Regular meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 15 September 2022, 15:00 UTC
Attending
Regrets
Consent Agenda
- Acknowledge receipt of Governance Committee Minutes 18 May 2022, 7 September 2022
- Approve the minutes of the August board meeting
- Add Melissa Wu to the Travel Committee
Minutes
- ED updates
- Very few updates as much staff vacation in August after GUADEC
- Focus moving on to GNOME.Asia, budget/proposal on agenda for later - CFP is ready but not advertised pending approval
- GSoC wrapping up, GUADEC wrap-up looking at survey results currently
- Recruitment for ED - launched and applicants in the system being reviewed
- Approve the budget for 3 Outreachy interns
- The cost for funding for Outreachy interns has increased from USD 6500 to USD 8000 per intern. The proposal is to continue to fund 3 internships.
- Thib: Is 3 the right amount?
- Rosanna: We usually approve 3 but only 1 or 2 end up happening.
- Philip: It's good to allow the space for 3 if the GNOME community has the opportunity to fill them.
- VOTE: Approve expenditure of USD 24k. Approved (nem. con.)
- Discuss app ID process
- Received an email with a proposal for org.gnome.* app IDs from Sophie Herold.
- Thib: App IDs are hard to move, so the idea is that apps either don't want the org.gnome.* ID to begin with or get put on a list of exceptions when they leave the core group.
- Rob: From the perspective of trademark law app IDs are not important, they are like executable names and header files. So from a birds-eye view this is something we could delegate to the release team. However it made me wonder if anyone had taken a look at the release team's naming policy lately - I'm not sure what the process is if you _want_ to name an app GNOME Foo. It seems to be, there are no more apps named GNOME Foo because the release team wants to keep the Core set small.
- Philip: I'm not that familiar with the existing process. Could we have a short overview?
- (We discuss the existing process)
- ACTION: Rob to reply to Sophie with follow-up questions.
- Approve the budget for GNOME Asia summit
- We received a proposal for the budget for GNOME.Asia.
- Sammy: Requires USD 49,203.00 to be done in Malaysia from Dec 2 to 4, 2022.
- Neil: Clarifies that previously approved USD 12k for travel plus USD 10k for the venue.
- Thib: There seems to be a big gap compared to previous years.
- Rob: Asks if we have budget for the gap.
- Rob: Asks if we have sponsors information to see if we can get closer to the amount. Clarifies we haven't approved before without having sponsors secured.
- Neil and Rob: Suggests USD 12k and rely on sponsors to boost the budget.
- Thib and Rob: Suggests to approve up to USD 12k and request more information on sponsors.
- Neil: Clarifies that USD 12k is already approved.
- VOTE: Approve up to USD 12k; approved (nem. con.)
Governance Committee, 18 May 2022
Attending: Kat, Philip, Regina, Thib. Regrets: Felipe
- Evaluation of previous board meeting
- Thib: It was good to have the minutes available to read well in advance, and to have asynchronous discussions in advance so we could come quickly to the conclusion.
- We should make it more clear that most activities should have an owner. Follow up e.g. with how to incorporate Regina's presentation into our Foundation activities, who should own that from the board side.
- Thib: Lots of things are happening within the executive committee between Rob and Neil, and I think we should involve the rest of the board more. I'd like to see the rest of the board be more responsive. This has made some progress but I think we need more.
Philip: From reading BoardSource this seems to be a common problem.
- Kat: It can be good for the executive committee to handle things that don't need to go to the whole board, but some delegation is still healthy.
- Thib: Asking for engagement in the Matrix room hasn't been too successful so far.
- Kat: Delegating explicitly can work, but requires a lot of attention from the committee.
- Bylaw change
- Kat: The voting system was confusing as to what YES and NO exactly meant. We should try to resolve it for next time.
- Thib: We need to find someone to join Andrea in the membership committee who can take on issues like this when Andrea steps down.
- Action: Thib - Open a ticket or a discourse thread new membership committee position(s)
- Discussion about increasing transparency by inviting a community member to interview the ED/board on a monthly basis.
- Action: Philip - mention this to the rest of the board, and gauge interest in TWIG
- Review of ongoing tasks
- Kat and Thib to work on the governance page, after June 6
- No movement on skill set template
- No movement on onboarding prep
- ED contingency plan is becoming more relevant
- Thib: Rosanna has the required access and will report to the board in Neil's absence.
- Thib to update the issue.
- Kat: I think we should have this as a standing board agenda item
- Action: Thib to add "ED contingency plan" to the standing board agenda
Governance Committee, 7 September 2022
Attending: Martín, Philip, Regina (later), Sammy
- Evaluation of previous board meeting (4 August)
- Sammy: We spent a lot of time on some items. But it was the first meeting with the new board members.
- Philip: What items could be streamlined in the future and how?
- Sammy: Is the meeting usually 1 hour?
- Philip: It's been longer in the past but I think it'll be difficult to plan more than 1 hour with current directors' schedules.
- Martín: No comments this time, will observe the following meeting with this in mind.
- Philip: It was difficult to plan a time for the board meeting, onboarding training, etc. What could we do to make this easier? Hopefully we can use Wednesdays at this time for most things, for the foreseeable future.
- Martín: A lot of the absences were circumstantial recently.
- Philip: We can recommend in the next board meeting that people use this time slot, and if we need to use a date picker then emphasize it's important to complete it quickly.
- Martín: The onboarding took a long time and I'm still absorbing the "oral tradition". That's why I haven't participated much in determining items for the agenda. It can be overwhelming. Some reminders from the chair would help.
- Discussion of when the next board meeting actually is.
- Chair and secretary of governance committee
- We'll discuss this next time when Regina is present. Martín volunteers to write the minutes next time.
- Review of ongoing tasks
- Reassigning tasks from departing committee members to new committee members and catching up on the context.
Completion of BoardSource training
- Reminding new directors to do this training is another of our tasks.