Minutes for Nov 17 2011

Minutes of the Plone Foundation Board of Directors

 

Meeting starts at 22:07 CET

Everybody present for the first meeting of the new Board.

Minutes of the past two meetings

 

Minutes from October 12th, 2011.
The meeting minutes from last Board meeting (oct. 12) were just emailed. Only two members of this Board were on the last Board.Geir moves to approve, Matt seconds. The rest abstains because they were not there. Approved.

Motion to approve minutes from last Annual Membership meeting, November 4th 2011.
Matt moves to approve. Geir seconds. The other Members approve.The rest (Paul, Maurizio, Sjoerd) abstain, because they were not there or not able to vote. Approved.

Election for Officers of the Board.

 

  • President: Sjoerd moves to appoint Matt as President. Seconded by Carol. Unanimous approval.
  • Vicepresident: Matt moves to appoint Carol. Erico seconds. Unanimous approval.
  • Secretary: Matt moves to appoint Paul. Carol seconds. Unanimous approval.
  • Treasurer: Carol reports that Jen Myers at SixFeetUp would be up for it, but the time to be invested is significant. Some form of recognition for this would be in order. The Board will return to this in one of the next meetings.
    Matt moves to elect Jen Myers to act as Treasurer. Carol seconds. Unanimous approval. Jen will take upon her the bookkeeping and financial tasks only; we will have to divide the other tasks that Toby did.

Chair for the Membership Committee:

 

This committee needs to be chaired officially by a Board member, according to the bylaws.
Jon Stahl has indicated that he wants to continue to be an active member of the committee, the Chairperson role will not be a huge time commitment. Matt moves to nominate Maurizio, Geir seconds. Unanimous approval.

Various other tasks:

 

  • Carol volunteers to take care of the voicemail.
  • Carol volunteers to be liaison to the Marketing team.

Old business

 

  • ZEA Indian Trademark Transfer
    The current trademark for Plone in India is owned by (old) ZEA.
    A newer incarnation of ZEA has arisen, but it will not be involved in trademark holding.  Last year's Board approved the transfer of the trademark to the Foundation, at a cost of around 800 euro.
  • Security Announcement Process.
    The Security Team has a document ready to detail the process. It will be published soon.The Announce mailing list has been resurrected by Jon Stahl.
  • Invitation to join OSI.
    OSI is in the process of becoming a membership based organisation. The Plone Foundation has been formally invited to join OSI. The previous Board was in favour of becoming a member; but wat still needs to happen is a consultation of the Members on this. Geir takes upon him to do this.
  • Copyright assignment, github.com/plone and github.com/collective
    Jon Stahl is working on a FAQ for this. Matt will follow up with him.


New Business

 

  • Advisory Board Members
    The Board decides we don't need advisory members at this moment.
  • Steps to be taken for organizing the next conference.
    A call needs to be put out for proposals. Erico volunteers to take this up, and will defer to another Board member if a possible conflict of interest occurs. Matt offers help. Carol will ask Mark to write a news item on this.
  • Liaison for the admin team.
    Matt is appointed to this task, with help from Geir if needed.
  • Contributor agreements.
    This is a role we want to move away from the Treasurer. Digital signatures (as in cryptographic keys) are not acceptible in the USA, but scanned documents are. The Board wants a more streamlined process for it. Sjoerd volunteers to oversee this. Mark and Carol are working on a newsitem on this, to highlight we've had a 10% increase in contributors in the last two weeks.
  • Change of Treasurer.
    The postal address will have to be changed, as well as some financial information. It makes sense to keep it in the USA. Carol volunteers to do this.
  • Web CMS Standard.
    A long time ago Adobe contacted the Foundation about something called the Web CMS Interoperability Standard. Geir has been handling this is in the past. If we want to keep pursuing this, the Foundation would have to join OASIS. That would cost about US$ 1500, and the benefits are not immediately obvious. Also, there is a difference between being a proponent of this standard, or to just implement it when it is ready. We defer this to a future meeting, after more information has been passed around.

 

Financial requests:

 

  • CMS Expo:
    Carol will take this up with the Marketing Team. We need a clearer proposal before we can decide on this. The date of the event is May 2012, so there is some time.
  • MyGOSSCON:
    two consulting firms have asked for support to represent Plone at a leading open source community event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but with impact all over the Asian region. See mygosscon.oscc.org.my/2011/home
    The request is well-detailed, supported by multiple firms, and will represent a good opportunity to promote Plone to a highly receptive audience in Asia. Matt moves to approve US$1000 in support. Geir seconds. Unanimous approval. Matt will take action.
  • Google App Engine:
    During the Sprint in San Francisco, we overran our free quotum for good-py.appspot.com. A kind individual stepped in at that time to foot the bill, but that's not a long term solution. Matt will take this up with Martin Aspeli to confirm an estimate of costs. If it's not much, the Board will pay for it outright; if it's more, we will seek other ways of sponsorship. The idea is launched to facilitate forms of micro-sponsorship for individuals and organisations to the Foundation, not only for this but other running costs.

Various

 

  • Erico volunteers to update the Board information on plone.org.
  • Matt moves to close the meeting. Seconded by Geir. Unanimously approved at 23.40 CET.