OSI Board Meeting Minutes, January 6, 2006

January 6, 2006

Attendees:

Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary / Treasurer
Mr. Russ Nelson, Director
Mr. Ken Coar, Director
Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director
Mr. Bruno Souza, Director
Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel

Late:
Mr. Joi Ito, Director
Mr. Sanjiva Weewarawana, Director
Ms. Laura Majerus, Director of Legal Affairs

Absent:
Mr. Chris DiBona, Director

Quorum Established at 11:00 am EDT/ 08:00 PDT

Agenda:

1. Approval of the minutes:

a) Discussion: Do we have minutes that we can not only approve but make public?

b) Ms. Cooper will post the last BOD minutes to the Board mailing list.

2. Secretary/Treasurer (Ms. Cooper) presented:

a) Ms. Cooper paid all outstanding invoices.
b) Report on new deposits and cash reserves.
c) Outstanding:

  • Discussion of outstanding claims related to Open Source Awards; Still lacking addressable invoices.

3. Board Nominations and Elections:

a) Possible candidates for Board recruitment:

  • David Axmark (MySQL)
  • Con Zymaris (Cybersource Pty, Open Source Industry Australia, and Open Source Victoria)
  • Deepak Phatak (IIT Mumbai)
  • Matt Asay (ex-Novell, now Alfresco.org)
  • Ernie Prabakar (Apple)
  • Bill Kagai (FOSSFA)
  • Simon Phipps (Sun)

b) Discussion: Ms. Cooper will send Mr. Radcliffe schedule of elections from April 2005. Mr. Radcliffe will look into modifying the By-Laws to allow us to add a BOD member from Africa without extending quorum. Mr. Ghosh will develop 3 to 5 suggestions for candidates from Africa and will be the contact for those recruitments. Mr. Tiemann will send out recruitment appeals to other candidates, using the form from last year. Goal to complete recruitment by March 2006.

4. Trademark Protection presented by Mr. Radcliffe

Ready to roll out new trademark. OSI needs to make a decision about Fee Structure (if any) and countries to file new trademark in. Mr. Radcliffe recommends we file in the US, EU, PRC, Japan, India, Australia, Russian Federation Taiwan and Brazil immediately. The OSI can add other countries within 6 months including Africa, other countries in South America and/or Asia. The website will need to be updated once the US registration is complete.

5. GPL v3 Kickoff presented by Mr. Radcliffe and Ms. Cooper

a) Who attended from OSI?: Mr. Radcliffe, Ms. Cooper
b) Ms. Cooper reports that this is the first in a series of meetings worldwide, the next one will be in Brazil in March. Ms. Cooper will circulate the draft OSI position for approval when appropriate. The language will include "We applaud the FSF for promoting public discussion of their proposed revision of the GPL, which has been one of the most important licenses driving the Open Source phenomenon historically. All licenses require periodic review to take changes in the law, technology and the industry into account and we feel it is appropriate that the GPL be revised at this time."

6. Calendar of Face-to-face (F2F) Visits for 2006:
Mr. Tiemann will propose a sacred schedule for normal BOD meetings within 10 days

7. New Business

a) Attribution Licenses
Per his last email, Mr. Radcliffe wants to recuse himself from the conversation. Mr. Nelson should approach SugarCRM as the OSI would any other party who the OSI feels is mis-using the term "Open Source". The OSI would prefer that they submit that license to License-Discuss process.

Committee Reports:

1. License Committee status presented by Mr. Nelson

a) Note: The license committee report includes an implicit item to approve or reject licenses that are up for votes.

b) License Approval (Mr. Nelson):

There are 3 licenses pending approval:
1. Mindtree License: This license has received general objections on the license-discuss mailing list.
2. OSLv3 License: This license has the problem of license author Mr. Larry Rosen’s explicit copyright and inability to add warranty. He has offered to deprecate earlier versions.

3. AFLv3 License: This license has the problem of license author Mr. Larry Rosen’s explicit copyright and inability to add warranty. He has offered to deprecate earlier versions.

Issue: What statement does the OSI need to make to users of existing license (for 2 & 3) when the author or the OSI deprecates it.
Private Submission to the BOD from NSA not in approval status yet

c) Motion: The OSI accepts the License Committee report recommendation and asks Mr. Rosen to work with the OSI on communication regarding deprecation of older versions of OSL and AFL prior to announcement of approval of the v3 versions. Mr. Nelson and Ms. Majerus should contact Mr. Rosen. Mr. Tiemann will be involved as appropriate. Mr. Tiemann moved the motion. Mr. Coar seconded. Passed by General Assent.

d) License Proliferation (Ms. Majerus and Mr. Nelson presenting):
This group is at a standstill. Mr. Tiemann will join the next meeting to try to restart.

2. Fundraising Committee status presented by Mr. Tiemann

a) Mr. Tiemann reported on existing supporter status. Expect institutional funding to continue at same level as 2005 at least.

b) Some funders have asked for more specific items to support (wish to support a specific meeting or action rather than blanket support)

c) Mr. Coar raises concern about needing small donations from individuals to offset large corporate donations. Mr. Radcliffe, general counsel will research test we must pass. Ms. Cooper will research and report on PayPal and CafePress.

3. Membership Committee status presented by Mr. Coar
Mr. Souza owes the "Member Discuss" comments on membership options. Mr. Coar will kick-start discussions in public list.

4. Standards Committee Startup presented by Mr. Ghosh and Mr. Tiemann

a) Mr. Ghosh reports on his work to create a Standards definition based on economic effect. He notes that many tenders stipulate products created by proprietary vendors explicitly, which is actually illegal in the EU. Groklaw and the Berkman Center have remarked positively on Mr. Ghosh’s work. He will be running a workshop in Koln, Germany on January 20, 2006 and the results will be published. Mr. Peter Quinn, CIO of the State of Massachusetts, will be speaking there and will be meeting with some government representatives as well. The EC is interested in this work as well and is looking at Standards as a public procurement issue and anti-competitive. An extension of this concept might include end of specific brand stipulations such as Centrino chips or specifications such as chip clock-speed.

b) Ms. Majerus reminds the Board that we expressed a charter for the workings of this committee at OSBC in April 2005 and then voted to suspend this committee to focus on License Proliferation.

c) Mr. Tiemann says this (standards) is the next battleground, and the OSI should undertake this work in 2006.

Meeting adjourned at 10:00 am PDT (unconfirmed).