Minutes for Foundation Board meeting 2002-10-22

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

          Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 2002-10-22
          ---------------------------------------------

Present:				Apologies:

   Jonathan Blandford                   Jim Gettys
   Nat Friedman (chair)
   Jody Goldberg 
   Telsa Gwynne (minutes)
   James Henstridge
   Miguel de Icaza
   George Lebl
   Federico Mena
   Tim Ney
   Havoc Pennington
   Daniel Veillard 


Completed actions:

  ACTION: Nat write down a draft for the foundation acceptance guideline
          the  schedule a meeting by Friday if possible with people from
	  the election committee.
        => See discussions below for the full story; but done.

  ACTION: Tim and Federico to produce a balance sheet for last fiscal year.
        => Done.

Actions:

  ACTION: Jim to restart the font discussions with various parties
	=> Jim reported progresses with a well-known font maker,
	   Jim wait from feedback from the lawyers
        => Jim is away for this meeting.
	   
  ACTION: Jonathan talk to gnome-sysadmin about adding ssh
          tunnelling for GNOME CVS access
        => Jonathan will try to get this scheduled with Owen. 
           The ssh tunnelling will get added when the new CVS machine
           arrives.

  ACTION: Jody volunteer for working on producing a first
          draft of ABI rules for GNOME-2 releases, get involvement from
          someone at Sun, and make sure the draft get some review.
	=> Worked on it but not finished yet

  ACTION: Tim looking at structuring tutorials, need to send a 
          call for speakers
	=> Pending.

  ACTION: Jonathan to work with Louie to put the organisation chart on the
          web site.
        => This is in progress: Luis is sending mails clarifying what
           goes where madly and has sent a drawft for comments to 
           foundation-list.

New Actions:

  ACTION: James and Federico to look at copyright assignment guidelines
          with Tim.

  ACTION: Tim to send out the report he sent to board-list to foundation-list
          as well.

  ACTION: Nat to send his guidelines for Foundation membership out.

Decisions and discussions:

  * Approve last meeting's minutes: 
  
  They are at:
  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2002-October/msg00010.html


  *  The GNOME Foundation membership guidelines: we have changed them. 

  The guidelines the membership committee has been using for approving
  renewals and approving new members for the GNOME Foundation were
  fairly stringent, and the committee, applying them, had to say "no"
  to people who were rather surprised. Some people on foundation-list
  felt the guidelines should be changed: 
  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2002-September/thread.html
  Thread subjects: "Astonishment"; "gnome foundation" and
  "[Fwd: Resignation from GNOME Foundation Membership Committee]"
  (among others)

  Nat sent a draft version of a proposal for new guidelines which were
  less stringent to board-list and much debate ensued. There was no
  real consensus. 

  So we tried to arrange a separate conference call between (some of)
  the board and (some of) the membership committee to get their input. 
  This took place on Friday 12th October 2002. Still no real consensus,
  since the same very distinct two different viewpoints were emerging.

  Because the elections are approaching and there are people whose
  applications are in limbo, we took a vote on whether to use Nat's
  proposals which relax the restrictions.

  Jim was not present but voted by email. The vote was eight in favour,
  two (Telsa and Jonathan) not in favour, and one abstention (James).
  Carried.

  So Nat's new proposals are the guidelines for the membership committee
  when looking at new applications; and the membership committee can
  un-freeze the election process. 

  Nat's proposals are in the membership-committee mailing list archives:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/membership-committee/2002-October/msg00050.html

  *  Administrivia and legal items

  Massachussets law expects us to fill a form which is signed by 
  president and clerk. The people who share the secretarial duties
  for meetings (Daniel, Jody and Telsa) are not usually in the US. 
  But Daniel will be in US shortly and sign it.

  Tim has been working with the lawyers again. They recommend that we
  accept formal copyright assignments of GNOME code if people want to
  assign it to us. Tim has a draft set of guidelines for this. James
  and Federico will look at it with him.

  Tim has drawn up a balance sheet which we need for a "990 form".

  Tim has also done much more, and sent the complete list to board-list.
  He will send it to foundation-list. 

  According to the by-laws, we can change the number of people on
  the foundation board. We didn't need a vote on this: consensus
  was that the number (currently eleven people voted for and who
  have votes, plus Tim as 'executive director') is fine as is.

Telsa