OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Quorum reached and meeting called to order at 8:08am PDT.

Attendees:

 1. Mr. Ken Coar, Director
 2. Mr. Harshad Gune, Director (via IRC, left 8:45am PDT, rejoined 9:45am PDT)
 3. Mr. Michael Tiemann, President
 4. Mr. Russell Nelson, Director (joined 8:23am PDT)
 5. Ms. Alolita Sharma, Director
 6. Ms. Danese Cooper, Secretary and Treasurer
 7. Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma, Director
 8. Mr. Martin Michlmayr, Director

Guests/observers:

 1. Mr. Andrew C. Oliver (left 9:40am PDT)
 2. Mr. Ernest Prabhakar (via IRC, left 8:45am PDT)

Expected, but Not Present:

 1. Mr. Merrill Freund (Schwartz Communications)
 2. Mr. Mark Radcliffe, General Counsel
 3. Mr. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Director
 4. Mr. Bruno Souza, Director (confusion about time)

Sent regrets:

 1. Mr. Zak Greant
 2. Mr. Bdale Garbee

Agenda:

1. Approval of minutes

Minutes for July 9, 2008 reviewed by Board. Minutes approved for posting by general consent.

2. Officer Reports

a) President’s Report:

We had great participation at OSCON 2008, with all Board members able to attend the face-to-face session. Thank you, all!

The Charter Membership committee was successfully launched (thanks Ms. Cooper for volunteering to chair!) and I look forward to seeing progress over the coming year.

Mr. Greant has made it clear that he is committed to helping us use the Trac system to manage every manageable aspect of the OSI’s information flow, from minor TODOs to major, complex decisions. We should all take advantage of his help, including his offer to take our calls if we know we need help.

There has been an outstanding question about whether and how I, as President of the Open Source Initiative, should be handling various overtures from Microsoft with respect to the Open Source Community. I believe the answer is that I should be constructive and transparent, and so I have done my best to answer what I perceive to be the relevant question they have asked of me, which is what Microsoft can do for Open Source. I have blogged that answer, and I have received no response from Microsoft.

I discussed the status of our current trademark applications and strategies with a specialist at DLA Piper, Allyn Taylor, and Ms. Cooper.

We must respond to these Office Actions on or before December 16, 2008, or these applications will be deemed abandoned. I’d like to respond this month if possible.

b) Secretary’s Report:

All public minutes posted, except for June 4, 2008 and those approved today. Thanks Mr. Oliver and Mr. Coar.
Progress continues on accounting work.

Mr. Michlmayr has requested that we send formal de-posting of Program Manager position to those who sent us inquiries. Mr. Tiemann agreed do this.
Mr. Ross Mayfield of SocialText has posted the correct version of our logo CPAL on their website. Need to undertake a project to get other license authors and users to post the correct logo.

c) Treasurer’s Report:

Reimbursements for OSCON: All pending OSCON reimbursements have been processed.

Fundsraising: Ms. Cooper made a report on checks received.

d) General Counsel’s Report:

None.

3. Committee Reports

Licensing Committee

Nothing to report.

Membership Committee

Ms. Cooper reported that charter membership conversation has started, and full voting membership for existing Board was the first official vote. Ms. Cooper has made a request of Mr. Greant that he subscribe the board, plus Mr. Prabhakar who was missed in the original subscribe list. Board members will be allowed to see the archives when subscribed. Currently they are working on agreement about the wording of a public announcement of their existence. The Board needs to decide what to do with old members-discuss@opensource.org list.

4. Old business

* Discussion of Trademark Status (Mr. Tiemann)

* Update on website cleanup, especially the Board page and adding Charter Members page — (Ms. Sharma)

* Status of new sysadmin / hyperreal migration (Mr. Greant)

5. New business

* Discussion of OSI Beat proposal (Ms. Sharma). Ms. Nwakanma will collaborate with Ms. Sharma to produce first few potential issues for BOD approval.

* Review of offices and incumbents (Mr. Coar). Review of existing by-laws indicate that we might want to review our practice of appointing officers and what authority appointment confers. Mr. Coar makes the point that in future our design for by-laws will require consideration of this point.

* Open Font License and IPA–how best to support free/open source fonts (Mr. Tiemann)

* Update on ED fundsraising (Ms. Cooper)

* Update on Tee-shirts (Ms. Cooper)

Meeting Adjourned 09:58 PDT.