Foundation Board Minutes for Tue, February 13th 2018, 18:00 UTC

Next meeting date Tue, February 20th 2018, 18:00 UTC

Attending

  • Alexandre Franke
  • Allan Day
  • Nuritzi Sanchez
  • Didier Roche
  • Carlos Soriano
  • Rosanna Yuen

  • Neil McGovern

Regrets

  • Cosimo Cecchi
  • Meg Ford

Missing

Agenda

  • URGENT - Marketing budget increase request
  • URGENT - GNOME infrastructure requirements - discussion with Andrea Veri
  • GNOME Maps costs (Neil)
  • Moderation of public mailing lists (Carlos)
  • Role of the Executive Director and Director of Operations with regards to the Board
  • Review ongoing items

Minutes

  • URGENT - Marketing budget increase request
    • Nuritzi has requested marketing funds to cover the cost of restocking the US and European events boxes, and to compensate for the cost of buying merchandise (socks) for FOSDEM
    • Carlos - concerned about the extra costs and would like time to review.
    • Alexandre - we are short of time - the US box needs to be ready for Scale in March. The Europe box also has a limited time frame.
    • Alexandre - it is an increase, but it is also an investment for several years.
    • Neil - based on the latest accounts, we're OK to increase spending for some extra boxes and marketing. He thinks that new boxes are a good idea.
    • Neil - it doesn't particularly matter which line the boxes come under. The board can vote to approve the expenditure and work out the accounting later.
    • Didier - what happened to the US events box? Some background provided here. It's concluded that it isn't worth trying to resurrect the US events box.
    • Rosanna - there hasn't been much interest in the US events box in recent years - people mostly want swag rather than a box.
    • What's going to go into the US box? What demand is there? Alexandre - the US box seems open to debate. It's decided to postpone voting for the US events box until next week, when we have more details.
    • VOTE: approve $3,300 to restock the European events box
      • +1, Alexandre, Carlos, Didier, Allan, Nuritzi - passed unanimously
  • VOTE: approve $1,314 for the socks for FOSDEM
    • +1 Alexandre, Didier, Carlos, Allan, Nuritzi - passed unanimously
  • URGENT - GNOME infrastructure requirements - discussion with Andrea Veri
    • The board is interested in server/infrastructure requirements for the future, both in general and also with regards to Gitlab and CI
    • We've received AWS credits and Javier is setting up Gitlab builders which will be spawned on AWS.
    • Our credit card has been added to the account with Amazon. We could get charged if we go over the limit. Caps and alerts are an option. Neil currently has access to this account.
    • General status of GNOME's infrastructure:
      • Migrating to only use Cent OS / RHEL. This reduces complexity.
      • We have retired one physical box and are in the process of retiring another - these machines had reached their end of life. The other hosts will reach their end of life in 2021. Red Hat is sponsoring some warranty renewals and RHEL subscriptions.
      • We will be receiving new hardware sponsored by Red Hat later this year. All our needs should be covered both in the short and longer term.
      • Gitlab migration has been a focus recently.
      • Phoenix data center summary: 2 boxes sponsored by Red Hat, 2 sponsored by GNOME, 2 incoming sponsored by Red Hat.
    • Question about Maps and Mapbox - would it be feasible to run our own tile server? This requires a lot of RAM and CPUs. One of the new boxes could potentially be used for that. Is bandwidth an issue? No - it will be fine. What about sysadmin resources for this? FreeIPA provides more granular permissions, so someone could potentially step in to just manage that service. If no one volunteers maybe Andrea could do it.
    • Question about the sysadmin apprenticeship program - had some initial success but then dried up. New volunteers wanted root access. No new members at the moment.

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

  • Raising internship stipends to $7000
    • Previous agreement was on $6500
    • Google Summer of code can go up to $6600
    • Current total budget from the privacy campaign is $20000
    • Outreachy does $5500 + $500 travel stipend, although they don’t have a travel committee
      • also $500 administrative fee, so total cost $6500
    • We are targetting a fall internship
    • ACTION: Carlos to take everything into account and come up with a new proposal
  • Membership committee call update
  • Report from Adboard meeting at FOSDEM

    • Attending Foundation representatives were Neil McGovern, Carlos Soriano, Didier Roche and Alexandre Franke

    • Attending adboard members were Canonical, SUSE, FSF, PIA and TDF
    • Positive atmosphere, constructive discussions about shared issues
    • ACTION: Neil to send a summary to adboard list
    • ACTION: Neil to extract action items and conversation starters for the adboard list
  • LAS update and budget request
    • A bid for Denver has been put together
    • They want to book the venue as soon as possible
    • We didn’t get any information before the meeting and we would like some time to get through it
    • Vote will happen on the list.
    • 2018-01-09 Sri joins the call
    • 2018-01-23
      • ACTION: Carlos to email the LAS team with a summary of the board's thoughts on the latest proposal, and to ask the team to send us a fresh proposal to decide on
  • GNOME Maps and Amisha's email
    • The Mapbox service is going to run out at the end of the year
    • Meg spoke to some of the Maps developers about this the last time it was an issue. Available options back then:
      1. Get another coupon for free access
      2. Pay, but with a discounted rate
      3. Run our own tile server
    • We probably need a short-term solution before the coupon runs out, and we don't have long
    • We think that the current coupon was organised directly between the Maps developers and Mapbox - the Foundation Board probably wasn't involved
    • Neil backs a short-term solution by renewing the coupon; then need to calculate how much capacity we're using and what it would cost
    • ACTION: Meg to speak to the Maps developers about renewing the coupon and calculating the long-term cost
    • 2017-12-19
      • We got a cost estimate and they are willing to give us a discount, we need to tell them how much we’d be able to pay
      • They are willing to extend the free coupon temporarily
      • We need to explore options
        • Client-side rendering + our own vector server should be the preferred one
      • ACTION: Meg to discuss with the Maps team
    • 2018-01-23
      • Meg had a meeting with their team last week, and proposed work on client-side rendering
        • That would not actually help the problem of many downloads
        • What may help is working on client-side caching to reduce the number of requests instead
        • Another option could be to also write and maintain our own caching server
        • Ideally we'd love to formulate a longer-term plan with the team
      • ACTION: Meg to ask the Maps team about what kind of resources we'd need to build a caching server on GNOME's side, and if client side caching with pre-made data packs could work as well.
      • ACTION: Neil to ask Mapbox if they can put a cap on the number of requests on their side
      • ACTION: Neil to ask advisory board members if there's anything that they can help with (money or developers) (this happened at the FOSDEM meeting)
      • 2018-01-30: They can cap the requests and voucher the rest if we need.
  • Events code of conduct arrangements
    • Draft in progress
    • Once ready, we can start a community consultation phase
    • Current draft mentions a committee that would help resolving incidents
      • Is the board ok with forming a committee for that purpose?
      • No objections, the responsabilities and attributions will be explored further down the line
    • When a local organisation handles the event in Europe for us, we need a contract with them
    • The board needs to consider letting the community vote eventually

  • GNOME.Asia committee & Board membership

    • Nuritzi is considering joining the organizing committee, to be the board liaison
    • Other directors can think about it and eventually join too
  • Follow-up on "Reviving Free Software Macedonia"
    • Monthly rental fee for the place where they meet (€300)
    • They seem to have a lead for sponsors, but would like us to help bootstrap
    • Not clear what their ask is.
    • We recommend they come up with a clear plan and specific outcomes for GNOME, then take it to the engagement budget holder
    • 2018-01-30
      • No updates on this for a while
      • ACTION: Cosimo to check status with Zeeshan
  • 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
    • 2017-07-26
      • Carlos and Zeeshan are taking this over -- the plan is still to do internships
    • 2017-10-14
    • 2018-01-10
      • Carlos in contact with mentors, going to publish this as soon as one of the mentors confirms dates.
    • 2018-01-28
      • Carlos checked and we will do with Outreachy dates on the second round. Everything ready, waiting a small clean up on the wiki ideas and to be anounced.
    • 2018-01-30:
      • ACTION: Carlos to clean up the wiki and announce it
  • Intention to create marketing committee
    • To dispense money for small events and marketing line items
    • In the meantime, we would have an individual budget holder
    • VOTE: appoint Nuritzi as the temporary budget holder
      • +1 Nem con. VOTE PASSES
    • There are concerns about the correct course of action.
    • ACTION: Nuritzi to come up with a charter for the proposed committee
  • Zazzle store
    • We have a link on the page where we list vendors
    • Andreas confirmed that Stormy is the one with access
    • ACTION: Allan to try to reach out to Stormy
      • 2017-10-08 - Allan got in touch with Stormy and got some login information, but he still can't access the account. More followup is required.
    • ACTION: Nuritzi to assess the quality and check whether we want to continue using them
    • 2018-01-30:
      • Feedback from multiple sources has been that the quality is low.
      • Designs needs to be updated.
      • We might want to close the store down. Allan to contact stormy again to get access, then possibly defer the question of what to do with the store to the Engagement Team.
  • 2018-02-02:
    • Allan has been in touch with Stormy again, and she can't access the account either. He's now contacted Zazzle directly.

    • 2018-02-12: Allan heard back from Zazzle - they need the holder of the email address that originally created the account to ask for access. This is stormy@gnome.org. Stormy agreed to do this but hasn't responded to messages subsequently.

  • Calls with committees
    • Twice a year with each committee, once after the board elections (end June/early July and then late November-early January).
    • The call is a touch point - a way of checking in. Needs to stimulate ongoing conversations and ad hoc problem solving. Committees will be invited to calls with the whole Board to problem solve around specific things.
    • One board member and the ED meet with each committee (or a board member and the director of operations if there's no ED).
    • Where possible the same board member should be consistent.
    • Board representatives then feed back to the rest of the board.
    • 2017-10-08
      • First meetings in the sequence to happen in November. Should focus on collaboratively setting goals and identifying issues.
      • Once the

      • ACTION: Carlos to meet with membership committee, see if we should update committee charter https://wiki.gnome.org/MembershipCommittee. - DONE

      • ACTION: Alexandre to meet with the travel committee, see if we should update committee charter https://wiki.gnome.org/Travel/Committee

      • ACTION: Cosimo to meet with the sponsorship committee
    • 2017-12-19 Committee check-ins - we were supposed to have done this in November
      • Travel call should happen in January, currently being scheduled
      • Membership call should also happen soon
      • Cosimo is not on the call and won’t be back from travel until the end of January
  • Foundation support for Flathub
    • 2017-05-09
      • The Board voted to try and use some of our pro-bono counsel time towards the Flathub legal framework, provided our lawyers agree
      • ACTION: Neil to connect to Luis
    • 2017-05-16 - Exact questions to ask Luis are being worked up
    • 2017-06-06 - Questions sent to Luis, being looked at.
    • 2017-09-05 - Being passed to Karen now, discussions have stalled a little, Neil chasing up
    • 2017-10-08
      • Neil and Rob are going to meet Karen at Freenode Live and try to talk about this
    • 2017-10-31 - Rob got sent to Indonesia, Neil to set up call with Karen/Rob to discuss
    • 2017-11-14 - Prodding email sent
    • ACTION: Neil to send another email to Luis and check if he’s available.
    • ACTION: Meg to ask Karen whether she can recommend someone
    • 2017-11-21 - Karen came back, call set up for next week
    • 2017-12-12 - Karen is drafting some texts which should get Flathub the legal framework required.
  • Hackfest process documentation
    • 2017-02-14
      • ACTION: Nuritzi to take a stab at updating the documentation for the process to request a hackfest and responsibilities between Board and TC
    • 2017-05-02
      • Nuritzi will work on this by end of May, check in then
    • 2017-09-05: Nuritzi updated the wiki about a week ago but we should go over this in Berlin.
    • 2017-10-08
      • Part of this was done at the hackfest, we'll need to update the wiki page
      • Another part is pending reply from Pam about how an event can use the GNOME wordmark
      • ACTION: Nuritzi to update the wiki page, including Alexandre's proposed statement about openness of hackfests
  • Friends of GNOME
    • 2016-08-10
      • ACTION: Allan to get in touch with Tobi and the sysadmin team to migrate the FoG infrastructure over to GNOME
    • 2017-03-07
      • Allan will pass this on to Neil, and connect him to Tobi

    • 2017-04-18 - Neil has CRM working (ish) on the gnome website, we're looking at how to move the PayPal IPN to CiviCRM

      • At sysadmin meeting at GUADEC
    • 2017-10-31 - Should happen around december

Ongoing but stalled

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

  • Dropping dates in copyright claims on our websites
    • 2016-12-06
      • ACTION: Alexandre to send an email to foundation-list with a proposal for discussion
    • 2016-12-20
      • Next step seems to be to reach out to Creative Commons to get advice on what exactly can and should be done
    • 2017-01-24
      • Alexandre reached out to Creative commons
    • 2017-02-28
      • Alexandre will try alternative channels
    • 2017-05-02
      • We got a reply, Alexandre to follow up
    • 2017-05-30
      • Two options
        • Have terms of use on the website that state that linking to a page is sufficient attribution
        • Require contributors to assign their attribution to the GNOME Foundation
  • 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

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
    • Alexandre took over
    • 2017-07-26
      • This is close to being done
  • 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
    • 2017-07-26
      • Allan is still working on this, but with low priority

Discussed on the mailing list

Completed actions

  • Kat's request for funds for Travel Box
    • Shipping falls into marketing budget, the request should be redirected to the marketing budget holder
    • Hardware request is above the threshold for the budget holder, should go through them and be pushed to the ED
    • ACTION: Alexandre to get back to Kat and indicate the process
    • 2018-02-13: Alexandre did this and the request is being processed - complete

  • Looking for sponsorship for GitLab runners

    • To increase our Continuous Integration capacity on the GNOME GitLab server, we'll need to provision some more servers, as we migrate more projects there

    • We could ask for help to our Advisory Board, or use our network to ask for support from other companies
      • It would make more sense to ask for hardware/cycles directly, rather than fundraising, since server bandwidth is a recurring cost
    • 2017-10-08
      • Neil is waiting for verification before this can proceed further
      • 2017-10-31 - we're verified! Neil to talk to sysadmin
    • ACTION: Neil to talk with Andrea Veri about this
    • ACTION: once done, Neil to announce it
    • 2017-12-12: [NM] av prodded again
    • 2018-01-30: [NM] This is now in production, it's unclear how long the credits will last, especially if we announce it.
    • ACTION: Allan to invite Andrea to the board meeting in two weeks (Feb. 13th 2018).
  • 2018-02-01:
    • Andrea has accepted our invitation to join the board meeting on Feb. 13th.
  • 2018-02-13: we had a call with Andrea about this and think that our requirements are covered for the near future - complete for now

FoundationBoard/Minutes/20180213 (last edited 2018-02-15 09:32:04 by AllanDay)