OSI Board Meeting Minutes, April 2, 2008

*Quorum reached and meeting called to order Wednesday, 2 April 2008 at 08:09am PDT

Attendees:

  1. Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
  2. Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary and Treasurer
  3. Mr. Russell Nelson, Director (left quorum 8:45am PDT)
  4. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Director
  5. Mr. Ken Coar, Director
  6. Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Director (by IRC)
  7. Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director (joined late)
  8. Mr. Raj Mathur, Directo (joined late by IRC)

Guests/observers:

  1. Mr. Andrew C. Oliver, Board Observer
  2. Mr. Bdale Garbee, Board Observer
  3. Mr. Ernest Prabhakar, Board Observer

Not Present:

  1. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel
  2. Mr. Merrill Freund (Schwartz Communications)
  3. Mr. Zak Greant, Board Observer
  4. Mr. Bruno Souza, Director

Agenda

1. Officer reports

a) President’s Report:

Despite the odds, I believe that the participants of the Chicago face-to-face work meeting helped move the OSI forward in a number of key areas, but important work remains.

 * We finished (finally) the task of editing all our written minutes for public consumption. Yet as of today, this great effort is invisible to the community for lack of anybody taking the initiative to actually post them.

 * We hammered out a consensus and a framework for inviting affiliates and members to join the OSI in meaningful ways. Yet that consensus is fragmenting due to it inherent instability: it is only the affiliates and only the members who can really give meaning to that consensus and sustain it. The board must come together long enough and work hard enough to present something, soon. The conference call held last week suggests that we need to devote serious time, both working time and discussion time, to make this happen. Yet there seems to be zero substantive traffic after promising initial progress. Bruno: your detailed email was very valuable at getting us all into a common and productive state of mind–thanks!

 * We received two qualified applications from people who have been visible contributors in the open source community. This helps us back-fill the two board members who retired this month.

 * Bruce Perens has mounted a write-in campaign to join the OSI board.

 * The monthly report from SocialText, analysis of the Trac System, and our public blogs shows who is showing up and doing work. Kudos to acoliver, asharma, danese (whose record number of saves on the wiki shows that she has really serious wireless issues), nelson, prabhaka, and zak. Kudos also to Nnenna for starting to create some interlock between FOSSFA and the OSI.

b) General Counsel

Mr. Radcliffe sent in a report on progress towards the pro bono proposal.

c) Secretary

Ms. Cooper moved that March 12, 2008 minutes be approved as edited for public posting. Mr. Nelson seconds. Passed by general consent.

d) Treasurer

Ms. Cooper has received and paid about half of the Face to Face expense reports.

2. Committee reports

a) Licensing Committee (Russ)

Mr. Nelson moved that we approve the NTP license as edited and resubmitted without classification. Mr. Tiemann seconds. Vote proceeded with one abstention (Mr. Ghosh), and passed by majority.

3. Old Business

a) Approval of minutes from 12 March 2008

b) Membership proposal: status, action items, work needed

Discussion of progress on Membership proposal and language Michael would like to add about staged implementation.

4. New Business

a) Discussion of hosting RFP

b) Board nominations and elections

Mr Ghosh moved that we vote to accept Bruce Perens as a candidate for 2008 board election, waiving proper application requirement and noting that we received no messages of support for his candidacy. Mr. Coar seconds. Motion passes with four aye votes, one nay vote (Ms. Nwakanma), one abstention (Mr. Tiemann).

Mr. Tiemann moved that we vote to accept the ballot. Mr Coar seconded. Passed by general consent.

Vote to reconfirm Ms. Sharma and Ms. Nwakanma. Both reconfirmed.
Vote to re-elect Mr. Coar, Mr. Nelson, Ms. Cooper. All three re-elected.

Vote on new nominations:
Mr. Michlmayr and Mr. Gune elected unanimously.

Ballot:

Seats to fill (members leaving board):

 * Matt Asay
 * Raj Mathur

Re-elections for new term:

 * Ken Coar
 * Russ Nelson
 * Danese Cooper

Reconfirmations for 2 more years:

 * Alolita Sharma
 * Nnenna Nwakanma

Nominees:

  • Martin Michlmayr
  • Harshad Gune
  • Bruce Perens

c) OSI Response to OOXML approval

d) OSCON planning

Ms. Cooper moved to adjourn meeting, Mr. Ghosh seconded. Meeting Adjourned 10:08am PDT.