OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Quorum

Quorum reached and meeting called to order at 16:03 UTC.

Attendees

Board Members

  1. Mr. Karl Fogel, Director
  2. Mr. Harshad Gune, Director (on IRC)
  3. Mr. Jim Jagielski, Director
  4. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Secretary
  5. Mr. Mike Milinkovich, Director
  6. Mr. Simon Phipps, President
  7. Mr. Luis Villa, Director
  8. Mr. Tony Wasserman, Director

Guests

  1. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel

Expected, but Not Present

None.

Sent Regrets

  1. Ms. Deborah Bryant, Director
  2. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Treasurer
  3. Mr. Fabio Kon, Director

Agenda

  1. Minutes Review and Approval
  2. Officer Reports
  3. Committee Reports
  4. Old Business
  5. New Business
  6. Action items
  7. Next Board Meeting

Minutes Review and Approval

The Board reviewed the minutes of the December meeting and the November face-to-face meeting. Mr. Wasserman moved that the Board approve the minutes. Mr. Fogel seconded. Minutes approved by general consent.

Officer Reports

President's Report (Mr. Phipps)

Mr. Phipps reports:

As we enter 2013, it's a good opportunity to review our progress and renew our commitment to change. We're very close to critical mass for "rebooting" OSI. Milestones I hope we will pass soon include our first successful working group (hopefully the DC events group), our first corporate members, our first member-driven working group and recruitment of our first employee. All are within reach - let's press ahead!

Secretary's Report (Mr. Michlmayr)

  • The following minutes have to be reviewed by the Board for approval:
    • November 9, 2012 (Face-to-Face meeting, San Francisco)
    • November 10, 2012 (Face-to-Face meeting, San Francisco)
    • December 5, 2012
  • The following approved minutes have been posted to opensource.org:
    • October 3, 2012

Treasurer's Report (Ms. Sharma)

No report submitted.

General Counsel's Report (Mr. Radcliffe)

Mr. Radcliffe mentioned that people are increasingly seeing a plethora of definitions of "open source" in commercial agreements. Some refer to our definition but some are very difficult to comply with because they talk about business models. It would be good for us to come up with a definition that meets the needs of everyone.

Committee Reports

(Listed in alphabetical order)

Education Committee (Mr. Wasserman)

Mr. Wasserman intends to reach out soon to Jesus Barahona and Roberto Galoppini to discuss possible collaboration around FOSSBoK.

License Committee (Mr. Villa)

Mr. Villa reports:

  • There has been no major objection to the reorganization of the license page, so he intends to go live soon.
  • Mr. Villa will send out the proposed Code of Conduct this week to gather feedback. He will add some rationale before sending it out.

Membership Committee (Mr. Phipps)

  • Affiliates: Mr. Phipps is reviewing all the signed Affiliate Agreements and will be completing this substantial administrative task process during January.
  • Individuals: no update.
  • Corporate: Mr. Milinkovich will continue to reach out to potential corporate members. He also updated the presentation slides.

Administrative Committees

Communications Committee (Mr. Phipps)

  • Mr. Fogel created a new FAQ item on "free software".
  • Mr. Phipps will be attending FOSDEM and will be conducting various meetings for OSI. He asked if OSI could cover some of his travel expenses, in particular the train to Brussels. Mr. Fogel moved that we approve up to $500 in expenses for Mr. Phipps to represent the OSI at FOSDEM. Mr. Jagielski seconded. Motion passed.
  • Mr. Phipps discussed communications with members and promised to prepare an update to members: he will sum up the key achievements for 2012 (establishment of first two membership categories, setting up CiviCRM, participation in public issues on behalf of community). Looking forward, he will include the points mentioned in the president's report, along with an invitation to participate. The lack of a discussion forum for members is holding us back. Mr. Phipps is quite impressed with Google+ where we have many members and discussions already.

IT Infrastructure Committee (Mr. Fogel)

  • OSI's organizational account at RIMUhosting.com is now the controlling account for our web site (i.e., no longer Andy Oliver's personal account).
  • Wiki selection proceeding

Trademark and Branding Committee (no chair)

No report submitted.

Old Business

Review of Action Items

  • Infrastructure: redirect opensource.net to opensource.org. Status: done by Mr. Fogel.
  • Infrastructure: create wiki for workgroups. Status: Mr. Fogel evaluating technologies.
  • Ms. Bryant: create charter for DC meeting workgroup. Status: done and approved on the board mailing list.
  • Ms. Bryant: set up meeting for Membership Committee. Status: Mr. Phipps will setup a call.
  • Mr. Phipps: sign engagement letter with Greenberg Traurig LLP.
  • Mr. Radcliffe: create privacy statement for membership program.
  • Mr. Villa: provide feedback on privacy statement
  • Mr. Villa: produce Code of Conduct for forums. Status: will send out draft to gather feedback.
  • Mr. Wasserman: write proposal regarding central FOSS repository.
  • Membership Committee: write corporate agreement. Status: done, waiting for feedback from potential corporate members.
  • Membership Committee: create budget for membership outreach. Status: waiting for Membership Committee meeting.
  • Unassigned: update other trademark pages and trademark contact pages

GitHub and the problem of unlicensed code

The board had another conversation about the problem of unlicensed code. Mr. Phipps believes that it's partly generational. There is a new generation of open source developers that doesn't care about licensing agreements. This is an issue we need to tackle. We can talk about the importance of having a license and the risk of not having one. Our FAQ currently assumes that you want to use a license but it never says why you should license your code. Mr. Villa will update the FAQ. Mr. Jagielski offered to write a blog entry about the problem.

New Business

None.

Action Items

  • Mr. Phipps: prepare an update to members.
  • Mr. Phipps: set up meeting for Membership Committee.
  • Mr. Villa: update FAQ to explain the importance of licensing your code correctly.

Next Board Meeting

The next OSI BOD meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 6, 2013.

Meeting adjourned at 17:17 UTC.

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.