Plone Foundation Board Minutes May 15, 2025

Call to Order

• Meeting started at 20:04

Attendance

• Present: Rafahela Bazzanella, Eric Brehault, Brian Davis, Mikel Larreategi, Martin Peeters, and Guido Stevens
• Excused: João Henrique Gouveia

Approval of the minutes of

• May 1, 2025: Mikel motions to approve. Eric seconds. All in favor. Guido and Eric obstain.

Action items

• Mikel contacted AI/SysAdmin team.
• Martin discussed AI Policy with Steering Circle.

Incoming Correspondence

• Emails from pypi
• License on icalendar on collective organization
• Thank you to a very gracious new sponsorship on Github!
• Buffer costs

New Business

• plone-board mailing list
• Mailman needs moderation. But when we did tests last time, we didn't receive anything on the mailing list.
• Mikel: I contacted AI/Sysadmin team
• Our email is connected to mailman and not hosted by us. Instead hosted by OSUOSL. Filter notifications go to Martin.
• However, we have other filtering in some layer of Google Workspace that blocks some emails.
• Suggestion was we move the mailing list out of this service.
• Martin: Could we move everything to Google Workspace?
• Mikel: Yes there is a benefit to having everything in one place and also because we are losing emails. I will report about EricB's missing email. However, I am not sure how to access Google Workspace admin.
• Martin: In Google there is no password, because its connected to user accounts. Martin has admin access and can give admin access to others.
• Mikel: Great, I have experience with Google workspace and will check for spam blocking or anything that is causing issues.
• Martin to add Mikel as admin in Google Workspace.
• We are the only active Plone mailman list. Everything is on Google Workspace except the board mailing list.
• Buffer costs
• Considering the cost exceeds the premium sponsorship rate for small firms, this is fine.
• Brian: There are 22 channels. Most are necessary. Recommend cleaning up any unused channels to reduce cost.
• Guido: This is a marketing expense that is enabled by a sponsorship, so that should be clear in the annual report. We should make it known, so the benefit is seen by the community.
• We will grant this sponsorship in exchange for the service. No formal vote needed. Martin to contact Erico.
• Plone Licensing question https://github.com/collective/icalendar/issues/2
• MIT for js, GPLv2 for python, but icalendar is bsd-2-clause
• If it's in the Collective, there is no concern. But if it's in Plone, we do care because the license is not the same.
• The concern is that icalendar says it is copyright by the Plone Foundation. But it was not copyrighted by the Foundation, just someone who attributed to us. And the contributor agreement wasn't followed, so the Foundation is not in a position to relicense the code.
• Guido: The misunderstanding here is not realizing that copyright is separate from licensing.
• GPL can freely use BSD, but BSD cannot freely use GPL.
• The contributor agreement is to put us in a position to sue others for violations or do relicensing if we want to.
• We are not the sole copyright owners of icalendar, but there are no restrictions on whether we are allowed to link to it, so its not a concern to us.
• The inquiry assumes there is no proper licensing in place because there's no contributor agreement enforced. That's the error. Guido will reply.
• Mikel: I'm noticing that it was GPL in 2005 and later moved to BSD.
• Guido: Unless all copyright owners agree, you can't do that. But again, it's not our problem to manage this.
• Sprint funding request and payment process
• Should we requests receipts?
• Martin: This is not required if we have an invoice, but may be better to avoid any problem. ie. We cannot pay for alcohol.
• Eric: It is my understanding that it is a long-standing rule that sprint organizers should send receipts.
• Invoice for Alpine City Sprint
• Since it's over-budget, we need a request for budget allocation increase.
• Considering the catering, it could potentially include alcohol, but not sure without receipts.
• As the Foundation, per the rules, we pay what we legally can pay.
• So we need a new request to increase budget that includes receipts without alcohol. Guido will contact and cc: treasurer
• Let's wait to vote on an increase in budget allocation until we hear back.
• Plone Trademark Renewal
• Email from April 10 about EU/UK trademark is legit. Martin recognizes the company. We have until June 26, 2025.
• We will renew for 10 years. Martin will ask them to remove SteveM and put Board as the owner of the trademark.
• Additionally, we have multiple trademarks in the US due for renewal in 2026.
• The problem is that there are duplicate trademarks owned by different people.
• So we will need to have a look at that next year.
• Guido: Did we budget for this cost? Martin: No, it will need to be added.
• Guido moves to budget 2070 EU to cover EU/UK trademark renewal. Martin seconds. All in favor.

Continued Business

• GSOC 2025
• 3 projects: 1 mentored by Jens, 1 by E.S. Tyrer, 1 by Rafael (2nded by Tisha)
• Small issue with application in assigning E.S., but now its fixed.
• Students received their welcome emails.
• Haven't announced invitations to PloneConf. We should discuss it first and make sure everyone agrees.
• We will be very clear about maximum budget for travel expenses.
• Can we offer housing?
• Mikel: It's been discussed in previous meetings. Please write directly to Rikupekka and discuss with him.
• What was done in previous years? Sometimes it is handled by the Foundation, sometimes by the Conference organizers. Depends on the year.
• Room-sharing possibilities depend on gender. At this point, we only have nicknames.
• Do we know home country for the visa?
• Not entirely sure. 1 is US, 2 others need to confirm. But would like to get the visa process started ASAP.
• The travel expense budget is 1.5k per student, but that is subject to change.
• Plone Conference 2025
• Mikel: Only discussion last week was on invoicing. No other updates.
• Rikupekka agreed to facilitate sponsorship via the offered transaction channels.
• New Treasurer
• Martin contacted Beth and Steve separately. Martin will send official email to both to setup communication between them.
• Big thanks to Beth for continuing to work on this.
• AI Policy
• Long discussion at the Steering Circle (took up 40 of 60 minutes).
• Main takeaways were:
• Should not be overly complex
• Difficult to enforce
• AI is everchanging
• New concerns were raised about using AI in discussion threads:
• Community is a place for humans to talk. AI should not be used to answer questions on community.plone/Github/Discord.
• However, there are different types of AI like Grammarly that help you improve wording and that seems okay.
• General consensus:
• Plone shouldn't be overly strict for/against AI.
• Especially if we want to promote Plone LLM integration in the future.
• Rather we should be open to the good and flag the concerns along the way.
• Action items from the meeting:
• Board to start writing a brief general guideline of rules and invite the community to collaborate. When new things happen, we will add more.
• Let's start a document on Quaive. Then later we will transfer to GDocs. Mikel will create on Quaive and share the link.
• Zope Foundation Funds
• No news.

Review Ongoing

• Mikel: Have received postive responses from potential candidates for the next board cycle.
• Salamina dates announced - https://community.plone.org/t/salamina-sprint-2025-ferrara-italy/22039
• Brian: Tomorrow is May Plone Tune-Up Day. Astrid will be hosting an AMA with Eric B.
• Brian: Marketing/Doc Teams are improving the Plone Organization Profile and Community Health Files on Github.
• Martin: New treasurer Steve will join us at the next board meeting to discuss managing different currencies.
• Is there any rule against the treasuer attending board meetings? No, but it's a non-voting position.
• Maybe quarterly or time-to-time for updates? Yes, that would be good for things like budget reviews, but it's volunteer.
• Discussed PloneConf tickets purchasing.

Adjournment

• Guido motions to adjourn. Martin seconds. All in favor.
• Adjourned at 21:20