KS Topic Proposal: Vendor and User problems with the Kernel

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

This proposal is a bit different from a concrete topic, but it's based
on the generally positive feedback from the end user panel last year.
It's to allocate 2h of Kernel summit to discuss problems raised by
vendors and end users.  The format I'm proposing is 10 minutes of
problem introduction by someone from the vendor or user representative
who is a subject matter expert and 20 minutes of discussion (so,
hopefully four such problems).

As usual, the difficulty is actually finding people from the vendor and
user community willing to do such a presentation (and ensuring they
won't simply want to talk about their problems with X distro enterprise
kernels).  The way I think we might get some diverse problems is to send
out a call for participation.  Something like.

"The kernel summit programme committe is inviting proposals for
participation in the 2008 Kernel Summit in Portland Oregon (URL) from
members of the End User and Vendor communities wishing to raise
particular issues or problems they see with the current Linux Kernel.  A
good problem presentation should stimulate discussion with the kernel
community, and as such the presenter should be a subject matter expert
capable of engaging in the debate.  While the presenter may have a
preferred solution, they should concentrate on the problem and be
prepared to consider the effects of solutions outside of their preferred
one.  It goes without saying that problems should have a significant
component which is susceptible to a solution within the Linux Kernel.

"Proposals of around 500 words and describing the nature of the problem
and the credentials of the presenter should be forwarded to the Linux
Kernel Programme Committee at
<ksummit-2008-pc@lists.linux-foundation.org>"

Obviously we'd have to circulate this beyond the usual mailing lists,
but we can solicit help from the Linux Foundation to do this.

James