Re: Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 10 July 2001

[Dan Mueth <d-mueth uchicago edu>]

First...  Thanks Linas for the feedback.  It is very important that the
GNOME Membership and the public know what is going on with the GNOME
Foundation and at the Board meetings.  There is also an element of trust
and openness which is essential here.  So, if anybody has any questions or
concerns please raise them up here so we can fix any problems which may
exist.  We haven't heard much noise yet, so we are assuming people know
what is going on and agree with how things are proceeding.

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, Daniel Veillard wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 01:49:22PM -0500, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> >
> > I've cc'ed the individuals who I beleive are subscribed to
> > this mailing list, since I suspect that the email reflector
> > silently fails when posted to.  (I received no response of any
> > sort to my last post).
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 12:34:50PM -0400, Daniel Veillard was heard to remark:
> > >
> > > 	  Minutes of the GNOME Board meeting 10 July 2001
> > >
> > >    - Mostly discussions, it was light agenda,
> >
> > It would be nice to know what the agenda was.
>
>   it is under the Discussion part all items are the agenda and associated
> discussion.

As Daniel said, the agenda is well-represented by the sections listed in
the Discussion part.  If people really want a seperate section for the
agenda, Daniel can probably be convinced to add it.

> > Presumably, there's stuff that's
> > being decided between meetings,
>
>   No the decisions are really done during meetings, and made public
> in the minutes. There might be exception, but this is the common case.

There is some discussion between meetings on the Board's mailing list, but
decisions are almost always left until the meetings.  It proves to be very
difficult to try to discuss or decide anything over email with so many
people involved, since you really need to make sure that a majority of the
Board is participating.  Plus most things are more easily done over the
phone than over email.

> > >   ACTION: John try to get a Copyright assigment form and procedure for the
> > >           GNOME Foundation
> > >     => still pending waiting on the FSF, RMS is working on that.
> >
> > Does the gnome foundation have a policy on copyright assignment? What is it?
> > When is it applied?  If there's no policy, then why is the above important?
>
>  No, N/A/, N/A, because Sun contribution is large and it's a really
> bice gesture.

We don't plan to request that people do copyright assignment.  However,
some groups (eg. Sun) have expressed interest in assigning copyright so we
want to set up instructions to make it easy for people to assign copyright
if they want to.

> > I'd like to ask about other gnome foundation activities, but am afraid to
> > do so, given the lack of clarity as to what is really going on.  That, and
> > the fact that my previous email generated precisely zero replies or
> > acknowledgements. (Hey, I thought it was pretty damned good, even if it
> > may have sounded off the wall to you).
>
>   I don't remember seeing anything I felt compelled to reply to, probably
> because I didn't see them ...

Linas - Could you send the URL or date and list of the email you are
referring to?

> > btw, having the gnome foundation provide little conveiences, like, 'what are
> > the foundation members emails' would be nice.  I'm using eazel addresses for
> > lack of any news of anything newer.
>
>   The foundation can be addressed by foundation-list gnome org,
> the board can be joined at board-list gnome org, and putting the collection
> of 350+ email addresses on a web page is just food for spammers IMHO,

I think the public alias is board gnome org, although board-list gnome org
might also work. (?)

You can view the current Membership list here:
http://foundation.gnome.org/membership-list.html

Dan