Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Time to call it quits for the maintainer summit?

On Fri, 2026-08-07 at 15:58 +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 06, 2026 at 11:34:09AM -0400, James Bottomley wrote:
> > What got me thinking about this is the obvious funding problem: MS
> > is free to attendees, but only had one sponsor in 2024, none in
> > 2025 and is on track to have none this year.
> 
> The sponsorship prospectus ([1]) indicates that the "attendee gift"
> category is sold out, does it mean one sponsor signed up ?

The LF paid for the attendee gift last year. Since they have to be
ordered some way ahead of the conference I'd guess the same is true
this year.

[...]
> The maintainer summit is limited to 30 guests, plus up to 7 sponsored
> attendee according to [1]. Assuming neither Linus nor the program
> committee are counted as guests, that would be 43 people in total, so
> a rough cost of $2500 per person for one day. 

I take it you've never seen the bill for attending a USENIX (or a lot
of other) one day events.

> I understand that hosting events in large venues is expensive, but if
> the maintainer summit is an invite-only, separate event, would it be
> an option to drastically cut costs by hosting it in a nearby but
> separate location ?

Is there any point wittering about your speculated numbers vs mine? 
The bottom line is there is a cost and someone has to pay it if there
are no sponsors.

Regards,

James