Minutes for Meeting of May 27th, 2010

Next Meeting

  • June 10, 2010

Attendance

  • Brian Cameron
  • Germán Póo-Caamaño
  • Jorge Castro
  • Rosanna Yuen
  • Stormy Peters
  • Vincent Untz

Regrets

  • Paul Cutler
  • Srinivasa Ragavan

Missing

  • Diego Escalante

Recurring Items

  • Review past action items.
  • Did each person with action items send their status reports to the board list before the meeting?
  • Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
  • Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
  • Update foundation.gnome.org website.

New Items

  • Shaun McCance's proposal for funding developer documentation.

    • ACTION: Germán will follow up with Shaun McCance about how the board can help with his proposal for funding developer documentation.

  • GNOME brand marketing arrangement with Ronaldo Padula (Loja Geek Depto Comercial)
    • The board agreed to propose a 10% fee.
    • ACTION: Brian - Ronaldo Padula (Loja Geek Depto Comercial) is interested to make arrangements with the GNOME Foundation to sell GNOME branded merchandise. Diego is working with Ronaldo, but was not present at the meeting. The board agreed to make arrangements for a 10% royalty fee. Brian will tell Diego about this so further arrangements can be made.
  • LWN.net agreement - status
    • The GNOME Foundation received the legal agreement from the lawyers and this has been shared this with LWN. Once this is finalized, work with marketing can start.
  • Women Outreach Program
    • The Womens Outreach Program is moving forward and they are putting together a plan.
    • Marina will send a notice to the general public when it is finalized.
    • ACTION: Stormy will send an update to the board to highlight the Women Outreach Program plans under discussion.

  • LiMo and GTK+

    • ACTION: Stormy will schedule a meeting to discuss and create the GTK+ RoadMap.

  • Making the bid for GUADEC public
    • Germán is making arrangements to make the GUADEC bid public with Koen Martens.
  • Sysadmin job
    • ACTION: Stormy will send out the announcement for the sysadmin job.
  • Consorcio Fernando de los Rios para la Sociedad de la Información y el Conocimiento (Consortium Fernando de los Rios for the Knowledge and Information Society) is working on a bid to improve GNOME accessibility. Details about the work being done are here:
  • Finances
    • The GNOME Foundation has a new invoicing process to make us more responsive to external teams requesting our help with invoicing (teams like LGM for example).
    • The GNOME Foundation should have the credit cards in the next two weeks.
    • Pre-purchasing tickets via a service like Orbitz.
      • More discussion with Orbitz is needed.

    • GnuCash - status

      • No update yet. Germán will try to work on this over the next two weeks. If this cannot be done by then, the board will explore other options.
  • Nokia arrangement to improve GNOME Mobility
    • We have a list of potential uses for the money, based on discussion on mailing lists.
    • ACTION: Stormy will write a proposal how to spend the money from Nokia to improve GNOME mobility based on discussion.
  • Event Updates
    • GNOME.Asia/COSCUP co-located event in Taiwan
    • GUADEC
      • Discussion about the budget.
      • ACTION: Vincent to mail to all board candidates that the board meeting at GUADEC will be on Sunday.
      • There was a lot of discussion about terms and conditions on the GUADEC mailing list. How was that resolved?
      • ACTION: Germán will talk with the GUADEC organizers to find out what happened as a result of the discussion about the terms and conditions.
    • Idlelo, a large (500 people) open source event that just completed in Accra, Ghana (May 17-21).
    • Brazilian events request from Jonh Wendell
      • ACTION - Brian will touch base with Jonh Wendell about upcoming Brazilian events.
    • AEGIS conference and a11y hackfest
      • ACTION - Brian will touch base with the a11y leaders and make sure that the transition is going well and to see how the board can help them to be successful.

    • GULEV Free & Open Source Software Conference 2010" (GFOSSCon) to be held in Cancún MX, from November 17 to 19, 2010.

      • ACTION - Stormy will ping the GULEV Free & Open Source Software Conference 2010 organizers and provide them with a list of potential GNOME speakers in Mexico.

  • Improving membership application process
    • Germán is working on this. We are just waiting for the elections to end first since it would be best to recommend changes after then.

Completed Actions

  • Everyone on the board - Needs to encourage appropriate people to consider running for the board.
  • Everyone on the board who plans to run for the next term - Needs to announce their candidacy.
  • Brian - Will follow up with the GNOME Usability community to determine a schedule for upcoming Usability hackfests. An email was sent to the GNOME usability list to encourage planning for GUADEC BOF's, but no response yet. Brian went ahead and scheduled some BOF time slots for the Usability team.
  • Brian - Ronaldo Padula (Loja Geek Depto Comercial) is interested to make arrangements with the GNOME Foundation to sell GNOME branded merchandise. Diego is working with Ronaldo, but was not present at the meeting. The board agreed to make arrangements for a 10% royalty fee. Brian will tell Diego about this so further arrangements can be made. This new action item was completed shortly after the meeting.
  • Brian - Will touch base with Jonh Wendell about upcoming Brazilian events. This new action item was done shortly after the meeting.
  • Brian - Will touch base with the a11y leaders and make sure that the transition is going well and to see how the board can help them to be successful. This new action item was completed shortly after the meeting.
  • Jorge - Will send an email seeking hackfest sponsorships from the advisory board.
  • Jorge - Taken over from Lucas - Work to ensure that Foundation members sign the GNOME Code of Conduct, and make it a requirement that new Foundation members need to sign this. Lucas completed a draft currently under review, tarted discussion on foundation list, got a lot comments and feedback, and summarized the discussion points. The board seems to be still interested in proposing Code of Conduct as an official guideline for Foundation members as a way have a more clear message about the values of the GNOME community.
  • Srini - To update the GNOME Foundation private Wiki with new Intel dial-in information.
  • Stormy - Will ping the GUADEC organizers to make sure that meeting rooms for the board and advisory board meetings are properly scheduled.
  • Vincent - Will talk to Juan Jesús Ojeda (Juanje) from Andalucia and ask them to blog about the project.

Status of action items

  • Brian - Get information about what should be in an "Employee Handbook". Draft approved by board. Now under review by the GNOME legal team.
  • Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.
  • Brian - Will track progress of GNOME.Asia event organization.
  • Diego - Taken over from Stormy. Will work with Gil Forcada from guifi.net and gnome-marketing to define the best way for organizations like guifi.net to participate in the GNOME community. Not many replies from the community. Diego will draft something more concrete for gnome-marketing to determine the best name and process for managing this.
  • Germán - Will do the needful to make the bid for GUADEC public.
  • Germán - Will share the financial data that was provided to the advisory board to foundation-list.
  • Jorge - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to use the GNOME trademark. Taken over from Vincent. Look at the archives in 2005 and try to determine which companies can use the GNOME trademark. Know what kind of contracts we had with them.

  • Paul - Will send an email to the foundation-list and the gnucash list seeking someone to take over the GnuCash automation. Taken over from Behdad.

  • Paul - Will provide the board update in a week to the Board with a list of articles and percentage completed for the Annual Report.
  • Paul - Will lead putting together the GNOME Annual Report.
  • Paul - Will reschedule the GNOME Foundation IRC meeting.
  • Paul - Will send an Annual Report update by May 16th.
  • Paul - Will follow up with Germán about the financial data for the Annual Report.
  • Paul - Will talk to the sysadmin team about setting up a gobby server for the GNOME Foundation board to use for minute taking.

  • Paul/Germán - Automate the process of entering PayPal information into GnuCash. Taken over from Behdad.

  • Rosanna - Research the GNOME Guidestar website and update if necessary. Rosanna sent an update about the status of Guidestar, but work is still needed. Need to find someone to keep the website up-to-date.
  • Rosanna - Will apply for the GNOME credit card.
  • Srini - Follow up with potential sponsors for the co-located summit in 2011.
  • Stormy - To schedule a meeting with companies that do consulting work with GNOME to start discussions on how we can help (how can we work together). Sent email. Got a couple of positive responses. Will follow up with others and schedule a meeting.
  • Stormy - To follow up with the Advisory Board about acquiring a second machine. Email sent, but no response yet.
  • Stormy - Set up a Euro bank account.

  • Stormy - To follow up with LiMo.

  • Stormy - To finish following up with Orbitz to find out if the GNOME Foundation can pre-purchase travel tickets.
  • Stormy - Will discuss the opportunity to fund Mobile projects on the GNOME mobile mailing list to determine the best way to coordinate and make use of these resources.
  • Vincent - Update the blog and planet to highlight that people are expected to sign and follow the GNOME Code of Conduct. BLOCKED: Waiting for Jorge's action on Code of Conduct.
  • Vincent - Follow-up with Intel to determine what to do about copyright assignment for clutter. Waiting for an official update from Intel.
  • Vincent - Follow up with Michael Meeks and Bradley Kuhn to see if there is an interest in defining a policy the release team can follow to know whether a project with a copyright assignment requirement can be accepted or not. What sorts of copyright assignments are acceptable? ONGOING: latest draft available. Waiting for comments.
  • Vincent - Create a Philosophy page on the GNOME Wiki. ONGOING: started a wiki page. Need to solidify it a bit.
  • Vincent - Announce that the Speaker Guidelines are approved. ONGOING: final version ready. Need to send a mail + blog about them.
  • Vincent - Organize the interview team for sysadmin. ONGOING: we have three people in the team, we are improving the job description, and we will hopefully be able to announce the job next week.

New Action Items

  • Germán - Will follow up with Shaun McCance about how the board can help with his proposal for funding developer documentation.

  • Germán - Will talk with the GUADEC organizers to find out what happened as a result of the discussion about the terms and conditions.
  • Stormy - Will send an update to the board to highlight the Women Outreach Program plans under discussion.

  • Stormy - Will schedule a meeting to discuss and create the GTK+ RoadMap.

  • Stormy - Will send out the announcement for the sysadmin job.
  • Stormy - Will write a proposal how to spend the money from Nokia to improve GNOME mobility based on discussion.

  • Stormy - Will ping the GULEV Free & Open Source Software Conference 2010 organizers and provide them with a list of potential GNOME speakers in Mexico.

  • Vincent - To mail to all board candidates that the board meeting at GUADEC will be on Sunday. DONE just after the meeting.
  • Vincent - To ask Fernando to blog about how the training went at Idlelo.

Discussed on the mailing list

  • The board wrapped up Stormy's bonus and shared the final results with the GNOME Foundation employees. It will likely take a few weeks to make a more public announcement.
  • The GNOME and KDE boards agreed to extend the deadline for the 2011 Desktop Summit Call for Hosts to June 9th.
  • The board approved spending $20,000 to fund the GNOME Women's Outreach Program. $5,000 was already raised from Google, and $25,000 provides funding for 5 women to participate.
  • Discussion about how to best spend the money Nokia provided to improve GNOME mobile.

  • Discussion about putting together a GTK RoadMap. Javier Jardón crafted a draft:

  • The GNOME Foundation was invited to attend the GULEV Free & Open Source Software Conference 2010" (GFOSSCon) to be held in Cancún MX, from November 17 to 19, 2010. The GNOME Foundation is seeking interested volunteers who can represent GNOME.

  • Negotiations with Ronaldo Padula (Loja Geek Depto Comercial) about the terms of him selling GNOME branded merchandise in Brazil.

  • Shaun McCance proposed the idea to the board about possibly funding a program to create better developer documentation for the GNOME platform. Shaun's proposal is to create a topic-oriented collection of how-tos. These would complement our existing API references, and provide a gentle learning curve for developers. Shaun suggests providing bounties for particular topics. The hope is that, besides creating more content, this will teach more people to write better. Shaun is looking for help to identify the work involved and to make such a program successful.

  • Mark Shuttleworth will be giving the keynote talk at GNOME.Asia/COSCUP in Taiwain in 2010.
  • Brian Cameron is putting together a "Free Agent" t-shirt to highlight that GNOME powers Sugar Labs and OLPC in a global humanitarian effort to help children.
  • Discussion about how to best recognize and reward companies who send people to GNOME events like GUADEC.
  • Vincent proposed a GNOME Philosophy page to provide a single reference for GNOME philosophic matters.
  • Discussion finalizing the proposed GNOME Speaker Guidelines.
  • Discussion about setting up a new invoicing process to make us more responsive to external teams requesting our help with invoicing (teams like LGM for example).
  • Stormy discussed the idea of setting up legal entities in other country to facilitate donations and raising money. The legal advise was:
    • If we had a nonprofit entity in Europe or Brazil, it would be a separate organization.
    • We could use the boards and the bylaws to tie them together. So for example, a European GNOME organization could have the same board as the US one. For the Brazilian one we could have the same board plus a Brazilian or two.
    • We would have to maintain bank accounts and file taxes in the region. This would be most of the work. We would have at least an accountant and maybe an attorney in each place.
    • If we do not think the new organization will increase our donations by at least $10,000-20,000 a year, then it is probably not worth it.

FoundationBoard/Minutes/20100527 (last edited 2010-06-23 20:15:03 by BrianCameron)