Foundation Board Minutes for Tue, March 14th 2017, 18:00 UTC
Next meeting date Tue, March 28th 2017, 17:00 UTC
Wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20170314
Attending
Regrets
- Cosimo Cecchi
- Alexandre Franke
Missing
Agenda for 2017-03-14
- Foundation travel policy
- GUADEC 2018 call for bids
- Immigration ban statement
- GIMP reimbursement request (see email)
- Should we move our documents from the resources page to ownCloud?
Minutes
- Foundation travel policy
- Neil has sent round a draft travel policy for the GNOME Foundation. Some modifications have been made in response to feedback from members of the board.
- Individual trips need to be approved by the board. After that, travel expenses that fall within the policy wouldn't have to be approved by the board.
- The policy is separate from the Travel Committee - it is intended for those travelling on behalf of the Foundation rather than the project (primarily staff and board members).
The policy uses GSA (https://www.gsa.gov/) rates to set a per diem ("per day") expense allowance. It isn't expected that claiments will need to go beyond the per diem rate.
- Question from Nuritzi about exchange rate conversions - will Rosanna do the checking? Can it be simplified?
- Neil - it shouldn't be a problem to look up historical exchange rates that were used for a transaction. We can use Oanda.
- Rosanna - we'll just look up the exchange rate for one day of a trip, rather than for every day.
- Neil will adjust the policy to reflect this.
- VOTE: adopt the new policy proposed by Neil, subject to the exchange rate amendment, and use it to replace the existing travel policy in the employee handbook
- +1 Nuritzi, Shaun, Meg, Allan - APPROVED
- ACTION: Neil to put the new policy on the wiki and remove the old one
- GUADEC 2018 call for bids
- We need to send out the call for bids - we usually aim to send it out in February
- Needs to be a mailing list post, gnome.org post, social media announcement
- ACTION: Nuritzi will take a look, with the aim to publish on Friday 17 March
- Immigration ban statement
- Neil and Allan have drafted a statement, which has been shared with the board.
- Neil has compared it with other similar statements and is happy with it.
- The new ban comes in on Thursday, so it could be apt to post it then.
- Alexandre has asked about the Foundation's ability to fund travellers from US embargoed countries. Neil thinks this could confuse the statement.
- Nuritzi - question - who is posting this? Is it Neil, or the Foundation?
- Neil - it's from the Foundation.
- Nuritzi - statements from other organizations have been from their ED. We have had legal advice that a statement like this should be OK.
- Neil - the Conservancy one was made on behalf of the Conservancy.
- Will be posted on gnome.org, social media. Agreement not to make too big a deal of it.
- Jim - the statement is fine in general. Would like to suggest some edits. So would Nuritzi.
ACTION: Neil to put the statement in an etherpad (https://etherpad.gnome.org/p/GNOME_immigration_ban_statement) so board members can make changes and post on Thursday
- ACTION: Neil to let the Engagement Team know what we're planning.
- GIMP reimbursement request (see email, subject "Reimbursements for GIMP Wilber Week Hacking Event 2017")
- ACTION: Nuritzi to process the receipts and Rosanna to send the cash
- Should we move our documents from the resources page to ownCloud?
- Not urgent - to be discussed another week.
Ongoing
This section includes items which have seen an update in the last 30 days. Format is "YYYY-MM-DD, action|discussion|abstract" for this and subsequent minutes sections
- WHS donations report
- 2017-02-14
- ACTION: Alexandre to follow-up with WHS about donation reports
- 2017-02-14
- Hackfest process documentation
- 2017-02-14
- ACTION: Nuritzi to take a stab at updating the documentation for the process to request a hackfest and responsibilities between Board and TC
- 2017-02-14
- Immigration ban
- 2017-03-07
- This is in the news again, since it was reintroduced effective 3/16
- ACTION: Neil to send a draft around to board-list (before next meeting)
- 2017-03-14
- Draft reviewed
- ACTION: Neil to send out on Thursday 16 March
- 2017-03-07
- Pitivi fundraiser beneficiary
- 2017-02-28
- Contract is ready for the Directors to review
- ACTION: Nuritzi to run the contract and the NY/CA change by Luis, and otherwise sign the contract by next week
- 2017-03-07
- Luis got back to us with the advice of keeping the contract with NY law
- ACTION: Nuritzi to sign the contract and send it back
- 2017-02-28
- libertyVPS server donation
- 2016-12-20
- ACTION: Meg to check with sysadmins whether we actually need a server
- 2017-01-10
- Meg sent an email and is waiting to hear back from the sysadmin team.
- 2017-02-28
- Meg to follow up with LibertyVPS pointing them to previous social media posts about donors and ask them what they'd like. Meg to follow up with engagement team about LibertyVPS social media perks.
- 2017-03-07
- LibertyVPS want to also donate some money to the project
- ACTION: Neil to connect to them 1:1 to talk about contribution opportunities
- 2016-12-20
- Chrome Store account for managing GNOME Shell integration browser extension
- 2016-12-20
- ACTION: Shaun to find out more about what's involved in creating an account
- 2017-03-07
- For the Play Store, we had decided that the contributor should be empowered to publish their app there, as long as they're members of the Foundation
- And as long as the credentials/keys are shared with the Board
- We should document this process in a wiki page
- The Engagement team could faciliatate Foundation members being able to publish on these stores
- ACTION: Neil will look into this
- For the Play Store, we had decided that the contributor should be empowered to publish their app there, as long as they're members of the Foundation
- 2016-12-20
- Dropping dates in copyright claims on our websites
- 2016-12-06
- ACTION: Alexandre to send an email to foundation-list with a proposal for discussion
- 2016-12-20
- Next step seems to be to reach out to Creative Commons to get advice on what exactly can and should be done
- 2017-01-24
- Alexandre reached out to Creative commons
- 2017-02-28
- Alexandre will try alternative channels
- 2016-12-06
- Google Play account
- 2016-09-27
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=771981 was done, we need to pay a $25 one-time fee for the developer account
- 2016-10-04
- Payment is authorized
- ACTION: Rosanna to make the payment and follow up with Ankit
- 2016-10-18
- Rosanna is waiting for Ankit to reply about the gmail account
- 2016-11-01
- Board is discussing who should have access to the credit card associated to the account
- 2016-11-29
ACTION: Rosanna to look into getting a PayPal credit card
- 2016-12-20
Rosanna has been collating materials to update the PayPal account owner before looking into the credit card
- 2016-09-27
- Privacy campaign funds
- 2016-09-27
- Draft is out for the Board to review and give feedback
- ACTION: Cosimo to try and form a committee to review internship proposals
- 2016-10-26
- We are aiming for an internship round in spring 2017
- 2016-09-27
- Bitcoins donations data
- 2017-02-07
- Neil will help with this going forward
- 2017-02-28
- Neil will talk to John Sullivan 3/8
- 2017-02-07
Ongoing but stalled
This section includes items which haven't seen an update in the last 30 days.
- Owncloud shared calendar for the board
- 2016-08-10
- Cosimo tested creating an event, but with mixed results
- ACTION: Cosimo to take it on from here
2016-09-06 - Allan has started a list of reoccuring events on the wiki - https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Minutes/UpcomingAgenda
- 2017-03-07
- Neil is looking into a similar calendar so will take over
- 2016-08-10
- Money raised for defense against Groupon
- Kat to draft a call for Free Desktop-style hackfests which would be sponsored with money raised for defence against Groupon
- 2016-09-06
- We probably don't want to track exactly this money flow, but the initiatives that the Board has been pursuing (Flatpak, LAS GNOME) are good fits for the original intent this money was kept for
- We can consider making a PR or some other form of announcement about how we're currently making use of this money
- 2017-03-07
- General feeling here is that Flatpak fits the bill of the kind of technology/event that taps into the wider community
- Another idea may be to use the resources not for an event but for infrastructure
- ACTION: let's understand the financial picture in the budget meeting on 3/7
- Paypal Giving Fund
- Alexandre suggested in december 2015 to get us enrolled in the program
- That would give us exposure. For example Humble bundle allows to direct the charity part of purchases towards any of their participants
- Zana tried to get us in sometime before may 2016, we never heard back.
- 2016-09-06
- ACTION: Zana to look into it
- Alexandre suggested in december 2015 to get us enrolled in the program
- Google ad grant
- 2016-08-10
- ACTION: Shaun will pick this up again and try to register us into the program when he's back in the US
- The actual ad campaigns would probably need to be managed by the Engagement/Marketing team
- ACTION: Nuritzi to discuss with the Engagement Team and let the board know if they want to start using Google ad
- 2016-08-10
- Sysadmin fundraising levels and perks
- 2016-08-10, ACTION: Nuritzi to take on this project and figure out what it entails
- Web page for prior pants winners
- 2016-08-10, ACTION: Shaun and Allan to add the web page
- 2017-03-07
- Only missing the winner for one year, 2005
- We can crowdsource the details and refinement of the bios/photos/etc
- Friends of GNOME
- 2016-08-10
- ACTION: Allan to get in touch with Tobi and the sysadmin team to migrate the FoG infrastructure over to GNOME
- 2017-03-07
- Allan will pass this on to Neil, and connect him to Tobi
- 2016-08-10
Ongoing but no director assigned
This section includes items which haven't seen an update in the last 30 days and have no Director assigned
Nice to have
This section includes items which we would love to see happen at some point but lack the time to effectively become reality
- Contract template for future use organizations for which we handle money
- Kat to draft this
- Privacy policy for GNOME services
Current draft is at https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/Privacy
- Sysadmin Team's NDA should also be covered when dealing with this item
- Kat or Allan to write up the policy
- Kat or Allan to write up recommended wording for distribution privacy policies, regarding the behaviour of GNOME software
- Photography policy for GNOME conferences
- Proposal needs to be drafted and sent to foundation list for discussion
- Should probably be addressed at the same time as a standardised code of conduct
Discussed on the mailing list
Completed actions
- GIMP @ LGM reimbursements (via Email)
- ACTION: Nuritzi to look over the receipts
- 2017-03-14 - this has been done. COMPLETED
- UNIXSticker signed stickers campaign (Nuritzi)
http://andrea.s3.iubenda.com/49LSfNgYlT/signed-stickers.html
- Neil could participate
- 2017-02-28
- Neil got in touch with them
- 2017-03-07
- Neil is receiving stickers this week to hand-sign
- 2017-03-14
- Neil has signed the stickers and sent them back - COMPLETED