Merge pull request #85 from scala/minutes-march-2019

March 2019 advisory board minutes

Author: SethTisue

minutes/2019/03/06/2019-03-06-march-6-2019.pdf

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+# Minutes of the 12th meeting of the Scala Center, Q1 2019
+
+Minutes are [archived](https://scala.epfl.ch/records.html) on the
+Scala Center website.
+
+## Summary
+
+The following agenda was distributed to attendees:
+[agenda](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/master/agendas/012-2019-q1.md).
+
+Rob Norris is the new community representative, replacing Lars Hupel.
+(Bill Venners continues as the other community representative.)
+
+Scala Center activities for the past quarter focused on
+Coursier, Bloop, MOOCs, documentation, Metals, mdoc,
+Scala.js, SIP meetings for Scala 3, and Scala Days 2019.
+
+Full details on these activities are in
+[Sébastien's report](../2019-03-06-march-6-2019.pdf).
+
+The main additional topic discussed at the meeting was the question of
+allowing board members to contribute engineering effort directly
+instead of funds.  Sentiment on the board is generally positive; the
+change in still in process with EPFL legal and with a prospective new
+member.
+
+No new proposals were made this quarter.
+
+## Date, Time and Location
+
+The meeting took place virtually on Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 4:30pm
+(UTC).
+
+Minutes were taken by Seth Tisue (secretary).
+
+## Attendees
+
+Board members present:
+
+* James Belsey, Morgan Stanley
+* Stu Hood, Twitter
+* Rob Norris, community/Typelevel
+* Olga Makhasoeva, 47 Degrees
+* Adriaan Moors, Lightbend
+* Jonathan Perry, Goldman Sachs
+* Frederick Reiss, IBM
+* Julien Tournay, Spotify
+* Bill Venners, community/Artima
+
+Apologies:
+
+* Thomas Gawlitza, SAP
+
+Officers:
+
+* Sébastien Doeraene (director), EPFL
+* Jon Pretty (chairperson), Propensive
+* Martin Odersky (technical advisor), EPFL
+* Seth Tisue (secretary), Lightbend
+
+## Proceedings
+
+As chairperson, Jon Pretty conducted the meeting.
+
+### Community representative
+
+The meeting began with a vote to approve the Rob Norris as the new
+community representative.
+
+Seb explained that the nomination arose as the outcome of discussions
+among "the whole Scala Center", as well as discussion at the December
+meeting.  Then, Rob was voted in by the board. (Jon stopped the vote
+once the necessary number of votes were in.)
+
+After the vote, Rob joined the meeting and introduced himself.  "I've
+been using Scala for about ten years, and I've been involved in the
+community and speaking at conferences for the last five or six
+years. [...] I spend a lot of time talking to [Scala] beginners, as
+well as advanced users."  See separate [blog
+post](https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2019/03/18/announcing-new-community-representative.html)
+for further information on Rob's background and professional
+affiliations.
+
+### Activities
+
+As the Center's Executive Director, Sébastien Doeraene summarized
+Scala Center activities since the last meeting.
+
+Most of Seb's remarks were based on his [detailed report](../2019-03-06-march-6-2019.pdf)
+on the Center's recent activities.  The following notes are a
+supplement to Sébastien's report.
+
+He began by saying that the report has be redesigned to be more
+integrated, an group effort.  He invites feedback on the new format.
+
+The Coursier work (on
+[SCP-020](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/master/proposals/020-sbt-transitive-dependencies-conflicts.md))
+is progressing well, but isn't complete yet.
+
+The main Bloop highlight is faster incremental and no-op compiles,
+especially for complex builds.
+
+The trial of EdX as a MOOC platform began in January with the new
+Programming Reactive Systems course. Results are still preliminary,
+but "it looks like it's gaining as much traction as the other
+courses".  Firmer conclusions will be possible in a few more months.
+
+Metals is "not shipped yet, but almost" (but has users already,
+regardless).  Code completion support will be in soon, at which point
+it will be "a viable alternative" IDE experience, in Seb's view.
+
+For Scala Days 2019, platinum sponsorships are all signed and a number
+of gold sponsorships are lined up, with more coming.  The conference
+schedule has now been announced.  15% of tickets sold in less than
+two weeks, which is very promising.
+
+### Financial report
+
+(Note that the USD/CHF exchange rate is currently very nearly 1-to-1.)
+
+"We got the rough results from the fourth quarter of our MOOCs for
+2018... We took in CHF 96K total," but it isn't known yet exactly how
+much of that money will actually come to the Scala Center.  This is
+"slightly lower than our usual income for the MOOCs, we're not really
+sure why, but we hope that the new course will of course change the
+direction."
+
+The board continues with eight full members, for CHF 400K/year total
+income.  Payroll outlay is currently only around CHF 300K, so the
+Center is hiring and is actively interviewing candidates.  "If you
+know people who would like to work at the Scala Center, send them
+my way," said Seb.
+
+### Community feedback
+
+Bill said, "I've always had a hard time getting people to tell me
+what their pain points are. I'm supposed to represent the community,
+but people don't complain [to me] very much. So I came up with an idea
+that is actually working, which is that I give free lunch-and-learns,
+where I have slides to talk about what's in Dotty and so on, and ask
+about pain points."  These are usually "the usual suspects".  "Upgrade
+is always mentioned as a pain point.  Upgrading to new versions of
+Scala can be hard.  Upgrading is something very practical that
+everyone faces.  Not just from Scala 2 to Scala 3, but in general."
+
+Seb broadened the topic a bit to include library upgrades as well as
+Scala upgrades.  He mentioned that the Scala website does offer advice
+for library authors on this.  Rob says that library compatibility is a
+frequent subject of discussion within Typelevel; Cats, for example,
+has a guide on this.  Could standards around this be more standardized
+and publicized?  The advent of TASTy may change the picture, though
+broadly, Seb said, "just replace binary compatibility with TASTy
+compatibility".
+
+On another subject, Rob emphasized "how excited everyone is about
+Metals and how pleased everybody is about how it's coming along.  I
+ran into a lot of people who are using it and very excited about it"
+and the technologies it's based on, such as Scalameta and Bloop.  Seb
+promised to pass that on to the team, especially Olaf and Jorge.
+
+### Proposals
+
+No proposals were received this quarter.
+
+### Other business
+
+### Contributor members
+
+As already mentioned at the [previous
+meeting](https://scala.epfl.ch/minutes/2018/12/05/december-5-2018.html),
+there is an open possibility of allowing prospective board members to
+participate by contributing engineering effort directly, instead of
+primarily contributing funds.  Seb has been in discussions with one
+prospective board member interested in this arrangement.  But Seb
+emphasized that this won't go forward unless the board approves.
+
+Seb also observed that "affiliate members" (at the lower CHF 15K
+funding level, but without voting rights) have so far been rare.  So
+the idea is to introduce a "contributor" membership, where the member
+would provide a full-time engineer or equivalent.  This would be known
+as a "contributor" membership.  Initially this would be without voting
+rights, but if the right legal arrangement can be drafted and cleared,
+this could eventually lead to full membership with voting rights.
+
+Jon explains: "Initially, the anticipation was that we would be
+getting sponsors who had sufficient financial resources to spare 50K
+CHF/year to be on the board. But for some companies, it's easier to
+provide a full time engineer, say a company in Poland for example,
+versus a bank in London or a Silicon Valley company.  So I would frame
+this as accommodating forms of payment that work better for
+differently sized and differently located companies."
+
+James asked for clarification on the timetable of eventually granting
+voting rights.  Seb said "right now no, the regulations don't allow
+it", but the hope is to change that, it's "obvious" for "fairness".
+But making the change requires clearing it first with EPFL's lawyers,
+then presumably also with board members' own legal departments.
+
+James also asked about control: "Do they get to choose what they work
+on, or are going to dictate to them what they work on?"  Seb said it
+would be a "common agreement".
+
+Of course, as Jon observes, the agreement for existing members doesn't
+involve either the board dictating, or the Center dictating.  The
+board makes recommendations; the Center then chooses what to work on,
+but can't disregard recommendations too much, if they want to keep the
+board satisfied.
+
+Seb said that they're still drafting wording around this question.  He
+expects there will be "a provision that we evaluate their work, and we
+if we aren't satisfied with it for two months in a row, or something
+like like that, then their contributor membership is in jeopardy."
+
+Seb said the Center has so far identified two projects that would be
+good choices for this kind of effort sharing: the Dotty IDE, and TASTy
+support in Scala 2 ([SCP-018](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/master/proposals/018-converging-214-30.md)).
+
+Stu suggested delaying granting voting rights until after "a minimum
+level of [engineer] contribution" has already been reached.  Fred
+suggested building in some structure around how contributor members
+get invited, before the trial period begins.
+
+Jon asked Seb if the draft agreement could be shared with the board.
+Seb said yes, but not quite yet, after it's run past EPFL legal.
+
+Stu also raised this question: how many contributor members does the
+Center want?  Two, three?  Twenty, thirty?  Ideal terms might depend
+on this.  James said a large number seems like a "management
+headache".  Seb agreed, and said he had been thinking perhaps five or
+so as a reasonable upper limit, or perhaps even lower, such as three.
+James observed, "There's no harm in capping it initially," then
+revisiting.
+
+Rob asked what "equivalent" means in the phrase "full-time engineer or
+equivalent".  Must it be a single person full time, or could it be "40
+hours gathered from consultants who don't have anything else to do
+that week"?  Because "it's much more expensive" to actually hire
+someone, but also he didn't think that a patchwork of consultants
+would be nearly as useful as a dedicated person.  Seb: "We want to
+have some flexibility" for engineers to be reassigned, but said he'd
+think about how much flexibility would be too much, as he completes
+drafting the terms.
+
+Seth asked about contributing less than a full-time engineer, is that
+possible?  Jon asked a different form of this question: could
+it still qualify as a full-time equivalent, if the enginner in
+question was considered especially valuable?  Seb was skeptical this
+could be "formalized".
+
+### Scala at Twitter
+
+Stu said that Eugene Burmako's departure from Twitter has some people
+wondering about the status of Scala at Twitter.  Internal discussion
+about this included questions about Scala 3, JDK 11, Scalameta, and
+rsc (the "Reasonable Scala Compiler" project Eugene led).
+
+Some excerpts of Stu's remarks on this:
+
+* "We are continuing approximately as already planned in the
+  absence of Eugene."
+* "Rsc is unlikely to remain a full compiler. We have another
+  use case for the Rsc work, and we'll be talking more publicly
+  about those plans soon. I hope to bring a proposal to the next
+  meeting to attempt to get some Scala Center involvement there."
+* "We don't think we are drastically behind on moving to Scala 3, or
+  on any Scala version upgrade.  Upgrading can take a long time
+  (several years) in 'wall clock time', but for example the
+  person-time total for moving to 2.12 has only been about 6 months of
+  one person's time .  Many other companies are still moving from 2.11
+  to 2.12."
+
+To put this in context, Stu confirmed that Twitter has about 10
+million lines of Scala code.  He also said that the biggest delays in
+Scala version upgrades have been caused by Spark and other third party
+dependencies.  So, backwards compatibility for Scala continues to be a
+major concern for Twitter.
+
+Since Spark was mentioned, Martin spoke up to say that "Spark is
+already running on Dotty, since Dotty is more forgiving than the Scala
+2 series about binary compatibility. Hopefully the problem with
+external dependencies will be a lot less [on Scala 3] than it is
+currently."
+
+## Conclusion
+
+Jon said that the next meeting will be held in-person at Scala Days in
+Lausanne, Switzerland in June.  Members not able to attend in-person
+may still attend virtually.
+
+The tentative date and time is June 11, in the afternoon, before
+Martin's keynote.  Timing this to be workable for US west coast
+members may not be possible.
+
+