[RFH] Future direction of the U-Boot project

[Tom Rini]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2025 at 09:08:11AM +0200, Mattijs Korpershoek wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> On Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 16:27, Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hey all,
> >
> > Something I've talked about in release emails earlier this year, and
> > promised a follow-up on but hadn't gotten to yet, was how to manage the
> > project moving forward. The email I made last week about Simon also I
> > believe highlighted some of the problems that we as a project and
> > community face.
> >
> > As a starting point, I want to thank all of the people (and companies)
> > that have been working on the project and doing the less visible but
> > important and expensive things that need doing. DENX has been running
> > much of the project infrastructure since inception. Currently, all of
> > the fast AMD64 build machines are from Simon. Linaro has been providing
> > two of the 3 fast ARM64 build machines (the other is from Simon). Our
> > patchwork project is on OzLabs group. A number of years ago, Simon
> > picked up the u-boot.org domain. There's likely other things I'm
> > unintentionally forgetting here.
> >
> > So, what are the problems I see and would like to get some help and
> > guidance in working on resolving? Well, in a lot of ways it all stems
> > from one root cause. The project was founded on the "BDFL" model,
> > which was quite common at the time, and a relatively reasonable option
> > too.
> >
> > But now? It makes getting resources harder. There are a number of people
> > working in the background now trying to get things donated to the
> > project (thank you, again) but I also know historically it's been a
> > challenge not having some distinct entity for U-Boot. Individual
> > contributions are best done as "I have a server" or similar. Conferences
> > are a strictly individual thing.
> >
> > Then there's the day to day parts of the project. I feel like I
> > shouldn't complain about taking vacations where I just handle pull
> > requests and not patchwork stuff too, or only doing a few things on the
> > weekend. But it also means there's no real way to handle contentious
> > issues other than what I say goes. Which isn't ideal.
> >
> > What to do about it? Well, I've talked with the Software Freedom
> > Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/) (SFC) earlier in the year (and
> > before that, years ago at conferences). There are number of open source
> > and community focused projects that they provide a legal entity for and
> > help with administrative things. I've personally been a fan of what they
> > do, and donated yearly for a long time. I think they would be a good fit
> > for the project because they do this kind of work for a number of other
> > big and important and community centric projects. I would encourage
> > anyone interested to look at their website and look around.
> >
> > But that is something like step two or step three. The first step is
> > that I'm hoping some members of the community would like to formalize
> > helping with the project. SFC can help us with creating some
> > organizational structure for the project itself, but we need a few
> > people to do it. And before we even get that far, help with the mailing
> > list moderation queue and triaging patchwork assignments would be great.
> 
> I'm happy to help with the mailing list moderation queue. I'm in Europe
> timezone.
> I will be away for 2 months (August-Sept). Please reach out to me if you
> think I can help.

Thanks! We've talked off-list but I did want to say something in public.

-- 
Tom
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