Meeting Minutes Published - March 29th, 2011

The meeting minutes for the March 29th GNOME Foundation board
meeting is now published.  Refer here:

              http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20110329

Other past board meetings are archived here:

              http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes

-- text of the latest minutes follows --

Minutes for Meeting of March 29th, 2011

Next Meeting

     * April 11th, 2011

Attending

     * Andreas Nilsson
     * Bastien Nocera
     * Brian Cameron
     * Emily Chen
     * Germán Póo-Caamaño
     * Og Maciel
     * Paul Cutler
     * Rosanna Yuen

Regrets

Missing

Recurring Items

     * Review past action items.
     * Did each person update their action items?
     * Approve and make sure that minutes of last meeting were published
       to foundation-announce and foundation-list.
     * Make sure to use gobby server for better minute taking.

New Items

     * On February 16th, Joanmarie Diggs asked if the GNOME a11y PayPal
       account can be used to receive GNOME a11y funds.
           o The main issue is that The GNOME Foundation does not have
             the staff to handle the accounting. Currently all PayPal
             transactions are handled manually. If this could be
             automated, this would make it more possible to consider
             this sort of request.
           o Perhaps The GNOME Foundation needs to find volunteers or
             hire people to help with accounting or to automate PayPal &
             CRM automation.
           o ACTION: Paul - Will write a response to Joanie Diggs to
             discuss how to move forward regarding receiving GNOME a11y
             funds.

     * There has also been discussion about whether GNOME projects
       should be allowed to join Conservancy.
           o Andreas, Bastien, Paul: -1
           o Emily, German, Og, Paul: 0
           o ACTION: Brian - Will follow up with the lawyers to discuss
             what would be involved to provide liability protection like
             what the Conservancy provides and to see if they have any
             perspective about whether the GNOME Foundation should allow
             GNOME projects to join Conservancy.
           o ACTION: Paul & Andreas - Will raise their concerns allowing
             GNOME projects joining the Conservancy.

     * CiviCRM Improvements
           o The board decided to approve $1,000 (USD) to improve the
             CiviCRM, as Rosanna requested.
           o ACTION: Og - Will notify Rosanna that $1,000 (USD) to
             improve CiviCRM has been approved.

     * GNOME 3 release!
           o Andreas feels that the GNOME 3 release is solid.

     * GNOME.Asia (Brian, Andreas, or Emily - update)
           o Lots of good work getting done on marketing, the release
             team, improving websites, fixing bugs.
           o Everybody in Bangalore is excited about the Hackfest.
           o The entrance admission has been eliminated, so the number
             of participants is naturally increasing.
           o The event is profitable even though there is no longer an
             entrance fee.

     * GNOME 3 Launch Party Update
           o Some parties have had trouble receiving the goodies due to
             tax issues.
           o Alan & Emily are planning a GNOME 3 Launch Party photo
             competition.
           o The board decided to return the $700 (USD) surplus to The
             GNOME Foundation bank account.

     * Johannes Schmid informed the board that at the Toronto hackfest
       that they discussed about an organization that decided to use Qt
       instead of GTK+ mainly because they were able to get a support
       contract for Qt. Therefore we thought it might be a good idea to
       give interested companies a chance to present themselves as
       commercial support options on developer.gnome.org. Perhaps via
       some "Get support" link. Do we have any response?
           o ACTION: Andreas - Will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing
             support contracts for GTK+.

     * Improve news.gnome.org
           o ACTION: Andreas - Will look into planet.gnome.org header to
             see if we can add a link to see news.gnome.org. This will
             help more readers to hopefully notice IRC meeting.

     * Continuing to work towards improving relationships with
       Canonical.

Completed Actions

     * Bastien - To e-mail Murray about contacting UPS one more time
       regarding the lost Event Box.
     * Bastien - Will help find a home for the European Event Box.
     * Emily - Create a PO in Oracle and transfer the gold sponsorship
       from Oracle to GNOME.Asia Summit 2011 (Done, in process)
     * Emily - Produce, Deliver and Tracking goodies for GNOME 3.0
       Launch Parties.(Done)
     * Emily - Prepare to launch the GNOME Store in Beijing
           o http://gnome.taobao.com/
     * Og - Will notify Rosanna that $1,000 (USD) to improve CiviCRM has
       been approved. This new action item was completed shortly after
       the meeting.

Status of action items

     * Andreas - Will follow up with Andrew Savory from LiMo to see if
       relevant information from their GTK+ study can be made more
       public. (will ping again).
     * Andreas - To ask Kat if she can reach out to the
       [email protected] mailing list about finding local German
       volunteers to help with the Desktop Summit 2011. (will ping again)
     * Andreas - Will look into the possibility of a Desktop Summit
       design where the facade is more neutral.
     * Andreas - Will blog a Desktop Summit status report.
     * Bastien - Will try to find people who can consolidate the
       feedback about the Texas Instruments Zoom2 device to provide back
       to Texas Instruments.
     * Bastien - Will take over the internal review process task from
       Diego Urrelo (hopefully he can automate it).
     * Bastien - To find a way to automate the process of exporting
       results from internal review process and email it to the board.
     * Bastien - To discuss the use of badges (a-la Creative Commons,
       last.fm page colors, or PSN badges).
     * Bastien - To talk to Olav Vitters about using bugzilla to track
       Friends of GNOME post card sending.
     * Bastien - To get _a_ WebOS/Palm contact from Lennart Poettering.
     * Bastien - To contact the BBC to discuss about possible
       collaboration in working directly with GNOME.
     * Bastien - Will reach out to Dave Richards from the City of Largo
       to plan for a hackfest there.
     * Bastien - To e-mail GIMP about changing their website, and
       procedure for donating.
     * Bastien - Reach out to the GNOME Advisory Board via email to see
       if they can help out with providing contacts at Yahoo.
     * Brian - Develop trademark usage forms for common use cases. James
       Vasile from legal is working with Brian on this.
     * Brian - Check records of organizations with existing contracts to
       use the GNOME trademark. Taken over from Vincent Untz. Look at
       the archives in 2005 and try to determine which companies can use
       the GNOME trademark. Know what kind of contracts we had with
       them. Taken over from Jorge.
     * Brian - Will finalize marketing contract with Allan Day and
       Sumana Harihareswara.
     * Emily - Follow by email about vote for the options for how to
       spend additional money after produced GNOME 3.0 Goodies.
     * Emily - Update Tracking ID for 112 Launch Party Packages.
       Tracking from
           o 
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Am0xSSV8T7asdGlxT2x1R2xiZW45MDhYVGxFdHkwNHc&authkey=CMbDn54C&hl=en#gid=0 

     * Germán - To discuss with GNOME Hispano about them handling GNOME
       Foundation money in Euros (€).
     * Germán - To track if the new method of boletos generates more or
       less money from Brazil.
     * Germán - To have a draft Fiscal Year Budget in October for the
       board to review.
     * Germán - Will provide an updated budget for review that we'll
       plan to send to foundation-list for community review.
     * Germán - Will assist with the GNOME 3 as a Foundation goal task
       and to help in getting the GNOME 3 as a Foundation Goal survey
       topics together. (Handing over to someone else.)
     * Og - Update the blog and planet to highlight that people are
       expected to sign and follow the GNOME Code of Conduct.
           o As per Paul's recommendation, I have emailed Vincent to ask
             him what his idea is for doing this.
           o Still have not heard back from Vincent Untz.
           o Still on ToDo.
     * Og - To look into Google Checkout as an annual payment option for
       FoG.
           o Still on ToDo.
     * Paul - Will send an email to the foundation-list and the gnucash
       list seeking someone to take over the GnuCash automation. Taken
       over from Behdad Esfahbod.
     * Paul - To start work on next 2011 Annual Report ASAP (due start
       FY2012).
     * Paul - Will work with Gil Forcada from guifi.net and gnome-
       marketing to define the best way for organizations like guifi.net
       to participate in the GNOME community. Not many replies from the
       community. Diego Urrelo will draft something more concrete for
       gnome-marketing to determine the best name and process for
       managing this. There was a discussion on the mailing list and a
       few good ideas, Diego will wrap them up and send them again for
       further comments.
     * Paul - Will follow-up with Board to read the Advisory Board fees
       for small businesses proposal, ask for feedback and set a date to
       vote by.
     * Paul - To finish the Privacy Policy, get review from James
       Vasile, etc.
     * Paul - To review Justin's email about updating trademark
       agreements and email the marketing team for feedback.
     * Paul - Will put together an email to Canonical regarding working
       towards improving relations.
     * Paul - Set up a phone call with the right people at Canonical,
       the GNOME Foundation board and/or GNOME release team to discuss
       how to improve relations.
     * Rosanna - Will apply for the GNOME credit card.
     * Rosanna - Automate the process of entering PayPal information
       into GnuCash.

New Action Items

     * Andreas will discuss with Ryan Lortie providing support contracts
       for GTK+.
     * Andreas - Will look into planet.gnome.org header to see if we can
       add a link to see news.gnome.org. This will help more readers to
       hopefully notice IRC meeting.
     * Brian - Will follow up with the lawyers to discuss what would be
       involved to provide liability protection like what the
       Conservancy provides and to see if they have any perspective
       about whether the GNOME Foundation should allow GNOME projects to
       join Conservancy.
     * Paul - Will write a response to Joanie Diggs to discuss how to
       move forward regarding receiving GNOME a11y funds.
     * Paul & Andreas - Will raise their concerns regarding allowing
       GNOME projects joining the Conservancy.

Discussed on the mailing list

     * Meetings
           o Planning for The GNOME Foundation IRC Meeting on March
             23rd.

     * Legal
           o Preparing contracts for the two GNOME Marketing
             contractors.

     * Events
           o Planning for GNOME.Asia 3.0 Hackfest/Summit.
           o Planning for GNOME 3.0 Launch Parties
           o Discussions with Ben Konrath about planning more of a GNOME
             presence at African free software events.

     * Event Box
           o Robert McQueen agreed to have Collabora host the event
             boxes in Cambridge. Dorée Carrier will be the contact
             handling shipping.
           o Eitan Isaacson notified the board that he purchased missing
             cables and a new kb/mouse for the GNOME Event Box and asked
             for reimbursement of $89.13 (USD).

     * Programs
           o The GNOME Foundation notified the Women's Outreach Program
             leaders that an additional $1,500 (USD) was allocated to
             match what Google is providing to students in the GSoC
             program.

     * Miscellaneous
           o Discussion about preparing a GNOME 3.0 LiveCD/DVD.
           o Having ongoing discussions with Canonical regarding
             improving relationships.
           o The board agreed to reward borschty and juhaz with t-shirts
             for their excellent work in monitoring #gnome on freenode.
           o Johannes Schmid informed the board that at the Toronto
             hackfest that they discussed about an organization that
             decided to use Qt instead of GTK+ mainly because they were
             able to get a support contract for Qt. Therefore we thought
             it might be a good idea to give interested companies a
             chance to present themselves as commercial support options
             on developer.gnome.org. Perhaps via some "Get support"
             link.