Re: Meeting Minutes Published - February 1st, 2011

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Stormy:

> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Brian Cameron
> <brian cameron oracle com <mailto:brian cameron oracle com>> wrote:
>
>         * Review past action items.
>         * Did each person with action items send their status reports to
>           the board list before the meeting?
>
> Has this been happening? Some of the action items have been there for a
> long time. Some have been on there since last July.

We did do a review of action items during the December 23rd and January
6th meetings.  We did close a lot of old and stale actions, as you can
see:

  http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20101223
  http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110106

That said, there are probably some that we missed and should address.
I already added it to our agenda for the next meeting to do this again.

>         * Orca / Software Freedom Conservancy
>               o Discussions underway. The SFC is working to determine if it
>                 is possible for GNOME projects to join the SFC.
>               o ACTION: Bastien will email Joanie about options about
>                 whether it makes sense for orca to consider being a
>                 FreeDesktop project.
>
> What would be the advantage for GNOME projects to join the SFC? I
> thought the GNOME Foundation provided all the services that SFC does.
> (I'm not opposed to the idea, just would like to understand why the
> projects want to.)

I think their website explains the benefits:

  http://sfconservancy.org/overview/
  http://sfconservancy.org/members/services/
  http://sfconservancy.org/members/apply/

The main benefits seem to be that they will help your project take care
of finances/fundraising, and they also provide some protection against
liabilities.  The above website provides more details.

So far, we have just had some discussions with the folks at Conservancy
about whether it makes sense for GNOME projects to be a part of
Conservancy.  That said, it is not yet clear if the Conservancy will
accept GNOME projects.  We are waiting to find out from them if it is
even an option.

I believe that the orca project is interested in using Conservancy to
accept donations targeting the orca project.

There has been some discussion amongst the board about whether it might
make sense to allow people to make GNOME a11y donations via Friends of
GNOME or otherwise handle this within The GNOME community.  However,
some people (e.g. the marketing team) has concerns that if we open the
door to allowing specific GNOME subgroups or projects to receive
earmarked funds that this would or could spiral out of control, or make
FoG too complicated.

But, even if we supported receiving a11y funds via some GNOME Foundation
mechanism, I think Joanie is still interested in having orca join the
Conservancy if possible since she has indicated that she is very
interested in the liability protection that they offer.

There has been some discussion about whether The GNOME Foundation could
provide similar protections, but I believe that their liability
protection is possible because of the way their organization is
structured.  For example, they require that all project funds be
managed centrally by them.  I am not sure it would be practical or
possible for The GNOME Foundation to require this of all GNOME modules.

Brian