OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Quorum reached and meeting called to order at 08:07 am PT.

Attendees

Board Members

1. Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
2. Mr. Ken Coar, Director
3. Ms. Danese Cooper, Treasurer
4. Mr. Harshad Gune, Director (by IRC)
5. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Director
6. Mr. Russell Nelson, Director (joined at 9:30 PST)
7. Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Director (by IRC)
8. Mr. Andrew Oliver, Director
9. Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director

Guests and Observers

1. Mr. Simon Phipps, Board Observer

Expected, but Not Present

1. Mr. Ernest Prabhakar, Board Observer
2. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel
3. Mr. Merrill Freund (Schwartz Communications)

Sent Regrets

1. Mr. Bdale Garbee, Board Observer
2. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Secretary

Agenda

1. Minutes Review and Approval
2. Officer Reports
3. Committee Reports
4. Old Business
5. New Business
6. Motions for Consideration by Board
7. Next Board Meeting

Minutes Review and Approval

Please review the following minutes as edited for public posting.

December 2, 2009 - Monthly board meeting minutes

Ms. Cooper moved to approve minutes for public posting, Mr. Michlmayr seconded. Motion carried unanimously.

Officer Reports

President's Report:

Mr. Tiemann reports -

My primary task this past month has been the attempted resolution of our legal status, not only for its own sake, but because an extension from the US PTO on our Class 41 trademark filing has now missed the extension deadline, which will consequently incur more expense and delay in our efforts. In hindsight there were so many opportunities for us to do this right and have it not be a problem. We do now positively have our accountants engaged, the accountants and DLA actually talking, and a specific plan to remedy the situation.

I have made progress on arrangements for the OSI Face to Face meeting at the end of February, and expect to report by Friday that all prerequisites (including internet connectivity) have been resolved.

I corresponded with Ms. Sharma about the progress of our hosting of the Open Source Competency Center infrastructure project and look forward to a positive report about that status.

General Counsel's Report:

Mr. Radcliffe reports -

1. I have been working with Karen Copenhaver of the Linux Foundation on opposing the ALI Principles and putting together a conference for lawyers to discuss open source issues such as educating open source projects about the Risk Grid and the Linking Project underway at FSFE; lessons learned from the license proliferation discussion and other phenomena in the open source ecosystem; how FOSS and commercial interests will co-exist and change each other in the longer term; and updates on FOSSBazaar and the SFLC activities. We (DLA Piper) will be co hosting the event on February 10 in our offices (it will be no cost to OSI). We are only charging for food costs.

2. California has recently used the OSI definition to define open source software for California which is now permitted under CA regulations.

Secretary's Report:

Ms. Sharma reports -

• Please review the following board meeting minutes for approval.
  • December 2, 2009 - Monthly board meeting minutes
• Approved board minutes have been posted on opensource.org.
  • November 11, 2009 - Monthly board meeting minutes for November 2009

Treasurer's Report:

Ms. Cooper reports -

• Bank account balances remain unchanged.
• Corporate Status: Ms. Cooper reports that she worked with OSI's accountants and lawyers towards restoration of OSI's corporate status.

Committee Reports

License Committee (Mr. Nelson)

Report submitted by Mr. Nelson to board. However, due to his tardiness at the board meeting, decisions to review licenses was deferred to next meeting.

Membership / Governance Committee (Mr. Oliver)

No report submitted.

Education Committee (Ms. Sharma)

• FLOSS Competency Center infrastructure (Ms. Sharma)

Ms. Sharma reports that she has been working towards setup and configuration of a Drupal based website for the FLOSSCC project. Setup is in progress and is due to be available for review by the FLOSSCC group technical team by January 15.

• Teaching Open Source POSSE initiative (Ms. Sharma)

Ms. Sharma reports that she has been working with the POSSE team at teachingopensource.org to organize a POSSE camp in Silicon Valley. OSI will be a co-organizer of this camp for computer science and information management educators. The team is in the process of finalizing the venue as well as program for the camp. A public announcement will be made as soon as details are finalized. Current details can be found at teachingopensource.org and will also be available from opensource.org.

IT Infrastructure Committee (Ms. Sharma)

Ms. Sharma reports that Mr. Nelson helped her transfer DNS for projects.opensource.org to the new server successfully. She also thanks Mr. Oliver and Mr. Greant for their support in helping solve server login problems.

Old Business

• OSI Legal Status (Mr. Tiemann, Ms. Cooper)

Refer to President's Report.

• Trademark filing follow-up with General Counsel (Mr. Tiemann)

Refer to President's Report.

• OSI Face to Face meeting (Mr. Tiemann)

Dates confirmed are February 26-28, 2010.

• opensource.com and Red Hat follow-up (Ms. Sharma)

Ms. Sharma reports that she has been unable to follow-up with Red Hat due to her travel schedule in December and January. Board discussion without Mr. Tiemann (who has recused himself) about opensource.com pending launch. Mr. Oliver moved that Ms. Cooper be empowered by the Board to again make contact with Red Hat to try to negotiate a suitable OSI presence upon launch of opensource.com. Mr. Nelson seconded. Motion passed unanimously.

• PDF on website for OSI trademark and logo usage agreement (Mr. Michlmayr)

A PDF version of the OSI trademark and logo usage agreement needs to be posted on the OSI website (opensource.org) for the public to access and use as needed. Mr. Michlmayr is to generate the PDF and link it to the trademark and logo usage pages on opensource.org. This activity has been completed.

• OSI Online T-Shirt Shop (Mr. Coar)

Discussion deferred.

• Process for recruiting new board members (Mr. Tiemann)

Ms. Sharma has created a document on OSI's wiki to start the process of gathering recommendations for potential candidates. All board members are requested to add their recommendations to this document.

Discussion about term limits and how to recruit new officers.

New Business

None.

Motions for consideration by the board

• December 2, 2009, monthly board meeting minutes for December 2009

• Motion to approve or reject recommendations of license committee - deferred due to Mr. Nelson's absence.

Next Board Meeting

The next OSI BOD meeting is scheduled for February 3, 2010.

Meeting Adjourned at 09:52 AM PST.