OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Quorum reached and meeting called to order 08:07am PDT

Attendees:

 1. Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
 2. Mr. Russell Nelson, Director
 3. Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary and Treasurer
 4. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Director
 5. Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Director (via IRC)
 6. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel (joined 8:10am, left 9:40am PDT)
 7. Mr. Ken Coar, Director (joined 8:12am PDT)

Guests/observers:

 1. Mr. Bdale Garbee
 2. Mr. Andrew C. Oliver
 3. Mr. Zak Greant

Not Present:

 1. Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director
 2. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Director
 3. Mr. Harshade Gune, Director
 4. Mr. Bruno Souza, Director
 6. Mr. Ernest Prabhakar
 7. Mr. Merrill Freund (Schwartz Communications)

Agenda
1. Officer reports

a) President’s Report:

Since the election on April 2nd 2008, there has been a marked falloff in board participation, though observer contributions continue. Russ Nelson has continued his work shepherding the decreasing traffic on license-discuss, posting articles to his blog, and generally responding to random inquiries, but other than sporadic comments in email, there is Not Much Going On. This is extremely disappointing because we spend a fair bit of money and a fair bit of time in Chicago to advance our agenda, particularly on the subject of membership, we produced a consensus, Ernie Prabhakar wrote it up, several of us edited and discussed it, and then poof. Not much more. In the mean time, I’ve been attempting to make it look like the OSI is functioning, tagging new items, writing blog posts, issuing announcements, doing interviews, planning board meetings, etc. And I’ve been writing and saying for months that we need greater board participation. I have put on the agenda a new topic “New expense reimbursement policies” which attempts to recognize that board members are nominated and elected based on being leaders, and thus we should expect some leadership. I believe that board members who do not visibly contribute to the progress of the OSI while they are not traveling should not be paid by the OSI to travel on behalf of the OSI, and with OSCON coming up, the best way for non-new board members to qualify for travel reimbursement is to do visible work, starting now. New board members can expect reimbursements (if not otherwise paid for by their companies) for at least the first face-to-face meeting, and until such time as they actually have a chance to define what specific work they plan to do for the OSI.
We can, and should, do better.

Action: Mr. Tiemann will send out email asking Board members to review participation language. Ms. Cooper will put voting item on next agenda.

Fundraising Chair: Mr. Tiemann will send annual fundraising letter.

b) General Counsel:

Mr. Radcliffe gave updates on Jacobsen case, the Pro Bono project and a report by the American Law Institute

c) Secretary

Ms. Cooper moved that April 2, 2008 minutes be approved as edited for public posting. Mr. Tiemann seconds. Passed by general consent.

d) Treasurer

Ms. Cooper has now processed 100% of Chicago Face to Face expense reports.

Report on current cash levels

Discussion of tax status and filing of 990 forms

2. Committee reports

  • a) Licensing Committee (Mr. Nelson)

Discussion of policy statement addition to process stating that “if a problem is adequately solved by an existing license, they should adopt that license, or put forth a substantial argument for a new license”

Mr. Nelson moves that the board rejects the CRIScript Software License per the License Committee Report recommendation due to similarity to previous licenses, Mr. Tiemann seconds. Five yes votes, one abstention. Motion carries.

Mr. Nelson moves that the board returns the UOML License to the submitter for justification due to similarity to the SISSL per the License Committee Report recommendation. Mr. Coar seconds. Five yes votes, one abstention. Motion carries.

Mr. Nelson moves that the board returns the Open Source Content License (OSCL) to the sender for reconsideration due to feedback from the License Committee that a new reciprocal license is not needed. Mr. Tiemann seconds. Five yes votes, one abstention.

Mr. Nelson will send a license retirement form to the authors of the CUA Office Public License.

3. Old Business

  • a) Membership proposal discussion

Action: Finalize email addresses and wording of email. Send before next meeting.

4. New Business

  • a) Election of Officers

Ms. Nwakanma nominates Mr. Tiemann for President, and Mr. Cooper for Secretary / Treasurer. Mr. Coar moved that nominations be closed, Mr. Tiemann seconded. Motion passed unanimously.

Mr. Tiemann moved that we vote to approve the slate, Mr. Coar seconded. Motion passed unanimously

  • b) Discussion of hosting RFP – Current plan to host on Hyperreal. Mr. Greant will contact Brian Behlendorf about selecting a Sys Admin.
  • c) Select a new board member to handle trademark issues – held over for next meeting
  • d) New expense reimbursement policies – held over for next meeting
  • e) TRAC – Mr. Greant is available in June for a F2F meeting about TRAC. Ms. Cooper will arrange a meeting.
  • f) Consider supporting the Hague Declaration of Digistan: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080512141838422

Meeting Adjourned 09:57am PDT.