Regular meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 9th February 2022, 17:00 UTC

Attending

• NeilMcGovern

• RobertMcQueen

• RosannaYuen

• ShaunMcCance

• AlbertoRuiz

• PhilipChimento

• ReginaNkemchorAdejo

Missing

• KatGerasimova

Regrets

• FelipeBorges

• ThibaultMartin

Consent Agenda

• None.

Discussion Agenda

• Proposed amendment to reserves policy
• Approve minutes of Membership, Governance, Finance and Executive Committees

Minutes

• Proposed amendment to reserves policy

  • GitLab issue with proposed text: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/240

  • Rob: What do people think of this text? This concept has been discussed in prior board meetings and finance committees on a number of occasions (and our current year's budget is approved with this principle in mind).
  • Philip: Seems to cover what we have discussed previously.
  • VOTE: Adopt the new reserves policy as presented.
    • Vote passed unanimously.
• Approve minutes of Membership, Governance, Finance and Exec Committees below
  • Philip: Curious about the Reddit commenter.

  • Philip: What's the current Membership & Elections committee composition? If Andrea resigns, do we need to find a new active member to replace him?

  • Regina: Andrea had indicated his intention to step down last year and focus on Infrastructure and other responsibilities, but still intends to automate the process. Will ask about potential successors in next meeting.
  • Rob: Does he need assistance to work on the automation?
  • Regina: Not at this time, he just wanted to keep the board notified.
  • Any objections to approving these minutes?
    • None.

Finance Committee Minutes, Meeting 27th Jan 2022

• Attendees: Shaun, Rob, Rosanna, Neil
• Still need to work on new reserves policy
• Advisory board: leave larger finance discussions for GUADEC advisory board meeting, do preliminary report of 2021 actuals vs. budget, and show 2022 budget
• Quickbooks migration is close but still ongoing
• A Reddit commenter was investigating GNOME finances and wasn't clear why Propublica doesn't have 2020 figures. This is because that's the fiscal year ending 2021 which has not been filed yet!

Governance Committee Minutes, Meeting 26th Jan 2022

• Attendees: Felipe, Philip, Kat, Regina, Thib

• Interested in revisiting BoardSource self-assessment to compare results

Exec Committee Minutes, Meeting 28th Jan 2022

• Attendees: Neil, Rob, Alberto, Thib
• ED updates - events, sysadmin work, AB rep change for Canonical
• Governance committee suggestions: 1, more frequent updates from exec committee e.g. via chat, 2. monthly foundation updates via TWIG, first items to go in at the end of January
• Chat evaluation on hold pending proposal from Thibault/Kat after FOSDEM
• Flathub governance / structure discussions ongoing, thanks to Jorge Castro for picking up some of this
• Nudge to governance committee to progress the bylaw amendments far in advance of elections

Membership & Election Committee Minutes 11th Jan 2022

• Attendees: Regina Nkemchor Adejo and Andrea Veri
• Membership report update: Andrea responded to Regina's request for a membership update, stating that we presently have 221 Foundation members and 71 Emeritus members.
• Updates on membership application process/system: Andrea discussed the importance of updating the web application for processing membership applications, as opposed to the manual method that is currently in place. At the moment, it's not a cause for concern; it's just a heads-up.
• Intentions/Notification: Andrea announced that he will be leaving the membership committee to focus on Red Hat and GNOME Infrastructure. He says that this action will be taken after the web site is up and running and the membership application has been automated.