Meeting Minutes Published - October 29, 2009

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

The meeting minutes for the October 29th board meeting is now public.
Refer here:

     http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes/20091029

Other past board meetings are archived here:

    http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of October 29th, 2009

Next Meeting

November 12, 2009

Attendance

    * Behdad Esfahbod
    * Brian Cameron
    * Diego Escalante
    * Germán Póo-Caamaño
    * Lucas Rocha
    * Rosanna Yuen
    * Stormy Peters
    * Vincent Untz

Regrets

    * Srinivasa Ragavan

Absent

    * None

Minutes

Recurring Items

    * Review past action items.
    * Did each person with action items send their status reports to the
      board list before the meeting?
    * Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
      to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
    * Make sure to start up the gobby server for better note taking.
    * System administrator hiring - waiting for funding.
    * Update foundation.gnome.org website.

Old items

    * None

New items

    * The NLnet grant that Shane Coughlan applied for on October 1st
      relating to GNOME Usability was not approved. We can try again in
      December. We should think about what additional projects the GNOME
      Foundation should consider applying for this grant. NLnet has a
      special interest in areas of intersections between Free Software
      and Open Standards, and especially anything to do with ODF. So
      perhaps we could put together other proposals that are more
      clearly aligned with their areas of interest.
    * The GNOME Foundation sent a request on November 3rd to Richard
      Stallman to make a statement about his keynote at the GCDS
      conference.
    * Discussed the need to set up more formal guidelines for future
      speakers at GNOME events to better communicate what is expected
      from speakers. Vincent will touch base with Matthew Garrett and
      the community to determine how the GNOME Code of Conduct needs to
      be updated to reflect speakers.
    * There has been a recent complaint that a GNOME community member
      had a blog post which does not follow the GNOME Code of Conduct.
      The board is discussing how to addressing this particular issue.
      More generally, we need to make sure that GNOME Foundation members
      sign the GNOME Code of Conduct, and perhaps make it a requirement
      for new members to sign. Also need to update the GNOME blog and
      planet so that it is more clear that people should follow the
      GNOME Code of Conduct.
    * Approved paying the GStreamer Summer of Code costs out of the
      money the GNOME Foundation is holding for the GStreamer project.
    * Approved the budget ($3,631) for DíaGNOME @ EncuentroLinux
    * Did the bi-annual review of Stormy's progress, and since it is the
      end of the fiscal year, the board calculated her bonus. In the
      past two quarters she received a discretionary bonus of $1,800 for
      a yearly total of $3,150. For fund raising, she received a yearly
      bonus of $11,500. This is a total yearly bonus of $14,650.

Action Items

Completed Actions

    * Brian - Since there was little interest on the foundation-list
      about getting international general liability and accident
      insurance, the board decided to not pursue getting such coverage
      at this time. Brian agreed to follow-up with the lawyers to find
      out what sort of text we should include in the travel subsidy
      agreement to ensure that people who receive subsidy understand
      that the Foundation is not providing coverage. The GNOME legal
      team provided suggested text in mid-October. Now Germán is working
      to actually add the text to the document.
    * Brian - Send email to the board list to schedule a special meeting
      for Stormy's review. Previously we were doing reviews quarterly,
      but moving forward these reviews will be done bi-annually.
      Ongoing.
    * Diego - Contact the sysadmin team about account creation. Talk
      with Bruno about who needs accounts.
    * Diego - Keep track of FISOL invitation (Chiapas, Mexico) - take
      over from Germán.
    * Vincent - Will contact advisory board members to see if they will
      sponsor upcoming events.

Old Actions

    * Behdad - Tasked with scrubbing the GnuCash file so it can be made
      public. Behdad sent a scrubbed GnuCash file to Rosanna to check,
      but still pending.
    * Brian - Get information about what should be in an "Employee
      Handbook". Still pending.
    * Brian - Look into organizing a hackfest on "how to make it easier
      for more people to do some usability magic". Discussions on
      usability list just starting, and making progress with seeking
      NLnet grant. Ongoing.
    * Germán - Put together a proposal for how to address board members
      who become inactive. Still pending.
    * Germán - Take over John Palmieri's previous task to propose new
      obligations that people who receive travel subsidies should be
      asked to do in return.
    * Germán - will get in contact with GUADEC organizers to clarify
      their bid.
    * Lucas - Work with Andreas for the donation ruler. Try to put $15k
      in the ruler in "yellow" ($10k for Canonical, $5k for Google) to
      indicate that these funds are matching. Waiting for Paul to get
      the general marketing message behind the ruler before publishing
      it. Paul was pinged on September 17th about it.
      http://www.gnome.org/friends/drive/
    * Lucas & Alberto - Set up a Euro bank account. Still in progress.
    * Paul - Will provide an overview of hiring a sysadmin and the
      benefits that has for the overall GNOME community.
    * Rosanna - Research the GNOME Guidestar website and update if
      necessary. Rosanna sent an update about the status of Guidestar,
      but work is still needed. Need to find someone to keep the website
      up-to-date.
    * Rosanna - to send check to pay 401K setup fees.
    * Srini - Ping John Palmieri for status about importing Paypal data
      into GnuCash. John Palmieri was pinged, but no response yet.
    * Srini - Send out the GUADEC call-for-hosts, and the next meeting
      with be an IRC meeting to discuss Done. Srini has the meeting
      logs, but not yet published in the wiki. Yet to format and upload
      and announce the meeting logs.
    * Stormy - Should the GNOME Foundation buy a blanket LWN membership.
      Very low priority. Will bring it up with Jonathan Corbet when they
      next meet.
    * Stormy - To propose a case study on how the improvements we made
      with bugzilla made a difference as input for the marketing
      materials for why the Foundation needs to hire a system
      administrator.
    * Stormy - Create a more public process for suggesting and deciding
      upon topics for future advisory board meetings. Conversations in
      progress.
    * Vincent - Will look into who the GNOME Foundation should send to
      the Mobile User Experience conference, perhaps Paul Cooper.
      Vincent mailed Paul and is waiting for an answer.
    * Vincent & Lucas - Determine how to announce the endorsement of
      Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services. This is
      blocking on a release team action that Lucas has ("push for a "web
      services" set of libraries")
      http://autonomo.us/2008/07/franklin-street-statement/

New Action Items

    * Brian - Touch base with the GNOME Marketing list to discuss other
      opportunities for seeking nlnet grants.
    * Brian - Follow up with Richard Stallman about his statement about
      GCDS.
    * Lucas - Work to ensure that Foundation members sign the GNOME Code
      of Conduct, and make it a requirement that new Foundation members
      need to sign this.
    * Vincent - Touch base with Matthew Garrett and with the GNOME
      community to determine how the GNOME Code of Conduct needs to be
      enhanced to reflect speakers.
    * Vincent - Update the blog and planet to highlight that people are
      expected to sign and follow the GNOME Code of Conduct.

Discussed on board-list

    * Preparation and review of the GNOME Q3 report.
    * Discussion about the budget ($3,631) for DíaGNOME @
      EncuentroLinux, which was approved at the meeting.
    * Request from Christian Schaller to pay for the GStreamer-related
      Google Summer of Code costs. The GNOME Foundation holds money for
      the GStreamer project, and the board agreed to pay these costs out
      of their money.
    * Discussion about Stormy's bi-annual review. Feedback was collected
      from all the board members to share with her, and discussion about
      her bonus.
    * Discussion about asking Richard Stallman to send a statement about
      his keynote at GCDS. The request to Richard went through a few
      rounds of review to make sure before sending it on November 3rd.
    * Discussion about a recent complaint that a GNOME community member
      had a blog post which does not follow the GNOME Code of Conduct.
    * Discussion about making the GNOME bugzilla data available for
      requests to do academic research on the data.