Minutes for Meeting of February 4th, 2010

Next Meeting

  • February 18th, 2010

Attending

  • Behdad Esfahbod
  • Brian Cameron
  • Germán Póo-Caamaño
  • Lucas Rocha (late)
  • Rosanna Yuen
  • Srinivasa Ragavan
  • Stormy Peters
  • Vincent Untz

Regrets

  • Diego Escalante Urrelo

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

  • Changes with regards to Rosanna Yuen's management.
    • Vincent announced that Rosanna will now be reporting to Stormy.
  • Lucas announced that he will be stepping down from the board. The board discussed planning for a replacement.
    • It was announced on February 17th that Jorge Castro will replace Lucas on the board.
  • Co-locating GUADEC with Akademy in 2011
    • Considering the positive responses in the survey, the board voted unanimously to co-locate in 2011.
    • Need to discuss planning for co-located hackfests with the KDE community.
    • Since many Foundation members complained the organization of the last co-located conference was not ideal, the board needs to plan to start pushing people to help with organizing co-location soon after GUADEC 2010.
    • ACTION - Vincent to discuss co-location organizing with the KDE board.
    • ACTION - Vincent will start the bidding process for co-location in 2011. Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier would be a good person to ask for help.
  • Status for GUADEC 2010 in the Netherlands.
    • Stormy has been working with volunteers to find sponsors.
    • Recently put out call-for-volunteers.
    • GUADEC Website is in progress.
    • Volunteers have been asked to help with organizing talks.
    • It was suggested that GUADEC organization would be a good topic for the next Advisory Board meeting.
    • ACTION - Vincent will invite GUADEC organizers to the next board meeting so we can discuss further how they can help.
    • Discussed making arrangements to have training at GUADEC as proposed by Dave Neary.
    • ACTION - Stormy will ping James Vasile about the legal arrangements for Dave Neary's proposed training.
  • Events
    • GNOME Usability Hackfest
      • Need $6064 to cover travel expenses. Have a budget of only $1000 right now.
      • ACTION - Germán will determine if we have budget to cover this event.
    • Running a booth at the Texas Linux Fest will cost will be $450. Voted to provide the funding needed.
      • ACTION - Vincent will reply to the Texas Linux Fest organizers to let them know the $450 requested is approved.
    • GNOME event in Zaragoza
      • Still in planning.
      • Would be good to plan a hackfest to happen at the same time and place.
      • Need to plan and discuss further.
  • Finances
    • Taxes
      • ACTION - Rosanna will touch base with the accountant to determine if we need an extension for taxes.
    • Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 Pledgie Campaign

      • 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.

      • ACTION - Vincent will notify the Libre Graphics Meeting organizers about how we fees will be handled.
    • FOSS.IN has been paid.
    • The GSoC mentor that the GIMP Google Summer of Code administrator requested has been paid.

    • GnuCash

      • Automation

        • ACTION - Behdad will 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.

      • Rosanna provided an updated GnuCash file recently.

        • ACTION - Rosanna will send a newer updated version of the GnuCash file soon.

  • GNOME Foundation/CEO Goals
    • ACTION - Brian will send an email to the board-only list to start a discussion about how to define Stormy's Bonus goals.
  • Donation Ruler
    • Lucas plans to update the GNOME website tomorrow.

Completed Actions

  • Diego - Will respond to the a11y hackfest organizers know they will have a budget of $10,000 for travel sponsorship.
  • Germán - Will determine if we have budget to cover this event. This new action was completed shortly after the meeting.
  • Lucas - Ensure the work for updating the donation ruler design gets done. Lucas pinged Paul, Vinicius and Andreas on January 26th to come up with a simple plan to get the ruler online this week.

  • Paul - Will provide an overview of hiring a sysadmin and the benefits that has for the overall GNOME community. Paul Cutler and Owen Taylor wrote a Job Description for the sysadmin role at http://live.gnome.org/Sysadmin/AdvisoryMeeting/JobDescription.

  • Rosanna - Will provide a list of stipulations that the Libre Graphics Meeting organizers need to agree to in order to ensure that there is not too much work. 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.

  • Rosanna - Will send an email to Behdad describing the extra scripts that she needs. The information was provided to Behdad during this meeting.
  • Rosanna - Will review the "Records Retention" and "Employee Reimbursement" policies in the Employee Handbook and to provide feedback about whether we should adopt the proposed policies from Karen Sandler, or whether we should modify them to reflect what we currently do. This task was done shortly after the meeting. For example, does the Records Retention Policy match what we do, or do we need to change our process to match the proposed policy?
  • Stormy - Will send an email to the Advisory Board asking for sponsors for the Usability hackfest.Done. Disappointingly there were no responses.
  • Stormy - Will send a draft of of the Free Software statement to Bradley for review, with Vincent cc'ed. Done.
  • Vincent - Will start discussion with the advisory board about co-locating in 2011 after the announcement. This is a topic for the next advisory board meeting in January, so discussion will be started a week before the meeting. Discussion with the advisory board happened during the last meeting. Survey ready to be announced, and it should bootstrap some discussion on foundation-list. We hopefully can take a decision before the first meeting of February.
  • Vincent - Will invite GUADEC organizers to the next board meeting so we can discuss further how they can help. This new action item was completed shortly after the meeting.
  • Vincent - Will reply to the Texas Linux Fest organizers to let them know the $450 requested is approved. This new action item was completed shortly after the meeting.

  • Vincent & Lucas - Determine how to announce the endorsement of Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services. This is blocking on a release team action that Lucas has ("push for a "web services" set of libraries")

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.

  • 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 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.

  • 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.
  • 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.

New Action Items

  • 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 - 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.

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

  • Stormy - Will ping James Vasile about the legal arrangements for Dave Neary's proposed training. Done shortly after the meeting.
  • 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.

Discussed on the mailing list

  • Planning for the Foundation IRC meeting which was held on Saturday, January 30th.
  • Discussion about how to best moderate the discussion about the GNOME Foundation and CEO Goals.

  • The Public live.gnome.org Foundation Wiki has been reorganized so that public pages are all under http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard. The old FoundationBoardPublic sites have been migrated to the new location.

  • Michael Meeks provided a draft policy/statement on Copyright Assignment for the board to review and it has gone through revisions.
  • Talking with legal advisors about fleshing out the GNOME Foundation "Conflict of Interest" policy.
  • Discussion to prepare for filing taxes.
  • Preparation and discussion about the 2011 Co-Location Survey and making the information public, which has been done.

  • Making final arrangements for the Usability, a11y and WebKit GTK+ hackfest travel budgets.

  • Vincent proposed a plan to make a statement to support the Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services. The board will make a statement in the meeting minutes to this effect and announce more publicly if/when GNOME will host some online service (such as Snowy) for users. The creation of a http://www.gnome.org/philosophy page would be a good place to put such information.

  • Agustín Benito Bethencourt has proposed a GNOME event in Zaragoza which would include a public event and meetings with the local government. The local governments would cover all local costs. Currently having discussion to work out providing people to participate.
  • Discussion with the Libre Graphics Meeting organizers to let them know that we will help them again this year, and to work out an arrangement so that it is not as much work as it was last year.
  • Making arrangements to pay the organizers of GNOME Day at FOSS.IN the $254 (USD) the Foundation agreed to sponsor.
  • Further review and improvements for the draft "Employee Handbook".
  • Diego made a suggestion that the GNOME Foundation board of directors have a more formal performance review process (he suggested 360° reviews as a starting point for discussion).
  • Lucas made the suggestion that people who receive travel funding or other subsidies from the GNOME Foundation should be more clearly expected to have the duty of actively promoting free software. Suggestions on how volunteers should be encouraged to do this is under discussion.
  • The GNOME Foundation received a request from Michael Schumacher (the GIMP Google Summer of Code administrator) to arrange a money transfer to a GSoC mentor.

FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100204 (last edited 2010-02-17 20:29:38 by BrianCameron)