OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Quorum reached and meeting called to order at 08:06 am PT.

Attendees:

  1. Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
  2. Mr. Harshad Gune, Director (joined late via irc)
  3. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Director
  4. Mr. Russell Nelson, Director
  5. Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Director (on irc)
  6. Mr. Andrew Oliver, Director (left at 9:30am)
  7. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Secretary

Guests/observers:

  1. Mr. Zak Greant, Board Observer
  2. Mr. Ernest Prabhakar, Board Observer (on irc)
  3. Mr. Karl Fogel, Invited Guest (on irc)

Expected, but Not Present

  1. Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director
  2. Mr. Ken Coar, Director
  3. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel
  4. Mr. Bruno Souza, Director Emeritus
  5. Mr. Merrill Freund (Schwartz Communications)

Sent regrets

  1. Ms. Danese Cooper, Treasurer
  2. Mr. Bdale Garbee, Board Observer

Agenda

  1. Approval of Minutes
  2. Officer Reports
  3. Committee Reports
  4. Old Business
  5. New Business

Detail

  1. Approval of Minutes

    Motion to approve the May 6, 2009 minutes as edited for public posting by Mr. Tiemann. Ms. Sharma seconded. Minutes reviewed by board and approved unanimously.

  2. Officer Reports
    President’s Report:

    Andy Oliver has done a fantastic job of stepping in to lead the membership discussion and has reignited interest among the core membership group in the future governance of the OSI. Because of his leadership, I have had to read and respond to more than 10x the normal correspondence I receive in a month. It is especially gratifying to see this progress because the board invested a considerable amount of time and effort to recruit the core members, and that investment is now becoming actively managed. Thank you Mr. Oliver!

    On the trademark front, we received a reminder from our attorneys that we have an upcoming deadline for demonstrating commercial use of our provisionally approved logo. Ken Coar undertook the difficult work of recreating SVG image files that were lost due to hardware failures. I believe we will have logos ready for use, and more importantly, in actual use, by the end of the month. This is very important if we want to avoid further delay and to avoid the payment of yet another extension fee. Thank you Mr. Coar!

    I still have not received an update from our General Counsel on the trademark usage guidlines documents that have been submitted for review. Now that we have our logo almost sorted, this is a critical path item.

    Our monthly web traffic has been steadily declining, except when new blogs are posted, in which case it turns slightly positive. I would like to remind the Board that the opensource.org website is still an important resource for the world to learn about open source, and that whatever you can do to improve or add to the content of opensource.org has a positive multiplier effect, up to and including helping you as a Board member be more effective.

    I look forward to seeing many of you in San Jose at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference next month.

    General Counsel Report:

    None.

    Secretary’s Report: (Ms. Sharma)

    * February 2009 FOSDEM Face to Face meeting minutes – Requested Ms. Cooper for her FOSDEM meeting notes. Thereafter Ms. Sharma can complete minutes based on these notes for review and approval by the board.

    * April 2009 meeting minutes – Minutes approved for April 1, 2009 have been posted on opensource.org.

    * May 2009 meeting minutes – Minutes for May 6, 2009 meeting are ready for review and approval by board.

    Treasurer’s Report: (Ms. Cooper)

    * Financial report (if any): No report.

    * Non-profit filing status in California: In the last board meeting, Ms. Cooper reported that the final filing of documents to support non-profit status has been completed. No report.

    * FOSDEM reimbursements status: All submitted claims have been reimbursed.

  3. Committee Reports

    Licensing Committee

    Mr. Nelson reports there are no licenses to approve this month. Mr. Nelson has updated the website to reflect the current status for all licenses.

    Membership Committee

    Charter membership discussion update to be provided by Mr. Oliver. Mr. Oliver reports that 3 resolutions have been voted on by the membership so far – a resolution on how to vote, a resolution to ensure the charter membership list stays private and a resolution to define categories of OSI’s stakeholders. Other than that there is not much progress on objectives, and how to proceed along. Most members do not yet have a shared vision on what the OSI should do. Mr. Tiemann thinks the idea of having a caucus around open source and the OSI’s initiatives during OSCON may provide some results. Mr. Oliver talked about the various options discussed. Ms. Sharma supports a do-acracy. Mr. Tiemann mentioned that the GPL process had the benefit of time. Mr. Tiemann also suggested that the membership may not be clear about what issues they are trying to solve. Mr. Greant mentioned that it seems that there is not enough common purpose on the charter membership list. So how do we achieve that – smaller groups, focused groups or some other strategy. Mr. Tiemann asks what is the definition of success in a process similar to the GPL? Follow-up should be done back on the list. Other questions include how long should the OSI continue with the current process and what is the backup plan should also be thought about.

    OSI Affiliate program status: Discussion on hold until membership discussions achieve deliverables.

  4. Staff Reports

    IT Services

    * Misc. maintenance of ideas.opensource.org (Mr. Greant)

    * Drupal module security updates (Mr. Monks)

    * OSI website maintenance status (Ms. Sharma) – Minor content updates done on opensource.org.

    * Projects.opensource.org status (Ms. Sharma) – Configured mediawiki at projects.opensource.org to add extension for approving all accounts by system administrator for projects.opensource.org. The ConfirmAccount extension disables direct account creation and requires submission and approval of accounts by bureaucrats. Account creations can be enabled through configuring user rights, such as if you wanted Sysops/Bureaucrats to be able to directly make them. Requested admin privileges to manage user accounts for education project.

    * Turnaround time for OSL is slow right now due to exams, volunteer availability. Mr. Greant suggests the OSI look at an ISP ($50 a month for rimuhosting.com), starting with projects.opensource.org, mediawiki, svn, shell access.

  5. Old Business

    • Trademark artwork on website (Mr. Coar)
      The OSI needs to assemble the artwork for the keyhole with “Open Source Initiative” so that it can be made available for use on www.opensource.org. Mr. Coar has the fonts as well as the original artwork in several formats. These images need to be posted on the website.

      Mr. Tiemann suggests that the identity marks are accessible from About the OSI, who we are, what we do, and a subpage for trademark usage. Mr. Tiemann envisions this process should be completed this week.

    • Guidelines for OSI affiliates to use OSI logo to promote open source events (Mr. Tiemann)
      Awaiting feedback from general counsel Mr. Radcliffe’s team. No update from Mr. Radcliffe. Ms. Sharma will follow-up with Mr. Radcliffe.
    • OSI Participation at FISL (Mr. Tiemann)
      Mr. Tiemann will be attending FISL at the end of June. He will be blogging about the conference from FISL.
    • OSI’s Education project status (Ms. Sharma)
      OSI’s education mailing list continues its discussions. New members joining the list steadily especially from Asia.
  6. New Business

    • OSI F2F Meetings (July 16-17, 2009) at OSCON (Ms. Cooper)

      • Agenda
      • Funding for travel
      • Public meeting
      • Booth, T-shirt sale

      Mr. Tiemann would like to request Ms. Cooper to provide a post-meeting summmary for OSCON arrangements. We should have a 2 day face to face meeting as well as a caucus for the membership to discuss. Mr. Nelson, Ms. Cooper, Ms. Sharma plan to be at the Community Leadership Summit.

    • Policing non open source vendors misusing open source vs. real open source vendors. (Mr. Greant)
      Mr. Greant raised the concern that good actors have been pressured by bad actors. Open source should be an advantage for good open source players. The board will take a look at the policy Mr. Radcliffe has put together.

Meeting Adjourned 9:47 PDT.