= Foundation Board Minutes for Tue, November 14th 2017, 17:00 UTC =
Next meeting date Tue, November 21th 2017, 17:00 UTC
== Attending ==
* Alexandre Franke
* Carlos Soriano
* Zeeshan Ali
* Meg Ford
* Rosanna Yuen
* Neil McGovern
== Regrets ==
* Allan Day
* Cosimo Cecchi
* Nuritzi Sanchez
== Missing ==
== Agenda ==
* Follow-up on "Reviving Free Software Macedonia"
* Review outgoing items
== Minutes ==
* Follow-up on "Reviving Free Software Macedonia"
* Monthly rental fee for the place where they meet (€300)
* They seem to have a lead for sponsors, but would like us to help bootstrap
* Not clear what their ask is.
* We recommend they come up with a clear plan and specific outcomes for GNOME, then take it to the engagement budget holder
== _Ongoing_ ==
'''This section includes items which have seen an update in the last 30 days. Format is "YYYY-MM-DD, action|discussion|abstract" for this and subsequent minutes sections'''
* Check in about budget and policies roll out
* Blocking on a couple action items from Neil, hopefully sorted out today
* Neil will then announce it, as well as TransferWise being an option
* 2017-11-14:
* Waiting for Nuritzi to come back from her trip so she can review drafts before they are sent out
* Conference spending policy updates
* The current policy would allow organizers to spend money they haven’t raised yet, which could lead to a loss
* Carlos suggested to approve two complementary budgets
* a part that can only be spent if raised
* a part that can be spent even if not raised, to make sure the conference happens
* Organizers are expected to make a profit, but a small loss would not be a problem
* The main goal should be to make a good conference
* How does the organizers forecast the amount they’ll raise?
* How does the newly appointed sponsorship committee tie in with that?
* Coordination between the two is expected
* VOTE: approve new policy with 2 budgets for conferences (minimal + extras depending on money raised)
+1 Carlos, -1 Allan, Meg. Abstained: Alexandre. VOTE DOESN’T PASS
* VOTE: conference organizers should be required to have a new budget approved by the board if they raised less than 70% of their budgeted income
+1 Allan, Meg, Abstained: Carlos, Alexandre. VOTE PASSED
* 70% by what time? The problem is that conferences often don't know what their income is going to be until very late - sponsors are often confirmed at the last minute.
* VOTE: invalidate the previously passed vote (let's give this more time to see if we can find a good solution)
+1 Alexandre, Allan, Carlos, Abstained: Meg. VOTE PASSED
* 20171031 - Neil suggests new rule that allows to limit the loss and gives organizers a bit of leeway, taking into account the evolving nature of account balance
* ACTION: Allan to prepare a new proposal to revisit this at a later meeting
* Privacy campaign funds
* 2016-09-27
* Draft is out for the Board to review and give feedback
* ACTION: Cosimo to try and form a committee to review internship proposals
* 2016-10-26
* We are aiming for an internship round in spring 2017
* 2017-07-26
* Carlos and Zeeshan are taking this over -- the plan is still to do internships
* 2017-10-14
* Name for internships for privacy funds
* If there is no contract it is not technically an internship
* Discussion needs to continue on list
* 2017-10-24
* GSoC are not called internships and there is no contract with the student
* The organising entity also does not have authority over the participants, the project entity does
* Outreachy on the other hand is called internship and there is a contract
* Same kind of relationship
* We could try and reuse the contracts from Outreachy
* ACTION: Zana to get a copy of the contract
* Done
* ACTION: Neil to ask Karen
* 20171031 - Done, karen says steal away.
* ACTION: Carlos to prepare a version for us
* Payment authorization policy
* VOTE: approve the new Payment authorization policy as specified on the private budget wiki page
* +1 Allan, Nuritzi, Carlos, Cosimo, Meg, Alexandre, Zeeshan - VOTE PASSES
* ACTION: Allan to make the page public (with ACL to prevent modifications from anyone else than the board)
* 2017-10-08 - page has been made public but Allan isn't certain what to do about the ACL
* ACTION: Nuritzi to ensure that this is announced to the Foundation
* Intention to create marketing committee
* To dispense money for small events and marketing line items
* In the meantime, we would have an individual budget holder
* VOTE: appoint Nuritzi as the temporary budget holder
* +1 Nem con. VOTE PASSES
* There are concerns about the correct course of action.
* ACTION: Nuritzi to come up with a charter for the proposed committee
* Zazzle store
* We have a link on the page where we list vendors
* Andreas confirmed that Stormy is the one with access
* ACTION: Allan to try to reach out to Stormy
* 2017-10-08 - Allan got in touch with Stormy and got some login information, but he still can't access the account. More followup is required.
* ACTION: Nuritzi to assess the quality and check whether we want to continue using them
* Using TransferWise or some other payment system
* This has been recommended to us as a good alternative to Paypal that is cheaper and works in certain countries where Paypal does not work
* 2017-09-19
* Since Rosanna and Neil would be the main users of this, a good next step would be for them to review options and report to the Board
* ACTION: Neil will look into this and coordinate with Rosanna when she's back
* 2017-10-08
* This is now set up
* Need to put this into travel sponsorship form
* ACTION: Alexandre to talk to the travel committee to add this to the options
* ACTION: Nuritzi to add this option to the small events reimbursement page
* ACTION: Rosanna to test if it works well
* 2017-10-24 - DONE. Tested two separate payments that both went through
* ACTION: Nuritzi to announce it to foundation-list
* Looking for sponsorship for GitLab runners
* To increase our Continuous Integration capacity on the GNOME GitLab server, we'll need to provision some more servers, as we migrate more projects there
* We could ask for help to our Advisory Board, or use our network to ask for support from other companies
* It would make more sense to ask for hardware/cycles directly, rather than fundraising, since server bandwidth is a recurring cost
* 2017-10-08
* Neil is waiting for verification before this can proceed further
* 2017-10-31 - we're verified! Neil to talk to sysadmin
* ACTION: Neil to talk with Andrea Veri about this
* ACTION: once done, Neil to announce it
* Calls with committees
* Twice a year with each committee, once after the board elections (end June/early July and then late November-early January).
* The call is a touch point - a way of checking in. Needs to stimulate ongoing conversations and ad hoc problem solving. Committees will be invited to calls with the whole Board to problem solve around specific things.
* One board member and the ED meet with each committee (or a board member and the director of operations if there's no ED).
* Where possible the same board member should be consistent.
* Board representatives then feed back to the rest of the board.
* 2017-10-08
* First meetings in the sequence to happen in November. Should focus on collaboratively setting goals and identifying issues.
* Once the
* ACTION: Cosimo to meet with the sponsorship committee
* Foundation support for Flathub
* 2017-05-09
* The Board voted to try and use some of our pro-bono counsel time towards the Flathub legal framework, provided our lawyers agree
* ACTION: Neil to connect to Luis
* 2017-05-16 - Exact questions to ask Luis are being worked up
* 2017-06-06 - Questions sent to Luis, being looked at.
* 2017-09-05 - Being passed to Karen now, discussions have stalled a little, Neil chasing up
* 2017-10-08
* Neil and Rob are going to meet Karen at Freenode Live and try to talk about this
* 2017-10-31 - Rob got sent to Indonesia, Neil to set up call with Karen/Rob to discuss
* 2017-11-14 - Prodding email sent
* ACTION: Neil to send another email to Luis and check if he’s available.
* ACTION: Meg to ask Karen whether she can recommend someone
* Hackfest process documentation
* 2017-02-14
* ACTION: Nuritzi to take a stab at updating the documentation for the process to request a hackfest and responsibilities between Board and TC
* 2017-05-02
* Nuritzi will work on this by end of May, check in then
* 2017-09-05: Nuritzi updated the wiki about a week ago but we should go over this in Berlin.
* 2017-10-08
* Part of this was done at the hackfest, we'll need to update the wiki page
* Another part is pending reply from Pam about how an event can use the GNOME wordmark
* ACTION: Nuritzi to update the wiki page, including Alexandre's proposed statement about openness of hackfests
* Friends of GNOME
* 2016-08-10
* ACTION: Allan to get in touch with Tobi and the sysadmin team to migrate the FoG infrastructure over to GNOME
* 2017-03-07
* Allan will pass this on to Neil, and connect him to Tobi
* 2017-04-18 - Neil has CRM working (ish) on the gnome website, we're looking at how to move the PayPal IPN to CiviCRM
* At sysadmin meeting at GUADEC
* 2017-10-31 - Should happen around december
=== Ongoing but stalled ===
'''This section includes items which haven't seen an update in the last 30 days.'''
* Dropping dates in copyright claims on our websites
* 2016-12-06
* ACTION: Alexandre to send an email to foundation-list with a proposal for discussion
* 2016-12-20
* Next step seems to be to reach out to Creative Commons to get advice on what exactly can and should be done
* 2017-01-24
* Alexandre reached out to Creative commons
* 2017-02-28
* Alexandre will try alternative channels
* 2017-05-02
* We got a reply, Alexandre to follow up
* 2017-05-30
* Two options
* Have terms of use on the website that state that linking to a page is sufficient attribution
* Require contributors to assign their attribution to the GNOME Foundation
* Paypal Giving Fund
* Alexandre suggested in december 2015 to get us enrolled in the program
* That would give us exposure. For example Humble bundle allows to direct the charity part of purchases towards any of their participants
* Zana tried to get us in sometime before may 2016, we never heard back.
* 2016-09-06
* ACTION: Zana to look into it
=== Ongoing but no director assigned ===
'''This section includes items which haven't seen an update in the last 30 days and have no Director assigned'''
== Nice to have ==
'''This section includes items which we would love to see happen at some point but lack the time to effectively become reality'''
* Contract template for future use organizations for which we handle money
* Kat to draft this
* Alexandre took over
* 2017-07-26
* This is close to being done
* Privacy policy for GNOME services
* Sysadmin Team's NDA should also be covered when dealing with this item
* Kat or Allan to write up the policy
* Kat or Allan to write up recommended wording for distribution privacy policies, regarding the behaviour of GNOME software
* 2017-07-26
* Allan is still working on this, but with low priority
== Discussed on the mailing list ==
== Completed actions ==
* Nextcloud shared calendar for the board
* 2016-08-10
* Cosimo tested creating an event, but with mixed results
* ACTION: Cosimo to take it on from here
* 2017-03-07
* Neil is looking into a similar calendar so will take over
* 2017-07-26
* (Neil) can someone else have this? Alexandre volunteers. #challengeaccepted
* 2017-08-19
* Alexandre tested the shared calendar that Allan set up a while back on nextcloud, seems to work well
* We are entering beta phase with some directors opting in
* 2017-10-31
* Positive feedback from those who used it
* Would be used for meetings (to avoid e.g. people getting off because of DST), away time, reminders (e.g. call for GUADEC bids)
* 2017-11-07
* It's up and running and we should use it.
* Add things like time that you'll be away, recurring events like renewals and trademark filings, AdBoard meetings, etc.
* Julita’s new programme
* Programme to get students ready for outreach programme applications
* Budget request for $? for 3 events
* We should probably approve a budget for the whole programme, 6 events
* To be taken out of the GNOME events budget, held by Nuritzi
* Questions collected on the list
* Reviving Free Software Macedonia
* Zeeshan met with Jovanka Gulicoska
* The activity has come to a halt for lack of funding
* Seems to fall under our GNOME events budget, deferred to budget holder
* Budget for FY2018
* VOTE: approve the budget as presented by Neil
* +1 Unanimous. VOTE PASSES
* ACTION: Neil to communicate with Shaun
* ACTION: Neil to put the budget spreadsheet into
cloud.gnome.org and link to it from appropriate places, including a written version of the reserves policy
* 2017-11-14: Done!
