2022-05-11 Budget Subcomittee Meeting

[andy-blum]

Previous meeting: #3681
Next meeting: #3800

Agenda:

• Start recording
• Ask somebody to take notes on the attached doc
• Financial reports
• Test runner purchase plan
• Discussion: Strategies to develop a co-maintainer
• Other discussion

Minutes:

May 11, 2022 | DDEV Budget Group

Attendees: Andrew Berry Cary GordonChristopher WellsRandy FayOfer Shaal

Agenda:

1. Start recording ✅

2. Ask somebody to take notes on the attached doc ✅

3. Financial reports

   • P&L (Profit & Loss) for the Localdev Foundation. Jan 1-May1, 2022.
     • ~7600 in income,
     • ~240 for MacStadium/CircleCI,
     • ~35 Wifi on the plane
     • ~$150 - upstream contributions & support
   • We now have an M1 Mac through MacStadium - they've refunded the costs plus given us one free.
   • There are two M1's Randy has that are being TestBots now because Platform.SH got him a daily driver machine.
   • Financials reports are generated through Wave Accounting, which is being used by LocalDev. There's no cost associated with Wave.
   • ~$7300 "in the bank.

4. Test runner purchase plan

   • See Randy's comment below
   • TWO AMD and one ARM Mac Mini ~$2100
   • Windows side - try a mini PC 8GB/256 ~$500. Buy 4 more if testing of this one works.
     1. AB: What about buying one beefy machine and treating it as multiple? RF: Nested Virtualization causes issues with Docker, WSL2, etc.
     2. AB: Cloud providers don't want to do the overhead for Nested, but on our own machine, maybe this is fine? RF: Windows Server + Virtualization + Docker/WSL is really 3 layers.
     3. CG: The machines are around $329 on Amazon. Smaller more machines is probably better than the single machine.
     4. It would be nice to have a Windows Server solution or something to help automate test-runner setup. (Licensing considerations, though.)
     5. AB: Electricity costs covered for this? RF: For now I'm not super worried about it. Would be cool to know the usage though. Something like a Smart Home Energy Monitor may help us understand more than just consumption, but also usage of individual devices.
     6. Test runners are isolated on the network in terms of current config. With GitHub Actions I could change so that every PR has to be manually authorized. But BuildKite - not sure if that can be done or how.
     7. CW: Is this a rough estimate for yearly outlay, or is this more of a big push now to catch up? RF: Probably more of a big push, but if we do expand our test coverage or expand scope then there may be more. Scale is always the issue.
     8. CG: We don't know what's gonna happen in the future, for sure.
     9. OS: Check out CodeSpaces for test-running. RF: GitHub CodeSpaces is a direct competitor for GitPod; there's great support for GitPod but not a lot of testing for that environment. We don't have real solutions to that yet. There are two major permutations of DDEV that don't have testing right now. Docker inside WSL2, and GitPod. GitHub CodeSpaces would be a third permutation, but it'll certainly take someone's time to figure that out.

5. Discussion: Strategies to develop a co-maintainer

   1. RF: Maybe Platform could help us fill this role. Would be cool to have Docs professionals working on the documentation. So that's one possible area to look toward.
   2. Another possibility is we currently have money coming in. It's not a full time dev salary, but it could be a push toward a full-time job. Hard to find that person who comes on part-time but wants it to become full-time. People like us are already fully booked.
   3. CG: there's an element of serendipity here. If you put it out there and put it out there enough, someone may appear.
   4. How do we market this? Twitter, release notes, a message that comes up with DDEV.
   5. AB: something that could help this is instead of focusing on a role, focus on mini-projects. Or focus on support. Start small, rather than scaring off with "hiring an open-source co-maintainer" :)
   6. Gentleman (missed name?) from Typo3 community who is in Germany is really good for us, he's a logical choice to maybe help watch the test-runner.
   7. Hurdles here are the history and complex skillsets needed. Go is divorced from PHP a bit. And Randy has a lot of experience with Docker/containerization/Linux.
   8. We probably do want to spend the money each year, not have any left over.
   9. Making some inroads in the WordPress community, maybe some connections there.

6. Other discussion

   1. We need to consider marketing, but not a 300k/yr contract.
   2. CG: So you're going to go ahead and buy the stuff? RF: Yes, we've got consensus here. We're not "voting" per se, we are an advisory board, not a decision-making board.

Recording

Watch the recording

Reports

Localdev Foundation Profit and Loss 2022-05-01.pdf
Localdev Foundation Balance Sheet 2022-05-01-20.pdf

[rfay]

Proposed Test Runner Purchase Plan:

Mac mini amd64: 2 $500-$650 each $1400

Mac mini arm64: 1 $650 each. $700

Windows MIni-PC 8GB/256GB with Windows 10/11 Pro, About $500. Purchase only one until usability verified, then purchase 4 more. Something like beelink. $400-$2000

Total investment for 2022: $4100

[chrisfromredfin]

Raw notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZxyEX45NAmirvScqFMdlRQKowKu0naHt39ybJJLvOk/edit#

[andy-blum]

Thanks! converted to .md and inserted!

[rfay]

Added the recording to the top comment