Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 6 March 2001

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

	  Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 6 March 2001
	  ===============================================


Presents:
=========

    Havoc Pennington (chairing)
    Raph Levien             
    Owen Taylor             
    John Heard              
    Dan Mueth               
    Daniel Veillard  (minutes)
    Bart Decrem
    Maciej Stachowiak       
    Federico  (leaving in the middle of the call)
    Miguel de Icaza (joined at the end)


Regrets:
========

    Jim Gettys
 
Decisions:
==========
  - Incorporating the foundation as a California public benefit non-profit
    organization. We will seek tax exemption status.
  - Decided the officers needed to incorporate, Miguel (president),
    Bart (treasurer) and Dan (secretary).

Done Action Items:
==================

 - Miguel to send summary of Ximian gnome-libs meeting
    to gnome-hackers
   -> done

 - Havoc to resend formal request for attendence at Guadec
   to the advisory board members.
   => Done, responses from almost everybody and most of them
      will come

Pending Action Items:
=====================

 - Owen and Havoc to write down details for GNOME-2.0
   preview packages to go along with GNOME-1.4.
   One of them to join next gnome-1.4 release meeting.
   => pending

 - Dan and Bart to work with Martin in making sure that
   companies have a clear idea what sponsorship involves.
   => yes we will talk more about this

New Action Items:
=================

 - Board members need to send their address to Bart for the
   incorporation


Discussion:
===========

 - Incorporation
   Should be able to incorporate over the next week
   2 issues left:
     - incorporating in Delaware vs. California
     - Type of non-profit:
       + membership orgabization or not:
         => yes (members elect the board)
       + public benefit vs. mutual benefit: a mutual benefit allow
         marketing, but no tax exemption. A public benefit allows to
	 apply for tax exempt status.
	 The second one allows to get donations from foundations and
	 individuals (including the FSF). There is more checking, and
	 it may requires some changes to fit IRS checking.
	 => suggestion is to apply to public benefit and rollback to
	    mutual benefit if we can't get tax exemption
    => maintenance will take like 2 hours/month of work
    => the Foundation should get the Trademark for the footprint

   => Bart will incorporate the Foundation 

   => Miguel will be President,
      We reaffirm Havoc as the chair.
      Bart will be the Treasurer.
      Daniel to be the secretary, and Dan would be the fallback if
      this a problem about Daniel's location in Europe.

 *** Editorial note, since then it was made clear that Daniel's location
     in Europe would be a problem for running the secretary position
     Dan will be secretary (and Daniel vice-secretary).

   => The Eazel address will be used for incorporation, and moved to
      a PO Box later

 - documentation:
   Gnome Press for books ? The No Starch Press guys (nostarch.com) seem
   to be interested in something like this.
   => we don't need to have a sanctionned publisher, but we can recommend
      good books and control who can have the footprint on it.

 
 - representatives for Linux accessibility conference

   This is a sub conference of the CSUN conference, the Linux
   accessibility is 19-20 March (hosted at L.A. Airport Marriott Hotel)
   Sun and especially John will be present
   Voice recognition, interfaces...
   
   => Seems there is no additional effort needed from us right now.
 
 - status check on GUADEC funding and other aspects
 
   We need more money, board members will check with the foundation members
   to find a quick solution.

 - confirm that GNOME 1.4 continues nicely
 
   The schedule has changed:
     - keeping it before Guadec
     - in case of showstopper (a really bad one) it may slip past Guadec.
     - Nautilus will ship on time for 1.4
   But it's on track.

Daniel

-- 
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veillard redhat com  | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
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