Minutes, January 31, 2008

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

Absent: Nate Aune (traveling)

Summary of Followup tasks


  • Darci to follow up with membership committee on process
  • Geir to followup with Paul to see if he has reasons to use Dave for licensing issues, and then to task the IP Committee with documenting legal roles & responsibilities for Dave appropriately.
  • Jon to contact hector about plone.mx
  • Joel to draft email and process w/r/t conference bids.
  • Joel with draft a motion to recognize Security Team as an official workgroup.
  • Jon to respond to spanish folks about translating plone.org content.
  • Darci to decline request to archive plone IRC channels, per email discussion.

 

 

Followup tasks from last meeting

  • Geir will talk to committee about David covering TM issues, SFLC should cover licensing issues.
  • Nate will work on getting additional marketing material ready for the summit [?]
  • Nate and Alex will consolidate and make sure the marketing mailing lists are operating the way we want [done]
  • Alex is securing a place to stay for the participants at the summit [done]
  • Alex will send mail that he's managing the transportation needs and how to get to SF, etc [done]
  • Jon to contact companies for feedback on sponsorship plan [deferred until after PSPS]
  • Jon will contact Xavier regarding use of PloneGov [done]
  • Nate prepared a process for sprint funds for review, will send to lists once ready [done]
  • Jon will contact Hector about plone.mx
  • Joel will create a general recommendation for country-specific Plone sites [done]

 

Routine Housekeeping

Darci called the meeting to order

Jon moved to approve the January 17 minutes, thanks to Alex for filling.  SteveM seconded, unanimously approved

 

Committee, Project Committee, and Workgroup Reports


Membership Committee (Darci)

Will be following up with membership folks this weekend, to talk about membership approval process, assisted by Geir.

 

Trademark & IP Committee (Geir)

Web page has been updated, Geir still checking on apparently-orphaned page.

No reported action on potential infringements, Paul & Dave are looking into them.  Geir has spoken with Paul about whether Dave Powsner is covering licensing issues (in addition to trademark).  Paul would like to use Dave more, but admits that the line is currently unclear.  We need to discuss more about how we want to work with him and document the roles & responsibilities.

Joel pointed out that our relationship with SFLC is strong, and we don't really need additional assistance on licensing issues.  Geir thinks that Paul may be a bit misinformed here.

The board agreed that our desire is for SFLC to continue covering licensing issues, with Dave Powsner to cover trademark issues.  Geir to followup with Paul to see if he has different desires, and then document appropriately.

Joel sent a draft of a policy for approving country-specific Plone domains.  Joel moved to adopt the policy as written with an amendment to the effect that we will discuss on a case-by-case basis whether to have the Plone Foundation, the individual, or a friendly third-party like Zea Partners own the domain.

 

 

Draft policy for country-specific Plone domains

1) The Foundation is, in general, happy to see "country-specific" Plone sites

(eg, www.plone.uk)

2) These domain names can be registered by companies/groups/individuals as a

special exemption to our trademark regulations, if the following conditions

are met.

3) The domain must be discussed in advance with the Foundation and receive the

approval of the Foundation board.

4) The domain must be used for sites about Plone (it may also include general

information about web design, CSS/HTML, Zope, Python, and related

technologies in our stack).

5) The domain must be essentially noncommercial. It must not be a "company"

site, or be used to drive sales traffic to one company or a group of

companies. Of course, the company/group/individual registering the domain is

putting a good deal of work (& possibly, money) into the venture, and may

give themselves appropriate credit. Examples of appropriate credit would be:

5a) a link in the footer of pages to a company site

5b) a company logo in the footer

5c) a "thanks" or "credit" page with links and company logos

Inappropriate credit examples would be (not a comprehensive list):

5d) a "contact us" form that goes to a company or group of companies for

mining for clients

5e) a list of "preferred", "official", or "premier" firms doing Plone work in

that country, unless that list is open to *all* countries doing Plone work.

(Instead, in general, we'd prefer a pointer to plone.net)

6) Nothing in this policy grants permanent exemption to the use of the Plone

domain name. In the future, the Foundation reserves the right to modify our

policies regarding use of "country-specific" Plone domains.

 

Darci seconded.

Unanimously approved.

 

Marketing Committee (Alex, subbing for Nate)

 

Alex: we have the new Plone logo up

http://plone.org/about/logo!

 

 

Bylaws Workgroup (Joel)

Joel: I'm drowning in email w/r/t membership committee; having trouble keeping up.

Darci suggested leaving membership issues for last.

 

Strategic Planning Workgroup (Jon & Alex)

Jon & Alex: things are coming.

Jon moved to approve the proposed PSPS scholarship scheme, with the amendment that we'll fund Xavier at $1400 instead of $900.

Joel seconded.

Unanimously approved.

 


 

New Business


2008 Conference Planning

Geir: takes a lot of time to go through the past conference bid process.

Joel offered explanation for past process.  Goal was to combine community input with board input into strategy.

General desire to have community input.

Process:

  • Call for proposals - due ____
  • Community vote to winnow
  • Announce top 3
  • Let board select

 

There was general agreement that we'd like to see the Foundation receive 10% of paid seat registrations, in recognition of our role in helping promote and market the conference.

Joel will draft a schedule and an email.

In 2007:

 

> Feb 28   - All proposals due

> March 5  - Proposals narrowed to a manageable list of finalists, 

> usually three. Voting begins. Foundation members all get a vote 

> among the list of finalists.

> March 9  - Voting ends

> March 10 - Winner announced.

 

Building the Plone.org Team

We'll take this up with Wichert in person next week in California

 

Security Team on Plone.org

Done, per alex. Joel with draft a motion to recognize them as an official workgroup.


Translating of Plone.org content into Spanish

Per email request.

This raises the question of Plone.org content policy. 

We discussed our desire to assert a non-exclusive copyright for the PF in Plone.org materials and to license such materials under an appropriate license (likely a Creative Commons license).  Steve will take this input and bring forward a proposal for discussion.

In the meantime, Jon will contact the Spanish folks and tell them to proceed, subject to terms that we'll get to them in about six weeks.

 

Authorization of admin payment to Zea Partners

Per email from Xavier Heymans, we've received an invoice from Zea for $2500 for their services as our official reprsentative in Europe. 


Jon moved to approve payment

Darci seconded.

Unanimiously approve


Jon to inform Toby.

 

Next meeting


  • Next scheduled meeting: Feb. 13, 2008.