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

On August 7, 2026 6:09:05 AM PDT, James Bottomley <[email protected]> wrote:
>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
>
>

I think it is worth in all of this to consider the following somewhat bigger question: what are the things (not just events) that we cannot expect to be individually sponsor-covered in the long run? 

The whole mission of the LF is to provide funding for exactly these things through aggregate fundraising. 

To me, that comes in a few buckets: ongoing infrastructure (e.g. kernel.org), fellowships for senior architects like Linus and Greg, funding projects that are highly critical but not "glamourous", and urgent assistance (legal and financial) for members in the larger community when either something catastrophic happens (e.g. the xz disaster) or there is a brief opportunity window (we had a few day window for getting sparse relicensed; I had reached out to LF for legal assistance but never even heard back. In the end we had to wing it without any legal help.)