OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Saturday, March 12, 2011 (Face-to-Face meeting, San Francisco)

Meeting started and quorum reached at 9:45 am PDT.

Attendees

Board Members

  1. Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
  2. Ms. Danese Cooper, Treasurer
  3. Mr. Fabio Kon, Director
  4. Mr. Harshad Gune, Director
  5. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Director
  6. Mr. Russell Nelson, Director
  7. Mr. Andrew Oliver, Director
  8. Mr. Simon Phipps, Director
  9. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Secretary
  10. Mr. Tony Wasserman, Director

Expected, but Not Present

  1. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel

Agenda

08:30 - 09:30: Breakfast (Catered: Bagels and Coffee)

09:45 - 10:00: President's State-of-the-OSI: Accomplishments, Failures, Goals

Mr. Tiemann thanked the Board for gathering for this face-to-face meeting. Mr. Tiemann outlined some of the OSI's challenges and projects throughout the last year:

  • Website and infrastructure challenges, FLOSSCC and Rimu restoration
  • Issues faced on corporate entity, financial updates
  • OWF, BRIC summit participation, Brazil and India focus
  • CPTA follow-up
  • Reach out to FSF
  • Software patents discussion
  • The OSI is more representative today with more energy
  • Thanks to Andy Oliver, Simon Phipps, Martin Michlmayr
  • Blogging has helped with our online presence

10:00 - 12:00: OSI Board Election Candidates discussion

Mr. Tiemann started the conversation with excitement about the number of applications received for candidature. Mr. Phipps suggested that we look at some parameters in the selection process. The following parameters were identified as possible selection criteria (in no particular order):

  • Licensing expertise
  • Membership/governance
  • Fundraising skills
  • Self-funding
  • Committee strength/affinity
  • Community center of gravity (e.g. commercial, education, government, developer, legal etc.)
  • Public profile
  • Legal representation
  • Officer material
  • Geographic location

The Board discussed the merits of each candidate.

12:00 - 13:00: Lunch (Catered: WitchKraftNYC)

13:00 - 14:00: OSI Financial Report (Treasurer)

OSI's accountant was introduced to the Board. The accountant gave an overview of the bank account balances. The current mailing addresses of all directors were given to the accountant.

14:00 - 15:00: OSI Committee Status Reports

Licensing Review Committee (Mr. Nelson)

Mr. Nelson reports that there is very little activity on the license discuss list other than on the Mozilla Public License revision. Discussion is ongoing.

Policy and Economic Development Committee (Mr. Tiemann)

Mr. Tiemann would like other Board members to report on this committee. There are various efforts related to BRIC countries.

Education Committee (Ms. Sharma)

Ms. Sharma reports her level of activity has been low in this area in the last 6 months. However, Mr. Kon has been working on building an educational resources catalog after the FLOSSCC website was revived. An internships may be a good way to work on these projects. Ms. Sharma also recommended that Mr. Kon take over the education committee to channel more activities through it. Mr. Wasserman also wants to engage.

Fundraising Committee (Mr. Tiemann)

Fundraising has been in limbo over the last year due to the administrative status of the organization. Mr. Tiemann would like to encourage support/participation for members (i.e. taking donations). It's important to diversify funding.

IT Infrastructure Committee (Ms. Sharma / Mr. Michlmayr)

Mr. Michlmayr reports that we're using the most current version of Drupal (6.x) and all patches. There has been some interest in redesigning the web site but currently there are no active volunteers working on this. There have been several requests for multi-language support. Mr. Michlmayr is happy to install the Drupal modules necessary for this but we also need someone to coordinate the various translations team that are required to translate the web site and so far nobody has volunteered for this. The technical and administration/coordination aspects are two different areas that need to be supported.

Governance Committee (Mr. Phipps)

Mr. Phipps gave a short report on governance strategies. A more detailed work session will be held tomorrow.

Communications Committee (Mr. Michlmayr)

Mr. Michlmayr reports that news have been consistently posted. Mr. Tiemann requested that our communications strategy should be more proactive (focus and work on key topics) instead of just reactively responding to news queries.

Mr. Wasserman recommended that we use some social networking tools (such as status.net, twitter, facebook, identi.ca).

Legal Affairs Committee (Ms. Cooper)

Mr. Phipps reported that he's been speaking with Eben Moglen/SFLC to getting general law support from SFLC (pro-bono services).

New Projects Committee (Ms. Sharma)

Internships for various education projects.

15:00 - 16:00: OSI Governance and Membership discussion (Mr. Phipps)

16:00 - 17:00: OSI use of social networking tools (Mr. Wasserman)

17:00 - 20:00: Board Dinner (at 660 Howard St.)

To promote and protect open source software and communities...

For over 20 years the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has worked to raise awareness and adoption of open source software, and build bridges between open source communities of practice. As a global non-profit, the OSI champions software freedom in society through education, collaboration, and infrastructure, stewarding the Open Source Definition (OSD), and preventing abuse of the ideals and ethos inherent to the open source movement.

Open source software is made by many people and distributed under an OSD-compliant license which grants all the rights to use, study, change, and share the software in modified and unmodified form. Software freedom is essential to enabling community development of open source software.