the Q&A session, how you, as open source projects, want to be included in such architecture-specific working
groups or collaboration projects, then. About myself a little bit, I'm an open source contributor since around 10 years, and I am also a member of a release engineering team, and I'm responsible for the S390x architecture,
therefore I'm also the team lead for S390x at open source. I wrote my bachelor thesis at IBM, and afterwards I became a DevOps consultant at Accenture. I'm also allowed to contribute a little bit to open source via my job. But anyway, I had this idea then to found the Linux
distribution working group, and I am with that also the co-chair of this Linux distribution working group. Mainframes, perhaps not everybody knows them. That is the latest, is his 16 system on the right side, that mainframes are large high performance computer systems
and are also called big Indians. The architecture behind IBM C is the S390x architecture. The x came at the end for the 64-bit architecture, which is also included in Satra's system.
And Satra's systems are used for mission critical data, for banking services, and everything else. And you can run thousands of PMs on Satra's system. The open mainframe project is an open hardware project for the mainframe, and it has been funded in the year 2015.
And this project is under the hood of the Linux Foundation and should have the focal point for deployments and the usage of Linux and open source in a mainframe computing environment. Therefore, we have got multiple mainframe-centric projects where I will not explain all the projects because the time is
a little bit missing. But we have got also a mentorship program included. Google, perhaps some have known before, but most projects are more COS-based. Therefore, it is no surprise that we have funded
our Linux distribution working group inside of this open mainframe project. And besides of that, we have also a COBOL working group and a COS-enablement working group. COS is an alternative operating by IBM and a little bit commercial, but IBM
is working on it to provide also open source projects for that. Here we can see a little bit the overview of all included Linux distributions SUSE, Red Hat, and Ubuntu have joined after the community Linux
distributions with Debian, OpenSUSE, and Fedora. SUSE is our sponsor of the Linux distribution working group and when also Rocky Linux and AIMA Linux have joined forwards. Our structure, Elizabeth and I, we had the idea to found this Linux distribution working
group at the IBM CDE two years ago. And then we said we don't want to have it only for one or two Linux distributions. We want to have it for all that we can achieve better support and better collaboration between all
of them. Then we said we want to have a minimum of one representative for every Linux distribution that is required for the input from the distribution side. And guess who says that we want to sponsor it. Our goals are creating a place for collaboration
across Linux distributions via the open mainframe project, mailing list, the wiki, and the chat. Then we wanted to provide a space for distributions to request for help via S390 exports. If there is something not working or anything else
like that. And then we had also the goal to ensure any and all infrastructure required should be available for supporting the ports. Therefore, you can request hardware and everything else. Dejan has got his own mainframe as an example.
You can request support from the Linux one community cloud. I have got also a slide about that included. And then I said I want to have better support from IBM to fix S390x specific bugs. We have got the distinguished engineer, Ulrich Weigen,
included here for that. And therefore, we are collaborating via the mailing list with him and our meeting sessions then. Our collaborative process is in the first step of the problem discussions on the mailing list. If anything is happening, we can discuss the problems.
We can reproduce issues sometimes in other Linux distributions, discuss it on the mailing list. And then we are forwarding issues and ideas of improvements for IBM that will be forwarded internally. And then we have got also monthly meetings
for half an hour every month. That is more come together with a review of what has happened in one month and what are the next steps, any other problems or any other news. And then we are sharing our knowledge also in this half an hour time.
This collaboration is also a benefit for all. With that, upstream contributions are available for all. That is lowering all the research and development costs because we have got our point of contact. We are, that is an exchange between distributions.
We can come faster forward. And that is a benefit for IBM and the community. Additionally, we have got the same solutions for our Linux distributions. We can use the patches from Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, share it, bring it upstream, test it together.
And with that, we have got also the same solutions for S390X-specific problems. We share our knowledge between the communities. Equal to here, we have got one deaf room together and are sharing our knowledge here. That is also in our working group available.
Then we are increasing a little bit also innovation. We have got diverse community ideas. We can bring it together and can forward it and bring the latest technologies into our Linux distributions.
And with that, we are accelerating also the Linux development for S390X. From that, if we are working together, I would say we can achieve more together than alone. And that is also the reason that IBM is providing
the Linux 1 Open Source software community cloud. You can receive VMs on Linux 1 systems. That is also a mainframe for Linux configuration that is sponsored by IBM in the United States. And the Linux 1 community cloud provides 120 days for single open source contributors.
With the free access, you are receiving Slack or Ubuntu there. And then we are providing also long-term access for open source projects. In our case, we have got five VMs for open source available and we maintain it for our own.
We have upgraded Slack to open source on that. And with that, we can develop also an open source foundation. With that, we are coming to the idea to include the upstream projects. It is easy to include base projects
like the Linux kernel compilers like GCC or KVM because we have got already developers at IBM who are contributing as maintainers and they can interact directly on our issues and back reports.
But there are many other projects in Linux included. Not only the kernel, not only tool train and everything else. We are receiving new programming languages. We are using the latest databases or anything else. The Linux world is really wide.
This is an example how we have done that in the GCC bug tracker. We can create a bug report that is arriving and then Andreas Krebel, as an example, an IBM developer is interacting on it
and analyzing it and creates a fix. The process at GCC is upstream bug report. IBM maintainers are receiving all S390X-specific bugs and the maintainers are interacting. The one hint in this direction,
these developers are also open for joining our Linux distribution working group for discussions. But from our point of view, that is not enough because there are many other projects. An example is Core, where I have created an issue last month
because of the S390X enablement, which was not working. I created on GitHub my issue. The developer tried to fix it and said, mm, I don't know how to fix it. I don't know S390X-specific things.
I asked when should I forward it to IBM? Yes, please! I wrote my email to the mailing list. Ulrich Weigand, the distinguished engineer, has interacted when news directly, that is the problem, add it, and it has been working.
But such a process is a little bit longer and requires us as Linux distribution maintainers in this case. Should we include such project also with invitations to our mailing list, or is this our responsibility
to forward that from the upstream project to IBM then? That is a question there. The reasons for such required forwarding is that there are so many open source projects everywhere.
IBM does not know all the Linux-integrated software and latest technologies, especially the new ones, and most IBM maintainers are only available for the base projects, which are called their strategic open source projects,
which is a bit funny, but in any way, they have got their strategic projects, their maintainers are working on that, and that's it, if anything new is coming in, they have to find someone responsible new for that one.
And yes, we, the Linux distribution maintainers, know our requirements, and what we want to include as the latest technologies, therefore we want to achieve a new connection between IBM and upstream projects, what is missing at the moment.
If you are interested for joining us as an upstream project or anything else, we are open for that now, here's our wiki link of the open mainframe project with the Linux distribution blocking group, then we have got our mailing list and our meeting sessions on Zoom every second Tuesday,
the invitations are coming via the mailing list, and now I want to use the rest of the time for discussions, how do you want to become involved into such architecture-specific working groups
as an upstream project? One hint, there are also other distribution collaboration mailing lists available now, two weeks ago, we have received an email, one from the kernel,
then I have seen there's something for security topics, there's also for ARM architecture by Linaro, I believe, one collaboration mailing list, something like that exists already, but what is your expectation and how do you want to be included if you have got problems
with architecture-specific problems? Have you got any wishes? Ben, say here.
I'm curious, you had a list of the distributions.
Yeah. Oh, by the way, your consistent branding across the various sub-projects that you had on the other slide is, I just want to compliment it, it's really nice, like the way they're all using the same palette and the... Wait, that's better. Sorry, I didn't mean to mess up your slide system. It seems I have got, you mean PCC and everything else?
No, no, no, the various things under the open mainframe group. Ah, the working group over mainframe centricity. Yeah, we've lost the slides now though. Anyway. Yes, I think that's super cool, I love it.
So the distributions you had in there, so I noticed you had Fedora in there, and I saw Red Hat mentioned, so does that mean RHEL is involved, or? We have got one person for Fedora and Red Hat, that is Dan Horak. Okay.
That is one person for both. We have for Yes, that is also involved if we want to give something forward to Red Hat when Dan Horak is our person. I am for open SUSE available. SUSE has got Mark Post continuously,
who is retiring at the moment, and that is the reason that we have got two persons from SUSE, that the follower will receive this introduction related S390x via. Then we have got one person from Debian,
and perhaps I should go into our wiki page, but we are receiving a better overview there.
Here we have got something about our Linux distributions with all information about our architecture, specific mailing lists and everything,
and who is responsible for what. Dan is listed here, open SUSE is listed here, but I am responsible for distributions. Oki Linux is listed here, with Luis Abe and Mustafa Gessen,
and then we have got also our meeting session site, where you are receiving an overview with attending our meetings. Therefore here you can see also the other responsible person, Deepak Sope. Nikolai is the new guy from SUSE, responsible for S390x, who is joining our sessions.
David Edelsohn is the CTO for open source by IBM. Ulrich Weigand is the distinguished engineer for open source and Linux. Therefore, these persons are mostly the four persons joining us.
Dan is only listed for Fedora, because he has joined as a Fedora representative, but he's also responsible for S390x at Red Hat, as a default. Cool, I was just, I'm with CentOS Project, and we sit kind of midstream between Fedora and RAL,
and so I'm just wondering, should we be getting involved, or is it enough that we have Fedora involved? So I'll talk to our Fedora person. Yes, my wish was, as a default, two different persons, because we have also separated open source and SUSE in our case.
I asked multiple times at Red Hat, can we receive an additional person? Yes, I will forward it, and nothing has happened, and when Dan said, I'm also from Red Hat, okay, then you are for both. So we are open to have an additional person from Red Hat,
but in general. Okay, I will forward it. Redistribution one person, why not?
So as an, like, a stream maintainer, if you want to support X390,
like, what will be the best way to kind of do it? So could we just document, like, some contact points for, like, your group? So, like, we can see, we can say, like, if we have some issues with supporting the X390 architecture,
I can just, I'll say if we can fix it ourselves, try to follow up with your working group. Yes, that's our goal, what we want to provide. As a first step, we have got our mailing list.
If you have got any problems or anything else, you can write to us, and we will look how we can support you. Okay, so. All the IBM people who are required are also on this mailing list, and they interact closed into two hours, or something like that, on the issues which are coming in,
and therefore, that's our first step how we want to include you. We are also open to include you in our meeting sessions then, but that would be the first step how we can include you. Okay, so the preferred, I guess, point of contact for you will be,
for example, our internal development documentation. It depends on which upstream project you are. Which one is that? For example, Python. That is Python. When Python, I expect there should be also a point of contact upstream from IBM.
Yeah, yeah, there are the ways. But they don't know the whole module things. Exactly. That is the problem. Therefore, forward the issues and problems, and then you are receiving the support. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense.
Are there any further questions? There's perhaps two minutes. It seems the people from the next session are joining now. Thank you that you have joined my presentation.
Awesome, thank you.