2025-10-17 Board Meeting

Board members: Carlo Piana, Tracy Hinds, Anne-Marie Scott, Catharina Maracke, Josh Berkus, McCoy Smith, Ruth Suehle

Guests: Deb Bryant

Regrets: Sayeed Choudhury, Thierry Carrez, Gael Blondelle, Chris Aniszczyk. Anne Marie available first hour only.

Quorum:

Quorum reached at 11:01 a.m. Eastern US

Agenda and Notes:

Board departure: Justin Colannino

Justin expressed his appreciation and said goodbye to the board as he transitions out Noted that he looks forward to OSI’s future and its importance as a voice for open in an increasingly closed world.

The board discusses the opportunity of creating an “alumni” email address for those who have had email addresses, but are no longer board/staff.

Approval of past minutes

Motion: McCoy moves to approve

Second: Catharina seconds

Anne-Marie and Tracy abstain due to absence.

All others approve.

Anne-Marie presents the Financial Report

• Compared to 24-25, we had one-time big grants last year that we don’t have this year.

This is not a surprise, we knew it was coming, but it does look like a significant drop.

Bringing in sponsorship revenue is vitally important this year. Staff and board members are expected to help close new sponsorship to support this transition phase. The committee also discussed ED salary and compensation ability and more specifically how to incentivize a new ED around fundraising. Anne-Marie begins handing off to McCoy as CFO today. Deb, McCoy, and Phyllis will gather. Officers will work on an interim budget that matches the existing strategy conversations so that we can operate on this budget until we onboard the new ED.

License Committee Business – Josh

Board mailing list discussed request to genericize the BSD-LBNL license. Genericize means to take out proper names and replace with placeholders: the license committee is asking for permission to do this to any license after a request came in to approve a license that was identical to the BSD-LBNL, except for the names of the departments. This is not an ask to genericize all licenses, but in the event that it comes up on license-discuss, then for specific licenses. McCoy notes that SPDX has done a good job with this concept. They have a sophisticated method through font effects/colors of noting these changes.

Motion from Josh:

Authorize the license committee, working with the staff, to genericize any license, without needing an additional board vote.

Second:

Anne-Marie

None opposed.

ED Search Committee update – Ruth

The board discusses how to present the reporting structure to candidates, and more specifically, how the future ED will have to work with the board and more specifically with the officers.

Motion from McCoy:

Board resolves to form a staffing committee for the purpose of running a search, hiring and onboarding of a permanent Executive Director composed of OSI board directors.

Second:

Carlo

All approve.

Deb presents the Operation Update

Sandro and Nick are working on members recruitment and are running a new Membership survey. Deep Dive went well with positive feedback. Should continue this community engagement. All Things Open was also successful; all sessions recorded. Deb talked to several existing and potential sponsors at ATO. We will be hosting policy devroom at FOSDEM, have been asked to cohost DPGA devroom. Staff morale is good. Some anxiety, but very little negativity right now. ATO was good for Nick and Katie to see folks supporting OSI.

Board resolution – Tracy

Motion from Catharina:

To approve the agreement between the board of directors of Oct 3, 2025

Second: Carlo

All approve.

Meeting adjourned at 12:31 p.m. Eastern.