OSI Board Meeting Minutes, December 13, 2006

Attendees:

Mr. Michael Tiemann, President,
Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary & Treasurer,
Mr. Russ Nelson, Director,
Mr. Ken Coar, Director
Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel and Board Observer
Ms. Laura Majerus, Licensing Counsel and Board Observer
Mr. Ernest Prabhakar, Board Observer

Quorum Reached 11:30am EDT and meeting called to order

Agenda:

1. Committee Reports:

1.1 License committee report (Mr. Nelson's report)

TrueCrypt has removed its license. The one action we might have taken is to reject the TrueCrypt license, which is now unnecessary.

Mr. Nelson submits a motion to approve the report as amended. Mr. Coar seconds. Motion carries

1.2 Development Committee

Ms. Cooper will look for a check from the donor who wrote us a letter. Mr. Tiemann will meet continue fundraising activities.

Ms. Cooper gave a report on current cash resources.
Mr. Tiemann directs Ms. Cooper to research investing all but $25,000 in CDs (1 year out, 9 months out, 6 months out)

1.3 Website update

Concerns were expressed over current state of website and and the possibility of using the Beta version of the new website was explored

1.4 License Proliferation

Ms. Majerus will work on wizard as soon as Dr. Sameer Verma from San Francisco State University gets back in contact with us. Ms. Majerus intends to finish this work before she leaves OSI (see PR topic below)

1.5 Membership

No report

1.6 Open Standards

No report

1.7 Public Relations

Ms. Majerus is leaving Fenwick & West for a new job, and is resigning her post with OSI at the same time (effective first week of January). Discussed doing a press release and possible call for applications to replace her.

Ms. Majerus will forward job description to Mr. Prabhakar, who will also draft the language for press release.
Ms. Cooper will work out how to put application form on website.

2. Attribution: OSD 11 vs. OSD 4 vs. other thoughts

Much discussion, which is good, no single consensus yet. Mr. Tiemann wonders whether we should try to guide the conversation on License-Discuss to try to summarize current state of the debate. Mr. Radcliffe notes that we (OSI) should avoid preaching doctrine and should rather try to make decisions that encourage or enhance the open source effect.

Adaptive Public License for instance has a clear attribution requirement. Further notes pasted at end of Special Topic: Attribution Licenses.

Mr. Eric Raymond (Founder and President Emeritus) has said he is working on proposed language to change the OSD if we decide we need more specificity therein. Mr. Tiemann will contact him.

Mr. Larry Rosen (of RosenLaw) is also making contributions to this conversation. Ms. Cooper will contact to thank him.

If we approve Attribution as Open Source we create some headaches, but on the other hand if we do not we will damage some distributors who are trying to work in the margins of open source to good effect. Some hosting organizations (notably Google) will find OSD not a good test to determine what is hostable if we take a broad rather than narrow definition.

3. GPLv3: need to schedule call

Mr. Radcliffe is available Dec 19th 7:00PST. Ms. Cooper will send out email to try to schedule a call.

4. Plans for 2007

F2F Meeting? Mr. Tiemann is available weekend of the 13th of April. Shoot for 20 people, 1-day discussion

Meeting Adjorned 9:50am PST


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.