Foundation Board Minutes for Monday 6th May 2019, 14:30 UTC

Attending

Regrets

RobMcQueen

Agenda

Travel Committee status
LAS co-hosting proposal
GNOME Software definition proposal

Minutes

Travel committee status
- Philip: There were a lot more pending requests than I thought at first glance. I started processing them thanks to Germán's detailed documentation and we are now caught up on sponsorship requests and reimbursements. I contacted Guillaume Gomez and he's still interested in volunteering.
- Nuritzi: Umang Jain is interested to join the committee as well.
- Neil: I have looked into how the Foundation could make things easier. I don't yet have any recommendations, but am still working on it. Currently I don't have a good picture of what is the most time consuming part.
  - Philip: A huge bottleneck is the tools: RT and nextcloud. Another time suck is the verification of flight searches, which should become much easier under the draft sponsorship policy which we will hopefully adopt soon. Germán's documentation is here: https://wiki.gnome.org/Travel/ApplicationProcess
- Nuritzi: If we are planning to appoint new people into the travel committee, we should train them as early as possible before the GUADEC rush.
- Philip: I propose not appointing them now, but first giving the travel committee a heads up.
- ACTION: Philip - Communicate to the travel committee our intention to appoint more people to the committee
- ACTION: Federico - Introduce Guillaume to the board on Discourse
- ACTION: Nuritzi - Introduce Umang to the board on Discourse
LAS co-hosting proposal
- Nuritzi: There have not been too many edits since the last time we discussed it. The main changes have been about fundraising and how any surplus is split after the event. Sponsorship from organizations that donate to both GNOME and KDE will be considered "joint sponsorship".
- Nuritzi: Regarding branding, the conference is pursuing a visual identity which is distinct from both KDE and GNOME, but there are designers from both communities contributing.
- Nuritzi: The committee is currently blocked on sending out the call for locations and would like the GNOME board to vote on the proposal.
- Philip: When did the name change from Libre Application Summit to Linux Application Summit?
  - Nuritzi: Quite early on. We thought that Libre implied that only representatives of free software applications were welcome at the conference.
- Carlos: How do we determine which organizations are considered "joint sponsorship"?
  - Nuritzi: Looking at whether they donate to GNOME and/or KDE conferences regularly in other years.
- Carlos: Do we have representation in the group that decides things around fundraising?
  - Nuritzi: Yes, Sri has expressed interest.
- Carlos: The Contributor Covenant is mainly for online situations, could that pose a problem when applied to a conference?
  - Nuritzi: We consulted with the code of conduct committee about this.
  - Federico: The language in the Contributor Covenant is quite similar to the GNOME events code of conduct already.
  - Nuritzi: We are considering adding some of the details from the GNOME events code of conduct, such as how to report incidents.
- Allan: At some time early in the process I would like the committee to present to the board. Otherwise I don't see an opportunity to provide feedback.
  - Nuritzi: Can we do this as part of presenting the bid?
  - Allan: We can make a note that the board would be able to provide feedback on branding, fundraising, etc. at that point.
- Allan: Neil, what's your opinion on this document?
  - Neil: The document has the right level of detail for this stage. We would want more detail when a bid arrives. The main risk to the Foundation here is if we ask people to put time into this and it ends up not happening, and this document goes a long way towards de-risking that.
- Neil: I'm not sure the board needs to vote on this necessarily, as no funds or trademarks are being committed.
  - Carlos: Since the process is new and uncertain, voting would send a clear message of support to the committee.
- Nuritzi: Would there be a way to remove some of the risks from the branding? Would it help to present the branding before a bid arrives, if it is ready? Would the board or the GNOME design team evaluate the branding?
  - Allan: Since we have to approve the trademark use, the board has to approve it. The GNOME design team can give input.
  - Nuritzi: Allan, I would like to discuss this further with you to figure out this process.
- The board formally acknowledges the proposal.
GNOME software definition proposal
- Carlos, Rob, and Allan have finished drafting the proposal, which aims to answer the question of how to define GNOME software.
- Carlos: The proposal splits things into two. There is "GNOME core" software which can use the GNOME trademarks and identify itself as "GNOME", and there is a group of "GNOME affiliates" consisting of applications that apply for membership in the group.
- Allan: GNOME affiliates don't need to be hosted on GNOME infrastructure, but the contributors are eligible for Foundation membership. This potentially broadens our membership base.
- Allan: It could be controversial to admit members who are developing applications on proprietary platform. However, we believe that if you are developing a great GNOME-related application which is hosted on GitHub, you should be able to join the Foundation and get support to attend GUADEC.
- Allan: The most potentially controversial item is if an application doesn't meet the criteria for GNOME core, but previously did. This is part of the reason why we have the GNOME affiliates, to provide a soft landing place for these applications.
  - Philip: Under what circumstances would an application drop out of GNOME core?
  - Allan: If a GNOME core application gets replaced by a newer GNOME core application that fills the same niche, for example.
- Nuritzi: Is there anything blocking opening this up for community consultation?
  - Allan: We would like the board to give some approval.
- Nuritzi: What would be the alternative to this plan?
  - Allan: Alternatively, we could open things up even wider and say "everyone can be GNOME".
  - Carlos: The problem with that is that we then have to be stricter about who can use the trademark.
- Federico: Do we extend the GNOME affiliate status to apps, or do they apply for it?
  - Carlos: The plan is to have a committee or working group that reviews applications.
- Federico: Do we require the GNOME affiliates to use particular parts of the GNOME stack, such as GNOME configuration libraries? Do we make any guarantees to GNOME affiliates, such as not breaking their applications, or giving priority to bug fixes that affect their applications?
  - Carlos: We are trying to keep it light. The goal is for the GNOME affiliate to feel like they are part of GNOME by allowing them membership in the Foundation and travel sponsorship. Otherwise we will have to have a review committee to comb through the application code.
  - Federico: Can the affiliates propose projects for GNOME's Google Summer of Code and Outreachy spots?
  - Carlos: Yes.
- We will continue to discuss this next week.

Actions

Philip - Notify the travel committee of our intention to appoint more people to the committee
Federico - Introduce Guillaume Gomez to the board on Discourse
Nuritzi - Introduce Umang Jain to the board on Discourse