Meeting Minutes Published - March 29th, 2011

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

The meeting minutes for the March 29th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

             http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110329

Other past board meetings are archived here:

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

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of March 29th, 2011

Next Meeting

    * April 11th, 2011

Attending

    * Andreas Nilsson
    * Bastien Nocera
    * Brian Cameron
    * Emily Chen
    * Germán Póo-Caamaño
    * Og Maciel
    * Paul Cutler
    * Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

Missing

Recurring Items

    * Review past action items.
    * Did each person update their action items?
    * Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
      to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
    * Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

New Items

    * On February 16th, Joanmarie Diggs asked if the GNOME a11y PayPal
      account can be used to receive GNOME a11y funds.
          o The main issue is that The GNOME Foundation does not have
            the staff to handle the accounting. Currently all PayPal
            transactions are handled manually. If this could be
            automated, this would make it more possible to consider
            this sort of request.
          o Perhaps The GNOME Foundation needs to find volunteers or
            hire people to help with accounting or to automate PayPal &
            CRM automation.
          o ACTION: Paul - Will write a response to Joanie Diggs to
            discuss how to move forward regarding receiving GNOME a11y
            funds.

    * There has also been discussion about whether GNOME projects
      should be allowed to join Conservancy.
          o Andreas, Bastien, Paul: -1
          o Emily, German, Og, Paul: 0
          o ACTION: Brian - Will follow up with the lawyers to discuss
            what would be involved to provide liability protection like
            what the Conservancy provides and to see if they have any
            perspective about whether the GNOME Foundation should allow
            GNOME projects to join Conservancy.
          o ACTION: Paul & Andreas - Will raise their concerns allowing
            GNOME projects joining the Conservancy.

    * CiviCRM Improvements
          o The board decided to approve $1,000 (USD) to improve the
            CiviCRM, as Rosanna requested.
          o ACTION: Og - Will notify Rosanna that $1,000 (USD) to
            improve CiviCRM has been approved.

    * GNOME 3 release!
          o Andreas feels that the GNOME 3 release is solid.

    * GNOME.Asia (Brian, Andreas, or Emily - update)
          o Lots of good work getting done on marketing, the release
            team, improving websites, fixing bugs.
          o Everybody in Bangalore is excited about the Hackfest.
          o The entrance admission has been eliminated, so the number
            of participants is naturally increasing.
          o The event is profitable even though there is no longer an
            entrance fee.

    * GNOME 3 Launch Party Update
          o Some parties have had trouble receiving the goodies due to
            tax issues.
          o Alan & Emily are planning a GNOME 3 Launch Party photo
            competition.
          o The board decided to return the $700 (USD) surplus to The
            GNOME Foundation bank account.

    * Johannes Schmid informed the board that at the Toronto hackfest
      that they discussed about an organization that decided to use Qt
      instead of GTK+ mainly because they were able to get a support
      contract for Qt. Therefore we thought it might be a good idea to
      give interested companies a chance to present themselves as
      commercial support options on developer.gnome.org. Perhaps via
      some "Get support" link. Do we have any response?
          o ACTION: Andreas - Will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing
            support contracts for GTK+.

    * Improve news.gnome.org
          o ACTION: Andreas - Will look into planet.gnome.org header to
            see if we can add a link to see news.gnome.org. This will
            help more readers to hopefully notice IRC meeting.

    * Continuing to work towards improving relationships with
      Canonical.

Completed Actions

    * Bastien - To e-mail Murray about contacting UPS one more time
      regarding the lost Event Box.
    * Bastien - Will help find a home for the European Event Box.
    * Emily - Create a PO in Oracle and transfer the gold sponsorship
      from Oracle to GNOME.Asia Summit 2011 (Done, in process)
    * Emily - Produce, Deliver and Tracking goodies for GNOME 3.0
      Launch Parties.(Done)
    * Emily - Prepare to launch the GNOME Store in Beijing
          o http://gnome.taobao.com/
    * Og - Will notify Rosanna that $1,000 (USD) to improve CiviCRM has
      been approved. This new action item was completed shortly after
      the meeting.

Status of action items

    * Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
      relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
      public. (will ping again).
    * Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the
      gnome-de gnome org mailing list about finding local German
      volunteers to help with the Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
    * Andreas - Will look into the possibility of a Desktop Summit
      design where the facade is more neutral.
    * Andreas - Will blog a Desktop Summit status report.
    * Bastien - Will try to find people who can consolidate the
      feedback about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 device to provide back
      to Texas Instruments.
    * Bastien - Will take over the internal review process task from
      Diego Urrelo (hopefully he can automate it).
    * Bastien - To find a way to automate the process of exporting
      results from internal review process and email it to the board.
    * Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
      last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
    * Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
      Friends of GNOME post card sending.
    * Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
    * Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible
      collaboration in working directly with GNOME.
    * Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo
      to plan for a hackfest there.
    * Bastien - To e-mail GIMP about changing their website, and
      procedure for donating.
    * Bastien - Reach out to the GNOME Advisory Board via email to see
      if they can help out with providing contacts at Yahoo.
    * Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James
      Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.
    * Brian - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to
      use the GNOME trademark. Taken over from Vincent Untz. Look at
      the archives in 2005 and try to determine which companies can use
      the GNOME trademark. Know what kind of contracts we had with
      them. Taken over from Jorge.
    * Brian - Will finalize marketing contract with Allan Day and
      Sumana Harihareswara.
    * Emily - Follow by email about vote for the options for how to
      spend additional money after produced GNOME 3.0 Goodies.
    * Emily - Update Tracking ID for 112 Launch Party Packages.
      Tracking from
          o 
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Am0xSSV8T7asdGlxT2x1R2xiZW45MDhYVGxFdHkwNHc&authkey=CMbDn54C&hl=en#gid=0 

    * Germán - To discuss with GNOME Hispano about them handling GNOME
      Foundation money in Euros (€).
    * Germán - To track if the new method of boletos generates more or
      less money from Brazil.
    * Germán - To have a draft Fiscal Year Budget in October for the
      board to review.
    * Germán - Will provide an updated budget for review that we'll
      plan to send to foundation-list for community review.
    * Germán - Will assist with the GNOME 3 as a Foundation goal task
      and to help in getting the GNOME 3 as a Foundation Goal survey
      topics together. (Handing over to someone else.)
    * Og - Update the blog and planet to highlight that people are
      expected to sign and follow the GNOME Code of Conduct.
          o As per Paul's recommendation, I have emailed Vincent to ask
            him what his idea is for doing this.
          o Still have not heard back from Vincent Untz.
          o Still on ToDo.
    * Og - To look into Google Checkout as an annual payment option for
      FoG.
          o Still on ToDo.
    * Paul - Will send an email to the foundation-list and the gnucash
      list seeking someone to take over the GnuCash automation. Taken
      over from Behdad Esfahbod.
    * Paul - To start work on next 2011 Annual Report ASAP (due start
      FY2012).
    * Paul - Will work with Gil Forcada from guifi.net and gnome-
      marketing to define the best way for organizations like guifi.net
      to participate in the GNOME community. Not many replies from the
      community. Diego Urrelo will draft something more concrete for
      gnome-marketing to determine the best name and process for
      managing this. There was a discussion on the mailing list and a
      few good ideas, Diego will wrap them up and send them again for
      further comments.
    * Paul - Will follow-up with Board to read the Advisory Board fees
      for small businesses proposal, ask for feedback and set a date to
      vote by.
    * Paul - To finish the Privacy Policy, get review from James
      Vasile, etc.
    * Paul - To review Justin's email about updating trademark
      agreements and email the marketing team for feedback.
    * Paul - Will put together an email to Canonical regarding working
      towards improving relations.
    * Paul - Set up a phone call with the right people at Canonical,
      the GNOME Foundation board and/or GNOME release team to discuss
      how to improve relations.
    * Rosanna - Will apply for the GNOME credit card.
    * Rosanna - Automate the process of entering PayPal information
      into GnuCash.

New Action Items

    * Andreas will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing support contracts
      for GTK+.
    * Andreas - Will look into planet.gnome.org header to see if we can
      add a link to see news.gnome.org. This will help more readers to
      hopefully notice IRC meeting.
    * Brian - Will follow up with the lawyers to discuss what would be
      involved to provide liability protection like what the
      Conservancy provides and to see if they have any perspective
      about whether the GNOME Foundation should allow GNOME projects to
      join Conservancy.
    * Paul - Will write a response to Joanie Diggs to discuss how to
      move forward regarding receiving GNOME a11y funds.
    * Paul & Andreas - Will raise their concerns regarding allowing
      GNOME projects joining the Conservancy.

Discussed on the mailing list

    * Meetings
          o Planning for The GNOME Foundation IRC Meeting on March
            23rd.

    * Legal
          o Preparing contracts for the two GNOME Marketing
            contractors.

    * Events
          o Planning for GNOME.Asia 3.0 Hackfest/Summit.
          o Planning for GNOME 3.0 Launch Parties
          o Discussions with Ben Konrath about planning more of a GNOME
            presence at African free software events.

    * Event Box
          o Robert McQueen agreed to have Collabora host the event
            boxes in Cambridge. Dorée Carrier will be the contact
            handling shipping.
          o Eitan Isaacson notified the board that he purchased missing
            cables and a new kb/mouse for the GNOME Event Box and asked
            for reimbursement of $89.13 (USD).

    * Programs
          o The GNOME Foundation notified the Women's Outreach Program
            leaders that an additional $1,500 (USD) was allocated to
            match what Google is providing to students in the GSoC
            program.

    * Miscellaneous
          o Discussion about preparing a GNOME 3.0 LiveCD/DVD.
          o Having ongoing discussions with Canonical regarding
            improving relationships.
          o The board agreed to reward borschty and juhaz with t-shirts
            for their excellent work in monitoring #gnome on freenode.
          o Johannes Schmid informed the board that at the Toronto
            hackfest that they discussed about an organization that
            decided to use Qt instead of GTK+ mainly because they were
            able to get a support contract for Qt. Therefore we thought
            it might be a good idea to give interested companies a
            chance to present themselves as commercial support options
            on developer.gnome.org. Perhaps via some "Get support"
            link.