Regular meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 16 December 2020, 16:00 UTC

Attending

Directors:

• KatGerasimova

• AllanDay

• FedericoMenaQuintero

• FelipeBorges

• ReginaNkemchorAdejo

• PhilipChimento

• RobertMcQueen

Non-directors:

• NeilMcGovern

• RosannaYuen

• ShaunMcCance

Regrets

Missing

Consent agenda

• Vision and mission statements - #187
  • The board double-approves the following vision and mission statements:
    • A world where everyone is empowered by technology they can trust. (by) Building a diverse and sustainable free software personal computing ecosystem.
• Add Thibault Martin to the Circle Committee - #192
  • The board agrees to add Thibault Martin as a member of the GNOME Circle Committee.
• Approve minutes of 9 November

  • https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Minutes/DraftMinutes

Discussion agenda

• Executive director's report (Neil)
• Review ongoing tasks:
  • Guidelines for technical terminology #177 (Felipe)
• Board governance proposals: (Allan)
  • Create standard board committees: #195
• Board-only discussion
• Board strategy and governance with John Lass

Minutes

• Approve consent agenda - no objections
  • Re-approved vision and mission statements - #187: "A world where everyone is empowered by technology they can trust. (by) Building a diverse and sustainable free software personal computing ecosystem."
  • The board agrees to add Thibault Martin as a member of the GNOME Circle Committee - #192
  • Approved minutes of 9 November
• Executive director's report (Neil)
  • LAS, GNOME Asia successfully run online as well as a mini-event based in Paraguay
  • Community engagement challenge phase 2 finished - 5 projects going into final phase. Mix of established projects and new ideas.
  • End of year fundraiser currently running.
  • GTK4 is released today

  • Mailing lists now use spamd instead of SpamAssassin

• Review ongoing tasks:
  • Guidelines for technical terminology #177 (Felipe)
    • [Felipe summarises current actions from the ticket]
    • Next steps? Felipe: coordinate with engagement team to roll this out and publicise it
    • Federico: like the GNOME initiative
    • Allan: should the board give this initiative its blessing?
    • Shaun: draft a statement for the board to approve?
    • Next action: Felipe to draft a statement for next meeting
• Board governance proposals: (Allan)
  • John Lass gave a presentation to Neil, Rob and Allan last week on his progress.
  • Specific actions came out:
    • Create standard board committees: #195
• Board-only discussion
  • Allan will send summary as we don't have time
• Board strategy and governance with John Lass
  • John presents slides
    • Overview of who John is
    • Explains the process of defining a strategy
    • Shares overview findings from interviews
    • Federico: through your interviews, do you see any patterns of problems which are immediately addressable?
      • John:
    • Federico: GNOME is more about constructing an infrastructure rather than selling a product; we don't have "money coming in through selling the product" as a metric. How do we reconcile this with the management literature?
      • John: look at credit unions, where their mission is to maximize value delivered to their members, not to maximize profit to their owners. GNOME needs to decide whom it wants to focus on serving.