OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Quorum

Quorum reached and meeting called to order at 16:02 UTC.

Attendees

Board Members

  1. Ms. Deborah Bryant, Director
  2. Mr. Karl Fogel, Director
  3. Mr. Jim Jagielski, Director
  4. Mr. Fabio Kon, Director
  5. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Secretary
  6. Mr. Simon Phipps, President
  7. Mr. Luis Villa, Director
  8. Mr. Tony Wasserman, Director

Guests

None.

Expected, but Not Present

  1. Mr. Harshad Gune, Director
  2. Mr. Mike Milinkovich, Director
  3. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel

Sent Regrets

  1. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Treasurer

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 January meeting. Mr. Fogel moved that the Board approve the minutes. Mr. Jagielski seconded. Minutes approved by general consent.

Officer Reports

President's Report (Mr. Phipps)

Mr. Phipps reports:

My sense is we are all on hold awaiting completion of corporate member recruitment and subsequent staffing.

I had the opportunity to meet with other leaders in the FOSS space at FOSDEM, including John Sullivan of FSF and Karsten Gerloff of FSFE.

Secretary's Report (Mr. Michlmayr)

  • The following minutes have to be reviewed by the Board for approval:
    • January 2, 2013
  • The following approved minutes have been posted to opensource.org:
    • November 9, 2012 (Face-to-Face meeting, San Francisco)
    • November 10, 2012 (Face-to-Face meeting, San Francisco)
    • December 5, 2012

Treasurer's Report (Ms. Sharma)

No report submitted.

Mr. Fogel said that he had received a monthly financial update from our bookkeeper and gave a quick overview.

General Counsel's Report (Mr. Radcliffe)

No report submitted.

Mr. Phipps has been in contact with Mr. Radcliffe. There is an appeal in the federal circuit court around software patents in the US and it might be benefical to make a statement about it.

Committee Reports

(Listed in alphabetical order)

Education Committee (Mr. Wasserman)

Mr. Wasserman reported that he had reached out to Roberto di Cosmo, Jesus Barahona and Roberto Galoppini regarding the FOSS repository and is waiting to hear from them. Mr. Wasserman proposed a joint effort to create material.

In the meantime, Mr. Wasserman is thinking of expanding FLOSSBOK. He will teach a course on open source starting in July and this might be an an interesting assignment for a student. This might be an option if there's no collaboration before then.

Mr. Kon reported the following:

  • Mr. Kon and Bruno Souza prepared material (slides, video) to support people willing to give lectures about open source and how people can contribute to the open source community. Mr. Phipps gave them some good suggestions for improvements and they will work on them in the following weeks. The material is available at http://flosscc.opensource.org/content/spread-the-word
  • Mr. Kon is reviewing papers for OSS'2013, the IFIP International Conference on Open Source Systems
  • Mr. Kon is helping on the organization of the FISL Workshop on FLOSS (academic event within FISL)

License Committee (Mr. Villa)

Mr. Villa would like to go ahead and publish the Code of Conduct on our web site. There was some discussion about the scope of the Code of Conduct. The Board agreed that it would initially apply to the licensing mailing lists and that it would be extended to all other mailing lists later.

Mr. Villa noted that he expects that we will be approached by one or several organizations to sign on amicus briefs regarding the copyrightability of APIs.

Mr. Phipps noted that the WTF license is likely going to be submitted again to OSI in the near future.

Membership Committee (Mr. Phipps)

  • Affiliates: Mr. Phipps has processed all affiliate agreements that have been sent to him and is following up for the ones that are missing.
  • Individual: Mr. Wasserman noted that this is currently on hold. There are marketing activities we'd like to undertake but we must set a budget.
  • Corporate: some companies would prefer to make donations rather than join as corporate members since the latter involves signing a formal agreement, which takes time to review and get approved.

Administrative Committees

Communications Committee (Mr. Phipps)

Mr. Phipps spoke at FOSDEM in support of OSI, and conducted an interview with Slashdot.

Mr. Phipps would like to apply for Google for non-profits. Ms. Bryant made a motion for OSI to join Google for non-profits. Mr. Phipps seconded. Motion approved by general consent.

IT Infrastructure Committee (Mr. Fogel)

Mr. Fogel reports:

  • Set up wiki.opensource.org.
  • Ruby-on-Rails security exploit meant we had to shut down our Redmine instance, which had Infra tickets. Seeking temporary off-site hosting; see also below re contractor.
  • Joe Murray working on member email blast.
  • Hat tip to Mr. Michlmayr, who took care of several Drupal and Drupal module upgrades.
  • The usual email list moderation (mostly Mr. Michlmayr and Mr. Fogel).

Trademark and Branding Committee (no chair)

No report submitted.

Old Business

Review of Action Items

  • Infrastructure: create wiki for workgroups. Status: done.
  • Mr. Phipps: sign engagement letter with Greenberg Traurig LLP. Status: done. Should be sent to Heather Meeker.
  • Mr. Phipps: prepare an update to members. Status: this is ready to go.
  • Mr. Phipps: set up meeting for Membership Committee. Status: Mr. Phipps or Ms. Bryant will organize it.
  • Mr. Radcliffe: create privacy statement for membership program.
  • Mr. Villa: provide feedback on privacy statement. Status: not done.
  • Mr. Villa: update FAQ to explain the importance of licensing your code correctly. Status: not done.
  • Mr. Wasserman: write proposal regarding central FOSS repository. Status: done.
  • Membership Committee: create budget for membership outreach. Status: waiting for meeting of Membership Committee
  • Unassigned: update trademark pages and trademark contact pages. Status: Mr. Michlmayr volunteered to look into this.

New Business

  • E-Mail Board approval process: Mr. Phipps discussed how we can make decisions by email. He will check with our General Counsel.
  • Face-to-face meeting: Ms. Bryant has various ideas an will populate the wiki in the near future. There was some discussion about a possible venue for the private board meeting in DC and Mr. Fogel agreed to look into it.

Action Items

  • Ms. Bryant: populate wiki with information about DC meeting.
  • Mr. Fogel: reach out to Google regarding venue in DC.
  • Mr. Michlmayr: update logo on trademark and license pages.
  • Mr. Phipps: talk to GC regarding making decisions by email.
  • Mr. Phipps: send proposed updates to members to board list for review.

Next Board Meeting

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

Meeting adjourned at 17:18 UTC.

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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.

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