Providing previously missing board meeting minutes
- From: Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>
- To: foundation-list <foundation-list gnome org>, foundation-announce gnome org
- Subject: Providing previously missing board meeting minutes
- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:20:18 -0500
GNOME Foundation:
Recently Rosanna Yuen informed me that she needed to print out and
archive copies of all past board minutes. She was having trouble
doing this since the GNOME Foundation board minutes archive on the
Wiki only went back to 2007. So she asked me to flesh out the Wiki
so it includes links to all meeting minutes back to the year 2000. I
have done this, refer here:
http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes
However, while doing research I discovered that there were eight (8)
meeting minutes that were sent only to the board members and never
published. These minutes are now attached, and are for the following
meetings:
* 03/01/2004
* 08/11/2004
* 06/27/2006
* 12/13/2006
* 08/09/2007
* 09/20/2007
* 11/01/2007
* 02/25/2009
Brian
GNOME Foundation IRC Board Meeting Minutes for March 1, 2004
by: Glynn Foster
Attendance
==========
Luis
Dave
Bill
Malcolm
Tim
Glynn
Regrets
=======
Nat
Missing
=======
Jonathan
Owen
Jeff
Leslie
Jody
We had the following agenda for today's short meeting -
o GNOME 2.6
o Roadmap
o 3rd Party Licensing
o GUADEC
GNOME 2.6
=========
We need to give a pretty status report for GNOME 2.6, mentioning the
small slippage in schedule and that there is no need for worry. Glynn
mentioned that it would be good to quickly list the main features coming
to 2.6 - file selection, spatial nautilus, lockdown, ...
Roadmap
=======
Malcolm will post his stuff this evening. Hopefully the other members of
the strike team can send their stuff out so we have something to present
by 11th March
3rd Party Licensing
===================
Malcolm offered to write a draft policy statement and bounce around to
the list. Bill suggested that we get in touch with some legal people
[Sun, HP, FSF] to see where the legal boundaries are for such a policy.
Glynn suggested that we form a new strike team of 3 board members who
define the problem and come up with a solution, whether that is a policy
or statement - otherwise we stand to lose a lot more time at meetings
discussing this, without any clear direction of where we should take it.
The team would be responsible to determine who to contact and bring on
to the team, but the core 3 board members should remain accountable
until the completion of the problem. Volunteers?
GUADEC
======
Would be good to set an initial date for the Advisory Board meeting at
GUADEC. Thursday 1st July should be the proposed date for the meeting,
with details of time and location to follow.
Malcolm will write up an agenda, including call details and send to
advisory-board gnome tonight. Malcolm also emphasized that people should
reply to his board times mail, as we need to settle this as soon as
possible.
Minutes from Board Meeting: 2004 Aug 11
by: Jody Goldberg
=======================================
Present:
Owen : chair
Jody : Minutes
Glynn
Dave
Bill
Jonathan
Tim
Leslie
Jeff
Absent:
Nat
Louis
Malcolm
------------------------------------------------------------------
New Actions :
-------------
ACTION : Jody to write up potential guidelines for bounty review
Existing Actions:
-----------------
ACTION : Schedule Financial reporting meeting with Jonathan, Tim and Jody
for Mid/Late August in Boston.
: Jonathan to set up a meeting during aug with Jody remote
ACTION : Dave to summarize trademark and Logo policy
: Dave to finish writeup of notes from guadec
ACTION: Malcolm to email David Schleef regarding gstreamer.net
ownership and recommend he posts his requirements to
gnome-sysadming list.
: Owen to followup
ACTION : Jeff to write up Foundation Grant Scheme
: Still open
ACTION : Glynn to find status of Anonymous Voting
: Glynn posted his write-up and included a specific mechanism
: Will continue following up with membership committee
ACTION : Ping Advisory board for response thoughts on
language discussion
Done
----
ACTION : Owen to collect GUADEC Feedback forms
: Dropped not enough data
ACTION : Responding to M Kreikemeier re: license query
: Done, Jody sent acceptance
ACTION : Tim to check into availability of space for summit
: Discovered
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Discussion
Financial Meeting
- Jody's Boston trip delayed. Jonathan to setup meeting
this month and Jody will call in.
Trademark & Logo Policy
- Tim outline's legal requirements to avoid the creation of a
'naked license' situation
- Need to discuss Protection vs Revenue Stream
- Dave will forward to board-list and Bill will merge his
thoughts
GNOME Summit
- Target dates are Oct Sat 9th - Mon 11th
- Apparently space is available on 2nd floor of Novell's Boston
office complex
- Will need to make arrangements for security on weekend
- Definite preference for holding it in boston if possible.
Tim to confirm availablilty with Novell Real Estate person.
Luis to find contact within Novell to help coordinate
Bounties
- There was a lack of community involvement in the current
proposals.
- Options
1) These are Novell sponsored bounties, that Novell
controls. They host it.
2) GNOME continues to disburse the bounties but provides
oversight on the content to ensure that maintainers are
comfortable, and that the tasks are in sync with
community policies.
Minutes of the Foundation AGM 2006 Jun 27
by: Vincent Untz
=========================================
Attendance:
===========
Dave Neary (chairing)
Anne �tergaard
Jonathan Blandford
Quim Gil
Vincent Untz
Regrets:
========
Federico Mena-Quintero
Missing:
========
Jeff Waugh
Chairman Report:
================
+ We hired someone from the community to write documentation
- first time we do this
- thanks to the previous board for launching this!
- nice success
+ We had someone working on GNOME for public service in the US
- he worked on a RSS component for evolution
- it's the first time a government recognizes working on Free
Software as public service
+ Tim, our executive director, has quited at the end of last year
+ Summer of Code
- we got 183 proposals
- we have 20 projects this year (we had 10 last year)
- we're trying to have more interaction with the students (we have a
planet, we're encouraging them to post on mailing lists, go on IRC,
etc.)
- we get $500 for each sponsored student
+ Women's Summer Outreach Program
- we wanted to reinvest the money we get from Summer of Code to get
more projects
- Chris Ball and Hanna Wallach have been rocking in the organization
- we originally planned to have 3 students, but Google helped us
sponsor 3 more students, so we have 6 students for WSOP.
- the most important point for us is that we're now actively trying
to change the fact that there's nearly no women involved in GNOME,
and in Free Software
- we got a huge number of candidates (~100)
- we were quite pleased to see the reception of this program by the
community
+ Boston Summit
- last year's summit was our fourth summit
- it was great and useful, and this is something we want to continue
+ Libre Graphics Meeting
- March in Lyon
- lots of people came to attend
- big success
- thanks Dave!
+ GUADEC
- this year is our seventh GUADEC
- bigger, better, and useful!
- it's self-sustainable, and we'll even have some income thanks to
GUADEC
- many thanks to all the people who contributed to the organization!
+ EclipseCon
- we got a sponsorship for a booth
- Ben Konrath went there, with some nice printed posters, live CDs,
etc.
- lot of traffic, so we're quite pleased that Ben went there
- thanks Ben!
+ Other conferences
- we were also represented in many other local and international
conferences (Linux World, FOSDEM, etc.)
+ How to help organization of our presence in events?
- we're empowering local groups to speak for GNOME in local events
- local groups can tell us when they go to a conference
- GNOME Event Box really helps make a difference in Europe
- it's a box containing computers, CDs, posters, etc.
- thanks Murray for initiating this!
- we're working on building one for the US
+ We'll be at SIGGRAPH
- we're sharing a big booth with blender
- this will be huge
- SIGGRAPH is the biggest graphics-related conference out there
- good opportunity to outreach people outside the free software world
Treasurer Report:
=================
Here we should paste what jrb has on his computer since I couldn't take
notes for this. I just remember that GUADEC is the worst possible time
for report :-)
Current Projects:
=================
+ Website redesign
- we'll empower some people from the marketing team to do it
- we don't want technical people to do this
- it's a good opportunity to contribute for people who don't know how
to help
+ Hiring
- we have hired a part-time administrator (Rosanna Yuen)
- we will hire someone whose role will be to develop the foundation
- 10x10 can be used as a performance measurement for the people we'll
hire
- in a couple of years, we should be able to hire people for specific
goals, but we're not rushing this
+ Trademark
- it's finally going through! (thanks Luis!)
- we want to make it possible to play with the logo
+ Merchandising
- it didn't happen last year, at the last minute
- this will be a goal for the people we'll hire
+ Membership
- there have been a lot of applications that were not processed in a
long time
- this is because the membership committee has been moving to a new
system to handle the applications and the member list
- everything should be fixed really soon now
+ Advisory Board
- we have new members this year: Software Freedom Law Center, Intel
- Eben Moglen has agreed to represent the Foundation
Foundation board minutes December 13, 2006
by: Federico Mena Quintero
Attendance:
Anne
Dave (+35 mins)
Federico
Jonathan
Zana
No attendance:
Jeff (regrets)
Quim (regrets)
Vincent
* Financial situation
Zana has been having trouble with the bank's web site; she
sent a financial report to board-list.
* We will suggest to the OSGeo conference that they pay 7% in handling
fees for their money.
* Fee structure for the Advisory Board:
We'll have to wait for quorum.
* Hand-over plan for the new Board:
We need to inform the new Board about the hiring process and
our results from the candidates.
We need to contact the old candidates to see if they would be
interested in a part-time job.
A meeting with the new Board is scheduled for Wednesday,
January 10th 2007.
We need someone to summarize what is discussed on board-list
for the meeting minutes; the discussion that goes on in the
list never makes it to the minutes. We'll make this
suggestion to the new Board.
* Upcoming events:
It would be good to have presence in small/local events. We
need a list of conferences, so that we can find volunteers to
represent GNOME.
Draft for privacy policy about GUADEC attendance list sent to
board-list. What do we do with people who donate, as we need
to keep their names/addresses to send them thank-you gifts?
We keep that information, but we keep it private and internal
to the Board.
We have outstanding requests for the GNOME Event Box in the
USA and Europe. Is there a web page?
http://live.gnome.org/FoundationGrants/EventsBox
http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam/EventsOrganisation/GnomeEventBox
* Giving GNOME-Hispano use of the Intel server:
Pending on getting the box racked. No further Board action is
needed, except for poking the people involved in racking.
ACTION: Dave to find out what's needed to get the box racked
and to give access to GNOME-Hispano.
* Meeting the lawyers:
Anne has been in contact with Luis. We need to have a phone
conference with them.
ACTION: Jonathan to schedule a phone conference with the
lawyers.
* Preparing an annual report:
Dave started one; sent it to board-list.
Everyone in the Board to fill in the report. We need to turn
this in before the end of the year, so everyone should
consider this as URGENT.
It's worthwhile to pay a designer to make the report look
pretty. We'll budget EUR 1000 for this.
Need text on the Summit; what else?
* For the next Board:
[what else? I missed some things here]
Budget for GUADEC and Summit.
Budget for two conferences.
Budget for the event box.
Budget for travel.
* Call for donations to the Foundation:
We can post a story to Slashdot.
Have we updated the web page where we list donations? Zana
has an up-to-date version; it needs to be uploaded.
The website for donations has no checkbox to make your
donation anonymous, while our brochure does.
ACTION: Zana to check that donations in the website can be
made anonymously.
* Press releases about the new members in the Advisory Board:
We haven't been successful at getting people to write the
press releases.
The Board is on the marketing-private list, so they could
contribute, too!
Recommend that there be no press officer next year, because
it's a single point of failure.
* New size sponsorships for GUADEC:
For 2007, we wanted to change the prices as such:
Cornerstone package: £ 18,000 (about 26,700 �, $ 35,600)
Gold package: £ 11,000 (about 16,300 �, $ 21,700)
Silver package: £ 4,000 (about 6000 �, $ 8,000)
HP and Intel made smaller donations this year, but we got
loaned and donated to make up for it.
* GUADEC:
By the end of December, the GUADEC team will have a list of
keynote speakers.
* Event box and web site:
We need to make it easy for people to find the Event Box in
the GNOME web site.
ACTION: Anne to mail the web team about making it easy to find
the Event Box pages from the main GNOME pages.
* Lawyers:
We need to sign the agreement with Software Freedom Law
Center. Need to contact Luis to get the papers.
Legal-list: Anne's problem with the mailing list has not been
resolved. Dave asked for Anne to give him the admin password
so that he can take a look.
* Pending actions:
Decided to remove Jeff's pending actions (writing a proposal
for subcommittees and for technical project meeting).
Vincent to change the templates for notification when you get
a CVS account - DONE.
Anne to start the creation of a GNOME-Legal group: IN
PROGRESS.
Quim to finish the financials from GUADEC - DONE.
Dave to push the idea of a book for ISVs - IN PROGRESS.
The new accountant got everything we sent her, and she's
working on it.
* Miscellaneous:
Zana is going to write the check for SIGGRAPH.
GNOME Foundation Meeting Minutes :: 9th August 2007
by: Glynn Foster
Present: Anne, Behdad, Glynn, Lucas, Quim, Vincent
Absent: Jeff
Regrets: Rosanna
1) GUADEC Debrief
Anne suggested that it would be good to have a GUADEC debrief, and
will invite Thomas and Paul to the next board meeting. Anne also said
it would be good to have an initial meeting with the Istanbul team to
set expectations. Quim wondered if it was expecting a little too much
given none of them report to the board, with Lucas asking if we could
do this by email.
ACTION: Anne to invite Thomas and Paul to next board meeting to see
if they would be willing to present a GUADEC debrief.
2) ODF vs OpenXML
Anne commented that it would be good to come out with a statement of
support for ODF over OpenXML from the GNOME Foundation. Glynn asked
whether this was really useful given that we're members of the ODF
Alliance, and have ECMA membership pending and that it might cause
confusion.
ACTION: Anne to draft up a mail and send to board-list for further
discussion.
3) GNOME Presidency
Jeff has taken this to the list and will follow the discussion there.
4) Laptop request
Rosanna's laptop (GNOME Foundation owned) has recently died, and she
asked whether she could buy a new one. All agreed she should go
ahead and organize it.
ACTION: Anne to mail Zana and ask her to continue with buying a
a replacement laptop.
5) GNOME 10 Year Anniversary
All agreed that having something concrete distributed to celebrate
the anniversary would be a good thing. Glynn commented that it would
be good to send a draft of the t-shirt design to board-list before
we go ahead with the order. Quim commented that it would be good
to replace the t-shirt design that Hackerthreads are currently
producing. Anne suggested that big GNOME foot would be a good
replacement. Lucas commented that people are asking on how to celebrate,
and that it would be good to provide feedback on what is being
prepared.
6) Replacement Treasurer
At GUADEC we briefly discussed that we needed a new treasurer. Jeff
commented that he may be able to take it on with co-operation from
Zana, but no official position was recorded.
ACTION: Board to continue discussing replacement treasurer on list.
7) Elections
Jeff proposed to move the elections out a few months so that they
would coordinate with GUADEC a little better for a first face to
face meeting. Anne commented that we should make sure this is
in alignment with the legislation on non-profits in the US. Jeff
has sent some mail to legal-list about this to find out the situation.
It may be useful to follow up with SFLC as well.
8) GNOME Annual Report
Lucas has contacted Silvia and Sayamindu about their offer to work
on the next annual report. The current plan is to get a basic
workspace up and running, and then get volunteers to write content.
9) PlanetGNOME
Lucas commented that a lot of people are asking to get added to
PlanetGNOME, but not often getting any replies. He mentioned that
it would be good to get some clear guidelines in operation so that
a team of admins could follow it and get these requests processed.
ACTION: Lucas to ask Jeff about writing a set of guidelines for
adding/removing people to PlanetGNOME.
GNOME Foundation Meeting Minutes :: 20th September 2007
by: Glynn Foster
Present: Glynn, Anne, Quim, Vincent, Zana
Regrets: Behdad, Lucas, Jeff
1) Zana's Report
Zana set an update to the list, and all agreed that it would be
a useful thing to do on a regular basis. It would also be nice to
include some details into the minutes. If someone has a specific
question to ask about them, we can answer it based on that.
ACTION: Zana to send regular updates of financials to board-list.
ACTION: Glynn to start publishing details of finances in meeting
minutes.
Zana commented that there was problems sending the money to Izabel
since there was a postal strike. She is going to try and wire her
the money instead, as this is the only way it can be received in
time for the conference.
2) Bylaws Ammendment
Baris sent out an update to foundation-list to say an official
referendum wasn't required, just a vote. He also checked the membership
database to make sure that those people who's membership was going to
expire were notified that they needed to reply. Looks like everything
is on track for this.
3) Fundraising
Anne commented that she thinks we should be more focused in terms of
revenue generation. She believes that a large proportion of it is
coming from the Advisory Board, and that we are missing out on a lot
of opportunity to raise money for additional initiatives. Anne pointed
out the fellowship membership for FSF Europe, and having members paying
a certain sum if they could afford it. The SFLC are also good at
knowing which foundations they can get money from in the US. Anne thinks
we need a team and a strategy.
Vincent agreed that we didn't push Friends of GNOME enough, and a lot of
existing GNOME members don't know about it, or what gifts are available.
ACTION: Zana to send some pictures and mockups of what is currently being
used in the Friends of GNOME program.
Zana and Behdad have been thinking about the possibility of providing a
subscription model for donations, where you could donate, say, $5 a month
over a time period. Zana commented that some of the supplies are slowly
running out and needs to reorder soon. Glynn mentioned that it would be
great to throw $5K at a designer and come up with ideas and designs for some
swag.
Quim remarked that we should be careful and clear about what we are doing
with our existing funds, and what we may want to fundraise for. Quim asked
if we actually needed more money, and whether we would organize anything
differently to where we are now. Anne commented that it would be good to
continue to organize specialized conferences or gatherings. Vincent agreed,
and hoped to organize a GTK+ hackfest once 2.12 was out. He commented that
we needed to ensure that the membership knew that funds were available and
that they should suggest ideas for it. Vincent is planning on sending some
mails to foundation-list about coming up with a budget for next year. He
hopes to send these next month, and kick off some discussions.
ACTION: Zana to look at current budget, and planned activities, to see
where we are with our money.
4) Boston Summit
Jonathan has asked around his contacts in Boston, and crossed off all
universities. He has also worked with the planning person at Red Hat.
It looks like only hotels are available now, and we need to investigate
and confirm.
ACTION: Zana to work on confirming the venue for the Boston summit so
that it can be announced soon.
5) GNOME Annual Report
Lucas posted about the GNOME Annual Report this week, and has got offers of
help from a few people. Looks like this is making good progress.
6) GNOME 2.20
The board would like to congratulate each and every member involved in the
2.20 release - excellent job everybody, thank you!
7) Sponsorship request for Open aLANtejo 07
The board agrees to sponsor Mirco Müller to go to Open aLANtejo 07 (in
Portugal). 50 t-shirts for this conference are also sponsored. They will be
sold and the money will be used to promote GNOME locally.
8) java-gnome hackfest during the Boston Summit
Sponsor Andrew Cowie, Srichand Pendyala and Vreixo Formoso Lopes to hold a
java-gnome hackfest during Boston Summit.
9) a11y meeting during the Boston Summit
Sponsor Kristian Lyngstøl to come to the a11y meeting during the Boston
Summit.
Board Meeting, Nov 1st, 2007.
by: Behdad Esfahbod
Present:
Board: Anne, Lucas, Behdad, Quim (+25min)
Admin: Zana
Invited: Jody Goldberg
[some echo issues, starting meeting at 4:10]
Jody: spent two weeks this summer writing oox import/exporters and last
two weeks on odf filters. both are not terribly useful. odf sucks more
than oox but better standards and processes and using existing standards
somewhat. neither standard has any real interest in being universal,
and anyone thinking odf will be one is severely mistaken. needs at
least a decade to become one...
it's very useful for gnome to be part of the standardization process and
want more people from community to join.
Luis highlighted the monopolist nature of MS. didn't expect community
fireback like this. offer to step down if the board thinks it's the
right thing to do.
behdad: we didn't make it clear in minutes that us joining ecma is about
ooxml. we should respond to that saying that we didn't do it
intentionally. and given that we are only three board members on the
call, we should discuss this further on list, with Luis too before
making any decision.
anne: couldn't hear you.
Jody: eventually ooxml will become a standard, maybe not fast-track.
the spec itself is not going to go away. ... I may not be involved with
resolving all issues, but I'm on the mailing list and see all the
incoming issues. many member say YES, but give it more time. they are
against fast-track, but not the entire thing.
anne: again, couldn't hear.
Jody: disagrees with "him" on that one. odf has two benefits: 1)
developed much more open way, community, etc whereas MS spec was
designed in MS, and community only did documentation.... out of 200
issues that I submitted, only 20% were enhancement requests and were
responded to, others ignored. ... on odf there was the possibility to
raise issues, but didn't make much difference. ... other thing 2)
openoffice is there. you can look at the implementations. past two
weeks I had to do that in several occasions. the only way was to look
at code. beyond that, it's not a terribly good standard.
anne: but it's an official open standard...
jody: open standard of what?
anne: discussed in an open forum.
jody: I'm not saying it's not open.
anne: someone had it examined to see if odf is a real open standard, the
answer was yes.
jody: the openness is clear, although that is sometimes violated by
corporations implementing it. but my issue is, it's an open standard
for oo.o file format, as opposed to universal file format for office
documents.
lucas: cant hear... what did you ask?
jody: at the end of the day I had similar experiences. on the ecma side
I submitted something like 200 plus/minus issues. some had subparts...
in the official ecma minutes there were about 200 submitted. I'd say
about 10 to 20 percent of those were enhancement requests. like don't
use a boolean... don't add version number as an integer... that sort of
things... by the time they gave it to committee office 2007 was
released already. they couldn't make many changes. the committee had
very little scope over it.
on the other direction, the odf side, exactly same thing took place. I
wanted shared formulas and shared strings. neither was even permitted
for discussion because oo.o couldn't implement it easily, so they were
not discussed.
quim joins.
Jody: I was also pushing ecma to work with odf side to have one formula
standard. both teams have been working on formulas, we should have been
able to get one formula standard. didn't happen and people were quite
irrite... someone from Microsoft was really not happy about it because
they want to get it in fast-track. on the odf side the only interest
was only documenting what oo.o was doing. there was some willingness to
improve current functions, but no interest at all in changing them.
there's no way at all oo.o and excel can evaluate the same thing in any
reasonably complex spreadsheet. that kills any possibility for real
interoperability.
anne: [some talk about time frame?] rms said he'd agree with luis and
that foundation should explain our participation with ecma. it can be
added to my previous draft.
Jody: I would have problems putting my name on any statement opposing
ooxml as a standard. I'd be happy to have foundation say that, then
there'd be the question of whether I should be representation the
foundation. I don't think it's the right approach for us to let MS take
the file format and hide it again.
anne: problem for us down to know is that we have to strongly oppose a
monopolistic agenda.
jody: I would rather take a constructive approach opposing MS than a
destructive one. I think we can write better software than they can.
if they want to put their file format to an standard, that's an
excellent thing.
anne: but then there's the time issue. time is on MS's side because
they get all the governement to support them. because they're working
with the software already.
jody: they'll use MS unless we give them a better alternative. our's
free. our's can have easier bugfixes. I think we can take them even in
an unfair fight, as long as they file format is public and they adhere
to it so we can take the data out of it. if they then release a version
of office not adhering to it, it shows that they are idiots. we should
take them to give us docs, even better, make them let us tell them where
we need the docs. it's a huge win for us to have docs.
anne: then we have to pay license fees to use it...
jody: another issue that is open to debate. .... XXXsome talk about
patents. the patent license says its for anything necessary to
implement it. some people can read it as granting nothing, but I think
there's a legal case for it. ...
lucas: in my experience in brazil... what did you say? ... it looks
like hard to improve documentation for a format that we ideologically
don't support.
jody: declaring that odf is the universal format for office document
adds to that criticism. ... MS says they do not claim this is universal
office format. a more realistic approach is, it's the MS office file
format, and we definitely want to implement it.
lucas: that's were the problem is, people considering if it's iso
standard it's universal.
jody: that's a useful thing to highlight in our statement.
lucas: agreeing...
anne: ...
jody: actually that gives me an idea. it's questionable, but it does
give us, instead of working, ... rather than opposing the adoption of
the ecma standard as iso standard, we can oppose adoption of ecma
standard as universal format by iso. that qualification is very true.
anne: but iso has different kinds of standards. as long as they can
document it but it's not the official standard, it could be another
standard, not like odf...
jody: that is exactly what MS is arguing...
anne: bruce perens(?) explained it very well in some conference... I
could give you a link to it.
quim: we have two levels to discuss. one is what to say? then we have
the emotional level. it's so emotional that no matter how well we
explain it, we can't help the emotional message that gnome is with
microsoft etc...
anne: we have to [can't hear again]
jody: it's fairly critical that we get somebody on the odf committee to
cover that base.
anne: yes sure we should have... since we are joining we should clearly
[can't hear]
jody: I've got contact with someone called Daniel ???? who is involved
in oasis. unfortunately there's a major problem towards the beginning
of this year. I don't know exactly the politics behind it but Sun or
IBM were unhappy that this open document foundation, basically anyone
part of a foundation, was becoming a member of this committee. they had
a nontrivial number of members coming in... the community was large
enough that they started giving the voting power. then ibm or sun
wasn't happy and made oasis make no org can have more than 2 members.
that made only 2 from community. in our case 2 hould be enough...
anne: if many nonprofits can have 2 members we'll be strong.
jody: when leaving novell I sent mail to oasis and ecma, the ecma people
responded fast. the oasis people said they had to look up how to set it
up and never got back to me. I'm sure with some pushing we can figure
out how it can be done.
anne: ... I'm not sure exactly what it is... can't hear at all :(
jody: I hadn't heard about it before it came up on slashdot but jeff
pointed it out to me on mailing list... it was written by someone who
never wrote an open letter. jeff pointed me and I joind the mailing
list... there are a bunch of people from ibm and others on the list. a
lot of head about foundation but not a lot of results. someone else on
the list is marbachs? that sent me a summary. not sure if it's fine to
send it all to board. got to see what comes out of it.
anne: ... we need to come up with something.
jody: agreed. I'm later for a meeting that started ten minutes ago.
have to cut out now. the key point is if putting out a statement I'd be
happy to be part of anything that said we support open standards we
support odf. also to say we are against ooxml as a universal office
format. but to say we're against the spec, I disagree with it and can
step down.
anne: ...
jody: if any of you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me...
jody: bye bye.
jody left.
lucas: there was a miscommunication. should make clear there was no bad
intention behind. second one is related to the open letter we need to
write anyway.
anne: it was too hard to explain? ... can't hear.
chaos.
lucas: jeff already volunteered to write a proposal for open letter.
ACTION: behdad put in the minutes that we didn't have bad intentions not
writing down ooxml in minutes before?!?!
lucas: would be nice trying to have the letter ready. sholdn't take too
long to publish it.
[...similar discussion continues...]
ACTION: jeff to send draft of our letter.
quim: I agree with whatever jeff and anne agree with. between you two
you can write it.
anne: maybe we can get a joint statement by kde and gnome.
lucas: I think this is the situation around gnome foundation... it's
more like a response.
anne: people think because of the MS/Novell agreement and Miguel and
all, we are supporting microsoft.
quim: those people I think no matter what we write down are going to say
that. I wouldn't bother about that. lets write down what we agree and
make it quite clear.
anne: ...
[silence]
lucas: it should be more explaining why we are on this ecma committee.
we should be more specific.
anne: I think it's two different messages. ... the board has to explain
why we decided to join the ecma committee.
lucas: yeah, that's one thing. for this moment that's more urgent.
ACTION: anne coordinate with jeff about the specific situation of
joining the ecma committee and jody representing us.
anne: the PR statement has to be very good and clear...
....
anne: have in minutes about adboard members OLPC and ... just OLPC?
behdad: I thought we wanted to keep this meeting about ooxml only, and
time is up anyway.
anne: just have a sentence in the minutes.
[5:05] bye.
Minutes for Meeting of February 25, 2009
by: Stormy Peters
We do not have good minutes for our meeting on February 25th. However, we
discussed the 2009 budget for a good part of the meeting. Here are some notes
from that part of the conversation.
Expected Income for 2009:
* $120K adboard fees
* $20K friends of GNOME (projected)
* specific fundraising for programs
* Total: $140K (projected, not actual)
Surplus to spend: (We have an amount of money in the bank. We save some of it
in case income doesn't meet expectations but we can also spend some of it.)
* We have about $110K (not counting money earmarked for accessibility)
* J5 suggests getting that down to $50K (Stormy thinks that would be low)
* That would give us an extra $60K
So our budget is approximately $190K plus specific fundraising.
Expected expenses:
* $123K (Salaries)
* $44K (Travel + bonuses)
* $62K (community development, marketing, legal, 10% of hackfest costs,
bank charges)
BALANCE:
* -$39K
So we either need to raise $39K more or we need to cut costs.
We should tackle this from two angles. Fundraising and cutting expenses.
* If we got four more corporate sponsors by GUADEC, that would cover this.
Stormy has several that are strong potentials and a list of further
potentials.
* Use the Friends of GNOME fundraising for a sys admin. For example, we
could say if we get 400 subscribers (one for every member of the
Foundation) we'll hire a sys admin. That'd be more than enough. (Thinking
a partime sys admin is $35-40K, can anyone confirm?)
* At the same time, we should figure out what we will cut if we don't get
four corporate sponsors by GUADEC. (Which seems tough.)
o Stormy's bonus.
o Some of Stormy's travel fund (couldn't save much more than $5-7K at
this point).
o Some of the community travel fund? (We have $5K more allocated for
travel requests this year than last year.)
* Figure out and count on a surplus from GUADEC? Expecting a surplus of
â?¬24.
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