November 8, 2022

Patrick Masson

Spring Face to Face Board Meeting Minutes, April 21 & 22, 2016

Quorum

Quorum reached and meeting called to order at 9:17 EDT / 13:17 UTC.

Attendees

Board Members

Allison
Molly
Leslie
Mike
Deb
Zack
Paul
Pat
Italo

Guests

Expected, but Not Present

Sent Regrets

Richard
Josh

Officer Reports

Motion to approve minutes (Patrick), see Motions
Treasurer’s report (Mike), see Appendix A

Board Topics

Year in Review
- Organizational shift to Teams: See Appendix C
  - Review Working Group / Incubator sponsors to ensure no vacancies.
- Membership
Board Officer Elections (President, Treasurer, Asst. Treasurer, Secretary)
- See Motions
- President: Allison Randal
- Treasurer: Mike Milinkovich
- Asst. Treasurer: Molly de Blanc
- Secretary: Patrick Masson
Team Membership
- See Appendix C
Create Fund-raising ~~working group~~ Team
- See Appendix C
Annual Budget
- Action: break down Professional Fees
- Talk about “low-water mark” ($35-50k) and fiscal reserves ($75k)
- What are the processes during the year, if we’re out of line with the budget.
  - Variance analysis, quarterly.
  - Compare spending requests against budget.
  - Plan ahead which conferences we want to target.
- Once budget is approved, GM (with support of communications team) to define spending per budget item (e.g. conferences, marketing, etc.)

Membership Topics

Individual Members

Work with Corporate Sponsors to promote membership drive (blog, links to OSI site).
Make individual membership a focus for 2016?
- Technical issue: civiCRM integration to allow members to login and renew
- Enticements:
  - Discounts for members of Affiliate organizations
- Define motivations for membership, voice what we’re doing and why it’s relevant
  - Free memberships for people who come out of various affinity groups, and intro programs
  - Benefits
- Value proposition:
  - The OSI should be seen as a leader on topics of interest to the community.
  - This is an expansion from the OSI’s original mission as the canonical license steward.
  - There is agreement in “promoting and protecting” open source: our mandate, is where we should focus in this area.
  - We should be sure to engage in a supportive manner.
  - We should be sure to promote our work/successes.
- Increasing membership adds to the status/recognition of the org.
- Increase awareness of our membership program
  - blogs (develop a monthly blog).
  - invitations to join at the end of communications
  - promotions
- Makes elections less “game-able”
- location specific fees, discounts through regional events
- tiers?
Create a volunteer position to help manage this
Multi-org membership “passes”

Affiliate Members

Measure how much we engage with Affiliates, low traffic list (goal of increasing engagement)
Messaging for Affiliates and benefits to their org
- Original reason was support for OSD, OSI mission, lending their name in support
- Or, to promote their own open source work, as an Affiliate of OSI
Initiatives to recruit new Affiliates
Affiliate conference gathering, around an agenda (e.g. “stamp out fauxpen source kickstarter”)
New benefits
Getting data on retention from SFC + FSF
engage members in volunteering, speaking, etc
2015 engagement
- OSIdeas
- Hackathons (e.g. HackIllinios)
- OSCON Booth
- Newsletter profiles
- Blog posts
- Press releases
- Elections
- Notifications (SF Voting, White House)
- Open Summit
- Educause
Possible future engagement
- Topic-focused event
- OSI (co)sponsored event
- Hosting at OSI booth (OSCON, etc.)
- Collaboration with Conservancy on events

Corporate sponsorship

See https://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Main/OSI+Operations/Development+%26+Fund-raising/
Brainstorm a list, review tomorrow
Having an open source programs office is a good sign of potential interest

Communications Topics

OSCON 2016

Who is attending?
- Deb
- Mike
- Zack
- Leslie
- Patrick
https://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Main/OSI+Operations/2016+OSCON/
Set up interview times
- Purpose: create content from directors + individuals from affiliate orgs
- Editing Video
  - Leslie is going to ask Brian Proffitt at Red Hat about this
  - Brian has confirmed the OSI can use Red Hat’s video equipment, we will get a schedule together for when filming can occur and then begin asking folks to sign up for interviewing slots
Host “drop-in” times at the booth.
- These will be hosted at the OSI Booth with topics based on Director expertise, e.g. Richard on licensing.
- We will also invite OSI Affiliate orgs who do not have booths to schedule a time at the OSI booth.
- Patrick is making a schedule sign at the booth thingie
Advertise volunteer positions at OSCON
- Continue to develop internships
  - market specific projects–volunteer + intern
  - create clear paths to involvement
- Can we offer incentives for volunteering? How did we get Shelly?
  - Driving volunteer interest by mentorship opportunities with individuals on the board
  - Offer opportunities to volunteers with Affiliate members as a way to recruit new volunteers.
Lot’s o’swag: stickers, patches, neck pillow, brochures,
Deb has organized a panel for Thursday afternoon for FLOSS Foundations 101
- Zack will represent OSI on the panel, Deb will moderate

Other

Internationalization of initiatives
- FOSSASIA is a potential vehicle for this, Italo knows Mario Behling and partner
Analysis of efficacy of conferences
- Create short list of objectives for each event
- Create short report out of exhibition
- Objectives for OSCON: how many stickers we gave out, # of attendees at each expert session, # of people who participate in the drawing, # of people at the panel, # of new member sign ups, # of people who visit the booth, # of new affiliate leads/sign ups, # of new corporate sponsor leads / sign ups, # of people who follow up after the event (takes a card and emails us for the month after the event….)
Analysis of efficacy of outreach
- Add to membership sign up – how did you hear about us?
- If you like this policy statement then join us CTA at the end of every post/statement
- Website update to add CTA to join as member on each individual license page
- Make use of Google AdWords budget + Twitter promoted tweets budget – Italo has volunteered to move this work forward
Increase visibility of org blog and individual board members blogs
- Fix the news & events page and merge From the Board (/blog/) with News section into one section….
One post from each board member during the year, one per year
- Yes!
  Hooray! Blog hackathon tomorrow, 22 April, in the afternoon
Keep a list of topics we need to blog about
- See also blog hackathon, above
Friday afternoon 12 topics for the year
- See, this is the blog hackathon
Push notifications to board mailing list
- Weekly email to Board Plus – Please amplify these 3-5 things
  - Global timing – early afternoon EU is the best time slot – works for EU media & US media
Create a press list and decide tooling in communications working group
- Use Italo’s press list as a starting point
Develop an open source / OSI image repository
- Ask Italo and Deb for contributions

The Open Summit

http://opensummits.org/
May 23 at NYU
Apero Foundation, OSI + others
Front-ends ApereoCon, about 500 expected
First ever, hope if it’s successful we’ll do it again
- Look to partner with other/existing events
Interview with Patrick https://opensource.com/open-organization/16/4/open-summit-higher-ed-conference

Email Templates

Take a moment to discuss what email templates we need to house on the wiki for common replies to incoming inquiries
Forward LH all emails that could be useful as templates – ACTION: she will ask for this to happen at start of blog-a-thon tomorrow
LH will take time then and there to get templates on the wiki so this actually gets done
ACTiON: Canned responses need to go live on the wiki, this is a great way to engage volunteers to send out these canned responses

OSI Lists

Assign moderators/admins to replace exiting board members.
- Simon moderated many mailing lists, needs to be replaced
  - Per Patrick this takes hours of work per week to moderate and respond
  - 100 / day from general contact list, not to mention trademarks, press, entities
- Develop standards for roles (if you’re moderating these, what are your responsibilities?)
  - Make up a policy for general volunteers to moderate mailing lists – ACTION: Patrick will compose policy and share with the board for feedback/ratification
  - ACTION: (zack) Change password for mailing lists & pass on to active moderators e.g. Simon
  - ACTION: (zack) Add Italo to moderate press mailing list
- When there is something that deserves a response,
  - Who does that?
    - Deb watches press list carefully and responds ASAP and loops in a BOD member to respond
    - In last month Patrick has responded to 50 incoming inquiries coming in to general OSI response
    - Fontana responds to most incoming legal questions
  - How do we assure it is in line with OSI principles?
    - Templates should allow alignment.
  - How do we take advantage of any opportunities from those?
    - Patrick will send a note to the appropriate team lead or to full board with a request for instruction to proceed / decline by a particular date.
    - For matters that can wait, add the topic to the next team call to surface the matter explicitly or to the next board meeting agenda.
    - Also ping Allison directly via text message or IRC to take a look at a specific message.
    - IRC is a good way to get people to take attention.
    - Add these items to the weekly Top 5 Communications topics to amplify with the “NO REALLY PAY ATTENTION TO THIS”
    - Patrick to add calendar invite for all board members to review this email (or perhaps Taiga board) – 15 minutes, up to BOD member to reschedule specific time but then there’s a time block to do the work
    - Proposal: Use https://taiga.io/ to track action items that need love from the BoardAction: approach about in-kind sponsorship with the OSI –
    - ACTION: Patrick will email them to ask
    - Proposed Action: Create a list of subject matter experts that we feel comfortable consulting for 1st pass talking points / ideas for responses. — decided not to do it

Public statements

As the OSI’s profile increases we are getting more requests for comment/engagement. How will we manage responses, requests?
- Stack Exchange, White House, DRM, etc.
- See above on Patrick’s escalation path to get us to pay attention to needs for input on external comms
- Italo will help with drafting statements
- Contract with Simon to draft OSI statements?
  - No budget, work with Italo on these.
- Use a kanban board resource

20th Anniversary Celebration

What month do we want to start planning, add it to the Timeline
- Feb 3, 2018 is 20th anniversary of founding of the OSI
- Take as a topic for next F2F board meeting
- ACTION: Comms team to collect bucket of ideas / people who would help us / etc to socialize at next F2F

Using Non-FOSS Tools for Community Gatherings

Meetup.com
Eventbrite
Lanyrd (OSI actually has a free account)
Gather a list of tools that we need, compare FOSS alternatives

Default to open source in every case but if we’re using a non-FOSS tool we need to understand precisely why we are compromising. Also ensure that we are making a very clear statement about why we are compromising and that our goal is to create more open tools in this area.

Decided: meetup.com offers great value to us in terms of meeting people where they are and increasing attendance at events, so OK to use it. Eventbrite is just a ticketing tool, so not worth it.

ACTION: Create a statement on why we use the tools we are using, e.g. need to reach communities that need education around open source software. Have statement done so that when we start using the tool then we can point to that. – create as an email template and respond with it if we are asked – Deb will author the statement

ACTION: Approach meetup.com to see if they will offer a free pro account – LH will follow up to request it

Legal Topics

Trademark violations

WUNDERBAR
- Commit to have next version completely open source – OSI must confirm that this is so before they use our logo next time
- Reimburse purchasers of the first version if they request it because of false advertising
- Followed up with our legal counsel – Paul is working on documentation to give to our counsel as evidence in our case; Patrick is grabbing images from Amazon where it was marketed, etc.
- Mike M. knows these folks via Eclipse and will see if he can find someone Senior to talk to at Microelectronica (can become contact for Mark Radcliffe at DLA Piper)
- Patrick will purchase the item with the OSi credit card as part of building our case
OpenCV
- We’ve sent them the first of 3 letters from our lawyer asking them not to infringe on our mark and they sent us a very lawyerly letter in response.
- Started by Intel and now a Russian company with a post box in San Francisco – have a history of strong legal representation vs. regular community project because of initial relationship with Intel.
- Don’t want damages, don’t want them to change their logo – need to understand from lawyer what our options are. Want to make it clear that we care for their interests but need to protect our marks. ACTION: Patrick to follow up with Mark, Allison would like to be on follow up call with OpenCV.
We have three letters drafted for us by Mark Radcliffe at DLA Piper with various degrees of esclation per letter. The templates are on the wiki under Trademarks -> Trademark Violations. ACTION: Link the above into our communications template index [Note: LH has]

Trademarks updates

Budget impact $5,000
If budget must be found, it will come from our conferences/events budget.

Popular License Page

CDDL is still advertised as popular on our page
What is our process for reviewing license categories?
Also approve the most recent version of CDDL
ACTION: Mike: submit CDDL 1.1 for review
ACTION: add list of projects that use each license

Infrastructure Topics

New platforms?

Simon’s departing gift: ask.opensource.org (https://askbot.com/) to replace several of the mailing list.
- Decision: Not at this time, not enough resources. May consider later.
- No more publicly-notified mail aliases
  - For fiduciary issues, a form on opensource.org that creates Redmine tickets
    - Assign to a Director based on the topic: trademarks, legal, license-review etc
    - New Ombudsman category as a catch-all that is assigned to the GM
    - Needs new license-review process
      - Director verifies request is complete
      - Annoucnes new review submission on a write-only list
      - Discussion happens in redmine ticket
  - For questions, an Askbot forum at ask.opensource.org
    - Could even handle license-discuss, using tagging to alert responders
    - Supervised by a director by run by a volunteer (/me raises hand)
    - Professionally hosted at askbot.com so OSi doesn’t have to
project management tool for identifying, organizing assigning, tracking open issues (taiga.io)–replacement of Redmine?
- Agreed above – ACTION Patrick will follow up to ask for hosted instance as an in-kind sponsored items.
- Experiment with Taiga for Infra too
- ACTION Patrick: Review other current uses of Redmine to see what might migrate

Incubator/Project Topics

Education

Open Source Centers of excellence: many university campuses would like to create open source centers of excellence but lack funding. Would OSI be interested in administering a general fund and application for funding? Donors may be more generous if they know they can give once and not be constantly fielding donation requests, plus this is very much in keeping with our mission.
Target administrators via OSI Educational affiliates, ask them to identify people with institutional authority to represent on an OSI Educational Working Group
- Reach out to Open Source centers, labs, etc
  - FOSS Magic at RIT
  - Oregon State University Open Source Lab
  - HFOSS involved profs/universities (this group no longer ‘meets’ – grant concluded)
- “Provosts chase the grants”
- If we went to potential sponsors with a list of Educational Affiliates we would be stronger in requesting funding
- Deb volunteers to recruit educational affiliates, Molly volunteers to recruit educational affiliates
- ACTION: create educational working group and get approved – Molly & Leslie to co-chair
  - create collateral / funnel for recruiting additional educational affiliates, genericize work Patrick has been doing – action needs owner, will fall out of our convos above

Project Updates

Open source contribution policies for companies: any interest in an OSI working group on open source contribution policies for companies? Related: thread to board list, based on interest from Van Lindbergh. (Related blog post).
- Came from a question from a member who asked for help
- Should we make this part of the Beyond Licensing working group? Yes.
Form a group of volunteers to help with development. Specifically “CRA” considering his connections and we’re losing Mike.
- addressed through fund raising team
Status update on OpenHatch
- Open Hatch board has made a decision to cease operations and is seeking a home for its activities and asests
- Have had casual conversations with board member but have not reported in for a year or more
- Is it possible to Revive OpenHatch, website and campus events
- ACTION: Talk with Asheesh
  - How are they doing with campus events?
  - Can we take over some website hosting? Should we?
- ACTION: Come back with a proposal on Open Hatch + followup
Policy decision based on Open Hatch experience : Fiscal sponsorees must meet their reporting requirements or be advised of suspension of sponsorship
- ACTION: review the fiscal sponsorship agreement and make sure it includes this language.
- ACTION: Review Snowdrift’s agreement and update if needed to include this.
Motion to approve Beyond Licensing as a new WG (see Beyond Licensing Working Group Proposal), see Motions.
Inspiring and engaging with Working Groups
- ACTION: Review of how the Incubator process is doing, what works and what doesn’t. Retrospective in board meeting phone call.
[Infra/Legal topic, postpone] GitLab for diffs, Taiga for tickets?

Review of Timeline

Planning Timeline

Next Board Meeting

Location/Dates of the next F2F board meeting.

Preferably in November
Attached to conference? OSCON Europe
Paris with Paris Open Source Summit (Nov 18-19)
Boston again
Not DC because of presidential elections, maybe Spring 2017
ACTION Allison: Take initial ideas to the list and discuss

The next OSI board meeting is scheduled for May 11, 2016.

Meeting adjourned at 4:12pm EDT / 20:12 UTC.

Motions

Motion (Patrick): Approve and post the meeting minutes of March 18, 2016.
Second (Leslie).
Discussion:
Vote: 3 Yes; 0 No; 6 Abstain.

Motion (Mike): Appoint Allison Randal as the 2016 – 2017 President
Second: (Paul).
Discussion: Much thanks for Allison’s continuing commitment.
Vote: 9 Yes; 0 No; 0 Abstain

Motion (Patrick): Appoint Mike Milinkovich as the 2016 – 2017 Treasurer
Second (Deb).
Discussion: Wanted to be clear that this his last year, in order to ensure transitional year.
Vote: 9 Yes; 0 No; 0 Abstain

Motion (Zack): Appoint Molly de Blanc as the 2016 – 2017 Assistant Treasurer
Second (Mike).
Discussion: Thanked Molly for stepping up and her interest in contributing.
Vote: 9 Yes; 0 No; 0 Abstain

Motion (Allison): Appoint Patrick Masson the 2016 – 2017 Secretary
Second (Zack).
Discussion:
Vote: 9 Yes; 0 No; 0 Abstain

Motion (Allison): Approve the Beyond Licensing Working Group
Second (Leslie).
Discussion: See Proposal https://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Main/Open+Source+Initiative+Working+Groups/Beyond+Licensing+Working+Group+Proposal/
Vote: 9 Yes; 0 No; 0 Abstain

Motion (Deb): Approve the 2016 – 2017 OSI budget as proposed.
Second (Allison).
Discussion:
Vote: 9 Yes; 0 No; 0 Abstain

Appendix A – Treasurer’s Report

Treasurer’s Report For the Month Ending March 31, 2015

Total Assets at Beginning of Period: $72607.60

Income or Sources of Funds:

Contributions: $20263.50
Memberships: $1200.00 (30x $40)
Open Hatch: Received $ 254.60 paid $254.60
Snowdrift: $5600.00
Interest: $1.47

Total Income or Sources of Funds: $15864.97

Expenses or Uses of Funds for Operations:

Payroll: $8970.84
Professional: $349.63
Bank Fees: $95.67
Supplies: $236.15
Postage, Shipping: $8.71
Conferences/Conv: $949.33
Working Groups, Project
Meetings: $1553.63
Website Hosting: $
Paypal: $52.17

Total Expenses or Uses of Funds for Operations: $12216.03

Total Assets at End of Period: $76256.54

Major Contributions 2016:

Previous Sponsor: $25000 (received 02/10/16)
Previous Sponsor: $20000 (invoiced 01/11/16)
Although this previous sponsor was included in previous reports showing a payment in February Jane can’t see where the current invoice has been paid.
Previous Sponsor: $20000 (invoiced 12/09/15 received 02/10/16)
New Sponsor: $5000 (invoiced 12/07/15)
New Sponsor: $7500 (invoiced 12/14/15 paid 02/10/16)
New Sponsor:: $20000 (invoiced 3/3/16 paid 03/07/16)
Outstanding Sponsor: $25,000
Outstanding Sponsor: $5,000
Outstanding Sponsor: $2,500
Outstanding Sponsor: $4,500
Outstanding Sponsor: $20,000
Outstanding Sponsor: $1,000
Outstanding Sponsor: $5,000
Outstanding Sponsor: $2,500

Appendix B – Team Reports

Communications Team

Membership Team

Infrastructure Team

Legal Team

Incubator/Projects Team

Appendix C – Updates to Team membership, 2016-2017

Communications Team
- Team lead: Patrick
- Members: Deb, Leslie, Italo, interns
- Responsible for: branding, marketing (Leslie), newsletters, annual reports, Twitter, membership drives, work with PR Firm, press releases, more responsive to requests for public comment

Membership Team
- Team lead: Patrick
- Team Members: Mike, Italo, Molly, Ask Josh
- Responsible for: individual (Molly), affiliate (Italo), corporate (Mike), election communication and membership drive

Infrastructure Team
- Team lead: Zack
- Members: Zack, Paul, Allison, volunteers
- Responsible for: websites, wiki, mailing lists, election voting system

Legal Team
- Team lead: Richard
- Members: Paul, Zack, Allison, Patrick
- Responsible for: license review (Richard, Paul, Allison) , trademark stewardship (Zack, Patrick)

Incubator/Projects Team
- Team lead: Leslie
- Members: Deb, Molly, all board sponsors for working groups
- Responsible for: incubated projects/working groups, promoting working groups to membership, OpenHatch (Paul), public sector (Deb), education-related working groups including FLOSS Desktops and Open Education Summit (Patrick, Molly, Leslie, Italo [Europe, global strategy], Ask Josh), TLDR::legal (Ask Richard), FLOSS Entities WG (Allison), Beyond Licensing WG (Allison), Snowdrift.coop Incubator (Allison)

Fundraising Team
- Team lead: Molly
- Members: Patrick, Mike, Italo, Ask Josh
- Responsible for: overall view of all channels of fundraising (individual, affiliate, corporate, crowdfunding, etc), annual plan, new ideas for fundraising

Appendix D – Review of new Affiliate Members

SysArmy

Affiliate Agreement / Cover Letter

Association memberships, partnerships, etc. (if applicable) with international, national, professional and/or affiliated organizations.
⚠ There are no formal documents of the organization itself, only a trademark registered in Argentina. SysArmy has hosted several events and had several International partnerships,for example, http://nerdear.la (“a nerd event for the IT community”). Right now SysArmy has attained support from MuleSoft, O’Reilly, GitHub and SaltStack as international sponsors and www.ekoparty.org (the biggest
Security Conference in Latin America) locally.
Mission statement describing purpose and goals.
✓ “sysarmy is the Argentinian SysAdmin Community, who brings together all IT professionals for knowledge exchange and fun” (http://sysarmy.com.ar/?en)
Publicly available release of events/activities, e.g. meetings, conferences, etc.
✓ http://nerdear.la (Nerd/IT/Open Source conference, twice a year)
✓ http://adminfest.com/index.php?lang=en (SysAdmin Appreciation Day – Argentinian Chapter)
✓ https://plus.google.com/s/adminbirras (Get togethers – every other thursday)
Documented approach for participation by the public.
An active community:
1. Methods for current and interested individuals/organizations to join and participate in your community
2. Active participation from multiple contributors, i.e. individuals and organizations other than founders (contributions may be other than programming/technology)
References from other open source projects, ideally a current OSI Affiliate Member.

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