Plaintext
The seL4® Foundation
FOUNDATION
https://sel4.systems/Foundation
Minutes of the 5th Meeting of the seL4 Board
21:00 on 2021-06-09 UTC
By Zoom
Members present
• Gernot Heiser (GH) – Chair
• June Andronick (JA)
• David Hardin (DH)
• Sascha Kegreiß (SK)
• Gerwin Klein (GK)
The meeting commenced at 21:00 on 2021-06-09 UTC.
1. Confirmation of minutes of previous meeting
RESOLVED: The minutes of the 4th meeting, of 2021-04-13 UTC, are confirmed.
2. Matters arising from minutes of previous meetings
• 210413: see Agenda item 6: Develop endorsement scheme
3. Update from the Chair
Members noted the chair’s update, including:
• $30k donation from Ghost Locomotion
• CSIRO’s decision to abandon the Trustworthy Systems Group:
– strong community reaction and support
– resulting in significant new membership applications, incl 2 Premium
– potential for significant R&D funding beyond that, on-going negotiations,
automotive focus
– UNSW offer to keep team funded to the end of the year is a critical enabler
– discussions on transfer of seL4 projects contracted to Data61
• JA appointed as CEO, as approved at previous meeting
• UNSW services agreement still under negotiation with LF
• No news on TM applications
• New member: Kry10
• Generally much increased community engagement
4. Update from the TSC Chair and matters arising
Copyright © 2021 seL4 Project a Series of LF Projects, LLC.
Distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License.
seL4 is a trademark of LF Projects, LLC.
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GK briefed the Board on:
• next seL4 release to happen within days
– some delay due to high community activity, many recent contribution
– also CI infrastructure in transition from CSIRO to UNSW, resulting in reduced
ability to test changes prior to committing
– Kent McLeod (Kry10) and Axel Heider (HENSOLDT Cyber) standing out in
commenting on and approving many pull requests
• 2 new Committers appointed:
– Axel Heider (HENSOLDT Cyber)
– Yanyan Shen (Cog Systems)
• CI infrastructure to move completely to UNSW, requires Foundation funding, will
further open access to infrastructure
• Maintaining access to the LF crowdfunding platform requires achieving LF’s Best
Practices Badge
– most requirements in place already, except vulnerability reporting and running
static analysis on each release
SK suggested encrypted email channel for vulnerability reporting, as required by German
authorities. SK also offered HENSOLDT Cyber’s help with setting up static analysis.
5. Budget
The proposed budget for FY21 was discussed, see attachment. The budget approved
by the previous Board Meeting needs revision for two reasons:
• Aligning the Foundation’s financial year with the calendar year, as requested by LF;
this meaning that this year’s budget only covers the 9 months April-December.
• Membership growth seems much stronger than anticipated. This increases the
available budget as well as the membership’s expectation on support.
The budget contains highlighted items for approval conditional on additional revenue
becoming available through the membership applications currently in the sign-off stage.
Declarations of interest:
• GH declared a conflict of interest in items marked with note (1).
• JA declared an interest in items marked with note (2) and (3).
• GK declared an interest in items marked with note (3).
RESOLVED: The FY2021 budget is approved as proposed, with approval of highlighted
expenses subject to extra revenue materialising. GH will notify the board once this
happens.
Members discussed strategic use of as-yet unbudgeted revenue (to be approved by a
future meeting of the Board). Items raised were:
• Admin support;
• Approachable documentation, explaining not only the how but also the why and
overall philosophy. The Rust book is a good example.
6. Endorsement of services and products
Interim endorsements were done by TS staff. In order to scale to a proper endorsement
scheme, community participation is needed. Members discussed ways to incentivise as
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well as the process. An unbiased, open process is essential.
RESOLVED: The TSC is to propose a model for endorsements.
7. Future meetings
Future meetings will be held on demand, most likely driven by the need to revise the
budget if available funds increase. The meetings may be held by zoom or email.
8. AOB
Nothing raised under this item.
The meeting closed at 22:05 UTC.
ACTION SUMMARY
From Item Owner Status Action
21-04-13 9 CC TBD Develop endorsement scheme for services and
products
Meeting Attendance
Current financial year, starting 2021-04-01:
Name Eligible Attended
Gernot Heiser 2 2
June Andronick 2 2
David Hardin 2 2
Sascha Kegreiß 2 2
Gerwin Klein 2 2
Acronyms
TS The Trustworthy Systems research group at CSIRO’s Data61 and UNSW Sydney
LF The Linux® Foundation
TSC The Technical Steering Committee of the seL4 Foundation
CC The Compliance Committee of the seL4 Foundation
OC The Outreach Committee of the seL4 Foundation
MC The Marketing Committee of the seL4 Foundation
ATTACHMENTS: Budget on next page
Signed as a true record
2021-10-07
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Budget
highlighted items are for conditional approval
subject to revenue increase
Board Meeting dates Budget adjusted the period Apr-Dec 2021
Income:
Carry-over from previous year ($ 33,491)
Income to date this year ($ 40,950)
Income forecast ($ 187,460)
Total available now ($ 74,441)
Total available to end of year (forecast) ($ 261,901)
Approved Proposed
Expenses: budget Spent budget Note Comments
Legal (TM) ($ 5,152) ($ 1,985) ($ 10,000) higher than anticipated
Mail hosting ($ 100) ($ 45) ($ 540) reflecting actual payments
HW for native web server ($ 2,000) ($ - ) ($ 2,000)
Contingency ($ 2,000) ($ - ) ($ 2,000)
CI hardware ($ 5,000) ($ - ) ($ 5,000)
Infrastructure (hardware) setup (1pm senior staff) ($ 16,000) ($ - ) ($ 16,000) (1)
Infrastructure support (0.1 senior FTE) ($ 16,000) ($ - ) ($ 10,000) (1) FY adjustment
seL4 community support (0.2 junior FTE) ($ 19,000) ($ - ) ($ 13,000) (1) FY adjustment
CEO part-time (6 months 0.2 FTE) ($ 20,000) ($ - ) ($ 20,000) (2)
Infrastructure (software) (2 weeks senior staff) ($ 10,000) (3) new
additional infrastructure support ($ 10,000) (1) increase from 0.1 to 0.2 FTE
additional community support ($ 20,000) (1) increase from 0.2 to 0.5 FTE
additonal provision for legal (TM) ($ 5,000) increase from $10k to $15k
additional provision for contingency ($ 3,000) increase from $2k to $5k
Total to be approved ($ 85,252) ($ 2,030) ($ 75,540)
Total to be conditionally approved ($ 123,540)
Notes
(1) UNSW staff
(2) June Andronick
(3) Gerwin Klein