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

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

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 ?

[1] https://events.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/sponsor-kernel26_080626.pdf

> Since Plumbers has a reasonably
> successful sponsor model and the LF brought the problem up in recent
> conversations, we thought we'd take a look.  A colleague remarked that
> it should be easy to sell seats to a room with Linus, which on the face
> of it looks to be true, but when examined more deeply isn't
> straighforward.  The problem is conferences like Plumbers, LSF/MM and
> MS are usually sponsored by engineering not marketing where budget is
> much harder to come by and the justification for ponying up the cash
> has to be very clear; effectively they pay for outcomes not access or
> publicity (although access is required to get successful outcomes). 
> When you look at the actual outcomes of MS 2025
> 
> https://lwn.net/Articles/1049982/
> 
> there isn't really anything that would move the needle for a potential
> sponsor.  Equally, there's nothing really that couldn't have been part
> of a wider discussion at Plumbers or LSF/MM, so I'm not sure there's
> anything that actually required discussion at this event (i.e. nothing
> to move the needle for kernel developers either).
> 
> Before I go into potential solutions, it might be beneficial to review
> the history:  The kernel summit began as a stand alone event in 2001
> run by USENIX and was the first time many kernel developers had
> actually met each other. It continued as a 2 day event co-located with
> Ottawa Linux Symposium (still run by USENIX) until 2008 when it mostly
> co-located with Plumbers and was run by the LF.  In 2015 Linus
> complained that he didn't find the KS talks that valuable and he'd like
> to discuss process with a smaller audience, so in 2016 the kernel
> summit was split and the talks went to the kernel summit track in
> Plumbers and a 1 day Maintainer Summit was born.  It can be argued that
> the decline in sponsors began with the 2016 split and thus, as the
> sponsors apparently see it, the decline in outcomes as well.  Oh and
> for those of you who keep saying the LF doesn't fund Linux: without
> sponsors the LF is eating the cost of the entire event which, based on
> what Plumbers costs, will be somewhere north of US$100k.
> 
> As for fixes, one possibility is definitely keeping MS as is and moving
> the sponsor responsibility to Plumbers, but unless I can strap Linus
> down and sell companies on pitching to him directly, I fear that would
> end up creating a US$100k hole in our budget.  Perhaps there are
> actually outcomes we could sell to sponsors but, because of the reduced
> audience, we simply don't get to hear about them ... so if you think
> that now would be the time to say what they are.  Another solution that
> seems viable would be folding the MS into one of our existing sponsored
> events, like Plumbers or LSF/MM.  Structurally either would be a fit
> for the past discussion topics and both could probably accommodate
> (although I don't think either could expand to a fourth day to do it).
> A final thing we might do is change the structure of the event itself
> to have more sponsorable outcomes; perhaps simply making the event more
> like the kernel summit of old, so moving back the KS track from
> Plumbers would be enough?

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 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 ?

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart