Minutes for Meeting of February 18th, 2010

Next Meeting

• March 4th, 2010

Attending

• Behdad Esfahbod
• Brian Cameron
• Diego Escalante Urrelo
• Germán Póo-Caamaño
• Jorge Castro
• Lucas Rocha (late)
• Rosanna Yuen
• Stormy Peters
• Vincent Untz

Regrets

• Srinivasa Ragavan

Recurring Items

• Review past action items.
• Did each person with action items send their status reports to the board list before the meeting?
• Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
• Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
• System administrator hiring - waiting for funding.
• Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

• Lucas Rocha is stepping down from the board. The board wished Lucas goodbye and extended a warm welcome to Jorge Castro, who is joining the board to replace Lucas.
• GUADEC Update
  • Koen Martens from the GUADEC organizing team joined the board meeting to provide a GUADEC update.
  • The board agreed that GNU Hacker meeting will be co-located with GUADEC 2010.

    • http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2009/

  • Website update. The main GUADEC website designer is Vinicious Depizzol. The website is not being developed as quickly as the organizers expected.
  • The board and local organizers are currently working to seek sponsors. Need to do more work since we only have one sponsor right now.
  • Koen suggested that the organizers are not providing enough information on the planning list. There is good communication working with the local organizers, such as Reinout. It was suggested that better communication with the larger community via the planning list could help to improve overall organization.
    • Behdad suggests to Koen to ask the local GNOME community and larger GNOME community for help. The GNOME community will highlight problems as they are noticed, and providing progress reports to the larger community will help such review.
• Hewlett-Packard and ACCESS have stepped down from the GNOME Advisory Board.
• GUADEC training as proposed by Dave Neary.
  • Contract is currently under legal and board review.
  • ACTION: Stormy will forward the latest contract to the board for review.
• BODHost
  • BODHost has made an offer to provide the GNOME community with web services at no cost. They said that if the The GNOME Project website is hosted with BODHost, that they will offer The GNOME Foundation their services as sponsorship and also provide complete managed 24x7 live support along with the servers that they will provide. In return the GNOME Foundation provides a simple link on the GNOME website footer.
  • These web services are currently provided by Red Hat at no cost.
  • The GNOME sysadmin team should decide if this is an opportunity the GNOME Foundation should take advantage of.
  • ACTION - Behdad will follow-up on the sysadmin list about the BODHost offer to provide the GNOME community with web services at no cost.
• XIPWire
  • XIPWire provides a service to offer mobile phone donation services.
  • They have set it up so people can donate to open source projects, including the GNOME Foundation, without paying any fees.
  • So people can donate money to the GNOME Foundation via mobile phones through the XIPWire service
• GNOME has another opportunity to allow people to donate via cell phones through their carriers.
  • We can participate in a "Mobile Giving Foundation" if we pay $300 (US).
  • If we do this, the GNOME Marketing team should have a plan on how to advertise it and how to make it work.
  • ACTION - Stormy will notify the marketing list that there is budget for the $300 (US) needed if a marketing plan can be put into place.
• PyGTK+
  • ACTION - Jorge will ping J5 to coordinate what is necessary to improve PyGTK+ maintainership.
• Board member review process
  • Diego has recommended that the board have a self-review process. Something similar to a 360° review process.
  • ACTION - Diego will lead the board member review process: pick a date, send reminders and coordinate with Stormy the missing members surveys.
• Co-location in 2011
  • Has been announced to KDE board.
    • ACTION - Vincent will send call-for-bids and press release for co-locating in 2011.
  • Events
    • FOSS Nigeria in Kano, Nigeria (April 23-25)
    • Idlelo open source event in Accra, Ghana (May 17-21) - training and booth opportunities.
      • ACTION - Vincent will find people to attend the FOSS Nigeria and Idlelo events.
    • Zaragoza
      • Possibly organize a Marketing Hackfest for Zaragoza.
      • ACTION - Diego will help Stormy to organize the Zaragoza event.

    • LinuxTag

      • ACTION - Vincent will get in contact with local LinuxTag community to organize a track in German.

Completed Actions

• Brian - Will send an email to the board-only list to start a discussion about how to define Stormy's Bonus goals.
• Rosanna - Will touch base with the accountant to determine if we need an extension for taxes. An extension is not needed.
• Stormy - Will ping James Vasile about the legal arrangements for Dave Neary's proposed training. Done shortly after the meeting.
• Stormy - Will forward the latest contract to the board for review.
• Stormy - Will notify the marketing list that there is budget for the $300 needed if a marketing plan can be put into place.

Status of action items

• Behdad - Tasked with scrubbing the GnuCash file so it can be made public. Behdad sent a scrubbed GnuCash file to Rosanna to check, but still pending.

• Behdad - Automate the process of entering PayPal information into GnuCash. Rosanna sent Behdad a sample of incoming PayPal information looks like and has shown how it should be incorporated into the GnuCash file. Behdad is now looking into this.

• Brian - Get information about what should be in an "Employee Handbook". Draft under review.
• Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.
• Diego - Taken over from Stormy. Will work with Gil Forcada from guifi.net and gnome-marketing to define the best way for organizations like guifi.net to participate in the GNOME community. Not many replies from the community. Diego will draft something more concrete for gnome-marketing and ask for comments.
• Germán - Put together a proposal for how to address board members who become inactive. Still pending.
• Lucas - Work to ensure that Foundation members sign the GNOME Code of Conduct, and make it a requirement that new Foundation members need to sign this. Lucas completed a draft currently under review, tarted discussion on foundation list, got a lot comments and feedback, and summarized the discussion points. The board seems to be still interested in proposing Code of Conduct as an official guideline for Foundation members as a way have a more clear message about the values of the GNOME community. Lucas will send an updated official proposal to members this week.

• Lucas & Alberto - Set up a Euro bank account. Still in progress. Lucas contacted Chema from GNOME Hispano for advice but still no reply.

• Rosanna - Research the GNOME Guidestar website and update if necessary. Rosanna sent an update about the status of Guidestar, but work is still needed. Need to find someone to keep the website up-to-date.
• Rosanna - Will check who received the 2008 Annual Report and send an email to board-list letting everybody know who received them.

• Rosanna - Will send a new updated version of the GnuCash file soon.

• Srini - Ping John Palmieri for status about importing Paypal data into GnuCash. John Palmieri was pinged, but no response yet.

• Srini - Send out the GUADEC call-for-hosts, and the next meeting will be an IRC meeting to discuss. This is done. Srini has the meeting logs, but these are not yet published in the wiki. Yet to format and upload and announce the meeting logs. Leaving this as an open action item until the logs are available.
• Stormy - To propose a case study on how the improvements we made with bugzilla made a difference as input for the marketing materials for why the Foundation needs to hire a system administrator. Max sent a write-up. Working with the GNOME Journal folks to turn it into a GNOME Journal article (tentatively have an author).
• Stormy - To schedule a meeting with companies that do consulting work with GNOME to start discussions on how we can help (how can we work together). Sent email. Got a couple of positive responses. Will follow up with others and schedule meeting.
• Stormy - To follow up with the Advisory Board about acquiring a second machine. Email sent, but no response yet.
• Stormy - Will set up a "Wish List" Wiki page to highlight things that the GNOME community needs help with funding with a link from Friends of GNOME.

• Vincent - Touch base with Matthew Garrett and with the GNOME community to determine how the GNOME Code of Conduct needs to be enhanced to reflect speakers. Ongoing. First draft is available, need to push this. Vincent sent a ping to put this on the wiki for public review. Draft published at http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct/SpeakerGuidelines and will announce it to the membership for review next week.

• Vincent - Update the blog and planet to highlight that people are expected to sign and follow the GNOME Code of Conduct. Waiting for Lucas' action on Code of Conduct.
• Vincent - Follow-up with Intel to determine what to do about copyright assignment for clutter. Waiting for an official update from Intel. Ongoing
• Vincent - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to use the GNOME trademark. Ongoing.
• Vincent - Follow up with Michael Meeks and Bradley Kuhn to see if there is an interest in defining a policy the release team can follow to know whether a project with a copyright assignment requirement can be accepted or not. What sorts of copyright assignments are acceptable? Draft is under review.
• Vincent - To discuss co-location organizing with the KDE board.
• Vincent - Start the bidding process for co-location in 2011. Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier might be a good person to help.

• Vincent - Will notify the Libre Graphics Meeting organizers about how we will handle fees. The board will handle GSoC and not charge a fee for money received via PayPal, but will charge the normal fee for any money received not via PayPal.

New Action Items

• Behdad - Will follow-up with the BODHost offer on the syadmin list.
• Diego - Will lead the board member review process: pick a date, send reminders and coordinate with Stormy the missing members surveys.
• Diego - Will help Stormy to organize the Zaragoza event.
• Jorge - Will ping J5 to coordinate what is necessary to improve PyGTK+ maintainership.
• Vincent - Will send call-for-bids and press release for co-locating in 2011.
• Vincent - Will find people to attend the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa in Ghana and Idlelo events.

• Vincent - Will get in contact with local LinuxTag community to organize a track in German.

Discussed on the mailing list

• Discussion about Lucas Rocha stepping down and finding an appropriate replacement. On February 17th, it was announced that Jorge Castro will be replacing Lucas on the board.
• The GNOME Foundation filed taxes on February 16th.
• Discussion about adopting a "Conflict of Interest" policy as needed to comply with the IRS to maintain the GNOME Foundation's tax free status.
• Planning with the KDE community for a co-located summit in 2011.
• Dave Neary provided more details about how to manage the costs and revenue for the GNOME training sessions that he proposes be held at GUADEC 2011. The terms are under discussion.
• The board approved paying the $5,264 travel costs associated with the Usability hackfest.
• Planning for the a11y hackfest, including making final travel subsidy arrangements.
• On-going discussion about the draft policy/statement on Copyright Assignment which Michael Meeks wrote.
• The GNOME Foundation has a contract to pay Joanmarie Diggs $6,000 for WekKitGTK+ related accessibility work, which Joanmarie recently completed. The board approved paying the amount owed.
• One of the two Zoom2 units that Texas Instruments donated to the GNOME Foundation was given to Steve Sakoman who intends to get the GNOME stack running on it.
• The draft "Employee Handbook" was updated to reflect discussions between Brian and Zana about how expenses are handled and the new version is under review.
• Discussion about setting up the new Friends of GNOME donation ruler.
• The GNOME Foundation received an invitation from the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) to attend the bi-annual conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons. This will be held in May in Accra, Ghana.
• The GNOME Foundation received an invitation to participate in Idlelo, a large (500 people) open source event in Africa. In addition to the conference, they will have an e-government day and 3 days of training. GNOME is invited to participate at no cost and provide a 3 day desktop training session, and a booth.
• Planning for having a GNOME presence at Linux Tag and the OSS Watch conferences.
• Shane Phillip from BODHost offered the GNOME Foundation web hosting services. They said that if the The GNOME Project website is hosted with BODhost, that they will offer The GNOME Foundation their services as sponsorship and also provide complete managed 24x7 live support along with the servers that they will provide. In return the GNOME Foundation provides a simple link on the GNOME website footer.
• Sharif J. Alexandre from XIPWIRE offered the Text Pledging functionality of XIPWIRE to the GNOME Foundation completely free of charge. They have created an "oss" campaign where people can simply text "oss" to 56624 (XIPWIRE's commercial shortcode number) to pledge a default amount of $10 and are wondering if the GNOME Foundation would be interested in participating.
• The board voted to approve counting the $19,578 received from 2009 Friends of GNOME funds towards the sysadmin campaign.
• Andy Wingo requested if it would be possible to colocate the GNU Hackers Meeting with GUADEC 2010. The board approved.

  • http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2009/

• Igalia requested a letter of support from the GNOME Foundation to help them prepare for a bid. The letter was provided as requested.
• John (J5) Palmieri sent an email to the board highlighting that PyGTK+ does not have a maintainer and may need some help from the board.

• The GNOME Foundation received a complaint about inappropriate content on http://planet.gnome.org, which the board is responding to.