Regular meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 11 May 2022, 16:30 UTC

Attending

Regrets

Minutes

Consent agenda: Resolution to thank Alberto Ruiz for his service on the board
- Resolved.
Update of Executive Committee members to add Thibault Martin
- VOTE: +1 Felipe, Rob, Regina (nem. con.)
Regina's proposal of a platform for diversity in GNOME
- Minutes of the Q&A:
  - Felipe: Great presentation. I think D&I initiatives can benefit our fundraising story considering that some companies might be inclined to donate to FOSS projects which are diverse, have a code of conduct, etc.
  - Thibault: We fail to communicate what we are and the activities with the foundation. The gnome.org website is an example of that.
  - Rob: People will come to us if we do a good job at communicating our activities and programs which enable newcomers and diversity in our community.
  - Rob: How can we go about making this happen?
  - Felipe: When it comes to the website implementation itself, there's ongoing work with the People of GNOME project. I think we can coordinate with them on developing the D&I portal to communicate our activities/initiatives with the engagement team.
  - Thib: Are we talking about the diversity of GNOME contributors, or having diverse audience of GNOME users? (re: @Rob: the more diverse the developers are, the more their products will benefit a diverse audience).
  - Neil: There's a D&I section in Discourse. The main blocker here is not the platform, but producing the content itself.
  - Thib: We should definitely follow-up on this. This is aligned with our strategy.
ED report
- Linux App Summit was a success! Now it is time to focus in GUADEC.
- (sysadmin) Finished the migration from OCP3 to OCP4. Allows us to drop various legacy stuff, Puppet etc.
- Calls on Flathub discussions around payments, tax implications, etc. are progressing well.
- Travel committee has a new booking system.
Appoint Martín Abente Lahaye to replace Alberto Ruiz for a year
- Thib: Martín has a good understanding of the impact of technology in society and underprivileged communities, making him a great candidate.
- VOTE: +1 unanimous
Approve GUADEC travel budget of up to USD 40,000
- Our approved budget was USD 30k, expecting income of USD 50k, but we've raised USD 59k and counting.
- VOTE: +1 unanimous
Communicating Alberto's resignation and the appointment of the new director
Acknowledge receipt of
- Executive Committee Minutes, 6 May 2022
- Governance Committee Minutes, 20 April 2022
- Acknowledged by all.

GNOME Foundation Executive Committee minutes, 6 May 2022

Attending: Neil, Rob, Thib
Discussion of Circle committee and prematurely granting membership status to Bottles contributors
- Understood as a sincere error but a public statement would be appreciated.
Foundation’s vision
- Formalising the full strategy.
- Discussion around what is needed to move the decentralised apps initiative forward.
- ED transition planning:
  - What’s the timeline?
    - We are ~3 months through the ~6 month transition period we set out.
  - Should we have a period where Rob and Thib take over duties, with Neil only acting as a backup?
    - Per bylaws, the president assumes the executive director functions.
    - In practice we'd expect Rosanna to assume some of the day to day management and report into the exec committee.
Topics for the next board meeting
- We need to appoint a director.

GNOME Foundation Governance Committee minutes, 20 April 2022

Attending: Felipe, Kat, Philip, Regina, Thib
Evaluation of previous board meeting
- Rob did a good job chairing.
- The agenda shared in advance was good.
- Committee minutes could have been added earlier and in wiki markup format.
- The meeting scheduling could have been done better. This should be highlighted in the election discussion, because board members are expected to be available/flexible for meeting times (although timezones). Meetings could potentially happen on weekends, depending on time conflicts/flexibility. It is worth considering the staff ability to attend weekend meetings.
Bylaw change: allow non-members to be directors
- Felipe has posted a new draft of the text that we want to communicate.
Recommend candidates to recommend to fill our vacant seat
- We are looking for someone with fundraising, executive management experience, able to drive our strategy...
- We should be mindful about the continuity of the Board, by replacing 5 members at once (4 election + Alberto's replacement).
- Discussion of potential candidates.
- The number and diversity of candidates to the Board is also something to be taken into consideration.
- Felipe to talk to Neil about the possibility of letting board candidates take the BoardSource trainings, allowing them to learn more about what involves being in the board.
Review of ongoing tasks
- ED transition contingency plan
  - This should be prioritized now.
  - We should identify Board members with ED skills to help with operational tasks during the transition while we don't have an ED. Thib could talk to the executive committee about taking this responsibility.
- Board skill set template and development plan
  - Philip to summarize the content linked in the issue and progress this.
- Document and advertise foundation roles
  - Thib is finishing the article and will submit for review to the governance committee.
- 2022 onboarding preparation
  - Regina to work on this.
- "This week in the Foundation"
  - Kat suggested that Board members could contribute to the content of the This week in Foundation post.