OSI Board Meeting Minutes, January 9th, 2008

Quorum reached 8:19am PST

Attendees:
Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary and Treasurer
Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
Mr. Russell Nelson, Director
Mr. Ken Coar, Director
Ms. Alolita Sharma, Director
Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel

Joined late:
Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director (by phone 11:30 EST)
Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Director (by IRC 11:45 EST)

Guests/observers:
Mr. Ernest Prabhakar
Mr. B’dale Garbee

Absent:
Mr. Bruno Souza, Director
Mr. Matt Asay, Director
Mr. Raj Mathur, Director

Agenda
1. Officer reports

a) President
Mr. Prabakhar has completed the transition to moderator of license-discuss, and he and Mr. Tiemann have thanked Mr. Nelson for his years of service in this role.

The legal advisory board has kicked into action on a few topics, the most notable being the filing of an Amicus brief in the Jacobsen case. There will doubtless be many additional opportunities for planned and reactive engagement, and Mr. Tiemann suggests the board consider writing a draft of their priorities for 2008, especially concerning license proliferation. Hopefully license proliferation (and license validity, see McAfee) will be one topic that can be advanced this year.

The topic of whether the OSI has any authority over the term Open Source continues to spark lengthy discusisons, which has caused Mr. Tiemann to wonder why. That is, why are people so interested in this particular debate when there are other issues to address? How can OSI direct this energy to productive purpose?

In the last two reports Mr. Tiemann asked for more participation from the Board, and yet most of the participation came from Board observers. Mr. Tiemann claims culpability for less-than average participation in the month of November, but few people seem to be taking up the slack. Mr. Tiemann would like to see a board that has enough leadership that when one or two or three members need to sit on the sidelines (for whatever reason), there are two or three or four others who are actively engaged and participating.

In the previous board meeting the Face-to-Face (f2f) meeting in early March was discussed. It now appears that Feb 29-Mar 3 in Chicago would be the maximum span of useful days. Mr. Radcliffe cannot attend until March 2nd, the organization should set our dates right away as many schedules require it.

Mr. Tiemann has not yet re-started fund-raising efforts for 2008, but plans to do so by the end of the month (so expect a report for the Feb 6th meeting).

b) General Counsel

c) Secretary
Please review december 12 2007 for acceptance for public posting. Mr. Tiemann moves to accept minutes as edited for public review. Mr. Nelson seconds.

Passed unanimously.

d) Treasurer
Cash levels remain unchanged. Two expense reports to pay out this month.

2. Committee reports
a) Licensing Committee (Mr. Nelson)
Discussion of un-named license used for Multics. Recommend Legacy approval.
Discussion of Open Source Hardware License. Note it was Withdrawn.
Discussion of Minimal Library License. Recommend no action.
Discussion of Simplified BSD License. Recommend we modify existing BSD template?
Discussion of Boost Software License 1.0. Recommend to approve
Discussion of Reciprocal Public License 1.5. Recommend to approve pending retirement of previous version (RPL 1.1)
Discussion of THINGIEsthetic Permissive License. Discussion of Unicode representations. Return to submitter for revision per discussion of legal validity.

Mr. Nelson motions to accept committee recommendations with changes as noted above. Mr. Ghosh seconds. Passed unanimously.

3. New Business:

a) Guests from HP, Mr. Phil Robb
Review of presentation by Mr. Robb

What they want from OSI?

* Make sure everybody on OSI understands
* Note that site will refer to OSI as licensing authority
* Gauge interest from OSI in participation
* Understand how going forward OSI initiatives can tie in

FOSSology is already available at www.fossology.org
FOSSBazaar will be launched as LinuxFoundation working group on January 24th

b) Date and Time for March F2F
Agreed on March 2-3 in Chicago. Several attendees will come on the 1st and there will be a non-mandatory working meeting that day as well. Ms. Cooper will contact Mr. Radcliffe about address of DLA offices in Chicago and will select a hotel.

Topics held for next meeting due to time constraints:

4. Old Business
a) Japanese Fonts (Mr. Tiemann–incomplete)
b) Alfresco Internationalization report (Ms. Sharma)

5. New Business
a) 10th Anniversary plans for OSCON
b) OSI Enforcement
c) Observer Code of Conduct

Meeting Adjourned 10:14 PST.