Open Mainframe Project TAC Meeting - December 10, 2020

Date/Time

Meeting held monthly on the second Thursday of the month unless otherwise stated. Agenda to be posted at https://github.com/openmainframeproject/tac/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22meeting%22

Timezone Date/Time
America/Los_Angeles Thu 10-Dec-2020 09:00 (09:00 AM)
America/Denver Thu 10-Dec-2020 10:00 (10:00 AM)
America/Chicago Thu 10-Dec-2020 11:00 (11:00 AM)
America/New_York Thu 10-Dec-2020 12:00 (12:00 PM)
Europe/London Thu 10-Dec-2020 17:00 (05:00 PM)
Europe/Amsterdam Thu 10-Dec-2020 18:00 (06:00 PM)
Asia/Shanghai Fri 11-Dec-2020 01:00 (01:00 AM)
Asia/Tokyo Fri 11-Dec-2020 02:00 (02:00 AM)

Or in your local time:

All meetings are listed on the Open Mainframe Project calendar at https://lists.openmainframeproject.org/calendar, subject to the mailing lists you are subscribed to.

Conference call details

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://zoom.us/j/290221938

Or iPhone one-tap :

US: +16465588656,,290221938# or +16699006833,,290221938#

Or Telephone:

Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):

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Meeting ID: 290 221 938

International numbers available: https://zoom.us/zoomconference?m=4ywiZErrEEDIHL6VXNjfZ-PXcfjeWMjs

Meeting recordings

Attendance

Voting member rollcall:

  • Phil Tully, ADP
  • Gregory MacKinnon, Broadcom
  • Enyu Wang, IBM
  • Peter Fandel, Rocket Software
  • Mark Post, SUSE
  • James Caffrey, IBM ( ADE )
  • Bob Dahlberg, VCU ( Mentorship )
  • vacant ( Zowe )

Quorum Achieved.

Other Attendees

  • John Mertic
  • Mike Friesenegger
  • Matt Hogstrom - Broadcom
  • Alexander Efremkin - IBM
  • George DeCandio - Broadcom
  • Dan Horák - Red Hat
  • Kip Twitchell - IBM, GenevaERS
  • Mike MacIsaac - ADP
  • Hiren Shah - IBM
  • David Edelsohn - IBM
  • Ingo Adlung - IBM

Agenda

Extracted from meeting-agenda labelled issues and pull requests from openmainframeproject/tac prior to the meeting.

Action Items

Notes

Ambassador Program Update

There are 9 open applications for the Ambassador Program. The goal for year one was to cap the applicants to 10 openings and that the candidates have some tie to projects. Diversity is also one of the goals for the program. An outstanding issue is how to conduct voting.

Greg: Suggested to leave the application process remain open through the end of the year.

John: Next Tac meeting after the new year on the 14th. Perhaps close the day before the next Tac.

Hogstrom: Asked if voting would be on the 14th.

John: No reason why not. Proposes to close at 2359 on January 13th and prepare the list for voting.

Public Cloud z/OS Enabelement - Kip Twitchell

Kip: The new project he is leading has seen the same issue as other OMP projects where there is a lack of access to z/OS instances. Some of the barriers are:

  • Hardware -
  • Systems Programmers -

Suggested to source these resources for these systems. The need is to enable access to real systems so people can learn through experimentation.

This is documented in Tac Issue (blah blah blah)

Things we might need:

  • How can people register for access to the system(s)
  • Need people that can donate system programming skills
  • Knowledge of what can be done that inconsistent with

Hogstrom: Need software licenses from other ISVs

**Kip: **Other software licenses was thought of under the hardware portion of the proposal.

Asked about ZD&T

»»> gd2md-html alert: Definition term(s) ↑↑ missing definition?
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»»>

Kip: That is an option. He thinks that might be too complicated. Other issues are the license server.

Hogstrom: Mentioned the use of Dockerized ZD&T running on River to support interns and other developers to give access. As a PoC showed its possible. More to do.

Dalhberg: Could we identify the list of existing processes and functionality to make sure that we had a way to make it a project.

Kip: Thinking out loud was considering a single (or multiple) shared systems that are multi-tenant versus other individual ones.

Dahlberg: Considering some of the education they are trying to do at VCU sees the same support.

Stowell: Identified there are systems today offered from vendors like IBM.

Kip: That’s one option, it depends on what you’re trying.

Next Steps: Begin a working group to flush this out in more detail.

John: Suggesting a community to build out some infrastructure. Asking Tac to vote on formation. John volunteered to help Kip form the next level of detail.

Updates on Debian

John: Haven’t seen much movement of Debian s390x support.

Ingo: Still looking for feedback from Canonical.

**John: **I’ll try to resurrect the thread.

Terse Compress / Decompress

John: Andrew Rolly has volunteered to be the maintainer. He is based in Australia. Works with Blackhills software.

Greg Suggested to defer renewal until after some time period

Hogstrom Suggested that we pair someone with Andrew and John is looking for volunteers. Hogstrom referred to an issue that occurred in Node about ensuring we know and trust commiters. https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/dk/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/hacker-infects-node-js-package-to-steal-from-bitcoin-wallets

John Asked Ingo to be the “diving buddy” with Andrew.

Enabling Github Actions for OMP Hosted Actions

John: There was a concern about exposing secrets.

Project Updates:

Ambitus

Bostian: One TAC meeting in the last month. Accepted a request to host the ZML tool to generate Python classes from assembler control blocks. There is a new tool to scan mixed byte streams for byte order problems, and swap bytes where needed. This is coming up for the next TSC meeting.

Feilong

Friesenegger: New systems were brought online for the project and they are now ready to encourage developers to contribute.

GenevaERS

Randall: Over the last month they have made progress on the workbench and moved to PostgreSQL.

Attracted 5 new non-IBMers to the group.

Software Discovery Tool

Setting up a new call to get information from the project.

Tessia

**Efremkin: **Weren’t able to complete the press release.

John: More of a general statement but the OMP is pulling together the newsletter for a final push to let people know what is happening across the OMP.

Zorow

Shah: Had some TAC meetings with limited attendance. Looking for how to improve participation.

Mentorship

Dahlberg: Starting to prepare for summer internship. Training for mentees and mentors. Brainstorming session around January 15th to discuss different topics. Bob is looking for 10 topics and a person to lead those discussions. Bob will send out a link after the meeting to help collate these subjects.