Minutes for Tuesday, September 22th, 2015, 19:00 UTC

Next meeting date Tuesday, September 29th, 2015, 19:00UTC

Attending

  • Shaun McCance

  • Rosanna Yuen
  • Cosimo Cecchi
  • Christian Hergert
  • Allan Day
  • Jeff F. T.
  • Ekaterina Gerasimova

Regrets

Missing

  • Andrea Veri

Board meeting

  • Trademark maintenance
    • Expiring next year
    • Official USPTO Courtesy Reminder of Required Trademark Registration Maintenance Filings Under Sections 8 and 9:
      • U.S. Trademark RN 3142484: G (Stylized/Design)
      • This is the GNOME foot logo
      • Renewal cost $400
    • Official USPTO Courtesy Reminder of Required Trademark Registration Maintenance Filings Under Sections 8 and 9:
      • U.S. Trademark RN 3142483: GNOME
      • This is the GNOME word mark
      • Renewal cost $800
    • Pam has offered to prepare the paperwork (and file it, if the Foundation would like her to)
    • No objections to renew
    • ACTION: Kat to write to Pam and ask to proceed with renewal
  • Travel budget for Oct 2015-March 2016 (I would like to propose that we assign $20000)
    • We spent less money this year, so we can assign a bit more money this time around
    • People already started filing requests for Boston Summit, so we should do this soon
      • Got the sense that Boston Summit will probably only absorb $1k/$2k
    • In next six months there will be quite a bit of hackfests guessing on previous years
      • If the budget isn't used it will go back to the Foundation
      • $20k is pretty standard according to previous years, before we had the spending freeze
    • VOTE: allocate $20k budget to Travel committee: +1 Shaun, Kat, Christian, Cosimo, Allan. Jeff abstained because would like to see budget first.
      • VOTE passed
    • ACTION: Kat to communicate budget allocation to Travel committee
  • Ongoing COLA increase paperwork for Rosanna
    • Need paperwork approved by Shaun
    • Rosanna will write a summary to Shaun of what needs to be done
  • Discussion of Pam's email regarding Ubuntu GNOME.
    • Logo sufficiently different from ours that it wouldn't be a concern
    • However there is a concern about using the GNOME name, in case one day they stop to use GNOME
    • Quite strong recommendation is to have a trademark agreement, but we need to define what makes GNOME such in order for that to be possible
      • Tricky to define technically
      • Should at least use GNOME Shell, but it's a slippery slope to which extent we can define this
      • GTK should also be there, but GNOME Shell already pulls that in too
    • Goal is to protect ourselves from entities using the GNOME trademark in ways we don't like
    • Perhaps we can suggest GNOME Shell with the right to review how it's being used
    • We can also add another core item to cover more ground, such as Control Center
    • But we should not mandate more apps since distributions should be free to provide their applications user experience
    • ACTION: Allan will follow up with Pam with the result of further discussion about the Ubuntu GNOME logo (include GNOME Shell + Control Center in the agreement with an option for the Board to review)
  • Discussion of regional domain names.
    • We should be open to people doing this
    • Ahmed should be free to either give the domain to the Foundation and administer it, or keep using it himself
    • Worry: owning a lot of domains that we don't use
    • Worry: hard for us to intervene when the quality is not up to par
    • Looks like we could NOT technically hold the registration for an .id domain as an US corporation
    • Proposal: let them run gnome.id as an user group and not get involved
      • Should we change the policy then?
      • Policy only seems to apply to unknown third parties.
        • Proposal: we should add a note that we are open to user groups and local communities contacting us to obtain permission.
        • User group agreement already has this language. We should add it to the wiki page as well.
    • VOTE: let the group own gnome.id. +1 Shaun, Jeff, Cosimo, Kat. Christian, Allan abstained.
      • VOTE passed.
      • ACTION: Kat to communicate the decision

    • Let's add the note to https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/LicensingGuidelines

      • ACTION: Cosimo to update the page
  • Trademark-infringing swag
    • Karen advised for a board member to contact them explaining the wrong use of the logo in both trademark and copyright
    • Still ongoing action item for Cosimo to write this and have Karen proofread it before sending.
  • Logo usage for tshirts
    • Would be great to have a standard agreement or process, but it's difficult because sometimes needs are different for each case
    • If we had a "default" agreement we could branch it out to accommodate specific needs, even though that needs the help of a lawyer
    • What kind of variations?
      • Sometimes there could be nothing to sell, or there is no royalty agreement
      • But more in general we could have a "default swag" agreement
    • Hope that when HELLOTUX agreement is done that can become our reference point
    • We will move this conversation forward when the HELLOTUX agreement is complete
  • Adboard memberships
    • Deferred
  • Action items:
    • GNOME logo use by podiatrist (Shaun)
    • Logo usage for tshirts (Jeff)
    • Trademark-infringing swag (Cosimo)
    • Freedesktop hackfests with Groupon money (Kat)
    • Privacy funds hackfest (Sri, Christian)
  • Open items:
    • GUADEC 2016
    • Annual report
    • ED search
    • Google Play account
    • HELLOTUX

Pending action items

  • Kat to draft a call for Free Desktop-style hackfests which would be sponsored with money raised for defence against Groupon
  • Christian to reach out to the ED Search committee and get some updates
  • Cosimo to ask Karen about the trademark-infringing mousepads and report his findings to the mailing list
  • Logo usage for t-shirts: Jeff to carry on with the process and follow up and have some general guidelines written down for future cases
  • Podiatrist possible trademark infringement: Shaun to check the trademark details for the GNOME logo and update the licensing page on the website
  • Allan to make a proposal for a different way to use the wiki/etherpad for action items, instead of using kanboard
  • Jeff to get advisory board contact details from Karen. If this fails, we need to start developing our own contacts and record them on the wiki.
  • Create a webpage for prior pants winners (Shaun and Allan)
  • Advisory Board meeting at GUADEC: Jeff to contact advisory board members by phone about joining the call on the 4th
  • Allan to follow up with Oliver Propst on Anual Report
  • Trademark-infringing swag (mousepads): Cosimo to follow up about possible future actions and send a proposal to the board
  • Cosimo to follow up in the upcoming meetings and prepare a version of the CoC to be finally considered final over all the GNOME yearly events
  • Kat to draft a proposal for a privacy policy for review
  • Kat to draft a contract template for future use organizations for which we handle money

  • Kat to propose privacy bounty T&C/rules for review

  • Andrea to write the Privacy policy for GNOME services
  • Allan will look at gnome-software privacy issues from a legal standpoint
  • Cosimo to draft a proposal for the photography policy at GNOME conferences to discuss on foundation-list
  • Christian to investigate the GNOME gifts situation
  • Sri to coordinate with engagement team to better standardize the licensing of GNOME artwork
  • Jeff to find existing fundraising brochure/proposal documents and come up with one for fundraising for a sysadmin

FoundationBoard/Minutes/20150922 (last edited 2015-10-01 20:47:26 by AndreaVeri)