OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Quorum
Quorum reached and meeting called to order at 15:07 UTC.
Attendees
Board Members
- Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
- Mr. Karl Fogel, Director (on IRC)
- Mr. Harshad Gune, Director (on IRC)
- Mr. Jim Jagielski, Director
- Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Secretary
- Mr. Andrew Oliver, Asst. Treasurer (until 15:43)
- Mr. Simon Phipps, Director
- Mr. Tony Wasserman, Director
Guests and Observers
- Ms. Danese Cooper, Board Observer
Expected, but Not Present
- Mr. Ken Coar, Board Observer
- Mr. Michael Godwin, Director
- Mr. Russell Nelson, Board Observer
- Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Board Observer
- Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel
Sent Regrets
- Ms. Alolita Sharma, Treasurer
- Mr. Fabio Kon, Director
Agenda
- Minutes Review and Approval
- Officer Reports
- Committee Reports
- Old Business
- New Business
- Action items
- Next Board Meeting
Minutes Review and Approval
The Board reviewed the minutes of the September meeting. Mr. Jagielski moved that the Board approve the minutes. Mr. Oliver seconded. Minutes approved by general consent.
Officer Reports
President's Report (Mr. Tiemann)
No report submitted.
Secretary's Report (Mr. Michlmayr)
Mr. Michlmayr reports:
- The following minutes have to be reviewed by the Board for approval:
- September 14, 2011
- The following approved minutes have been posted to opensource.org:
- August 10, 2011
Treasurer's Report (Ms. Sharma)
No report submitted.
General Counsel's Report (Mr. Radcliffe)
No report submitted.
Committee Reports
(Listed in alphabetical order)
Education Committee (Mr. Kon)
Mr. Kon reports:
- Organizing IFIP's academic conference on open source: 7th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS'2011)
- Acting as a member of the mock thesis committee for the OSS Doctoral Consortium. 8 PhD students are presenting their thesis projects on open source to get feedback from a "mock thesis committee".
Mr. Wasserman reports from the FLOSSCC Summit at Open World Forum in Paris. The summit had about 20 attendees from 12 different countries. There was a good geographic distribution with people from Brazil, India, various western European countries, the US and Japan. The goal was to get people to move forward and to operate like a community project instead of everyone going their own way. They identified seven major areas. Mr. Wasserman will write a detailed report in the near future. In addition to the FLOSSCC Summit, Mr. Wasserman had the opportunity to make a presentation about the new governance structure of OSI during a plenary session at OWF.
License Committee (Mr. Fogel)
Mr. Fogel reports:
- Contacted FSF and FSFE about potential "{Open Source|Free} Software is Commercial Software" campaign. John Sullivan at FSF has responded positively. Haven't heard from FSFE yet, but only sent to them today so that's not their fault. Mr. Fogel will follow up with proposals for campaign, suggestions/questions, etc.
- Both PSF and Mozilla Foundation are apparently still working on new drafts of their proposed licenses; have heard nothing. Mr. Fogel will ping them to try to get status before our F2F in November.
- The Redmine bug tracker has been down since at least September 25th. This is an obstacle for license committee work.
- Forwarded Becky Long's (US Dept. of Commerce) request to Mr. Wasserman, who will meet with Russian delegation.
Legal Affairs Committee (Mr. Godwin)
No report submitted.
Membership-Governance Committee (Mr. Phipps)
Mr. Phipps spoke about the new governance structure of OSI in three sessions at the Open World Forum (OWF) In Paris. He received good feedback and organizations asked to join. Additionally, Mr. Wasserman talked about the new structure during a plenary at OWF.
Mr. Phipps noted that he had sent out targeted invitations as well as an email to the FLOSS Foundations mailing list. He has heard from a number of organizations already and expects to receive more responses in the near future. Mr. Phipps hopes to present a list of potential affiliates at the face-to-face meeting in November and will ask for a vote from the board to make them into official affiliates. Mr. Phipps also hopes to attract a comfortable number of affiliates by December.
The next step is to focus on non-incorporated organizations (such as OSU-OSL and various FLOSS competence centers). Mr. Phipps will lead a discussion around this topic at the face-to-face meeting.
Mr. Tiemann asked whether it would make sense to approve potential affiliates before our face-to-face meeting so we can focus on future steps at the face-to-face meeting. The consensus from the board was to make the vote at the face-to-face meeting.
Mr. Tiemann also asked about the status of the creation of the legal basis for adding affiliate members. Mr. Phipps explained that the idea is to get something working and only later make it formal. Mr. Jagielski has volunteered to work on the appropriate document.
Mr. Wasserman asked whether we are planning to invite Linux User Groups (LUGs) and similar groups of open source advocates. Mr. Phipps would like to invite such groups but noted that this has to wait until we have tested the affiliate approach with a limited number of affiliates.
Mr. Wasserman also wondered whether it would make sense to invite representatives from LUGs or folks like Jim Zemlin from the Linux Foundation to our face-to-face meeting to discuss their perspective and needs. Mr. Tiemann was not sure whether this was a good use of time of the board as a whole but suggested that Mr. Wasserman and Mr. Phipps meet individually with such representatives, for example on the Friday before the face-to-face meeting, and to report their feedback to the board.
Policy and Economic Development Committee (Mr. Tiemann)
No report submitted.
Administrative Committees
Communications Committee (Mr. Phipps)
Mr. Phipps reports that it has been a quiet month for the Communications Committee.
IT Infrastructure Committee (Mr. Oliver)
Mr. Oliver reports:
Everything on the opensource.org mail server appears to be working properly. This is due not to myself as I've had a few personal emergencies, instead it is due to the fine efforts of Mr. Oliver's staff, especially Patrick French.
The links are updated on the opensource.org web host. The education project list is still being hosted elsewhere, and the DNS seems to be working properly for that.
In addition to the lists on that page, there are the osi and board lists. The previous form of the board list, in /etc/aliases, has been converted to a Mailman list. Other than the infrastructure list, which you are listed on the information page for, all the lists now have generalized administrator addresses. These can be pointed at whoever will be administering the list in the server's /etc/aliases. This will lessen the spam that will be created for the list administrators by having their email addresses on the landing pages.
The osi list is now a Mailman list as well, but a couple emails a day still get by the spam filter. This list, by virtue of being set to accept mail from anyone, is not protected by being set to only accept email from members. As a result, a few emails get by the spam filter every day. These are the ones not identified as spam by Spam Assassin; emails identified as spam are discarded. We have had about 53,000 spam emails and so I think under the best of circumstances some will get through although the tuning can get better over time. One solution that I will discuss with the infrastructure committee and the board is that those who want to be on the osi list should join, and those who don't want to receive a couple spammy emails a day (along with occasional good emails) should not sign up. Alternately, the list could be moderated, so that moderators receive emails being held for approval. More than one moderator can be assigned to the list. Mr. Jagielski volunteered as moderator.
Floscc.org has been mirrored to the new VPS but their DNS still points at the first VPS, which is serving it.
Mr. Fogel is being given access for the setup of Redmine.
The issue of the past archives is an outstanding one. Obviously, it will be a project to try to bring them in.
New Projects / Outreach Committee (Ms. Sharma)
Mr. Jagielski is working on a draft plan and vision policy to bootstrap the discussion at the upcoming face-to-face meeting.
Old Business
Face-to-face logistics
Mr. Michlmayr gave an update regarding the meeting facilities at DLA Piper. He's in contact with DLA Piper regarding the logistics of the meeting. He also asked all board members to book their flights and add the details to the wiki. Mr. Michlmayr can book rooms at the Courtyard.
Review of action items
- Mr. Fogel: reach out to FSF and FSFE to seek cooperation on wrong use of the term "commercial". DONE (see above).
- Mr. Wasserman: check if we can get some time in a plenary at OWF to discuss the OSI affiliate scheme. DONE. Mr. Wasserman had a keynote during OWF.
- Mr. Michlmayr and Ms. Sharma: create a digital repository to archive OSI documents. Pending.
- Mr. Michlmayr: contact SourceForge to find out about the status of OSI donations. Mr. Michlmayr had a chat with Ross Turk at OWF. He'll follow-up with Roberto Galoppini who just joined SourceForge.
- Mr. Michlmayr: create draft agenda for OSI f2f meeting. DONE.
- Mr. Michlmayr: check if we can use HP rate to book rooms at the Courtyard. DONE.
New Business
- Mr. Wasserman requested partial OSI travel support to attend OSI Days (Bengaluru, Nov 20-22) and speak about the new OSI Governance structure. Mr. Michlmayr noted that this sounds like a good opportunity to attract individual supporters but that our current focus is on affiliate organizations. Mr. Tiemann added that there are a lot of great venues to talk about our new governance structure but that we have to define a set of priorities.
- Open Hardware "gears" trademark for Phillip Torrone: since there were some concerns from the board, Mr. Tiemann will write up a concrete proposal and send it to the board for review.
Action Items
- Mr. Wasserman: post a report about the FLOSSCC meeting.
- Mr. Fogel: follow-up with FSF/FSFE regarding "open source/free software is commercial SW" campaign.
- Mr. Fogel: ping PSF and Mozilla regarding status of their new licenses.
- Mr. Wasserman and Mr. Phipps: meet potential affiliates (such as LF) for informal discussion before the f2f.
- Mr. Oliver: work with Ms. Sharma and Mr. Kon to get the DNS of the FLOSSCC server changed.
- Mr. Jagielski: create draft outreach plan for discussion at f2f.
- Mr. Tiemann: write proposal regarding Open Hardware trademark.
- Mr. Michlmayr and Ms. Sharma: create a digital repository to archive OSI documents.
- Mr. Michlmayr: contact SourceForge to find out about the status of OSI donations.
Next Board Meeting
The next OSI BOD meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, November 2, 2011.
Meeting adjourned at 16:26 UTC.