Good morning. I really appreciate you all coming. It's a great honor for me to introduce an old friend, I mean a friend of many years. He's not old, but he's genuinely exactly the kind of person that we want to have talking about issues at CSIS because he is an absolute true expert on the situation that we'll be discussing today, which is the ITLOS case that's before the court. And Paul Reichler, who has joined us today, is an expert. I'll introduce him in a little bit more detail soon. For those of you sitting back, please fill in at the table. We'd really like to fill all these seats. I think some say reserved, but you're welcome to take these seats, please. It's nice to have everybody up at the table. And for those of you who started your day with a visit to CSIS's old building at 18th and K, sorry about that. We're trying to reprogram everybody's heads that this is indeed the new building, and it's just a great pleasure to have all of you here today. Let me go straight to the topic today and introduce Paul Reichler. He is a partner and co-chair of the International Litigation and Arbitration Department at a Boston-based law firm called Foley-Hoag. Paul has specialized in the representation of sovereign states and disputes with other states and with foreign investors for more than a quarter of a century. He's part of a select group of lawyers with extensive experience in litigating on behalf of sovereign states before the International Court of Justice in the Hague and the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea in Hamburg. Among many other cases and clients that Paul has dealt with, he has particular experience representing and advising sovereign states and land and maritime boundary disputes with neighboring states, and these include Nicaragua against Columbia, Bangladesh against Myanmar, and several others that he may reference today. He served as a mediator appointed by the Secretary General of the Organization of American States and Land and Maritime Boundary Disputes between Guatemala and Belize, and I can tell you firsthand when I was starting, actually my business years ago, we actually shared some space with Paul and he is a brilliant tactician, a good lawyer, a fantastic thinker, a very strategic person, and also just a wonderful, a wonderful guy. So please join me in welcoming Paul Reichler and ask you to take it away, Paul. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ernie. I feel like I shouldn't say anything because there's no way I can live up to that. It is a great pleasure for me to be here with you today and it's an honor for me to have been chosen along with my law firm to represent the Republic of the Philippines in its dispute with the People's Republic of China. I plan to speak for 20 minutes or so to give you some background on the issues and the reasons for the case that was brought by the Philippines and then hold the balance of time for questions. So I find that that's usually more interesting to the audience and more lively and I know that at CSIS it's a very sophisticated crowd so I'm sure there will be some very interesting questions. The case is about this. What you see on the screen is a depiction of the South China Sea and you see the red dashes around the perimeter of the South China Sea. To the north is China. To the east is the Philippines. To the west is Vietnam. And the southern rim of the South China Sea is Malaysia, Brunei, Malaysia again, Indonesia, and then Malaysia again. But I ask you to focus on the dashes. This is the so-called nine-dash line that has aroused such interest and controversy. China first asserted this claim in several years ago in a letter to the UN Secretary General opposing the submissions, a joint submission of Malaysia and Vietnam to the UN Commission on the Limits for the Continental Shelf seeking to establish extended continental shelf rights within the South China Sea. And from the moment that this letter surfaced in international discourse it has aroused a great deal of debate and discussion. What China claimed at the time in its letter to the UN Secretary General was that everything land and sea encompassed within the nine-dash line is area over which China exercises sovereignty or sovereign rights. That area encompasses between 70 and 75% of the South China Sea. In the case of the Philippines, just welcome Ambassador Acuisha of the Philippines, in the case of the Philippines the nine-dash line comes within 50 miles, 50 nautical miles of the island of Luzon to the north you see it marked in black on the map and it comes within 30 miles of the southern or southwestern Philippine island of Palawan right over here just north of the Sulu Sea. Now at its farthest extent the nine-dash line is more than 800 miles from China's mainland coast. It extends between 350 and 850 miles from China's mainland coast and as I said if this were a fence it would fence the Philippines in within 50 miles or 30 miles of its coasts. The Philippines position of the Philippines is this. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to which both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of the Philippines are parties, a coastal states entitlements are prescribed as an entitlement to a 12-mile territorial sea over which the coastal state is virtually sovereign. It's almost like land and out to a 200-mile exclusive economic zone and continental shelf and what that means is within 200 miles of its coast a state has an exclusive entitlement to the resources. The living resources, the fish in the water and the non-living resources under the seabed, that's the continental shelf whether it's hydrocarbons or some other minerals. The Law of the Sea Convention which in this regard reflects customary international law. So even though for example there are a few states, we know which one is the main one, that are not parties to the Law of the Sea Convention, they are still bound by these principles because they have been adjudicated to reflect customary international law which is applicable to all states. But in this case we're talking about two states that are parties to the convention. So there's an entitlement to exclusive use of the resources out to 200 miles. And as you can see China's claim conflicts with this by claiming sovereignty or sovereign rights, not only more than 200 but more than 800 miles from its mainland coast and within 200 miles but not only that within 50 or 30 miles of the Philippines coasts, you have China claiming entitlements which are not authorized under UNCLOS, under the convention, which overlap with the 200 mile entitlements of the Philippines which are indeed authorized under UNCLOS. The same could be said for Vietnam on the opposite side. Now so from the Philippines perspective, and this is what the main claim in the arbitration is, that China's nine dash line claim, that is its claim of sovereignty and sovereign rights extending far beyond its entitlements under the 1982 United Nations Convention is inconsistent with that convention, unlawful, and it constitutes a trespass or a violation of the Philippines' rights within 200 miles as set forth in the convention. Now this is not simply theoretical. In fact, China has been in the hands of the Philippines and has objected to and prevented the Philippines from enjoying its rights under the convention within its 200 mile exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. There is an area called Reed Bank which is up around here, and this is the area which is within 100 miles from the Philippines coast of Palawan which reports say has a major hydrocarbon potential. But the Philippines until now has been unable to exploit this because of China's objections, indeed because of China's threats that it will not allow the Philippines or Philippines licensee to exploit that potential resources. Similarly, China has prevented the Philippines from exercising fishing rights throughout much of its 200 mile zone. So what the Philippines is seeking first and foremost in the arbitration, and I will come back in a few minutes to talk about the arbitration process. Sorry, I will come back in a few moments and really conclude my remarks without going into boring detail for you, just outlining the legal basis of the arbitration under the convention and the process as it has developed to this point. But fundamentally what the Philippines seeks is a declaration that all of the rights and entitlements in the South China Sea including the rights to the resources living and non-living are governed by the UN convention on the law of the sea. And that under that convention the nine dash line is inconsistent and unlawful. The Philippines is entitled to the full enjoyment of its 200 mile exclusive economic zone and continental shelf and the resources located therein and that it should be free to exploit without interference by China those resources especially where China has no corresponding entitlement. Now there are some other issues in the case which are worth mentioning and those concern the status of the insular features islands and rocks within the South China Sea. I'm going to see if I can operate this successfully. What we have circled here is three insular groups if you will in the South China Sea. To the northwest the Paracel Islands are not involved in the arbitration. They're in dispute between China and Vietnam but the Philippines does not claim rights in the sea extending that far. Scarborough Shoal though is a key element in the case. Let me see if I can go right to the photo. There it is I think I have a better slide for that. This is Scarborough Shoal or a piece of it. Scarborough Shoal consists of six features like this one essentially rocks that protrude above the water at high tide, barely above the water at high tide. This is the largest of the six features. Now sovereignty is disputed between the Philippines and China but in under the law of the sea convention an arbitral tribunal that is constituted does not have jurisdiction to determine sovereignty over land features and that includes islands or insular formations. However what the Philippines has asked of the tribunal is that it determined the status of this feature under the convention. That is is it a true island which would generate like a state with a coastline, a 200 mile exclusive economic zone and continental shelf or is it what the convention refers to as a rock. An insular feature that is above water at high tide which is a definition of an island under the convention but which is so insignificant that it cannot sustain human habitation under the convention. Or economic life of its own. I don't think much more needs to be said about whether this feature can sustain human habitation or an economic life of its own. It is barely big enough to support the Philippine flag. Now what is the significance of this? Let's go back. This is where I had difficulty and I might need some help going backward. Is Elka here? In any event I don't want to. Well this is good enough. You can see Scarborough Shoal and where it is. Scarborough Shoal is about 120 miles off the coast of Luzon. Therefore it is within the Philippines exclusive economic zone and continental shelf which would extend another 80 miles beyond. You can see where that blue line is, where the blue area is. The blue area and the blue lines that surround it are the 200 mile lines from the different coasts around the different coastlines of the coastal states that border the South China Sea. So it is well within 200 miles of the Philippines. And if this feature is a rock entitled only to 12 miles, then what would be in dispute between China and the Philippines would be a circle with a 24 mile diameter, a 12 mile radius, 24 mile diameter around Scarborough Shoal. And all of the waters not inside that circle would be part of the Philippines exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. And all that would remain disputed would be the waters, the feature and the waters within that circle. So for the Philippines it is important to have this feature classified as a rock rather than an island because most of the surrounding waters then would be subject to the exclusive entitlement of the Philippines and only a small part of the sea would be subject to dispute, ultimately to be resolved whenever sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal is determined. Now in the, I'm sorry, I want to go back again. Can you do it from there? Let's go back again, one more, that's it. These are part of the islands in the Spratly group. Scarborough Shoal is not part of the Spratlys. The Spratlys is to the south of Scarborough Shoal and you can see very close, the closest, most of them are very close to Palawan, the Philippine island. The Spratlys are about 140 different features. The vast majority of them are underwater. And at all times. Another significant portion of them are underwater except at low tide and they are called low tide elevations. There are relatively few of them that constitute true islands in the sense that they are above water at high tide. And a very, very tiny number of those even have vegetation on them. Now the Spratlys have been the subject of contention among a number of states. All of the Spratlys are claimed by China. All are claimed by Vietnam. A number of them are claimed by the Philippines and some, a few are claimed by Malaysia and one or two by Brunei. In the third element of the Philippines claim, that is the focal point being first, the Nine Dash Line. Second focal point being Scarborough Shoal. And third, the Spratlys. And here, similar to the objective in regard to Scarborough Shoal, what the Philippines is attempting to establish is that these features do not generate more than a 12-mile entitlement. That is, they are, under the terms of the convention, rocks. They do not support human habitation or habitat. They do not support the economic life of their own. And if, again, they have 12-mile entitlements because they are rocks, as opposed to 200-mile entitlements because they are islands capable of sustaining human life or human habitation or economic life, then their significance diminishes. And if they are all confined within 12-mile circles, then the reach of these islands or features does not extend very far. And again, this is a little more complicated than Scarborough Shoal. We're only dealing with one feature. But if these features generate no more than 12 miles, then the, there's a much larger area within 200 miles of land. And that's the area of the Philippines that is not covered by any of these circles and that would fall to the exclusive entitlement of the Philippines. Now, because there are so many features in this case, and it might be too complicated to put them all before the arbitral tribunal, the Philippines has identified seven of them that are occupied by China and claimed by both the Philippines and China, and asked the tribunal to rule on the status of each of those seven features. In fact, four of the seven features are underwater at all times. They're not only not islands, they're not low tide elevations, they are shallow reefs. As such, they are considered under the Convention and under international law to be part of the seabed. And they belong to whichever state has rights over the continental shelf. They cannot be seized and occupied by another state. You don't acquire title by occupation of an underwater feature. That's four of the features, including mischief reef, which I'll come to in a moment. And there are three features occupied by China in this area that look very similar to Scarborough Shoal. They're quite obviously rocks. So the Philippines has asked the tribunal, in the case of all seven features occupied by China, to rule that, well, in the case of the three features occupied by China that look like Scarborough Shoal and stick out above the water at high tide, to rule that they have only 12 mile entitlements. And as to the four features that are permanently underwater, that these are not islands or rocks, and they generate no maritime entitlement. So the waters above them belong to whoever has the exclusive economic zone, and since they would be within 200 miles of the Philippines, they would appertain to the Philippines. Let me show you mischief reef, which is appropriately named. This is an underwater feature that's about 100 miles off, well, what you see is more than the underwater feature here. But underneath this structure, which has been built on top of it, there is a reef that is permanently underwater. This is about 100 miles off the coast of the Philippines and more than 600 miles from the mainland coast of China. In 1995, China seized mischief reef. Even though under the law, it is part of the continental shelf, as I said, it's not an island, it's part of the seabed, and well within the 200 mile continental shelf entitlement of the Philippines. This naturally caused a great deal of protest and led to discussions between China and the ASEAN states. Little by little, China began constructing on top of mischief reef. This is only one of several sites at mischief reef, but what they have done is they built a barracks so that they could station military personnel there, a helipad so that they can resupply with helicopters, and gun emplacements so that they could defend mischief reef. Because of the great disparity in military power, the Philippines was able to do little more than protest and convene its neighbors and engage in discussions, but the result has been an expansion of the facility by China. This is one of the features that is included in the arbitration since this is an underwater feature, and a state cannot transform an underwater feature into an island by building on top of it. This feature, the Philippines claims, is part of the Philippines' continental shelf, and China is there illegally. After the arbitration was filed in January, China sent a rather large flotilla to an island of the Philippines. Another underwater feature, about 30 miles to the east, also within 100 miles of Palawan, the Philippine island, called Second Tamasho, or Ionjin Sho. Although China has not yet constructed anything there, they have made public pronouncements that it is theirs, and they have told the Philippines that no Philippine fisherman may come, no Philippine naval vessels may come, essentially cordoned it off, again expanding. I think one of their generals referred to this in a magazine article as the cabbage strategy, but there is a risk of further expansion because there are many underwater shoals and reefs in this area, even closer to the Philippines, and of course a risk given China's behavior to this point, occupying and fortifying mischief reef, now moving on to Second Tamasho, that there's no indication that they will stop, or if so, where. Now, the Philippines had spent many years, actually negotiations, go back to 1995, mainly bilateral, some multilateral, and at no point was any progress made in reaching any kind of a solution bilaterally. China simply held to the position that China has sovereignty and sovereign rights within the nine-dash line, and that includes sovereignty over all the insular features, reefs, shoals, caves, rocks, within the nine-dash line, and there's no flexibility in that position in the negotiations. So the Philippines was faced with a very difficult situation. That was getting worse. In April 2012, Chinese ships surrounded Scarborough Shoal and excluded Philippine fishing vessels. Tentative agreement was reached that both sides would remove their vessels. The Philippines did remove its vessels, China did not remove its, and China remains in de facto possession of Scarborough Shoal. And then in the spring of this year, China moved in on Second Thomas Shoal to the south in part of the Spratlys. So the Philippines was faced with a very serious situation. One, it could not exploit the resources in the areas to which it has entitlement under international law, including the UN Convention. Two, negotiations had gotten nowhere, and there was no indication of any softening in China's position. In fact, all indications were the opposite after the incidents at Scarborough Shoal in 2012 and Ionjin Shoal this year or Second Thomas Shoal this year. Confronting China militarily was not a viable option. The Philippines doesn't have the kind of economic or commercial influence vis-a-vis China to cause a change in its behavior, and the options were limited. But the one option that appeared was the law, because in a court or before an arbitral tribunal, a small state that is weaker militarily, economically, commercially has the opportunity, at least, to compete on equal terms with a much larger, more powerful state. And there are, there's a growing number of precedents for this, particularly under the Law of the Sea Convention. Diana and Suriname in their arbitration, Mauritius and the U.K. in their arbitration, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and Bangladesh and India, which I'm going over to the Hague to argue next week. In all of these cases, we have smaller, less powerful states unable to do anything to secure what they considered to be their rights under international law in negotiations with states that were more powerful or larger militarily, or economically, or both, and the smaller state resorted to arbitration under the Law of the Sea Convention. And that is what the Philippines did here. Now, just a couple more words on this, and I will, this is Article 286 of the Convention, and it provides that, just to interpret it a little bit for you, where the parties have exchanged views on a dispute without resolving it, then either one can submit the dispute to third-party dispute resolution under any of the mechanisms provided for in the Convention. And in the next article, Article 287, it provides that they may take the dispute by agreement to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, which is what Bangladesh and Myanmar did, or to the International Court of Justice, or to an arbitral tribunal that they would constitute by mutual agreement. But failing agreement to go to any of these forums, the fallback, the default mechanism is paragraph five at the bottom. If the parties to a dispute have not accepted the same procedure for the settlement of the dispute, it may be submitted only to arbitration in accordance with Annex Seven, unless the parties agree otherwise. So, what this means is, if one party initiates a dispute under the Convention, the other party does not want to agree to any particular forum, that does not frustrate or stop the arbitration. The claimant state has the right to take it to arbitration under the rules specified in one of the Annexes to the Convention, and the respondent state, the other state, is obligated to participate, is obligated by that choice, and is obligated by the decision of the arbitral tribunal, I should say. Let me see. I don't think there's anything else here that I want to go into right now. So, under Annex Seven, that is how the arbitration was initiated under those procedures. The way it works is the claimant state appoints an arbitrator. Bangladesh appointed a very distinguished international jurist who's a judge on the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea from Germany, Judge Rudiger Wolfram, and then the other state has the right to appoint an arbitrator, and then the states try to agree on three neutral arbitrators, including the President. If they're unable to agree, the Convention provides that those arbitrators will be appointed by the President of Itlos, the President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg. China took the position from the very beginning that they would not participate in the arbitration, so they did not appoint an arbitrator, and one was appointed in lieu of their choice by the President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and then they refused to negotiate over the other three arbitrators who likewise were appointed by the President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. We have an arbitral tribunal, I've been before many, that is clearly one of the most esteemed, expert, respected group of Law of the Sea experts that could possibly have been assembled. It's provided over by Judge Thomas Mensa of Ghana, who was a President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. It has Judge Wolfram, who I mentioned. It has Judge Jean-Pierre Cotte from France, another esteemed expert and judge on the Itlos Tribunal. The Polish Judge Paulak from the Itlos Tribunal is also a member appointed by the President of the Itlos Tribunal, and the fifth member is a very, very distinguished Dutch expert Alfred Soons, who's the Director of the Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea. It's a very serious, very prominent, very expert tribunal. China still has refused to participate, but the Annex 7 provides in Article 9 that in the event one of the parties refuses to participate, that does not frustrate or stop the arbitration. It proceeds. The members of the tribunal have a particular burden of establishing to their own satisfaction that the claims of the claimant state are supported by facts and law. They cannot simply enter a default judgment, as might happen in a national court in the United States, so it's still a rigorous procedure. Article 11 provides that the award, the judgment of the arbitral tribunal is final, it's not appealable, and it is binding. It's obligatory on all parties as a matter of international law. To this point, the tribunal has met its established rules of procedure, and it has set a schedule, which requires the Philippines to submit its written pleading, what we call its memorial, its arguments on the facts and the law, and supporting documentation by the 30th of March 2014. So the Philippine legal team is hard at work on that as we speak. After that, the tribunal has reserved judgment as to what the next steps will be. It will give every opportunity for China to change its mind and participate. It will keep the door open for as long as possible, but ultimately it will proceed to consider the Philippines claims, its evidence, and its legal arguments, and ultimately render a judgment. We expect that that judgment to be rendered sometime in 2015, probably by the middle of 2015. It will be binding on the Philippines, and it will be binding on China. Whether China adheres to it is an entirely different question, maybe one that some of you have comments about, but right now our task is to present the claims to the tribunal and to obtain the relief that the Philippines has requested. And with that, I will turn it back over to you, and I'm sure we'll invite your question. I will. Thank you, Paul. That was fantastic. And I want to start with a question, but just to get everybody ready, if you have questions, please identify yourself and your affiliation and ask the question. I'd like to start with a question of how would it be enforced? How would the judgment be enforced if China disagrees with the judgment, and if it were awarded to the Philippines? Well, it's, of course, a very good question, and it's not something that is, how can I say, unanticipated by the Philippines. There's no Pasi, there's no police force, there's no sheriff who might be ordered by a local judge to go and make the defendant comply with the order. It is largely a question of whether a state that is subject to a judicial order, or an arbitral award, chooses to comply or not. But having said that, I should point out, number one, that in 95% or more of cases decided by the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, or arbitral tribunals that have been convened for interstate disputes, in at least 95% of those cases, the states that are, quote, unquote, the losing party comply. We see this also in investor state arbitrations, although the compliance rate may be a little bit lower, but still, it's a little lower. Still, in the vast majority of investor state arbitrations under bilateral or multilateral investment treaties, which may involve judgments of hundreds of millions of dollars, in the vast majority of these cases, the states comply. The question is, if there's nobody who can force, if there's no army, there's no police who can force a state to comply, why did they do it in the vast majority of cases? And I think that part of the explanation is that there is a heavy price to pay for a state that defies an international court order or a judgment of an arbitral tribunal that is seen, that is recognized in the international community, as legitimate, as fair, as correct, as appropriate. There's a price to be paid for branding yourself as an international outlaw, as a state that doesn't respect, that doesn't comply with international law. There is something to be said for soft power and for the ability, the component of soft power that is composed of a state's ability to defend its actions as legal in the international system, as explaining and defending itself as respectful of international norms. It becomes an important part of a state's ability to influence other states. Now, it is important, therefore, not only for the Philippines to obtain a judgment in its favor, but for that judgment to be seen as impeccable in terms of its integrity, its honesty, its fairness, and its legal correctness. It may be that it takes some time before China adopts a more flexible position, but it's not unreasonable to think, at least I would say, it's not unreasonable to think, that in the ultimate resolution of this dispute or these disputes or parts of these disputes, the fact that the Philippines has a legal judgment in its favor that's recognized internationally as valid and binding and legitimate and correct, will play some role in the evolutionary process toward an acceptable solution. I'm Larry Nicks from CSIS. A very interesting talk, Mr. Reichler. I have two questions. First, on the definition of these above water objects or whatever you want to call them, you mentioned rocks and islands. Is this basically the only distinction under the law of the sea between rocks and islands, or are there other classifications as well? Secondly, when this case is heard before the tribunal, will other law of the sea country signatories be able to give testimony or submit briefs to the tribunal? I'm thinking especially of Japan in this case. In response to the first question, Article 121 of the Convention defines an island. An island is a naturally occurring feature that is at least part of which is above water and high tide. Article 121, paragraph 3, says rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life on their own are not entitled to an exclusive economic zone or a continental shelf. So the Article 121 distinguishes between islands being the island and the island between different types of islands. If a rock meets the definition of an island, if it's above water at high tide, but it doesn't get all the rights of an island, doesn't generate all the maritime entitlements, that is beyond 12 miles, of an island that is capable of supporting human habitation or economic life. There are other features. I mentioned a low tide elevation, which is a feature that is above water only at low tide. And there are features like reefs and shoals, which are mainly below, sometimes they dry in patches, but mainly below water even at low tide. It's only an island or a land mass that generates a maritime entitlement. There's an old phrase, the land dominates the sea. What that means to those of us who work on this every day, it means that a state's entitlement in the sea is generated by its land, if it has its coast, so to speak. So if it, and an island is land. So islands generate maritime entitlements just as a large, just as the U.S. Atlantic coast would generate it. And that includes a 200-mile entitlement in terms of continental shelf and exclusive economic zone. But features like rocks only generate 12 miles, features that are not even islands at all have no maritime entitlement. And so there, control over an underwater feature does not give you any rights in the sea. I didn't answer the other question, but I can, can I do that? Whether other states will be able to participate, normally it is, in arbitration there is no opportunity for intervention. And before an international court like ITLOS or the ICJ, there is a right, well there is a procedure for intervention by a third party. Of course it's subject to the discretion of the court to allow it. Normally there is no right to third party intervention in arbitration. However, we, we raised this with the tribunal in the discussion of the rules of procedure in this case. And third party intervention was not precluded by the rules. So we interpret that to mean in this case that the tribunal would consider an application by a third state to either intervene or to submit its comments. And we, we know that there are a number of states in the region that have coasts on the South China Sea that share the Philippines concerns and indeed have the same interpretations of the convention as, as, as the Philippines. And their participation would not be unwelcome. Hi, Mike McDevitt from CNA. To follow up on Larry's question about islands, one of the things that I think many of us who've looked at the South China Sea are have in mind is the issue of many islands that do not have natural water supplies but are occupied like the Vietnamese around 22 and everybody, everybody's squatting on pieces of rock around the South China Sea has a law evolved in a way that would allow you to essentially go ahead and occupy, build a runway, put a desal plant on there and essentially claim then that that can in fact support human habitation or all of these people actually on fools there and squatting on rocks that are, or islands that aren't going to, in a, in a scheme of things pay off. Well, it's a very good question and it has inspired debate in the, among academics who study this, study this issue. I, I think the, the, should point out just as a fact that Vietnam has the same position as the Philippines in regard to the none, that none of these features in the Spratlys, none of them is entitled to more than 12 miles. So they would at most be classified as rocks under the convention. Although there may be some difference of view between the Philippines and, and Vietnam over whether certain low tide elevations are rocks or not, but, but where the Philippines and Vietnam coincide is that nothing in the Spratlys is entitled to more than 12 miles. But the question that you raise is a very good one. I, I think the answer probably is, I wouldn't, I would not say that anybody is on a fool's errand. I wouldn't use that terminology. But, but I, I think that there is a, there is a concept in international law and particularly in regard to issues of sovereignty or status of features called the critical date. And, and once a dispute arises over the status of a feature, any state that unilaterally takes action to enhance its own claims after the dispute has arisen, it is not improving its legal position. Let me put it that way. So I, I think here with the, all of the Spratlys being notoriously disputed, as a legal matter, these artificial installations, whether you're talking about living facilities or desal plants, are not enhancing the rights of any of the states. Okay. And we have a question here. Thank you. My name is Paul Lewis. I work for the Guardian Newspaper. I was interested in the non-participation of China and wondered if you could speak to any other examples where the arbitration tribunal has ruled in which one state has refused to participate and what the consequences have been in terms of perceived legitimacy of that state not participating? This, this is also a very good question. It happens very, very, very rarely. And the, the case that comes immediately to mind is the, is the diplomatic hostages case, the United States against Iran in the, in 1980, that Iran did not appear in that case. The ICJ went ahead and found that it had jurisdiction and that Iran had violated international conventions in its seizure and, and imprisonment, if you will, of U.S. diplomatic and consular personnel. And that decision, that judgment by the court was widely recognized as legitimate. And, and indeed it may have, I, I, this is a question of personal opinion, so I, I can't give you concrete proof, but I think many who were involved at the time would say that the ICJ judgment did play a role in the ultimate negotiation and, and agreement which was brokered by the Algerians. There have been a few other cases. There was another one involving Iran in the early 1950s, U.K. against Iran, the Anglo-American oil case. Iran did not appear, initially the court found it had primate fascist jurisdiction, but then decided it did not have jurisdiction and vacated its, its earlier ruling. But these are, these are, of course you have the Nicaragua against the United States. The United States did appear both to oppose Nicaragua's request for provisional measures and it did appear to challenge the jurisdiction of the court. After the court, this is the ICJ, decided that it did have jurisdiction and proceeded to the merits. The United States did not appear for the merits of the case. The court proceeded to enter a judgment and while there may be some sectors in Washington that continued to argue about it, the rest of the world and in fact a lot of informed and academic opinion in the United States considers that judgment to be a landmark and classic in, in international law. So there are very, very, very few examples of this because states do participate, but it's always a danger to the system when a major state like the United States in 1984, but when a major state that, that especially, well, a major power defies the international legal order. And what we have seen, I don't, I don't know if there is a connection or not, but an argument can be made that there is. In, in really the very next case brought under the UN convention after Philippines-China was Netherlands against the, against Russia over the seizure of the Arctic sunrise and the holding of the, of the prisoners, the crew as prisoners. And the Netherlands, it brought it as an arbitration, but under the convention you can seek provisional measures from the tribunal in Hamburg pending the establishment of the arbitral tribunal and the Russians refused to appear. And I, I question if, if China hadn't done this a few months earlier, would the Russians have wanted to be the first? And my answer to that is probably not. When Georgia sued Russia over the 2008 invasion of Georgia under the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination because of the ethnic cleansing that the Russians carried out, Russia appeared. They opposed the request for provisional measures which were issued by the court. They opposed jurisdiction and they won. And I would have assumed they would, they might have done the same thing here had it not been for China's example. Thank you very much Mark Rosen from CNA. What will be the precedential effect of this? Will there be a written opinion? My understanding is that arbitral tribunal decisions are sources of international law under the statute of the International Court of Justice. But I'd like your view on that. And then also to the extent that you get a favorable ruling, would that be the legal basis for so-called provisional measures under the statute for the at-lose to get something akin to a restraining order if China was to prevent the Philippines from developing resources within their EEZ? Also very good questions. The, technically speaking, an arbitral award is binding only between the parties to the case. However, these awards in interstate cases usually issued by very prestigious world-class experts, legal experts on the law of the sea, become published. And they are cited in other cases. The International Court of Justice, as you said, cites arbitral awards as well as its own decisions when it issues opinions in support of its judgments. Arbitral tribunals cite other arbitral tribunals. And especially if you have a tribunal with people like Mensa, Kot, Wolfram, Paulak, Fred Soones, one would expect a very, very well-reasoned opinion. One would expect that anyway from five arbitrators like that. You can be sure in a case like this, which is going to receive a lot of attention and a lot of scrutiny, they're going to be extremely careful to issue an award which is very, very carefully and thoroughly justified. And I think it will be cited frequently in other cases. It will be taken as a statement, as an interpretation of the law. It presents some novel questions, but some questions which are rather clear or should be clearly answered under the very clear and expressed terms of the convention. So I think it will have a huge impact on the international legal community and hopefully on the international community in general. And hopefully that will create the kind of environment which over time will permit China as it evolves to become more of a law cognizant country to incorporate, to digest, and to find a way to accommodate. When I say it's evolution toward a law cognizant country, there was a time nobody thought that China would ever comply with adverse WTO awards. But it's doing that largely. So the world isn't static, China isn't static, and there's reason to believe that over time and with persistent diplomacy and support from the international community, if an award is issued that favors the Philippines, it will have some impact. Now, as to going to ITLOS, let me say, it's a very interesting idea for provisional measures, some sort of restraining order. It's not one that we have had occasion to study yet, and for that reason I would be hesitant to offer an opinion now without fully knowing what I'm talking about. But it's a very interesting idea. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking Paul. And I think we would all agree, Paul, we're going to ask you to come back from time to time. Now that I know where you are. We've been very embarrassing here talking about the South China Sea if I couldn't even find it through Diamond Avenue after going to 18th and K. But I made it.


Masuma again to Sar to his left through ball looking for Madison whose side foot sit past Netto into the bottom corner and it's Tottenham they take the lead here at the Vitality Stadium you have to say it's been coming Bournemouth little Tottenham one James Madison opens his Tottenham account Semenio wins it back for Bournemouth now they can come forward Christie Edging out to the left Christie shoots left-gooded save away to the left by Vicario diving save difficult to know from our angle that might have been heading into the top corner Cliver down the left just inside the box Cliver onto his right foot with the trigger early comes back to Billing oh that was close just wider the post from Phil Billing he's got his head in his hands he can't believe he didn't hit the target here's Cliver down the left he's got Christie in fields Salanki on the edge of the box as well still just in Cliver twisting turning Semenio shoots Semenio nearly snuck one in that's rattled the upright in on to his right foot twisting and turning into the box one two with Sun to the byline pulls it back not dealt with by Bournemouth and that's an easy finish for Kulaczewski who doubled scores lead far far too easy for Spurs to read their way through the Bournemouth defence and make it Bournemouth Neil Tottenham too


It started. Welcome to the OKD working group meeting for March 29th of 2022. And let's take a quick look at the agenda there. And if there's anything that was missed, please let me know or add it in there. Let's see if we have any new folks. Any new folks want to introduce themselves? I see one or two names that I don't recognize. No pressure. But if you want to introduce yourself, feel free. Then let's move on to our first agenda item, which is the OKD release updates. Christian is not here today. Vadim is taking a hiatus from OKD. And so basically Christian sent me some info that basically there's a blocker and I have a link to it up there. And this is for the 410 release. And as soon as they can get past that, then we will have a solution to that. And it looks like this issue here might be related to it. But basically within that link, yeah, okay, so that is the link actually that first link. So basically if you go in there, you'll find some stuff related to the ongoing issue for OKD 410. And we'll be talking more about that at the next meeting. The docs group is just sort of getting things settled where we'll have multiple people with access to the Twitter and be able to tweet out things like new releases and whatnot. It's just a question of everyone having the same bit more than set up to share the credentials for Twitter. We'll talk about that in the docs updates. Is anyone from the F cost any red hat folks from F cost here doesn't look like it. So, I guess we can go to the docs update Brian go ahead. I wasn't at the last stop meeting how I was ill so I'm not sure there's anything happened there. What I can say is I've moved the charter into the OKD the IO docs and that put a new items list in the repo. And so we'll talk about how we want to sunset the rest of that content. There is a roadmap in there and there is a membership and there are membership lists in that repo. And I don't know whether we still want to do those or keep them up to date or just drop them. So we'll talk about that there. But in terms of the charter, the charter as it now stands is in the OKD IO docs in the community section. And I am still working with Brandon to get some styling updates added. And he's done some tweaks on basically the CSS style sheets just to update some colors and to make the site a little bit easier to read and improve accessibility. And so I'm not sure whether he's going to do a pull request on those or he's going to wait until he's done any further styling. I'll catch up with him this week. Yeah, there was some people have commented there has been a discussion group about site stability. And this is down to GitHub because OKD IO is now hosted by GitHub. It's on the GitHub pages and we just redirect the OKD IO URL to the GitHub pages site and GitHub have been having a number of issues. Apparently they're having some database issues which cause the outage and I put a link into the HackMD minutes where there is a blog from GitHub discussing the issues they've been having over the last few weeks. The site has been stable for over a week now. So I think whatever the issues were, GitHub seemed to be getting on top of it again. OK, so it wasn't related to build someone had thought it was related to. No, no, it was nothing to do with us. It was purely the GitHub pages environment was down. So every site hosted by GitHub was down for a while. And I noted that there was some repo at about the same time I have some repo issues where you couldn't access repo. So it was purely a GitHub issue. OK. I think that's it for docs. Dusty did pop in to talk about F cost stuff real quick. He's only got a few minutes. So let's pass the talking stick over to Dusty real quick to talk about F cost stuff. And then we'll switch back to maybe docs after that. So Dusty take it away. Gotcha. Yeah, I didn't know if we had any specific questions. A couple of things to call out just happenings in the community. Our next stream in Fedora CoroS is now on Fedora 36. So the beta for Fedora 36 came out today and we've been testing on next develop for a few weeks running that through CI. So hopefully, you know, people don't find issues. But if they do, at least they may, you know, we found them before they reached our other streams. So I don't know what the beam and Christian have set up now for, you know, testing future streams. But that might be something to look at. And then one other thing, Jamie, I know I think you run some VMware, don't you? We are updating our VMware images to use UEFI and secure boot by default. And that is happening on our next and testing streams this go around and then it'll happen in stable in two weeks. We also have some documentation that we're working on. I don't know if it's published yet that will show you how to essentially go back in and edit the image if you, for some reason, need to stay on BIOS boot. That's it for me as far as updates. I don't know if we had any specific questions from the Fedora CoroS perspective. So I thought that the the FCOF cause image production process actually produces hybrid boot images that they do both UEFI and BIOS. So because like that's how it is for the KVM images, if I remember correctly. So I'm a little confused why that's not being done for the other ones. I think the OVA's themselves have metadata in them that specify like what this image prefers. And we're updating that to say default to UEFI and secure boot. Okay, so the actual content of the disk image inside the OVA is still hybrid, but the metadata that is associated with it for the OVA is what's changing. That is my understanding. Yes. The reason I asked that clarification is that at work, I deal with some VMware or some things that I pretend to hope I don't have to care about very much, but it's a thing. And some versions of VMware ESXi straight up ignore the value that's set in the OVA metadata and we'll just always do one mode or the other depending on what bug is affecting the ESXi or vSphere software at this point in time. So that's why I'm concerned because if the actual disk doesn't have both parts, then if the field is being ignored for some reason that the image won't boot and there's no clear way to actually fix it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that it supports both because for the most part, our images on different platforms are mostly just the same bits just repackaged in a different way. Because different platforms take different inputs like I think GCP takes a tar ball and some take a QCOW and some take a VHD and some take an OVA. But nine times out of ten, there's nothing, as far as when you boot the machine, there's no changes between the different platforms other than a platform ID that gets embedded. So because obviously we can boot on either or for other platforms, it should work as well on VMware if you try to go in and override that and go back to BIOS. Okay, cool. So that's all I really care about is just not that I want people using BIOS, but I'm already aware of vSphere and ESXi versions where there are bugs in VMware where it doesn't read the metadata value properly and will do one thing or the other, regardless of what you tell it. And so I would just rather that actually work regardless. Cool. Yeah, if you have access to one of those environments, go grab our testing or next VMware image. You should be able to grab those on the webpage today and see if they work. I will ask to see if I can. I will make no promises, but all I know is I know that this is a problem because I've been bitten before and I just wanted to ask to make sure. Cool. Yeah, we always welcome that feedback just because it's hard to know everything. So we only know what people tell us. Jamie, I can't hear you. I don't know. How about now? Yes, I can hear you now. Any questions or comments for Dusty related to Fedora Cora West side of the house? Anything? Awesome. Well, thanks, Dusty. We appreciate your time. We appreciate you popping in like this. Just unspure the moment. Yeah, no worries. Yeah, I was planning to cover today, but I got busy with some other things. Sorry. No, no problem at all. I'll see you all later. All right, take it. All right, let's bounce back to doc stuff. So one of the things that came out of the docs meeting is the need for a contributors guide and a guide on the infrastructure. Like the actual infrastructure behind the builds. The reason for this is something that I alluded to earlier in the meeting that Vadim has decided to take a hiatus from working on OKD. So right now there's Christian contributing when he can, but that's it. We can put in bug fixes and code changes and whatnot and get them approved by Christian and a handful of other folks. So we can contribute still, but there's really, there's no guide for sort of how things work in the background and, you know, Brian has rift on this quite a bit. You know, there's nothing to say what the infrastructure is in the background very clearly or what is the path to being a contributor. At the docs meeting Diane suggested following sort of a stepped approach to contributions. So just like in Kubernetes or some of the other projects.  That's something that the dots group will talk about is does anyone have any feedback on those ideas. Any thoughts on this. You know, this was a sudden the morning of the dots meeting. He sort of left the channel and said he's going on hiatus. So it was kind of sudden. Okay, yeah, Jeremy. Yeah, I have been quite vocal of this. I think one of the one of the challenges is before anybody can start contributing. They have to be able to do a build and do a local test because nobody really wants to push anything or no one should want to push anything and do a pull request until they've at least checked that their code compiles and hopefully works. And my problem is I don't know how to do that. And I don't know whether I can do that, or whether okay D is so integrated linked with the red hat build system the proud system that runs internally with red hat. But I'm not sure how to go. And there is the, the 600 odd repose in the open shift organization. So just trying to find out which repose I actually need to care about to actually work out how to do a build. I've tried to go down the sort of the sort of M maze before, and you just end up going round and round circles and getting totally lost. I'd love to be able to do an okay the build. But even things like always still in Vadim's repo for the special. Okay D sort of process. Vadim had that in his personal repo for a while. There was talk about it moving into the open shift repo again. So I don't think anybody outside red hat really understands or has the ability to understand how to do a build. If it's possible to do a build outside of the red hat infrastructure. And if so, what is the end to end process flow. So I think it'd be really good to actually try and get that at least documented. I'm quite happy to write things up, but I need some guidance. I need some money to walk me through it so I can actually then document it. I think it depends on what you mean by a build. You know, I built, I've built my own images for the last year, you know, for testing. You have to realize that okay D, you know, an open shift are built with a wide variety of modules and each of those modules kind of has its own build process. They're kind of similar. But 99% of the time you don't need to rebuild those you just go out there and you access the ones that are currently out there and currently built. So it's more of how do you build a particular module say, you know, okay D machine OS. And how do you integrate that into your own image to test with. It's not a hard process for that particular one. Yes, it's honestly, it's not even convoluted. But what you probably do need is your own repository out on. Not get up for Dr. I just went right out of my head. We're all the images are currently key. Key. Yes.  And then you can actually do an install from that secondary image. You know, isn't going to look exactly like what you what we're currently doing with all the dates and everything. No. And, you know, there's probably details that we can get from redeem on that, you know, to help with the process, but for debugging and building. It's really not that not that difficult is just not well documented. Yeah, so I can, I can probably speak to this from front to back depending on where you want to start but like, I pretty much agree with what John saying, like, I don't think it's good to advise like okay D community members to try and build an entire release image on there. That's going to be like boiling the ocean and like what you're going to have to do is basically fork the open shift release repo, set up your own proud system, and then allow because that's how we build the release images now is we use all that proud automation to build the individual images, we put them through testing, and then we promote them into release image.  So like, and this is. Yeah, go ahead, Jamie. Well, I just let me add a little bit more context. One of the things that came up in the docs meeting was Diane is actually going to check into what are the ramifications of making OKD a truly external open source project. So it's this is necessarily in terms of users building it, but the community, the community. Yeah, right, right. Well, and so I'm trying to get to the point of like what you originally said about like making changes.  So like, it what I my point here is that like, yeah, I think if the OKD community wants to grow to the point where they're doing, they've got like their own proud system that's building everything like that's, you know, that's awesome. Right. Like all that code is still going to go back to the OCP stuff, unless OKD becomes a full fork, right. And then there's like no stuff. There's no linkage between the OKD code repositories and the upstream or downstream, I guess, is the way we look at it. OCP repositories, right. So like, we're working with partners to help them do these kind of things now from the red hat side. And the way we do it is exactly like John was just talking about now. So like the entryway to get into testing your things is learning how to build an image for the component you're working on, a container image, right. And then using the OCADM tooling to build a release image from a known good OKD image that has your component image inserted into it. And so like to me, that's the level one process you want to get to once you once you know how to create like a component image that you're working on. Let's say you're working on machine config operator, right. So I've got my repo, I know how to build an image. I know how to put it into key or quay depending on which side of the pond you're from. And then I know how to build a release image that points to my image in the registry, right. And so now I've got that all bundled up and I've made sure that the internals look good so it'll it'll match the image when I deploy it. Just getting to that step alone is a really big accomplishment. But once you get there, you can do what John's talking about where you can build your own release image that has your component in it and now you can at least test it before you put it up to, you know, the upstream. And then the next step would be like, OK, learning how to do that for each component and building a full release image. But I think for a contributor, just get like if we had guidance of how they could take a currently released OKD image, use the OC tooling to replace one of the components that would probably get people started at least on this process of contributing. And honestly, that's how I do my testing.  That's how I do it. And then I build it on my local environment and test because honestly, it's faster than going through CI. It's so much easier to go through and iterate, you know, over an hour than it is over four hours waiting for CI to do a test. You know, then once you have some confidence in it, yes, I'm only testing a VMware, you know, a lot of changes have to go through and, you know, go on OpenStack and, you know, all the other things. But at least you have some confidence that at least, you know, in one environment it runs and builds and then CI can test it. Hopefully, wherever else it has to do. Part of the issue we have right now, especially with OKD machine OS, is that right now it can only, you can't build it from a poll from another user account. So if I create something, I have a fork build and then I want to do a poll. It won't work because of how OKD machine OS is currently built with Vadim's magic. He has some magic that happens in there. So the only way that you can build is if you have actual access to the direct repository outside of a build. You can still do a poll, but you have to have real access to it, not from a fork. So that's one of the issues that we have is that somebody has to be able to control it. Right now I think it's only Vadim and Christian, although I could be wrong. I haven't looked at the owner's site very much, but it's not really a flaw, but that's a disadvantage of how we're currently building. Because that's how we're building the images for F cost and adding all the other magic that happens that differentiates us from using RH costs. So there's some discussion that has to happen in there if you don't have build authority in that repo. Now, one of the things that came up is that OKD is now theoretically a true upstream of OpenShift. So that might change the dynamics a little bit in terms of what Red Hat's thought might be about our spinning off and how those any fixes we would make would end up back in OCP. Like they might be reluctant to relinquish it now because we are a true upstream or they might be really happy to do that because there'll be innovation if there's a lot of developers working on it. Are they talking about completely forking it? Because right now we have the exact same, except for OKD machine OS. My understanding right now is that we are completely on the same code base. So that would have to fork everything if we're going to be completely upstream. Or we flip it on its head. The other way to think about this is the existing process shifts to being more in the public view. The one that actually runs right now that builds the OCP slash OKD, whatever's. And if we're saying, OK, we're tracing all this, we're already OK with the content set, the literal binary blobs that make up the different container images that are the unbranded bits are identical. Then we take the bits that actually have like the brand name, the integration bit. So that's MCD web console container, and I think like two others out of like the 360 odd containers that actually make up OpenShift. Those get splintered. One you get that is OCP built internally and one you get OKD built publicly. And then the rest of them just happen publicly in one built process. Because doing that flipping that, because right now we're sister builds, we're not like the truth is we're sister builds. And the way Red Hat does it is that they promote at their own pace rather than following the train that we do now. So if we keep that model, which I think is actually a really good model, then we can minimize what kind of splitting we actually have to do architecturally for motivate making this more of a community platform. Right. So if we shift what we're already doing from inside the Red Hat Farm to outside the Red Hat Farm, and then we take the bits that actually have to be different and split their processes. Inside the Red Hat side and one outside the Red Hat side, then we don't wind up boiling the ocean, I think like two or three times for no particularly great reason. And it maximizes the value to the OCP team and minimizes the, how would I say this, responsibility or pressure or onus on the OKD side. And that I think is probably what we want to move towards because I think we basically want to emulate without the bad parts, the way that RHSP is handled right now, which is, you've got the RDO stuff. That's all being built essentially once and then Red Hat promotes internally at their own pace because otherwise it just turns into madness because it's like hundreds of components. That need to be recycled through and it's just like nobody want nobody on this planet wants to boil the oceans faster. So let's not let's not do that if we don't have to. You know, part of this is like, you know, Neil, I don't disagree with what you're saying. But I think there's like a really complicated part of this and just, you know, to push back on the notion, you know, Jamie you're saying OKD is an upstream. But I think like that, if that is kind of like what the community thinks that messaging is certainly not happening internally at Red Hat. I think that there's a big disconnect here.  But there are architectural decisions that are being made inside Red Hat right now about the core structuring of OpenShift and how it will change going forward. And so this has to do with our plans on, you know, what, what we're going to do with OpenShift as a product going forward, right. And so I think that it's disingenuous to the community right now to say that there's even any sort of upstream notion, because there is no forum whereby the community is having input on these like, you know, kind of big design decisions that are being made. I would expect that if we ever get to the point and I hope we do, where OKD is seen as the upstream to OCP is downstream, I would expect these decisions to be happening in an open forum that's, you know, curated by the community and right now that's just simply not possible and, you know, just to be blunt about it because this is Red Hat's product and it's making a lot of money right now. Yeah, this is a big deal, right. It's a very big deal and so there's no way that these architectural decisions could be moved outside of the Red Hat fence at the moment, right, not while things are in flight like this. So like, I would expect that like, at some level, the OKD community coming together to start building a mirror of the build process that's happening internally, that might be the natural course here. And then at some point, there could be a discussion about like, okay, is there a way that we move the fader over more towards the community side where we have confidence that there is a proud configuration happening the same way that we do internally. And now can we start to model what it would look like to have the community doing this, but like as far as where I'm sitting, I haven't heard any of these discussions internally about like moving to like a community model or OKD being upstream, you know. Maybe that's happening around what who Diane's talking with and whatnot, but like it hasn't percolated to the engineers. Who's going to pay for the community proud because right now it's all being it's all being paid for by red hat and that is not going to be cheap. It is not cheap. I mean, I can't pay for it. Yeah, I definitely have community funding that I'm aware of, you know, that would allow us to go through and do something like that.   They're not going to give that away. And I see you have something and then Daniel you had something as well. So Brian. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I think let's do what's achievable. So we know there are bits of OKD that are different. We've talked about getting an OKD catalog for what are currently the licensed operators. So that's difference. We do have some differences in branding. So there are some differences where we do have a different we're based on fedora so there are bits of it where we own our own destiny in terms of those little pieces. And I think if we start there, we can then set up something working. And then I agree. I mean, I mean red hat is very vocal about its open source credentials. And I think this could test those because at the minute. I mean, OpenShift isn't really an open source project. There is no governance outside of Red Hat. So I think there are some discussions to be had primarily within Red Hat initially. And then wherever those discussions lead, where sort of be holding to them. And we can't really do anything until those discussions have been taken at senior level within Red Hat. But there are bits we can certainly do. I'm very keen to try and get this operator thing up and running. It both our community catalog is broken currently because the community catalog that gets shipped with OKD has dependencies on the registry at Red Hat operators that are missing. So for example, I can't put the community chain operator on OKD because it's looking for the terminal operator that's part of the licensed Red Hat registry. So without a pulse secret and pulling that operator, I can't even put the community chain version on. So there are things like that. I think that we can own our destiny and we can actually make progress on. I think you should focus on those. And then we in the background, we let the discussions around what's going on within Red Hat to go on and then we'll pick up whatever those discussions produce. Yeah, I will let Daniel go. So I'd just like to propose to the Red Hatters. One of the ways this could go is the same way CentOS Stream went, where it's Red Hat controlled, but it's out in the open enough that the community has some level of participation. And just like Red Hat is, I mean, Red Hat Linux is obviously a huge money maker, but CentOS Stream still makes sense as a collaboration model. I think that's one of the ways we could do this for the same reason. And, you know, for what it's worth, I don't participate a lot in OKD compared to a lot of you, but I personally would be OK giving up some amount of control over OKD's destiny if the result was that we in Red Hat were aligned in moving in the same general direction. I'm curious to hear other people's perspectives on that. But I just wanted to point that out for other, for Red Haters who are talking about this internally. So this is pretty much the reason why I said that we probably want to focus on, instead of having a conversation of how to replicate the whole infrastructure, let's, the, I think the strongest and easiest thing to do internally for Red Haters. Is to have a conversation about moving the prow that builds OCP, the infrastructure that actually does that out of the firewall. And then splitting the bits that actually, like, when you look at all the content that makes up Red Hat OpenShift and OKD, let's ignore our cause and F cause because those two bits are already technically independent build infrastructures. All the other stuff that's layered on top of that, most of it is bit for bit identical. We produce the same containers and they get consumed by both sides. Then you have the very small proportion of things. Right now I think it's MCD, the OpenShift web console, the API server and like two other things that are actually fundamentally different because they need to be tweaked, specifically to be Red Hat OpenShift container platform versus OKD on F cause. Like, if you, if you consider what actually makes the differences between the two platforms, then the bigger win initially is to try to move the thing that already does the stuff into the public view, so that people can see what's happening. And then we can talk about access controls, we can talk about contribution levels, and we can talk about where splits need to be done for stuff that happened that it has to happen internally versus externally. We can talk about how do you deal with, like, cause then you can, the focus point then is dealing with things like, okay, you have sensitive OCP, you have CVE things, you have nondisclosures and weird things that vendors do, that those need to be done, you know, maybe hidden from view and then later exposed when, when things are fine, that sort of stuff, but like duplicating the OpenShift container build, OpenShift container platform build infrastructure. I do not think it's a productive thing. It is, I don't think it is productive for us to consider going down that path for the working group or anyone as a whole, beyond the fact of how can we do a subset of this for the OKD specific parts, because the rest of it is identical and also it's enormous. And frankly, I don't think anyone wants to build all of it more than once. Anyone else want to chime in just the one thing. The one thing I just want to make sure though is obviously Vadim's got his reasons for for taking a step back at the minute. If Christine gets pulled into an internal project, are we going to be left in the state where OKD stops. I think as a community, we need to need to make sure that that that can't happen. And if that means that somebody from outside Red Hat needs to be able to step in and do the work that Vadim or Christian is doing, assuming they can get the knowledge. I'm aware that those guys have a lot of internal knowledge that we in the community probably don't have. Maybe John, I think is probably one of the more technically advanced in the community. But I just think as a community, we need to make sure that we're not beholden to a single person is about person has to step back for either personal or job related issues. We don't want this project to stall. I think that's my concern. Yeah, and I've voiced this before is that I mean Vadim is basically the lynchpin in all of this, right? And if Vadim gets abducted by aliens, you know, then we're kind of screwed, right? It's we can assume that Red Hat would put someone else in there. But, you know, we don't know, we do know that Red Hat has put some effort into this new operators catalog that's OKD specific. That's a step towards acknowledging that it's OKD is still viable, I think in the eyes of Red Hat because they're putting some engineering. But we don't really have any guarantees and no promises and lots of people there as Diane phrase it to me the other day, there have been many Vadims. There have been many people in the in the life cycle of OKD who have stepped into that role and then stepped out because they get promoted. It's basically a stepping stone to getting promoted within. So it's going to happen. And it's just a question of how, you know, as you said, Brian, like, how do we fill that? And can it be filled by an external person? Or can we show the value so much that that Red Hat very easily puts someone else in who's going to do a good job of leading this project, right? It's been said and it's probably accurate. I'm not going to mince words about it, but it's likely that Red Hat views OKD as a stepping stone to OCP, to people purchasing OCP licenses. It's like, hey, here's this thing. It's nice. By the way, it's even nicer and stable and supported if you pay for OCP. Many, many organizations have gone that route, right? Of playing with OKD, testing it, then they buy their OCP license. That's so, you know, yeah, go ahead, John. Comment on what Daniel said a little bit ago. He had mentioned, you know, Centos streams and stuff.  I specifically asked when that happened, what's going to happen to OKD?  You know, it's free. You know, people can manage it themselves. You know, you look at a lot of the problem tickets, whatever you see online, you can manage a lot of your issues yourself if you have the technical teams to do it. So, do you do something with OKD, like, make it like Centos streams and now make it much harder to use in production because you can't be sure about whether or not things are going to be stable. The biggest issues that we have with stability right now, and I know I've said it before, you know, we're probably tired of hearing it, is because of FCOs.  It's okay. But we know, you know, that any OKD issues themselves are probably the same issues that OCP has in terms of the actual product outside of networking and some of the other things. So we have a high level confidence that OKD itself is probably fine. If we go to an upstream version or like Centos streams or, you know, something similar to that, my concern is that we will go to a different model of how quickly we do things. And now we're going to have so many changes, you know, kind of like we're doing in Fedora between, you know, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, where it's going to make it hard for it to be used in a production type of environment, like I'm using it, versus a lab or a college or something else where people are learning about OpenShift technology. So there's my concern in terms of, you know, going to a Centos streams type of model. I understand why Red Hat did it, at least I think I understand why Red Hat did it. But it really made the community, the Centos community unhappy. And now that's why you've got Rocky Linux. But just in point of fairness, John, like I think, you know, you say it was a Red Hat decision and I think that's definitely what the popular conception is. But like the decisions that were made were actually made by the Centos community or whatever their governing body is. So it wasn't like a dictate that came from it. Yeah, but I would say that most of that leadership were probably Red Hatters. I'm not denying the closeness between those communities. I'm just quibbling about semantics. No, I understand.  But the reason I say that is because I mentioned that a year ago or however long ago that this happened, that my worry was this was going to happen with OKD. And this is the first time that I'm not saying that it's officially been said, but the idea has been brought forward, you know, to model OKD, you know, like, like, you know, the Centos streams. And Daniel, I understand exactly what you're talking, you know, how you're talking. It's not, it's just something that I heard that I wanted to express. That's fair. And to be very clear, I am not a Red Hatter. I have no insight into what Red Hat is planning. So this random idea that I threw out should not be taken as any sort of official direction of anything. Oh, sure. Sure. I'll just say no comment, but there are continual discussions inside Red Hat about like, you know, the best ways to improve open shift and kind of the future and whatnot. So like, you know, I, well, I get what you're saying. And I think in, to me, in an ideal world, what we would want out of a situation like that is kind of like the best of what's coming out of the Centos streams. You know, thing, which is that streams is like this kind of bleeding edge next rel that's coming and the community can put things in there that will eventually make it into rel. And I would, I would imagine that like, if that's the model that Red Hat wants to use going forward for open shift, you know, I mean, to get OKD at a point where the community is using it. Out front and putting changes in there that eventually get into OCP. You know, that would be ideal. But yeah, it doesn't doesn't serve you, John. Go ahead, Neil. Sorry. So a couple of things I want to quibble since we're now at quibbling points. First of all, Centos stream, not really bleeding edge and not even like the door leading edge or any of that sort of thing. Right. That's it. It's no particularly worse than what happens that you get that rel minor release, three months, four months, six months from now, right? That's how that works. The second point of order really is we have always been this way, even if we haven't tacitly acknowledge we haven't really explicitly acknowledged this. The Centos stream model, as it were, is essentially how OKD operates now. We basically take what Red Hat does.  And we kind of call it a day that that's pretty much what's happening now. And the main point of difference between OKD and OCP is that where the version numbers track. So like, OKD right now is I think going to be tracking to 411 and OCP is just about to track on to 410. So we're already in that like OKD is the next minor version of OCP thing. The continual integration of container technologies and such, and especially trying to get more Kubernetes stuff, you know, bettered has necessitated using F cause as the base rather than building a sent cause or whatever you want to pervert words into making a Centos version of Koryos. Like though that is already today, formalizing that structure makes it easier to make the engagement more positive between Red Hat engineering, Red Hat product management, technical marketing, and the community. Because right now the situation is we all just don't talk to each other and we pretend we don't exist. And that's pretty bad. Like being involved in Centos stream now, like I'm not in Red Hat. I don't know people. I don't know what's going on in the internal discussions, the minutiae of what goes on inside of Red Hat. I know some people claim to think I work for Red Hat or do whatever, but I promise you I never have. I don't even know if it ever will happen. But I can say this much that Centos stream. I was one of those people that pushed very hard on the Centos stream concept even before it existed. Like when Red Hat acquired the Centos project to revive it from its like half broken state that it was before. It was something that I talked to a lot of Red Hat Enterprise Linux product managers about like I want a way for this to be a thing because y'all pushed out to point releases that broke all of my servers. Because you didn't test AMD stuff enough to make sure that you didn't break them. And I had to like hold back rel minor releases and the the faces that they made, when I said I had to hold back rel minor releases, because they because of, you know, actual faults in the software, I think drove the point home that something like this needed to exist. When rel 9.0 GAs in a month and a half. I think people are going to be surprised at how up to snuff it is immediately out of the door with the collection of Apple with all the software with all the hardware testing, and all the usage that has happened from having six, six months to a year of existing Centos stream nine ahead of time right like that that's a huge win that I want to replicate for open shift. And I, and that is I think where we should move our north star towards, and I think for Red Hatters like Elmico and, and others, I think that's a productive point to go towards talking about how in the world we want to make okay D viable successful and interesting to Red Hat and the community. I mean, I tend to agree with you know, I tend to agree with you but like, if those conversations are happening I hope they're happening on Diane's end because like sadly, they're not happening in the places that I'm hanging out in turn. So this has been a great conversation. I think we covered a lot of ground. It sounds like first and foremost, we want a contributors guide that includes as its first chapter sort of an overview of the infrastructure. It works the build process overall. And then chapter two is our first goal which it seems like we sort of agreed upon is building components successfully building components and integrating them as being a first step to really building contributors to it. And so, does that sound like a game plan moving forward that the docs working group can start on that next week is basically create a template and start asking questions to fill out that template so that we have a the first two chapters of a contributors guide. I think I heard the other way around. I think the suggestion was the easier option, the easier way in is learn how to build a single component and integrated into an installation, rather than the bigger build picture. That's what I mean actually that that would be, but chapter one would be like, what is everything like how is it all connected, like just sort of an overview of the of the build process to even know that there is this thing out there that you're taking the whole of and then inserting a component into I just dropped a Lincoln chat here because this is a documentation site that we just launched that I've been kind of leading the effort for internally and this is like the documentation that we've been creating over the last, you know, six months to a year when we've been onboarding IBM and and Alibaba and whatnot and this is the documentation that we're going to that we're starting to show to like Nutanix and others for how they would integrate like core components into open shift like integrating new infrastructure layer components. I don't think it's necessarily specifically related to like the whole notion of the contributor guide, but I think it's another window into the type of activity that someone contributing might want to do. And it's got a lot of links to like PRs from IBM and Alibaba and how they integrated their components. I think it's extra information that would help someone who's really trying to dive deep to understand this. So I just wanted to share it as like one more point to think about as we're maybe assembling a contributor guide. You know this is more resource and we plan to continue to update those docs with more information about how to you know how to put these components in. So, yeah, just forgot I shared that. Jamie, I'll put something together. It sounds like I mean except for Christian, I probably, and obviously Vadim, you know, I've been through this process a couple of times. I'll try to get something maybe in the next week, depending on my on my time, at least how to do it may end up being videos because a lot of times videos are just easier to do. But if I can, I'll try to drop in on the docs meeting next week or touch base with me and Brian, Brian and I, and just let us know what you have. And we can shape it into something that we can bring the doc script. And I do a meeting coming up with the team where I'm going to pick his brain a little bit. So, yeah, I mean, John, if it will make up, make it easy for you. If you want to do a demo, we can record that and then I can turn that into documentation. It'll be easier for you.  What I'll probably want to do is take two, like OKD machine OS and then our good old friend and build those two. Those are the two most interesting for us, but the process is the same for a console or for author or anything else.  Then you push the document and you know the Docker file or container image. So the process, the high level process is the same. The minutio of each component is a little bit different. Okay. Cool. All right. I'd like to share two more links here, if you don't mind. Yes, share, share away, buddy, share away. So these are some hacking guides for the components that you know my team directly works on and I work on the first one is like our new operate. Like, I'll just give you the component. The components don't really matter, but that first one is for our new operator that manages the cluster. The cloud controller managers. And the second one is for the machine API. But the first one has our instructions about like replacing a component inside of the inside of a release image. So I know John's going to like demo that and everything, but there's a little pre canned text for you if you want something to reference to go along with what John's doing. And the machine API operator one is all about like hacking on the machine API. That might give you a little insight into how we talk about contributor guides and kind of what we talk about to other people, you know, predominantly red headers who are contributing these things but I figured those might be helpful as inspiration for what you guys are doing. I appreciate you sharing. Fantastic. Well, as you guys noted there's like 600 repos in there and this stuff is buried deep in each one of them and it's like, you know, this is like the Fremen on Arrakis or something like no one knows where all the water caches are you have to go out and look. Now, another thing that we've talked about that we haven't done yet. And I brought up even early on in my involvement with OKD is we need a list of who has what resources for testing and building and whatnot. So I think the docs group I'll add that to the agenda for the docs group for the next meeting. Just to get a sense of the membership of the OKD working group and surrounding community. What can people contribute in terms of infrastructure for testing, building, etc. Like I've got, you know, vSphere access, someone might have, you know, Alibaba, someone might have, you know, whatever, like the more that we can test across the platforms and do builds on different infrastructure. I think the stronger will be to contribute. Right. If I wanted to donate AWS, that would be AWS resources. I'd be happy to test AWS, but I can't pay for it on my own book. Right. And, and, well, so I, here's the thing. I did. AWS, a basic OKD and AWS, it ran about $340 a month to run it. It was, it was not cheap because you figure you've got your worker nodes. And you're, you're, you know, so it's, it's, it's, it's can be kind of expensive. We might be able to come up with some way of a couple of companies contribute every month or we develop. I'm actually involved in a lot of community groups that take contributions to do various types of. Well, for, for this, I mean, it wouldn't be running it all the time and be more like, okay, can we build and test. Right. And do the basic work. Can we test a particular issue and then fix that issue and then turn it over to Proud for, for initial regular testing. Yeah, exactly. You know, like it doesn't always have to be testing on those specific clouds. Like if it's an AWS problem, yeah, you're not going to be able to solve it without testing on AWS. Yeah. But when I think about what's going on with the operate first community that's coming out of like the cloud native computing foundation and redhead has a bunch of inroads in with it. We're deploying like open stack instances that are community operated. And I've talked with this with the operate first people, but you know, there's the notion that the OKD community could link up with the first community and utilize something like their public open stack to run, you know, CI infrastructure that deploys open shift using the open stack provider for one. But then you could also do vSphere installations on top of open stack, you know, assuming you could you could handle the nested virtualization or whatever. But you can see what I'm getting at here. Like it doesn't always have to be AWS, GCP, Alibaba, whatever. Like as a community, we might decide to choose to use open stack because it's also a community project that we have good, you know, coverage on and we have people who can operate it. We link up with the operate first community, figure out a way for us to like have administrators who could maintain our infrastructure. And then OKD could actually be doing like testing and CI on their own inside of a public cloud. You know, and I think that really gets to kind of the crunchy granola side of the open source, which is like, you know, we're collaborating with others and using shared infrastructure to do these things. And like, for me, that would be like an ultimate kind of milestone to reach. It would be tough to do, but, you know, very cool. Well, just the reason I say AWS and GCP is that those are the, those are the stopping points right now for future releases because that's where we're having the issues. Gotcha. Okay. Sorry about that. Oh, no, no, no, no, what you said makes perfect sense. Yeah. You know, we might be able to do AWS. I mean, I'd have to map it out with like, you know, anyway, it's, it's, it's possible. Right. And it's possible. I think if, if we got the community, everyone chips in, you know, $5 a month or something like that, like, you never know, there's no, I mean, and I'm serious, like there's, there's, there's a myriad of ways in which we could like, fund or get donated stuff, like, let's not limit ourselves in any way. Right. But like, if they would support it. But like, for example, if let's say John is like working for a company that's using OKD or John owns a company that uses OKD and they happen to be using AWS and they're hitting this issue. Then it's like, okay, if you fix the issue on your own deployment, and then take it back to propose the code change upstream, and we're using at that point, the community infrastructure or red ads infrastructure. Then like, I would expect as long as the test pass on the CI at that point, I wouldn't necessarily need the OKD community to have their own like, you know, AWS infrastructure. I mean, that may be the way it works in the end. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, the organization I work for does have OKD and AWS and OKD and vSphere. But we need to document who has what and who has access to what to be able to know what we have. So I think that's the first step. All right, I want to be mindful of people's time. It's three minutes after the hour. Thank you so much for this awesome discussion. We'll pick it up at the next meeting. There'll be a lot of stuff happening in between, so please check the mailing list. Oh, matrix. I was able to get into matrix. Other folks have as well. So they fixed an issue where the room wasn't visible. Now it's visible. If you just, if you're in the matrix server, you can now find the room. So anyone that hasn't gotten into it, just shoot a message to me and I'll help you get into it, because it seems like we might be having some conversation. Any last minute thoughts before I end the meeting? I'm good. Thank you. Awesome. Well, thanks for the excellent discussion, folks. This was great. Look for the video and look for discussion in between.


Let's get into some classical conditioning here for you today. We are going to look at trace conditioning this time What you haven't seen folks is the fact that we've recorded these all once before and I got them backwards so the point is is that It's completely okay to look things up because I was like through the last one We were recording it and we're like as in the middle of getting I'm like I did that backwards So anyway, these ones won't be backwards. These will be error corrected So the really cool thing though is that you're missing one of the best videos We've ever recorded we may just put it up because it was a mistake. Anyway, but it was a great video So we might put it up just for fun so to point out that you can have fun making mistakes And then you can correct your mistakes and you can still have fun. It's okay to make mistakes All right, so here we go trace conditioning classical conditioning Why is it important because trace conditioning and classical conditioning all of it? That's how you develop reinforcers, right? So you're gonna develop new reinforcers using classical conditioning procedures So you better know your procedures and I'm not talking really quickly right now It's because I've already presented all this content and I'd really like to get through it because it's 530 which You know what that means Anything you want it to mean anyway, so classical conditioning where we need to present the CS and then the US right? So the CS is going to predict the US and that's how you end up developing a connection between the CS and US And you end up with conditioning. Okay, here we go. So In trace conditioning, I think is what we're talking about We're gonna turn the CS on and we're gonna turn the CS off before we turn the US on so take a look up here We got CS on CS off break US on US off now that break is called the interstimulus interval So the time between the presentation of the two stimuli the longer that is the worse you're conditioning It's that simple about a half a second is what historically has been used in the laboratory But it's just a historical phenomenon. It doesn't matter like quarter of a second who cares. It's all good All right, there you go. So trace conditioning. There's a trace