Thank you, and welcome to my presentation.
AppStream collaboration and Linux distribution collaboration is very excluded.
In my case, I'm representing two projects, OpenSUSE, where I'm a member and a representative,
and then the OpenMainframe project, where I'm leading the Linux distribution working
group with the most important Linux distribution included, who are running on the mainframe
I'm Sara Krisch, 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 AppStream projects at the moment,
and what we want to achieve, and I want to receive a little bit feedback in the Q&A session,
how you as OpenSUSE projects want to be included in such architecture specific working groups
or collaboration projects, then about myself a little bit, I'm an OpenSUSE contributor
since around 10 years, and I'm 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 OpenSUSE,
I wrote my bachelor phases at IBM, and afterwards I became a DevOps consultant at Accenture,
I'm also allowed to contribute a little bit to OpenSUSE 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 he 16 system on the right side, that mainframes are a large
high performance computer systems and are also called big engines, 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 such a system, and such systems are used for mission critical
data, for banking services, and everything else, and you can run thousands of VMs on
such a system, the open mainframe project is a 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, cobalt 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 also, and besides
of that we have got also a cobalt working group and 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, Open SUSE and Fedora, SUSE is our sponsor of the Linux distribution working group,
and then also Rocky Linux and IMA Linux have joined forward, our structure, Elisabeth and I,
we had the idea to found this Linux distribution working group at IBM C-Day 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 yes SUSE said
we want to sponsor it, our goals are creating a place for collaboration across Linux distributions,
we are the open mainframe project, mailing list, the wiki and the chat, then we wanted to provide
a space for distributions to request for help on their S390X ports, 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, Debian 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 when I said I want to have better support from IBM to fix S390X specific bugs, we have
got the distinguished engineer Ulrich Weigern included here for that, and therefore we are
collaborating via the mailing list with him and our meeting sessions. When our collaborative
process is in the first step, the problem discussions on the mailing list, if anything is
happening, we can discuss the problems, we can reproduce issues sometimes in our Linux
distributions, discuss it on the mailing list, and then we are forwarding issues and ideas of
improvements for IBM that will be forwarded when 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 the 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,
where there is an exchange between these 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
S390 specific problems, we share our knowledge between the communities equal to here, we have
got one deaf room together and 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 one open source software
community cloud, you can receive VMs on the Linux one systems, that is also our mainframe
for Linux configuration, that is sponsored by IBM in the United States, and the Linux one
community cloud provides 120 days for a single open source contributors with free access,
you are receiving less Ubuntu 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 a slas 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 all ready developers at IBM who are contributing as maintainers and
they can interact directly on our issues and bug reports, but there are many other projects in
Linux included, not only the kernel, not only toolchain 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 and 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 390X specific bugs and the maintainers are interacting.
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, what I have created an issue last month because of the
390X enablement which was not working, I created on GitHub my issue, the developer tried to fix it
and said, I don't know how to fix it, I don't know 390X 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 at 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 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 the strategic open source projects, which is a little bit funny,
but in any way they have got their strategic projects, the 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 is our wiki link of the open
mainframe project with the Linux distribution working 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, we are also our distribution collaboration mailing lists available now, two weeks ago we
have received an email, there is one from the kernel, then I have seen there is something for
security topics, there is 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, nothing?
Yeah, by the way, your consistent branding across the various sub-projects that you had
on the other slide, I just want to compliment it, it is really nice, like their way they
are all using the same palette, sorry I didn't mean to mess up your slide system, you mean
TCC and everything else, no, the various things under the open mainframe group, we have lost
the slides now though, anyway, yes, I think that is super cool, I love it, so the distributions
you had in there, I noticed you had Fedora in there and I saw Red Hat mentioned, is that
mean Raoul is involved or?
Yes, Red is also involved, if we want to give something forward to Red Hat, I am for open
mainframe group, we have the
Why is it not
creating energy?
Why does it not share it?
And here we have got something about our Linux distributions with all information about
our architecture, specific mailing lists and everything else, and who is responsible
for what.
Dan is listed here, Opensuzer is listed here, but I am responsible for the distributions.
RockyLinux is listed here with Luis Arbel and Mustafa Gessen.
And when we have got also our meeting session side where you are receiving an overview who
is attending our meetings, therefore here you can see also the Debian responsible person,
Deepak Zope, Nikolai is when you guys from Suser responsible for S390X who is joining
our sessions.
David Edelssohn is the CTO for Opensource at IBM, Ulrich Weigand is the Distinguished
Engineer for Opensource and Linux, who for these persons are mostly the default persons
joining us, Dan is only listed for Fedora because he has joined as a Fedora representative,
but he is also responsible for S390X at Red Hat as a default.
I was just, I am with CentOS project and we sit kind of midstream between Fedora and
RAL, so I am just wondering like, you know, should we be getting involved or is it enough
that we have Fedora involved, so, I will talk to our Fedora for a second.
Yes, my wish was as a default, two different persons because we have also separated Opensuzer
and Suser 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 am also from Red Hat,
okay, when you are for both.
We are open to have an additional person from Red Hat, but in general.
Okay, I will forward it.
Yes, if we have got from every distribution one person, why not?
As an upstream maintainer, if you want to support S390, what will be the best way to
kind of do it?
So could we just document some contact points for your group, so we can say like, if we
have some issues with supporting the S390 architecture, I can just, I will 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 would be for our 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.
But they don't know the whole module things, that is the problem, therefore, forward the
issues and problems and when you are receiving the support.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Any further questions?
Ben, we have.
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.