Foundation Board Minutes for Tue, November 29th 2016, 18:00 UTC

Next meeting date December 6th 2016, 18:00 UTC

Wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20161129

Attending

  • Meg Ford
  • Shaun McCance

  • Nuritzi Sanchez
  • Alexandre Franke
  • Rozanna Yuen
  • Jim Hall
  • Allan day

Regrets

  • Cosimo Cecchi

Missing

Agenda for 2016-11-29

Minutes

  • GUADEC venue vote to sign
    • Downpayment £1558 in december, £4675 in July
    • VOTE: sign the venue contract and approve the above amounts and schedule.
    • +1 Nuritzi, Allan, Alexandre, Meg, Shaun. PASSED
    • ACTION: Nuritzi to tell the team about approval
  • USPTO trademark email
    • We got an email about renewal for our logo.
    • We thought it was already sorted.
    • ACTION: Allan to ask Pamela what the next steps are.

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

  • USPTO trademark email
    • We got an email about renewal for our logo.
    • We thought it was already sorted.
    • 2016-11-29
      • ACTION: Allan to ask Pamela what the next steps are
  • Conference sponsorships
  • Email from HELLOTUX, "GNOME hoodie and a new shirt"
    • We have a license agreement with HELLOTUX, they want to expand the range of products and they need our approval to do so
    • There's a question about Ubuntu GNOME merchandise to address separately, since we would need another agreement in place with Ubuntu GNOME that considers merchandise for them to do so
      • It's also tricky becaue there are other parties interested to royalties, and the agreement would not only be wih GNOME
    • 2016-11-29
      • Allan has emailed HELLOTUX. We're waiting to hear back.
  • GNOME Foundation goals setting and budget overview for 2017
    • 2016-11-22
      • ACTION: Nuritzi to set up a separate call about budget and send a framadate, inviting all the Board members, Kat and Rosanna
  • GUADEC venue and accommodation contract, and bank account
    • 2016-11-22
      • The deadline for the accommodation booking seems to have moved to the next month, since the University themselves were a bit late on the contracts
    • 2016-11-29
      • Board has approved the venue contract
        • ACTION: Nuritzi to tell the team about approval
      • About the bank account:
        • The local team is going ahead with opening a UK bank account. Kat seems to be ok with this and asked if we can use this in the future too. People on the Board call think this may not be a good idea because it's risky. We would need to keep a close relationship with the trustees. Right now it's looking like Sam and Javier will be the trustees, partly because they're both in Manchester now.
        • The risks are that it's a personal account so we would need to keep close contact with the trustees, as stated above. As a US non-profit, we cannot hold foreign bank accounts. We would need to have a contract signed with them because they would be the ones responsible for money and taxes. We don't want to look like we're hiding money overseas.
        • Tl;dr we will not keep the bank account open for future use. We would need to investigate more around opening up a foregin bank account, but we've already done some research before and we do not think it's possible at this time.
      • ACTION: Rosanna to let us know if we are actually using the liability coverage in the US. Should we keep it, or is it obsolete?
  • ED search update
    • 2016-08-10, The search is still ongoing
    • 2016-11-08
      • The ED search committee identified qualified candidates and presented them to the Board.
      • The Board is in advanced stages of the process.
  • Google Play account
    • 2016-09-27
    • 2016-10-04
      • Payment is authorized
      • ACTION: Rosanna to make the payment and follow up with Ankit
    • 2016-10-18
      • Rosanna is waiting for Ankit to reply about the gmail account
    • 2016-11-01
      • Board is discussing who should have access to the credit card associated to the account
    • 2016-11-29
      • ACTION: Rosanna to look into getting a PayPal credit card

  • Privacy campaign funds
    • 2016-09-27
      • Draft is out for the Board to review and give feedback
      • ACTION: Cosimo to try and form a committee to review internship proposals
    • 2016-10-26
      • We are aiming for an internship round in spring 2017
  • Bitcoins donations data
    • 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
    • 2016-11-29
      • If we don't hear back from legal by December 6th, then we will announce to the community that they have 7 days until we close the account and put it back in their court
      • ACTION: Nuritzi to email Luis Villa about this (email sent on 11/29)

Ongoing but stalled

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

  • Owncloud shared calendar for 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
    • 2016-09-06
      • We probably don't want to track exactly this money flow, but the initiatives that the Board has been pursuing (Flatpak, LAS GNOME) are good fits for the original intent this money was kept for
      • We can consider making a PR or some other form of announcement about how we're currently making use of this money
  • Paypal Giving Fund
    • Alexandre suggested in december 2015 to get us enrolled in the program
      • That would give us exposure. For example Humble bundle allows to direct the charity part of purchases towards any of their participants
    • Zana tried to get us in sometime before may 2016, we never heard back.
    • 2016-09-06
      • ACTION: Zana to look into it.
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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)
  • 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

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

  • Email from HELLOTUX, "GNOME hoodie and a new shirt"
    • 2016-11-22
      • ACTION: Allan to get back to them with an OK for the new products
      • ACTION: Allan to communicate that we are open to reviewing a plan for Ubuntu GNOME that takes into account royalties, without committing to this yet though

FoundationBoard/Minutes/20161129 (last edited 2017-02-07 04:38:50 by CosimoCecchi)