Minutes of the Executive Committee meeting which took place the 19th of May 2014 in Grenoble.

The following points have been discussed:

Transition period

We are preparing a new organization scheme which will fully change the membership rules. At the same time several institutes have requested to sign the present MoU. Should we wait for the new organization or should we accept them?

Comments: The setting-up of the new consortium will take a long time. It should be approved and modified by lawyers of different institutes. It will probably not be finalized before 2015.

Decision: Therefore, the Committee agrees unanimously that we continue with the present organization until the new one is officially ready. The new candidates will be invited to sign the present MoU.

 

Feedback on the last version of consortium document

The last version of the consortium document has been sent a few weeks ago to the committee members. This document is still a draft version that needs to be rewritten to be legally acceptable by international lawyers. However each committee member had to present/discuss it to his management to make sure there is no show stopper and to listen to first comments. During the meeting every member commented or reported on their first reactions.

First good news: No show stopper has been detected. The management of each institute agrees on the overall principle of contributing to a consortium. However, it is obvious that the document cannot be signed in this state and should be written in a legally compatible form.

The remarks of the committee members were the following:

  •  Not enough strength on how to share device servers and on tango-ds repository.
    • Decision: Agreed to include the management of tango-ds repository in the responsibility of the consortium
  • The document limits the number of core contributors; why refusing candidates when we need more core contributors
    • Decision: Agree to remove the limit
  • What to do in case of even vote. :
    • Decision: the hosting institute has a predominant vote 
  •  What to do if a commercial company wants to become a core member?
    • Decision: We accept commercial companies as members but they cannot buy more power than a standard core member (i.e. vote weight of 4).
  • We should synchronize the total number of votes regularly to make sure to be fair with the contribution of each.
  • Engagement (commitment) for 3 years may be difficult to maintain in certain cases
    • Decision: We should add a withdrawal clause for members
  • The fees exclude VAT. It varies from country to country
    • Answer: the consortium should have the same net contribution. Anyway, this point will be refined with the help of a lawyer.
  • How to change the level of the annual fees?
    • Decision: An unanimous decision is proposed to increase it.
  • What about delegation of voting rights in case of unavailability during Committee meeting.
    • Answer: We should still define rules. Anyway email voting or visio-conferencing will be proposed.
  • Executive Board cannot be a legal representative because the consortium will not be a legal entity by itself. Only institute managers can be legally responsible.
    • Answer: Should be described as “ representative”and not " Legal representative" 
  • People will not be hired by the consortium but as ESRF staff.
  • Should write that contribution is public open source.
  • Some institute (ELIALPS) cannot contribute in cash due to European funding but they do have possibility to hire somebody for working on TANGO core. They cannot engage for 3 years for administrative budgetary rules.
    • Answer: The document foresee this case, this is named a "contributing member" 
  • Dual licensing should be foreseen from the beginning.
    • Decision: we will add this point in the document
  • We didn’t include ALBA in the institute investing in promoting TANGO for new comers: 
    •  Decision: This will be corrected
  • We should write the annex on TANGO history more precisely

At the end of the meeting, JM will share a modifiable version of the document via Dropbox. All the members are invited to send their comments/proposals by the 8thof June.

New candidates wishing to join the Collaboration

  • ELI Beamlines officially requested:  accepted unanimously
  • University of Szeged officially requested:  accepted unanimously
  • INAF expresses their interest but not formally requested: The committee took note positively and is waiting for an official request.

Collaboration Coordinator:

E. Taurel resigned from this role, JM Chaize becomes the new coordinator. Moreover, Lajos Fülöp (ELI-ALPS) applies for the next period. We should take into account that the next meeting being in one year from now, the organization may change in the meantime. Lajos will have to apply for one of the newly defined roles. Meanwhile JMC trains Lajos for the next Tango meeting

Should ZMQ become the main protocol:

The committee agrees that it is too early to declare that. The agreement is the following:

  • We should first find resources to develop TANGO core V10.
  • As soon as the resources are found (H2020?) we agree to continue to study* the use of ZMQ for replacing CORBA in synchronous and asynchronous calls in the future.
  • Once we have the results of the more detailed study, a discussion session will still be necessary to take the official decision to go or not to go.
  • CORBA will continue to be supported as long as necessary.
  • *note: a first study entitled "TANGO: Can ZMQ replace CORBA?" has been published at ICALEPCS 2013 - the paper and slides are available online

Place of the next TANGO meetings

We have 2 candidates: Solaris and ELI ALPS. For seasonal reasons, it has been decided to change the periodicity of the meetings from 9 months to one year. Therefore the committee decided as follows:

  • The next meeting will take place in Krakow (Poland) organized by Solaris in may 2015
  • The following one will take place in Szeged ( Hungary) organized by ELI-ALPS  in may 2016

Workshop proposal

A workshop on project management (gerrit, code review, tracker, ….) is proposed by FRM2 . Jens Kruger will organize it this year.  No decision has been taken by the E.C regarding the usage of these tools for all tango related development”