OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, January 7, 2009

January 7, 2009

Quorum reached and meeting called to order 08:08 am PST.

Attendees:

  1. Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
  2. Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary and Treasurer
  3. Mr. Ken Coar, Director
  4. Mr. Harshad Gune, Director
  5. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Director
  6. Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Director
  7. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Director
  8. Mr. Bruno Souza, Director
  9. Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director (joined late)

Guests/observers:

  1. Mr. Ernest Prabhakar, Board Observer (on IRC, left 8:38am PST)

Expected, but Not Present:

  1. Mr. Karl Fogel, Guest
  2. Mr. Bdale Garbee, Board Observer
  3. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel
  4. Mr. Merrill Freund (Schwartz Communications)

Sent Regrets:

  1. Mr. Russell Nelson, Director
  2. Mr. Andrew C. Oliver, Board Observer
  3. Mr. Zak Greant, Board Observer

Agenda:

1. Approval of minutes

Minutes for December 10, 2008 reviewed by Board. Ms. Cooper raised the motion to approve December 10, 2008 minutes as edited for public posting. Approved for posting unanimously.

2. Officer Reports

a) President’s Report:

Mr. Tiemann reported that he continues discussions from IPA about their open source activities. Allyn Taylor says there are no outstanding trademark issues pending. The material we submitted over the summer is still in play and we are free of deadlines.

b) Secretary’s Report:

Ms. Cooper reported on FOSDEM 2009 plans she worked on over the past month. Mr. Tiemann notes that addresses of Record in GuideStar and IRS both need to be updated.

c) Treasurer’s Report:

Ms. Cooper reported on current funding.

d) General Counsel Report:

Mr. Radcliffe reported to the Board that the District Court in San Francisco has denied a preliminary injunction to Jacobsen in this closely watched decision on January 6, 2009. For more information, see his post at http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=141

3. Committee Reports

Licensing Committee

Mr. Nelson not available. Discussion of need to determine a plan to backfill key positions on the Board.

Membership Committee

Ms. Cooper reported on conversation with Ms. Mitchell Baker of Mozilla. Discussion about restarting Membership with an eye to discussion at FOSDEM. Decision to try to hold an informal meeting on January 23rd in the Bay Area and also to notify the OSI charter membership of FOSDEM meetup.

4. Old Business

  • Trademark status and discussion (Mr. Tiemann)

Mr. Tiemann reported back on his conversations with Mr. Allyn Taylor of DLA Piper about the status of our trademark application.

  • Update on ED fundraising (Ms. Cooper)

Ms. Cooper reported on conversation with Ms. Mitchell Baker of Mozilla wherein she confirmed Mozilla’s intent to partially fund ED position.

  • Update on adding OSI Approved License Mark by License Stewards (Mr. Nelson)

Mr. Nelson not present at this meeting.

  • Update on OSI’s Education project (Ms. Sharma)

Ms. Sharma reports that heard back from Mauritius volunteer who said he found the presentation “Open Source 101” useful in his meeting with the director of Mauritius’ National Computer Board. Ms. Sharma also reports that she and Mr. Oliver are scheduled to work further on developing education material later this week. Ms. Sharma also discussed with Mr. Souza how he would like to work on developing materials for this effort. Mr. Oliver, Ms. Nnwaknma, Mr. Souza and Ms. Sharma are active committee members on this project.

  • Update on website cleanup (Ms. Sharma)

Ms. Sharma reports that she is working on a list of tasks that need to be done to update outdated content on opensource.org as well as to outline other areas of improvement. She hopes that this report can be discussed briefly at the F2F meeting coming up in February. Ms. Cooper has sent a ping to Mr. Brian Behlendorf again to discuss hosting transition. Ms. Sharma has contacted OSL.

5. New Business

  • Next Face to Face meeting at FOSDEM discussion

We have a private board room meeting space for the Face-to-Face meetings in Brussels. We have a large public room for OSI’s session on Saturday (12-1pm) at FOSDEM. Further discussion on goals and agenda for February meeting at FOSDEM. Further discussion about this topic can be found on the Board wiki (document: FOSDEM 2009).

  • Guidelines for OSI affiliates to use OSI logo to promote open source events

We need to have some guidelines for usage of OSI’s logo by the global open source community. Mr. Tiemann had talked about using the Fedora project guidelines as a template to formulate these usage guidelines. This task can be part of the agenda at the upcoming Face-to-Face meetings.

Discussion of next steps. Mr. Tiemann will contact DLA Piper lawyers to modify Fedora policy for our uses.

  • Existing Logo Mis-Use

Discussion about starting to use TRAC to notice violations. Mr. Radcliffe has drafted boilerplate notifications. Ms. Sharma noted that Dell Computer is misusing logo. Mr. Michlmayr added that W3C could use some guidelines help.

Ms. Cooper moved that we adjourn meeting. Mr. Tiemann seconded. Motion passed unanimously.

Meeting Adjourned 09:41 PST.