OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Quorum

Quorum reached and meeting called to order at 16:06 UTC.

Attendees

Board Members

  1. Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
  2. Mr. Karl Fogel, Director
  3. Mr. Harshad Gune, Director (on IRC)
  4. Mr. Fabio Kon, Director
  5. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Secretary
  6. Mr. Simon Phipps, Director
  7. Mr. Tony Wasserman, Director

Guests and Observers

None.

Expected, but Not Present

  1. Mr. Ken Coar, Board Observer
  2. Ms. Danese Cooper, Board Observer
  3. Mr. Michael Godwin, Director
  4. Mr. Russell Nelson, Board Observer
  5. Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Board Observer
  6. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel

Sent Regrets

  1. Mr. Jim Jagielski, Director
  2. Mr. Andrew Oliver, Director
  3. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Treasurer

Agenda

  1. Minutes Review and Approval
  2. Officer Reports
  3. Committee Reports
  4. Old Business
  5. New Business
  6. Action items
  7. Next Board Meeting

Minutes Review and Approval

The Board reviewed the minutes of the November phone meeting and the November face-to-face meeting. Mr. Fogel moved that the Board approve the minutes. Mr. Tiemann seconded. Minutes approved by general consent.

Officer Reports

President's Report (Mr. Tiemann)

The OSI held its semi-annual face-to-face meeting in San Francisco Nov 11-13. It was well-attended, and we made continued progress down the path of becoming a membership organization. Specifically, we have strengthened the consensus we reached at our last face-to-face meeting regarding affiliate public benefit members, and we discussed and clarified some of the issues around individual and corporate members. These discussions touch the core existential issues of the OSI, and compared with similar types of conversations I have seen in both the corporate and non-profit sectors, I was impressed by the progress we have made, both up to this point and at this meeting. In addition to the good work of the whole of the Board, many individual Board members have really stepped up to lead the organization through their committee and officer work. The key functions of the OSI are working well, which gives further credibility to the strategic direction the OSI has taken. Moreover, several excellent potential candidates have expressed interest in running for President after my term expires, which is also very encouraging.

Secretary's Report (Mr. Michlmayr)

Mr. Michlmayr reports:

  • The following minutes have to be reviewed by the Board for approval:
    • November 2, 2011
    • November 12, 2011 – Face-to-face meeting, San Francisco, Day 1
    • November 13, 2011 – Face-to-face meeting, San Francisco, Day 2
  • The following approved minutes have been posted to opensource.org:
    • October 5, 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:

  • Mr. Wasserman wrote a FLOSSCC Vision document. It would be great to post this document on opensource.org (either as a blog entry or a document)
  • Mr. Gune's students are developing an educational material portal. I will be integrated into flosscc.org soon.
  • Mr. Kon has prepared slides with Bruno Souza on open source. The contents is complete but the layout needs some more work. The next steps are to feedback on the contents, finalize the layout, and to record a video of the lecture to serve as support material for other presenters.
  • Mr. Kon is teaching a graduate course on "FLOSS Development" at a new university in Brazil's interior region (as a visiting professor).

License Committee (Mr. Fogel)

Mr. Fogel reports:

  • Licensing Working Group elector list mail drafted, sent to board for review.
  • Mozilla Public License 2.0 latest version (proposed final) received; in discussion with Luis Villa about process. We can perform the vote by email next week.
  • Got admin access to license-* mailing lists, for checking membership size, activity, etc (for potential electors).

Legal Affairs Committee (Mr. Godwin)

No report submitted.

Membership-Governance Committee (Mr. Phipps)

Mr. Phipps gave an update on the potential affiliates. Mr. Phipps would like to make an announcement regarding the affiliates at Open Source World Conference in January.

Policy and Economic Development Committee (Mr. Tiemann)

No report submitted.

Administrative Committees

Communications Committee (Mr. Phipps)

Mr. Phipps remarked that there had been no activity.

IT Infrastructure Committee (Mr. Oliver)

Mr. Fogel reports:

  • Got a handle on all mailing lists, including memberships of active and defunct lists, so can update http://opensource.org/lists.
  • Backed up list memberships.
  • Split infrastructure@ into infrastructure-public@ and infrastructure-private@, to avoid recurring debate over where to discuss sensitive topics like access.

New Projects / Outreach Committee (Ms. Sharma)

No report submitted.

Old Business

Review of Action Items

  • Mr. Wasserman and Mr. Phipps: meet potential affiliates (such as LF) for informal discussion before the f2f. DONE. There was a meeting with Jim Zemlin after the f2f.
  • Mr. Oliver: work with Ms. Sharma and Mr. Kon to get the DNS of FLOSSCC server changed. DONE.
  • Mr. Tiemann: write proposal regarding Open Hardware trademark. Mr. Tiemann reports that he sent a proposal to Phil Torrone and that the proposal was positively received. The Open Hardware entity is in the process of formation, and that could lead to the happy result of them becoming affiliates and using a modified trademark as part of the OSI, which is our preference.
  • Mr. Fogel: create candidate elector list for license committee. Status: started
  • Mr. Wasserman: create candidate elector list for education committee
  • Mr. Jagielski: work on details for personal membership scheme. Status: In process. Mr. Jagielski has been in contact with organizations with similar "membership" structures to get their inputs as well as some individuals on what they would like to see in an OSI membership.
  • Mr. Fogel: work on a plan on splitting license list into recommended and other licenses. Status: not started
  • Mr. Fogel: work on a plan to migrate www.opensource.org to our hosted server. Status: not started
  • Mr. Fogel: investigate a shared secrets mechanism for passwords. Status: started; will mail infrastructure-private@ with suggestion.
  • Mr. Fogel: investigate method to import old mailing list archives. Status: not started
  • Mr. Fogel: work with Mr. Nelson to transfer ownership of opensource.org to OSI. Status: in progress.
  • Mr. Michlmayr: sign OSI up for Flattr and put a button on the donations page. DONE. Mr. Michlmayr signed up OSI for Flattr and added a button on the OSI donations page.
  • Mr. Oliver: investigate email delay when posting to board list. Mr. Oliver believes this problem has been resolved.

New Business

Next f2f meeting

Mr. Michlmayr asked whether we want to hold the next face-to-face meeting before or after the board elections. Mr. Tiemann would prefer to hold the meeting after the elections because this would allow the new board members to participate. Mr. Wasserman suggested that early May may be a good time because it gives new board members enough time to book flights. The board agreed that we could circulate a date to potential board members before the election.

Mr. Tiemann asked all board members to send in proposed times and venues so the different proposals can be discussed in the January meeting.

Action Items

  • Everyone: send in times and venues for the next face-to-face meeting.
  • Mr. Fogel: create page on governance based on email to affiliates.
  • Mr. Wasserman: post FLOSSCC Vision document to opensource.org (either as blog or document)

Next Board Meeting

The next OSI BOD meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, January 11, 2012. The date was later changed to Monday, January 9, 2012.

Meeting adjourned at 17:06 UTC.