2016 04 21 TSC Minutes

Hyperledger Project

Technical Steering Committee (TSC) Meeting

April 21, 2016 (7:00am - 8:30am PT) via GoToMeeting

TSC Members

Emmanuel Viale

Accenture

Stan Liberman

CME Group

Yes

Tamas Blummer

DAH

Yes

Stefan Teis

Deutsche Boerse Group

Yes

Pardha Vishnumolakala

DTCC

Yes

Hart Montgomery

Fujitsu

Yes

Satoshi Oshima

Hitachi

Chris Ferris

IBM

Yes

Patrick Holmes (proxy)

Intel

Yes

David Voell

J.P. Morgan

Yes

Richard G. Brown

R3

Yes

Resources:

Agenda

  • Action Item Review (Chris Ferris)

  • WG Updates

    • Requirements WG (Patrick Holmes)
    • Architecture WG (Ram Jagadeesan)
    • Whitepaper WG (Dave Voell)
    • Identity WG (Christopher Allen)
    • CI WG (Chris Ferris)

  • Discussion re: Tamas’ request for repo

  • Discuss exit criteria

  • TSC Representation Policy

TSC Representation Policy

  • CF:  Have not settled on a formal proxy representation policy

  • MD:  Not typical to have voting alternates (sometimes TSC will use email for voting if coordinating calls for quorum becomes a challenge).  Call is open to all, not just TSC members – anyone can participate. In terms of voting, preference is to have people at meeting.

    • TSC needs to agree on a representation policy for:

      • First 6 months startup phase (when TSC is populated by Platinum members)
      • Beyond 6 months (elected contributors or maintainers)

    • For example, someone is lead of a Project, what happens if they can’t make meeting, should they be able to send someone from their company?  …or should they come from Project they are involved with?

      • In Standards body, typically send from Company
      • In OSS, the norm is that it should be someone else from Project

  • MD:  Many TSCs have a no-alternate policy, and votes are taken via email

  • CF:  Can coach people to get back to participation, or have them gracefully step aside

  • ChristopherA:  Will it always be weekly meetings?

    • CF:  Not likely, just during this startup phase.  Then should move to bi-weekly or less frequent.
  • ACTION:  Chris Ferris to draft policy for review

Action Item Review

  • Action Item Review (Chris Ferris)

    • LF Tooling meeting (Todd)

    • Technical F2F update (Todd)

      • Likely for 5/5 & 5/6 after the Consenus event
      • Hopeful to have identified venue space by EOD today

    • Dave to finalize wording of whitepaper to get in from of Board to review

      • Likely a few more weeks until first draft done

        • One section discussing public vs. private (want to get everyone on same page)
      • ACTION:  Dave to complete draft with group by May 5th

    • Patrick to setup Sawtooth Lake repo

      • ACTION:  Will complete by 4/28

    • Chris to start discussion on exit criteria

      • Slack channel has been created and discussion has begun

WG Updates

  • First regular meeting happened on Monday
  • Primrose walked through counterfeit drugs use case
  • Next meeting to walk through requirements discussion

  • If you have requirements or use cases, please send to Patrick.

  • Architecture WG (Ram Jagadeesan)

  • Whitepaper WG (Dave Voell)
  • Reviewing Renat’s proposal for feedback – put together right process/procedures form.  This was all accepted.

  • When the WG posts first draft, will include link (google form) for people to provide feedback, each meeting we’ll review for updates into paper

  • Identity WG (Christopher Allen)

Discussion re: Tamas’ request for repo

  • Original request via TSC mailing list

    • I’d like to create a github repository within github.com/hyperledger to give home to a subset of the Digital Asset proposed code (https://github.com/DigitalAssetCom/hlp-candidate) so our earlier proposal https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XECRVN9hXGrjAjysrnuNSdggzAKYm6XESR6KmABwhkE/pub can be built only using Hyperledger Foundation github repositories.
    • The code I would move into this repository defines a generic data access interface to the block chain, implements key generation, transaction composition and account level aggregation of UTXO. This is the code that we connected with IBM’s OBC during the hackathon in NYC to demonstrate the joint proposal. The repo would come with its own build script to create an artefact (a java jar) to be further used with the fabric.
    • The code is used by our higher level stack at Digital Asset and I am sure will be helpful to others to build on, it could be best described as api or client library, hence I suggest the name api or java-api for the repository.

  • Discussion

    • PH:  Does the fabric repo in HLP today include this code?

      • TB:  No, it doesn’t.
      • PH:  I thought purpose of “fabric” was to include this.
      • TB:  Two distinct repos and connecting resulting services with each other

    • ST:  How would code act with current code in fabric?  Via interface or would you code it in directly?

      • TB:  Code would be connected to fabric through an implementation of a gRPC connection between the two – they are two distinct technology; connection between services.
      • ST:  Is it interaction between 2 independent blockchains?
      • TB:  No, the code is not an implementation of a blockchain.  It is an implementation of an application development API and utility functions to use a blockchain.
      • Stefan:  It’s a client layer?
      • TB:  yes.

    • CF:  Concern was too generic of a name and also was complexity of build (dealing with submodules, etc.).  More difficult CI pipeline to manage.

    • CF:  Start with this approach, and then merge into fabric repository?

      • TB:  There are different technical motivations for this setup.  These are distinct technologies. While it might look more optically related, the technical process would not change at all.  This piece of code is part of internal DAH stack, this is simplest way to separate and maintain both code bases.

    • TB:  Regarding naming, could call it Java API or Fabric API (to make it less generic)

      • ChristopherA:  Currently, does it only work with fabric repo?  …or would it be useful to Sawtooth Lake or some other incubation moves forward?
      • TB:  Currently aim to support joint proposal.  However, it is an open source project, people can use it as they see fit.
      • RGB:  Just needs to be clear from name to people that surf to project what the repo is

    • CF:  For Patrick, do you transfer ownership of Sawtooth Lake collection of repos to LF?

      • PH:  Doesn’t make sense to move multiple repos to Hyperledger.  Would create a single repo in Hyperledger, but wouldn’t have more than readme file pointing to other location for Sawtooth Lake.
      • MD:  Let’s pull in LF Infra team, they can help determine the best long term solution.

  • Revised proposed name:  Fabric-API

    • TB:  This works for us.

    • CF:  This is still a merge, the code bases are built independently and compliment each other.  This is not a new or different proposal… just dealing with the naming.

    • No objections.

      • Annotate readme to be clear what the repo is

Discuss exit criteria

  • CF:  had some discussion on slack

  • Need to start making this more real and actually getting concrete discussion
  • Get people together on a call to discuss this to put together beginning of proposal, need deeper engagement separate from TSC call
  • Action:  Todd to create Doodle poll for exit criteria (1 hour call)

Actions:

  • TSC representation policy draft (Chris Ferris)
  • Finalize Technical F2F date/venue (Todd)
  • Whitepaper draft complete by May 5th (Dave Voell)
  • Set up Sawtooth lake repo by April 28th (Patrick)
  • Connect Patrick with Ry to figure out plan for Sawtooth Lake repo(s) (Todd)
  • Create Fabric-API repo and annotate readme (Tamas)
  • Doodle poll for 1 hour exit criteria call (Todd)

Recording