[OpenPower-Firmware] Welcome and towards op-build v1.8

[Stewart Smith]

Hi everyone,

Welcome to openpower-firmware - where we hope to have a good place for
communicating about the openpower firmware stack as a whole.

We're currently heading towards what is currently op-build master-next
becoming op-build v1.8.

We haven't had a tagged release since op-build v1.7 back at the start of
October 2015 (and this is for a variety of reasons I won't go into
here). The plan is to try and tag v1.8 on or around March 17th.

This mail commits to text and the internet what was discussed in a phone
call recently with (most of) the relevant parties. It was felt that we
could use this list to help co-ordinate this and future efforts - and
it'll help combat the fact that phone calls aren't timezone friendly.

To do this, the following conditions need to be met:

- We're happy that adequate testing has been done on master-next
  - For this, we want Atit and Sachin to sign off.
- We're happy with the content of master-next.
  - For this, we want signoff from:
    - Patrick on Hostboot
    - Joel on buildroot and kernel
    - Sam on petitboot
    - Stewart on skiboot
  - Additionally, we should be happy to defer any open issues on github
    that aren't resolved.
    Current list of open issues:
    - https://github.com/open-power/op-build/milestones/v1.8
  - Patrick is also working to ensure that Barreleye is in a state where
    it will at least boot with a fully populated system.

-- 
Stewart Smith
OPAL Architect, IBM.