Minutes, August 21, 2008

Plone Foundation board minutes

Present: Jon Stahl, Joel Burton, Steve McMahon, Geir Baekholt, Darci Hanning, Alex Limi

Absent: Nate Aune

 

Housekeeping

 

Darci called the meeting to order at 12:07 PM PDT.

Jon moved to approve August 7 minutes

Darci seconded.

Unanimously approved.

 

Officer reports

Darci: DC tax exempt paperwork submitted.

 

New Business

  • Discuss/Decide: "Practical Plone / Foundation Royalties" proposal by Martin. See: Martin's email, Aug 17. 

    Jon: need to link here

    .

    • Steve, Jon, Darci are authors, and so recused themselves from voting.
    • Jon reported that Toby doesn't see any blocking administrative/operational issues.
    • Joel emphasized the importance of making it clear that we are open to considering similar proposals in the future, in order to avoid any perception of favoritism or "special blessing" for this book.
    • Geir observed that this is a great example of how the Foundation can support community documentation work by playing a facilitative role.
    • General agreement to structure this so that the foundation doesn't take financial risk.
    • Joel moved to communicate to Martin that the board is willing to authorize an arrangement where we will distribute money received from Packt to boook authors.  We are not able to forward money in advance of receiving it from Packt.  Subject to Toby's reviewing the final proposal for any tax issues.
    • Geir seconded.
    • Geir, Joel and Alex voted in favor.
    • Nate Aune was unable to attend, but sent in a proxy vote via email in favor of pursuing Martin's proposal.
    • Motion carried, 4-0, with 3 abstentions.
  • Discuss/Decide: plone.net hosting proposal by Pilot Systems. See: Jon's email, Aug 8, "New hosting proposal for plone.net by Pilot Systems" and

    http://www.openplans.org/projects/plonenet/pilotsystemshostingproposal

    • We would like shared LDAP authentication to work if at all possible.  Let's discuss if it proves infeasible for some reason.
    • Steve: would be nice to sign an MOU at the conference.
    • Jon  moved to pursue moving Plone.net to hosting with Pilot Systems, subject to negotiating an MOU with Pilot Systems.
    • Joel seconded.
    • Unanimously approved.
    • Jon will follow up.
  • Discuss/Decide: plone.org hosting proposal by Six Feet Up (if made available before the meeting) and plone.org hosting issues in general. See Steve's email/PDF and Jon's last response, dated Aug 18, "

    Plone.Org hardware/management discussion".

    • Geir: Calvin will only propose to host Plone.org the site, leave SVN, lists, etc. on the current server that is at OSU.

    • Joel: we should make an agreement to review any arrangement periodically.  General agreement that this should be a feature of an MOU.

    • Steve will carry this forward to the admins team and continue liasing with 6FeetUp.

  • Follow-up action: Python Software Foundation is discussing 2010 conference date, possibly considering the month of October. Can we coordinate in advance to avoid a huge conflict?
  • Jon: followed up with PSF via email, turns out they are not planning to move the conference to October.  False alarm. Thanks to Chris Calloway for the vigilance and heads-up, though!
  • Discuss/Decide: any follow-up needed regarding commercial software listed on plone.org (in the Products section)?
  • Joel: we have always allowed commercial products.  No motion was advanced to change this.


Old business

 

Conference 2008

  • 145 registrations
  • Videotaping: no clear internal champion. 
    • Needed someone to champion this with DC crew to organize.
    • Joel will talk to Nate and try to get him to lead a volunteer-driven effort.

 

Conference 2009

  • Announcement out, no siginficant action or feedback.