OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Quorum reached and meeting called to order 08:10 am PST. Attendees

1. Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
2. Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary and Treasurer
3. Mr. Harshad Gune, Director
4. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Director
5. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Director
6. Mr. Russell Nelson, Director (left at 8:40 am; re-joined at 9:30 am)

Guests/observers

1. Mr. Karl Fogel, Invited Guest (on IRC)
2. Mr. Zak Greant, Board Observer (left at 9:25 am)
3. Mr. Andrew C. Oliver, Board Observer
4. Mr. Ernest Prabhakar, Board Observer (joined 8:20 am, left at 8:40 am)

Expected, but Not Present

1. Mr. Ken Coar, Director
2. Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director
3. Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Director
4. Mr. Bruno Souza, Director
5. Mr. Bdale Garbee, Board Observer
6. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel
7. Mr. Merrill Freund (Schwartz Communications)

Sent regrets

1. None.

Agenda

1. Approval of minutes
2. Officer reports
3. Committee reports
4. Old business
5. New business

1. Approval of minutes Motion to approve January 7, 2009 minutes as edited for public posting. Ms. Cooper raised the vote. Mr. Greant seconded. Approved for posting with Mr. Nelson abstaining. 2. Officer Reports President's Report: The highlight of the past month was the OSI face-to-face meeting during FOSDEM in Brussels and our meeting with the license stewards of the EUPL, one of the licenses we are set to vote on in our March meeting. At the face-to-face meeting we defined 5 areas of focus for our upcoming year:

1. Licensing/Legal, including discussions and self-published positions on proliferation, description, classification, examples, anti-trust, etc.
2. Education, including K-12, college and universities, business best-practices, curriculum development, and a special focus on ensuring that the younger (MySpace, Facebook) generations are as up to speed as us older folks (from the paleolithic days of the internet).
3. Policy and economic development, meaning standards, commercial concerns, public sector economics, open data and cloud computing, e-government, e-health, UNDP and the OSOR (the Open Source Observatory and Repository). The CSIS study may provide a great basis for publishing and classifying many open source initiatives in government, and establishing credibility for an Open Source Index.
4. Governance of the OSI, including nominating, day to day business, fundraising, PR, etc.
5. Representation and Authority, which includes our membership and affiliation initiatives, as well as specific thought-leader recruitment goals.

These were shared with a full room of FOSDEM delegates (perhaps 80 people) and those attending seemed very supportive of these areas of focus and the OSI's efforts in leading them. Our website numbers showed a decline from November through December, but activity has picked back up, with an increase sustaining from January through February. I believe that the renewed blogging efforts of many on the board have been helpful in driving our daily web hits close to 10,000 per day. Could we double this by the end of the year? General Counsel Report: No Report. Secretary's Report: Ms. Cooper reports that FOSDEM 2009 F2F minutes are in progress and will be available for review at the next BOD meeting. There are pending approved minutes that need to be posted to the public website. Ms. Sharma offered to post the approved minutes and clear the backlog. Treasurer's Report: Ms. Cooper reported that OSI's reserves are running low. Fundraising to cover travel costs is a necessity. Ms. Cooper will be contacting the necessary folks to get the tax returns filed. 3. Committee Reports Licensing Committee Mr. Nelson's report includes the following licenses to be discussed and approved/disapproved by the Board.

1. Title: European Union Public License (EUPL) Submission: http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:105:200803:kokiblmeljajbpncpbnc License: http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7774 Comments: Matt Flaschen reviewed v1.1, and finds it conforming (at least in the English version, which is sufficient). Recommend: Approve
2. Title: WTFPL Submission: http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:634:200902:aglgcgbhmfcheffmdgon License: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/ Comments: It's no different from dedication to the public domain. Author has submitted license approval request -- author is free to make public domain dedication. Although he agrees with the recommendation, Mr. Michlmayr notes that public domain doesn't exist in Europe. Recommend: Reject
3. Title: IPA Font License v1.0 Submission: http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:515:200902:ahjoeececbbcpiajppfi License: http://ipafont.ipa.go.jp/enduser_license_draft090203.html Comments: Discussion continues Recommend: Defer
4. Title: Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, v1.0 (TGPPL) Submission: License: Comments: Discussion continues, but Bruce says "Deny approval" because the benefits aren't worth the cost. Recommend: Defer
5. Title: caGrid Open Source License Submission: http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:476:200901:nhlgbahaekpcbnldleop License: http://cagrid.org/wiki/CaGrid:LICENSE-1.2 Comments: Discussion has bogged down. Apparently they change the license with every release. Are they going to want approval every time?? Recommend: Defer

The board evaluated all licenses presented by Mr. Nelson in his report. Mr. Michlmayr did not agree with the reasons cited for possible rejection of the WFTPL license since public domain doesn't exist in Europe. The EUPL was accepted. IPA Font License v1.0, TGPPL, and caGrid Open Source License are still being discussed. Mr. Michlmayr moved that we reject the WFTPL as redundant to the Fair License. Mr. Tiemann seconded. Passed unanimously. Membership Committee Ms. Cooper suggested that the membership list could be tapped into proposing potential BOD candidates for the upcoming elections. Mr. Oliver suggested an alternative approach to building a more vibrant membership community by creating open source style projects supporting OSI's areas of interest such as education and licensing. Active participants in these projects can form the basis for being OSI members as well as board members. 4. Old Business

• Trademark status and next steps (Mr. Tiemann) Mr. Tiemann has good news to report. The OSI trademark has been approved finally and the long process has been completed.
• Guidelines for OSI affiliates to use OSI logo to promote open source events (Mr. Tiemann) Mr. Tiemann had submitted the Fedora logo usage guidelines to be used for the OSI logo usage guidelines to Mr. Radcliffe. Mr. Tiemann and the board now awaits Mr. Radcliffe's feedback.
• Usage of OSI logo by MSFT and OSI's trademark usage policy (Ms. Cooper) Ms. Cooper mentioned that MSFT is interested in using OSI's trademark for software on Codeplex. The board discussed potential misuse of the OSI logo in mixed environments where open source and proprietary software are bundled together. Decision taken to give MSFT guidance that our logo can only appear on pages that refer exclusively to open source software.
• OSI's Education project status (Ms. Sharma) Ms. Sharma reported that she has been talking with Red Hat, Mozilla and Ubuntu's folks about their interest in working with the OSI to promote their open source technologies to educational institutions. The mailing list osi-edu-discuss had more than 10 members join this week. Ms. Sharma has been working on goals for this project. She has been in discussions as to how these can be aligned with various open source projects.
• OSI website maintenance status (Ms. Sharma) Ms. Sharma has been working on removing unused links and sections from the website.

5. New Business

• Upcoming Board Election and nominations (Mr. Tiemann)
  • Board Members whose terms are expiring: Mr. Bruno Souza
  • Board Members whose terms are coming up for confirmation (after completing first year of service): Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Mr. Harshad Gune
  • Status of Mr. Coar as Board Member (Ms. Cooper)
  • Nomination discussion - Mr. Tiemann recommended Mr. Andrew Oliver (Board Observer) as a potential member to join the Board. Ms. Sharma recommended Mr. Harish Pillay of Singapore as a Board Observer in support of Asia's interests in education and adoption of open source and open standards.
  • OSI Affiliate program details and official launch announcement (Ms. Cooper) Deferred to next meeting.
  • Report on Open Source activity in Singapore (Ms. Sharma) Ms. Sharma briefly presented her recent experience of Singapore's open source interest. She mentioned that open source adoption has picked up among the SMEs, universities in Singapore. The community has matured and is doing well in growing various popular projects such as Fedora, Ubuntu, LXDE etc.
• Follow-up with EC: Thank-you note from OSI and next steps if any (Mr. Tiemann) Mr. Tiemann will be corresponding with the EC when notifying them of the approval of EUPL.
• Press coverage for FOSDEM 2009 http://opensourcebuzz.technetra.com/2009/02/02/at-fosdem-2009/ http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/115938/index.html

Meeting Adjourned 10:01 PDT.