Regular Meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 9 March 2023, 15:00 UTC

Attending

• RobertMcQueen

• MartinAbenteLahaye

• JeremyAllison

• SammyFung

• RosannaYuen

Regrets

• PhilipChimento

Missing

• ReginaNkemchorAdejo

• ThibaultMartin

Consent Agenda

• Interim officer/committee appointments
  • Acknowledge Martin Abente Lahaye's resignation as Vice Secretary, thanking him for his service
  • Appoint Martin Abente Lahaye as Chair, thanking Thibault for his service
  • Appoint Anisa Kuci to the Code of Conduct Committee
  • Appoint Sonny Piers to the Circle Committee

Motion to approve the consent agenda carried: Nem. Con.

• Review GNOME Latam budget request
  • Is there scope to raise local sponsorship to recover or contribute the costs?

  • The conference spending policy (https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/Conferences#Conference_Spending_Policy) imagines that the board will approve an advance to secure the event, venue, etc (what's the minimum), and the conference team will secure sponsorship to raise the full budget.

  • VOTE: Approve up to $4,000 expenditure (based on 1 auditorium, streaming and some additional expenses) to secure the event and start raising sponsorship.
    • Motion carried: Nem. Con.
• Review Faces of GNOME initiative request
  • Why is this a board request? Use of infrastructure, brand, etc.
  • Is it well regarded by the engagement team? Some have been working on it for quite some time, some are a little ambivalent.
  • Why is the site called Faces of GNOME but the request is to use people.gnome.org. Ambiguity/confusion with Friends of GNOME.
  • Concerns from the board:

    • Requiring GitLab cloning etc to submit a new entry seems too high-friction. Can this be made easier?

    • Equally, requiring a GitLab ticket to remove personal data is too high-friction as well. Can this flow be made easier or at least a clear policy around private data and a contact point to have it removed?

    • Can it be renamed consistently to People of GNOME if FoG is considerered ambiguous?
    • Does it have broad community support? There are very few people featured currently.
  • VOTE: Approve on an interim basis for 6 months so it can be deployed in a Beta/Incubator state while the above concerns are worked on. Review in 6 months to see if there is broad support.

    • Motion carried: +1 Rob, Sammy & Martin. Abstain: Jeremy

• Approve the minutes of the January meeting
  • Approved.
• No committe minutes received. To be updated for next meeting.
• ED search:
  • Rob and Rosanna met to update JD to better reflect a marketing/spokesperson capacity as this is a gating factor for fundraising. Easier to find program execution capability off the back of better promoting and fundraising our existing work. ED committee reviewing this updated JD.
  • ED committee reaching out to some interesting candidates in the meantime.
• Flathub:
  • Received promising draft of compliance memo from lawyer. Have a few amendments to make but I hope to share with the board shortly for consideration before discussion and vote next meeting.
• Melissa asking for travel dates for GUADEC to do a block hotel booking, and whether we will be having a board meeting in the days preceding.
• GNOME Asia call for bids has closed with no applicants. If anyone knows any teams who might be able to host please reach out. GNOME Asia team will consider a distributed/hybrid event, like GNOME Latam.