Foundation Board Minutes for Monday 14 October, 15:30 UTC
Attending
Regrets
Agenda
- Approve minutes of September 23, September 30, and October 7
- Adjust spending authorization limits
- Approve Neil's attendance at China Open Source Conference (COSCon) to keynote in November
- GUADEC 2020 and 2021 for Mexico and Latvia
- Appoint Jonathan Blandford to membership and elections committee
- Announcements
Minutes
- Carlos is chairing the meeting, due to Allan's absence and Rob's internet connection.
- Approve minutes of September 23, September 30, and October 7
- Neil and Carlos submitted textual clarifications.
- There was an instance in the minutes of September 23 where it wasn't clear who said something, and no-one present can remember who said it. We decide to amend it to say "Someone mentioned ..."
- Minutes are approved, with the proposed amendments.
- Adjust spending authorization limits
For background, see https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/issues/124 and https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/BudgetAndSpending.
- Neil: When we originally put the spending authorization limits in place, they were based on public guidelines and scaled down to the size of organization that we were at the time. Now we are a considerably larger organization, so we should update these limits. The limits were put in place by the board, so the board needs to vote if we want to change them. For comparison, the situation before we had the authorization limits was that the board would need to discuss and approve everything, down to minor purchases.
- Tristan: Is this a per-expenditure limit?
- Neil: Yes.
- Tristan: What would this allow that the previous policy didn't allow?
- Neil: For example, renewing the warranty on our servers would now fall within the approval of the executive director.
- Carlos: Does this apply both to expenditures that we have a budget line for and ones that we don't?
- Neil: No, things that aren't budgeted for, still require explicit approval.
VOTE: approve the following updated spending authorization limits:
< $1,000 - Budget holder
< $5,000 - Executive Director
< $20,000 - Executive Director AND ( President OR Treasurer )
- ≥ $20,000 - Board
- +1 unanimous
- Approve Neil's attendance at China Open Source Conference (COSCon) to keynote in November
- Neil: I've been invited to give a talk at COSCon. This is something we've done in the past and is worthwhile. Note that the dates are very close to LAS. It should be possible to attend both, but there's a risk if the flights are delayed that I would miss some of LAS.
- Tristan: This reminds me that we should fix the board hackfest at FOSDEM.
- Philip: It's important to attend LAS, but it seems worthwhile to do this as well if you are able to attend both.
VOTE: Approve Neil's travel to COSCon in November.
- +1 unanimous
- GUADEC 2020 and 2021 for Mexico and Latvia
- Neil: I have started a Discourse thread on this; please send any comments there. Summarizing, GUADEC is our main annual event, and it does a disservice to us to tie it to Europe.
- Carlos: Our attendance is around 70% European.
- Neil: It is important to recognize that GUADEC is not our European conference; it is our flagship conference. Therefore we need to make it visible worldwide, and hence move around instead of it always being a European event.
- Carlos: Did you look at the concerns that Allan and I raised last time [in the September 30 meeting]?
- Neil: Yes; I think the concerns can be overcome, given the larger concept. I think assuming GUADEC is a European event comes from a position of privilege — where we say it should be European based, and requires people from outside Europe to come here. This means it's more difficult for those outside Europe to attend.
- We will keep this on the agenda next time for further discussion.
- Appoint Jonathan Blandford to membership and elections committee
- Neil: Jonathan expressed interest in joining, and the committee is in need of members.
VOTE: Appoint Jonathan Blandford as a member of the membership and elections committee.
- +1 unanimous
ACTION: Neil to inform Jonathan and the committee.
- Announcements
- Carlos: The next session will be 21 October, and will be a working session.
Actions
Neil — Communicate the results of the vote to appoint Jonathan Blandford to the membership and elections committee.