OSI Board Meeting Minutes, March 9, 2007

Day One 2007 Face to Face Meeting OSI Board at Sun Microsystems Office, San Francisco.

Venue provided courtesy of Mr. Bruno Souza and Sun Microsystems.

Attendees:
Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary & Treasurer
Mr. Russ Nelson, Director and Chair of License Approval Committee, Co-Chair of License Proliferation Committee
Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director
Mr. Joi Ito, Director (left after 10:30am PST)
Mr. Bruno Souza, Director
Dr. Ernest Prabakar, Board Observer
Mr. Ken Coar, Director and Chair of Membership Committee (by phone)

Meeting called to order at 9:15 PST with voting quorum established

Agenda:

Board met for annual Face to Face working meeting. Most of the agenda was taken up with planning and brainstorming for 2007 year’s activities.

1. Encouraging more participation on OSI Board

2. Reciprocity with the Creative Commons

  • Mr. Ito and Mr. Tiemann jointly suggested that Creative Commons and OSI work this year to build reciprocity and take advantage of infrastructure sharing potential. Especially website share, including production of a wizard that branches between code and content licenses.

Action Items from Creative Commons discussion:

  • Appoint Reciprocal Board Observers
  • License Wizard – someone on OSI to take responsibility for co-work with Creative Commons

3. Final work to launch new OSI website:

Identified remaining few items before planned launch at the end of March 2007.

Action Items from Website discussion:

  • Content Disclaimer language needs legal review (Mr. Radcliffe)
  • Posting Policy and Terms of Service need to be posted (Ms. Cooper)
  • Front Page redesign to feature "What is Open Source?" piece written by Mr. Eric S Raymond (Founder and President Emeritus), with blogs and news as sidebars (Ms. Cooper)
  • Plain text versions of licenses need work (Mr. Nelson will complete).

4. Discussion on Membership

As interest in transforming OSI to a membership organization grows, need to review possible patterns for membership. Mr. Coar has posted one possible pattern on the Membership Forum on new OSI website.

Dr. Prabhakar contributed draft "Mission Statement" language to help focus the membership discussion:

"OSI affiliates are individuals, groups and corporations who share the OSI’s Mission to serve the Open Source community by connecting and educating developers, consumers, and decision-makers around the nature and benefits of Open Source Software as expressed in the Open Source Definition."

5. Discussion on Governance

Review of proposed Board of Directors meetings for the remainder of the calendar year 2007

6. Discussion on recruitment of New Board Members.

Action Plan: Ms. Cooper, Mr. Ghosh and Mr. Tiemann will obtain applications in within the next 2 weeks from recruitment candidates for Board positions. Board Members who have agreed to obtain Observer applications should strive for the same deadline. There will be a voting meeting March 28th, 2007.

7. Discussion About Closure of Open Topics from 2006

a) License Proliferation:
We have a report, it needs to be acted upon. Decision will be taken in voting meeting on March 28th, 2007.

b) Open Software Standards:
Needs a new owner (Mr. Sanjiva Weewarawana (Director) is retiring to Emeritus status this year). How can OSI be helpful in the fight to redefine Open Standards? Issue tabled for additional research.

Mr. Ghosh, Mr. Tiemann, Ms. Cooper will do research and report back at June meeting.

c) Transfer of Domain from SPI:
Mr. Nelson will query Software in the Public Interest suggest steps that need to be followed to make domain opensource.org transfer happen.

d) Attribution Licenses:
Tabled for discussion over dinner

Meeting Adjourned at 5:00pm PST.