Foundation Board Minutes for Tuesday, August 30th 2016, 17:00 UTC

Next meeting date September 6th 2016, 17:00 UTC

Wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20160830

Attending

• AllanDay

• AlexandreFranke

• MegFord

• CosimoCecchi

• NuritziSanchez

• RosannaYuen

• ShaunMcCance

Regrets

• JimHall

Missing

Agenda for 2016-08-30

• Invitation Letter for Visa Application - needed by August 30 (from the mailing list)
• Status of Montreal Summit 2016 (Nuritzi)
• Flatpak store (Allan)
• Outgoing board members probably need to be removed from mailing list, the wiki, etc
• From the mailing list - "support my volunteer program" (Allan)
• From the mailing list - "[GANDI] gnome.tw expires in 30 days" (Allan)
• From the mailing list - Jim's message about fundraising ideas. (Allan/Jim)
• Privacy funds - we have some ideas now. What's next? (Allan)

  • Long list of proposals: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/PrivacyCampaign2013/

  • Notes from the GUADEC session: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/PrivacyCampaign2013/20160814

• Do we want to register gnome.blog? (Suggested by Andreas)
• Google Play account (see ongoing actions) (Allan)

  • Michael has responded on the mailing list - https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/private/board-list/2016-August/msg00074.html . Are we OK with this?

Ongoing

The following section is part of the Agenda and includes items which have seen updates in the last 30 days. Items which have been updated more than 30 days ago are listed under the "Ongoing but stalled" section.

• Meeting agendas and minutes
• Owncloud shared calendar for the board
• ED search update
• Google Play account
• Status of logo copyright
• Bitcoins donations data
• Conference sponsorships
• Friends of GNOME
• Google ad grant
• Sysadmin fundraising levels and perks
• Web page for prior pants winners
• Privacy campaign funds
• Money raised for defense against Groupon
• Standard code of conduct for GNOME annual events

Minutes

• Invitation Letter for Visa Application - needed by August 30 (from the mailing list)
  • Since LAS GNOME is an event organized in the US by the GNOME Foundation, we are responsible to write the invitation letter
  • The applicant we would be writing the letter for, is not a GNOME Foundation member
  • It's not clear that the Foundation should be responsible to sign this letter, and how LAS GNOME being an event organized in the US impacts this
    • The LAS GNOME organizing committee is not an entity, so that may be the reason the Foundation is responsible for this instead of the organizing committee
  • We can only sign this today, as the applicant has a consular appointment tomorrow
  • VOTE: if it's determined that the GNOME Foundation does not have legal of financial implications by signing this letter, then Nuritzi would sign it
    • +1 Nuritzi, Meg, Allan, Cosimo, Alexandre, Shaun
    • VOTE PASSED
    • We should encourage the applicant to become a Foundation member, since in general this is a perk that comes with being a foundation member
    • ACTION: Nuritzi to investigate whether there is any responsibility from the Foundation, and see if the LAS GNOME committee can sign it instead, or otherwise sign it
• Status of Montreal Summit 2016 (Nuritzi)
  • Should we be more actively pushing it forward?
  • It looks like the organization of the Summit is moving along just fine, and there's no action that is needed from the Board at this time
• Flatpak store (Allan)
  • There's an idea of a central store where people can upload Flatpak apps, and users would get it from the store, rather than getting it from the distribution
  • Longer-term, this would be an independent effort that is not tied to a specific desktop, since it's not GNOME-specific or KDE-specific
    • But as a way to get started and see if the idea has potential there has been discussions about making this an opt-in store and have the GNOME Foundation be the organization to bootstrap this
  • There are a few questions around this
    • Do we want to do it?
    • What kind of resources do we need in order to pull this off?
    • Should we get in touch with the advisory board members to support this?
  • Can Allan make inquiries on behalf of the Board to push this forward?
  • Can or should we reach out to other organizations first, to push this forward?
  • VOTE: the Board gets behind this project officially, and gives Allan permission to reach out to other organizations on behalf of the Board
    • +1 Nuritzi, Shaun, Meg, Allan, Alexandre, Cosimo
    • VOTE PASSED
    • ACTION: Allan will move forward with the plan and keep other people in the loop
• Outgoing board members probably need to be removed from mailing list, the wiki, etc
  • This has happened, no further discussion needed
• From the mailing list - "support my volunteer program" (Allan)
  • Unclear they have any strong ties with GNOME
  • There's very little information in the message
  • ACTION: Shaun to reply asking for more information
• From the mailing list - "[GANDI] gnome.tw expires in 30 days" (Allan)
  • Sysadmins need to sort it out. No further action needed from the board
    • Andrea is aware
• Privacy funds - we have some ideas now. What's next? (Allan)

  • Long list of proposals: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/PrivacyCampaign2013/

  • Notes from the GUADEC session: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/PrivacyCampaign2013/20160814

  • Cosimo's idea would have been to make this money available for internships (e.g. Outreachy) on this specific area, e.g. on the Seahorse redesign
    • There are questions about whether we can rely on interns to provide work on critical features
    • There are also questions about whether Outreachy is the best pool of candidates for this, since this was money from the general public
      • Outreachy's goal is also more generally to get people involved, rather than having them work on critical features, so may not be the best fit for that reason
    • In the past, we picked interns that were really qualified for some critical features -- there is precedent for this
      • However, another issue is how much capacity there is to mentor people on this project within the community
    • Also, other people are independently working on the Seahorse redesign, so that is probably not a good idea
      • ACTION: Allan will check whether the person working on this can do it without any additional resources
  • So we are back to the need of distilling the list of ideas down to a shortlist and approach relevant maintainers
  • Can we decide whether the funds are opened to individuals rather than the bidding of companies?
    • Generally sounds like a good idea
    • Perhaps we can have this at the same time as other internships, to concentrate the focus
    • But not as part of Outreachy, just at the same time as a special program
      • We could get three interns for it
  • ACTION: Cosimo to put together a proposal that includes this feedback, with the goal of circulating it to the community/vote ideas/etc, and run it by the Board
• Do we want to register gnome.blog? (Suggested by Andreas)
  • Looks like it's around 180EUR first year, then 35EUR per year after that (price without Gandi discount)
  • Feeling that this could be a worth one to use, since it would bad if others used it to blog about GNOME
    • But there's no particular activity associated to this which is planned at the moment
  • If someone comes along and they're talking about GNOME in an official way on a gnome.xyz domain, we could make a case using trademark protection, so we have ways to react
  • VOTE: not purchase this domain for now
    • +1 Cosimo, Alexandre, Shaun, Allan, Meg, Nuritzi
    • VOTE PASSED
    • ACTION: Allan will get back to Andreas

Ongoing

This section includes items which have seen an update in the last 30 days. Format is "YYYY-MM-DD, action|discussion|abstract" for this and subsequent minutes sections

• Invitation Letter for Visa Application - needed by August 30 (from the mailing list)
  • 2016-08-30
    • ACTION: Nuritzi to investigate whether there is any responsibility from the Foundation, and see if the LAS GNOME committee can sign it instead, or otherwise sign it
• Flatpak store
  • 2016-08-30
    • There's an idea of a central store where people can upload Flatpak apps, and users would get it from the store, rather than getting it from the distribution
    • The Board voted to get behind this project officially, and give Allan permission to reach out to other organizations on our behalf
• From the mailing list - "support my volunteer program" (Allan)
  • 2016-08-30
    • There's very little information in the message, unclear how they're related to GNOME
    • ACTION: Shaun to reply asking for more information
• Do we want to register gnome.blog? (Suggested by Andreas)
  • 2016-08-30
    • Board voted not to register this
    • ACTION: Allan will get back to Andreas
• Meeting agendas and minutes
  • 2016-08-10
    • ACTION: Allan to gather a list of every recurring events.

      • 2016-08-19: an initial list has been added to the wiki here - https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Minutes/UpcomingAgenda . What next?

    • ACTION: Cosimo to document the new pad/agenda process on https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Minutes/UpcomingAgenda, since that is out of date at the moment

• Owncloud shared calendar for the board
  • 2016-05-23, ACTION: Allan will try if it's functional enough for us to use it now
  • 2016-06-06, Allan's tried it and reminders don't seem to work. Needs to follow up.
  • 2016-06-20, Since it works for Andrea, but not for Allan, help would be welcome from someone else for testing.
  • 2016-08-10
    • Cosimo tested creating an event, but with mixed results
    • ACTION: Cosimo to take it on from here
• ED search update
  • 2016-08-10, The search is still ongoing
• Google Play account
  • 2015-12-01, ACTION: Alexandre to follow up with the Release Team about this
  • 2015-12-08, Alexandre mailed the Release Team today, still waiting for an answer.
  • 2015-12-15 to 2016-01-19, No updates.
  • 2016-02-02, Release team did not come to an agreement/conclusion. Unclear what next steps should be
  • 2016-08-10, ACTION: Allan to send out feelers to d-d-l and talk to r-t in person at GUADEC to get the ball rolling again
• Status of logo copyright
  • 2015-12-01, ACTION: Shaun to send out email to d-d-l with proposal
  • 2015-12-08 to 2016-01-19, No updates.
  • 2016-02-02, Shaun will try to pick it up this week
  • 2016-08-10, ACTION: Shaun will send a proposal to licence the asset with dual LGPLv3/CC-BY-SA-4.0 (similar to adwaita-icon-theme)
• Bitcoins donations data
  • Tobi is the only person with access to the Bitcoin donations data
  • 2016-02-23, ACTION: Alexandre to get in touch with him about this

  • 2016-03-01, Account is on BitPay using friends@gnome.org

  • 2016-08-10
    • Board voted to shut down the account, since we can't report those as donations. Bitcoin does not allow to trace the sender, which is required to report the donations to the IRS
    • ACTION: Rosanna to shut down the account
    • ACTION: Allan to remove the option from our website
• Conference sponsorships
  • 2016-08-10
    • Previous action items were completed
    • ACTION: Kat to make sure that a sponsorship brochure with all conference, levels, combinations and perks is available for the Board to review
• Friends of GNOME
  • 2016-04-11, ACTION: Alexandre to request more information about the donation data from the European donations system (Wau Holland Stiftung Foundation)
  • 2016-08-10
    • ACTION: Allan to get in touch with Tobi and the sysadmin team to migrate the FoG infrastructure over to GNOME

    • ACTION: Meg volunteers to monitor the friends@gnome.org account for the time being

• Google ad grant
  • 2016-08-10
    • ACTION: Shaun will pick this up again and try to register us into the program when he's back in the US
    • The actual ad campaigns would probably need to be managed by the Engagement/Marketing team
    • ACTION: Nuritzi to discuss with the Engagement Team and let the board know if they want to start using Google ad
• Sysadmin fundraising levels and perks
  • 2016-08-10, ACTION: Nuritzi to take on this project and figure out what it entails
• Web page for prior pants winners
• 2016-08-10, ACTION: Shaun and Allan to add the web page
• Privacy campaign funds
  • 2016-08-10: New plan
    • ACTION: Cosimo to hold an unconference session during GUADEC to generate a shortlist of ideas, with a view to contracting them out to a consulting firm
  • 2016-08-30

    • Long list of proposals: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/PrivacyCampaign2013/

    • Notes from the GUADEC session: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/PrivacyCampaign2013/20160814

    • ACTION: Allan will check whether the person working on the seahorse redesign can do it without any additional resources
    • Board agreed to open up the funds to individuals, rather than company bids. Current idea is to make a special internship round, possibly with three interns
      • ACTION: Cosimo to put together a proposal that includes this feedback, with the goal of circulating it to the community/vote ideas/etc, and run it by the Board
• Money raised for defense against Groupon
  • Kat to draft a call for Free Desktop-style hackfests which would be sponsored with money raised for defence against Groupon
• Standard code of conduct for GNOME annual events
  • 2016-08-23
    • Board voted to charge the Diversity working group of proposing a code of conduct

Ongoing but stalled

This section includes items which haven't seen an update in the last 30 days.

Ongoing but no director assigned

This section includes items which haven't seen an update in the last 30 days and have no Director assigned

Nice to have

This section includes items which we would love to see happen at some point but lack the time to effectively become reality

• Contract template for future use organizations for which we handle money
  • Kat to draft this
• Privacy policy for GNOME services

  • Current draft is at https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/Privacy

  • Sysadmin Team's NDA should also be covered when dealing with this item
  • Kat or Allan to write up the policy
  • Kat or Allan to write up recommended wording for distribution privacy policies, regarding the behaviour of GNOME software
• Photography policy for GNOME conferences
  • Proposal needs to be drafted and sent to foundation list for discussion
  • Should probably be addressed at the same time as a standardised code of conduct

Discussed on the mailing list

Completed actions