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

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

On Fri, Aug 07, 2026 at 09:09:05AM -0400, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Fri, 2026-08-07 at 15:58 +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > 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 ?
> 
> The LF paid for the attendee gift last year. Since they have to be
> ordered some way ahead of the conference I'd guess the same is true
> this year.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > 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 take it you've never seen the bill for attending a USENIX (or a lot
> of other) one day events.

USENIX, no. That was unfortunately before my days.

> > 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 ?
> 
> Is there any point wittering about your speculated numbers vs mine? 
> The bottom line is there is a cost and someone has to pay it if there
> are no sponsors.

Please don't speculate that I'm speculating. I've organized multiple
one-day events for crowds between 15 and 25 people, at costs of around
100€ per attendee for a meeting room and lunch. I know it doesn't scale
linearly, and I'm sure we don't want to organize the maintainers summit
at the lowest possible cost, but there's quite a gap.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart