OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Quorum
Quorum reached and meeting called to order at 15:04 UTC.
Attendees
Board Members
- Mr. Karl Fogel, Director
- Mr. Harshad Gune, Director (on IRC)
- Mr. Jim Jagielski, Director
- Mr. Fabio Kon, Director
- Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Secretary
- Mr. Mike Milinkovich, Director
- Mr. Simon Phipps, President
- Ms. Alolita Sharma, Treasurer (until 15:32 UTC)
- Mr. Luis Villa, Director
- Mr. Tony Wasserman, Director (until 15:32 UTC)
Guests
None.
Expected, but Not Present
- Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel
Sent Regrets
- Ms. Deborah Bryant, Director
Agenda
- Officer Reports
- Committee Reports
- Old Business
- New Business
- Action items
- Next Board Meeting
Officer Reports
President's Report (Mr. Phipps)
As the new Board year commences, I'd first like to thank the other Board members for the confidence they have expressed in me during this period of transition. As I said in the face-to-face meeting, the strongly collegial nature of the current OSI Board means that the President role tends to nudge rather than direct. Here are some nudges:
- The roll-out of the Membership schemes is our key focal activity. We need to ensure each scheme is attractive to Members, that it offers a vector for active promotion of OSI's mission and that no individual member is either unduly alienated nor over-empowered.
- We need to devise the means for Members to directly conduct OSI's mission. We've thought about this but not really reached concrete designs, and this needs to be a priority for the year.
- We need to be ready to fully resource OSI, both in terms of staff and of funds. OSI is not an open source project, and few Members will have its activities as a core part of their own priorities; those that do may well need buffering!
I believe these three points need to be our meta-agenda for the year; I am looking forward to working on them together.
Secretary's Report (Mr. Michlmayr)
Mr. Michlmayr reports that the May minutes are outstanding and that the approved April minutes have not been posted to our web site yet.
Treasurer's Report (Ms. Sharma)
Ms. Sharma reported on recent treasurer activities. She opened a new bank account with Wells Fargo, opened a new PO Box in Palo Alto, processed some reimbursements and performed some other work.
The board discussed the need for a stable phone number for OSI and Mr. Fogel volunteered to look into Google Voice or other VOIP solutions.
Mr. Phipps asked the treasurer whether we can get a credit card reader, so we can accept donations and membership fees at OSCON. Mr. Phipps also asked the treasurer to investigate and document how we can receive international payments.
General Counsel's Report (Mr. Radcliffe)
No report submitted.
Mr. Phipps reported that he had been in contact with the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) and the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) regarding their derivatives of the OSI logo. He will have a call with the OSRF next week. Our general counsel has produced a draft trademark license.
Mr. Phipps would like to see a board director own the responsibility for trademark related matters. Mr. Jagielski said that he has experience in this area from Apache and that he would be happy to serve in this role.
Committee Reports
(Listed in alphabetical order)
Education Committee (Mr. Wasserman)
Mr. Wasserman reported that the FLOSS Competency Center session has been accepted by Open World Forum.
License Committee (Mr. Villa)
- License page: there appears to be agreement with the exception of a veto from Larry Rosen.
- CeCILL still pending.
Membership-Governance Committee (Mr. Phipps)
Mr. Phipps reported that he was ready to announce Wikimedia Foundation, OW2 and TDF as new affiliates. He would like to publish a news item at the end of this week or the beginning of next week.
Mr. Phipps furthermore noted that he received and email from AFUL (Association Francophone des Utilisateurs de Logiciels Libres) indicating their interest to join as an affiliate. The board accepted AFUL's application.
Mr. Phipps asked whether we should invite other user groups, such as Open Source Sweden and the New Zealand Open Source Society.
Mr. Phipps mentioned that he had put a new contact form on the web site to make it easier for affiliates and others to contact us. Mr. Michlmayr noticed a problem with the contact form and said he would fix it. Mr. Fogel observed that the various contact pages have to be unified.
Policy and Economic Development Committee (Ms. Bryant)
No report submitted.
Administrative Committees
Communications Committee (Mr. Phipps)
Mr. Phipps has been invited to give a keynote speech at OSS 2012 in Tunisia in September.
Mr. Phipps is working on a news item announcing the new affiliates.
IT Infrastructure Committee (Mr. Fogel)
Mr. Fogel reports:
- Membership system investigation. In serious conversation with Drupal/CiviCRM contractor Joe Murray, who can also do Drupal upgrade. Mr. Fogel believes it will cost 5000 USD or less for Joe Murray to implement CiviCRM for us. This is great since we set a limit of 10k.
- Started issue tracker for Infrastructure: projects.opensource.org/redmine/projects/infra
- Did the board-plus@ / board@ switch.
- Mr. Michlmayr is working on moving our web site to our own server, and is planning to complete it soon.
- Mr. Phipps has set up a contact form: http://opensource.org/contact Previous experience with such forms suggest we may need to add a captcha, but that's easy to do.
Old Business
Review of Action Items
- Mr. Fogel/Infra: produce a report by June meeting on what infrastructure committee is plannig to do. Status: everything is now recorded in our issue tracker
- Mr. Wasserman: Create & print postcard to promote individual membership (for OSCON). Status: in progress.
- Mr. Michlmayr: get scalable vector graphics version of our logo from Ken Coar or wherever it is. Status: Mr. Phipps found an SVG version on Wikipedia. This should be usable but uses a proprietary font. Mr. Jagielski will work on this and also change TM to R.
- Mr. Fogel/Infra: implement a membership system. Status: in progress.
- Mr. Fogel/Infra: a way for members to conduct conversations (a discussion forum). Status: Mr. Fogel is evaluating possible solutions.
- Mr. Villa: produce Code of Conduct for such forums. Status: in progress.
- Mr. Villa: write blog post about new officer election. Status: done.
- Mr. Villa: update web site to reflect new officers and committee chairs. Status: done.
- Mr. Villa: draft email about Individual Memberships for past Board memberships. Status: will draft this week.
- Mr. Kon: Education Committee to write "What License Should I Choose?" document. This is more a project than an action item. Status: Mr. Kon has some material but is waiting for the new license page.
- Mr. Wasserman: draft Messaging / Talking Points / Market Segmentation document.
- Mr. Wasserman: double-check that we can accept membership fees before we change our bylaws.
- Mr. Milinkovich: Propose a revision to the license landing page which more closely reflects the prior work of the license proliferation committee. Status: done.
- Mr. Milinkovich: Draft a Corporate Membership proposal. Status: done.
New Business
None.
Action Items
- Ms. Sharma: check if we can get a credit card reader, so we can accept card payments at OSCON
- Ms. Sharma: check and document how OSI can accept international payments
- Mr. Fogel/infra: look into Google Voice to provide phone number for OSI
- Mr. Fogel/Mr. Michlmayr: fix email addressed used by new contact page
- Mr. Michlmayr: migrate web server to our VM.
- Mr. Michlmayr: upgrade web server to Drupal 7.
- Mr. Fogel: unify contact page
- Mr. Jagielski: update OSI logo from TM to (R)
- Mr. Jagielski: update other trademark pages and trademark contact pages
- Mr. Phipps: circulate draft trademark license agreement to board
- Mr. Phipps: work on announcement of new affiliates (Wikimedia, OW2, Document Foundation)
- Unassigned: work on paper-based backup for member signup at OSCON
Next Board Meeting
The next OSI BOD meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 3, 2012.
Meeting adjourned at 16:20 UTC.