Wiki location: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20200622
= Meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 22 June 2020, 14:30
UTC =
== Attending ==
* TristanVanBerkom
* FedericoMenaQuintero
* AllanDay
* CarlosSoriano
* NeilMcGovern
* PhilipChimento
* RosannaYuen
* RobertMcQueen
== Regrets ==
* BrittYazel
== Agenda ==
* Approve minutes of 8 June
* GNOME software definition & GNOME Circle initiative
* Board handover arrangements
== Minutes ==
* Approve minutes of 8 June
* Philip: There is a domain name mentioned in the minutes that the
Foundation would potentially purchase.
* We decide to redact it so that it doesn't get scooped.
* No other changes were submitted.
* Minutes are approved, pending the above correction.
* GNOME software definition & GNOME Circle initiative
* Allan: This has been a long-standing item and I'm glad to be finishing
it up. We've discussed these before, so I'll just go through what's new.
The first item is the release team becoming a committee. We decided to
stick to the bare essentials for the release team committee's charter, just
covering the trademark issue where the board devolves the power to decide
what is GNOME and what can use the Foundation's trademarks to the release
team committee. The draft charter is at
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/166
* Tristan: While it is all about the Foundation's trademarks, we don't
mention trademarks in the charter. Should we?
* Carlos: I don't think so. This seems like a policy implementation
detail that the board is still responsible for. The board just needs to
keep in touch with the release team about the requirements for the
trademark.
* Tristan: I agree, but I think it should be documented somewhere.
* Allan: The trademark policy is part of the last item in the slate
we'll be voting on.
* Allan: The GNOME Circle committee has a draft charter at
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/167 I'm volunteering myself
for the committee as well, to help bootstrap it. As we've discussed, this
affects who can become a member of the Foundation.
* Allan: The last item is the policy on official GNOME software, the
draft of which is at https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/165. The
domain name has been removed from the policy since we haven't resolved that
question yet.
* Tristan: You had already sent an announcement for what would be under
the remit of these committees, correct?
* Allan: The announcement was published on Discourse, but as a
proposal.
* Tristan: So what is our vote on today? To create the committees,
make the proposal into a policy, and point the committees to it?
* Allan: That's a good question. The release team's activities don't
change, but there will of course be a transition period where the GNOME
Circle committee is bootstrapped and the infrastructure for the GNOME
Circle is created on !GitLab. In practice, if there are difficulties with
the implementation, then they will take it back to the board to amend the
policy.
* Tristan: My point is that the original proposal for these committees
had a lot more detail. Do the committees know what is expected of them?
What if the implementation turns out to be different from our intention?
* Carlos: I agree, but I think the answer is that we need to
anticipate that by being in a close loop with the GNOME Circle committee
during the bootstrap period, not by making the charter more detailed.
* Allan: In practice, we do the same with other committees, we can
make course adjustments.
* Allan: The part about projects with an existing fiscal sponsor has
been removed, because it turned out to be confusing in the proposal. We
intend to leave this up to the committee's discretion.
* Rob: Fiscal sponsorship is a nonprofit term of art, so although it
may not communicate very well because people might not know what it is, it
is unambiguous. I do think it's important to specify it.
* Tristan: It would be odd for a project to be both a GNOME Circle and
an Apache project, for example.
* Allan: We could add this back to the GNOME Circle committee charter,
and I don't think it would be that confusing, because projects looking to
apply would be looking at a more user-friendly description.
* Carlos: I agree, we can include this guideline and the committee can
discuss with the board if they want to deviate from it.
* Rob: We do need to be intentional that the GNOME Circle projects
further the GNOME mission, because being in the GNOME Circle affects how
the Foundation's budget is spent.
* Neil: The expectation would be that if a GNOME Circle project became
big, then they would move to full fiscal sponsorship.
* Rob: I think we should add a non-normative statement: "It is
intended that projects seeking membership of GNOME Circle are not already
members of another non-profit fiscal sponsor organization."
* Tristan: I agree.
* Allan: We will add this to the policy as a statement of intent.
* VOTE: Approve the following:
1. Create a new committee, "The Release Team", as described in
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/166 Appoint the existing
members of the Release Team as committee members:
* Abderrahim Kitouni
* Andre Klapper
* Javier Jardon
* Matthias Clasen
* Michael Catanzaro (chair)
* Emmanuele Bassi
* Tristan Van Berkom
* Jordan Petridis
2. Create a new committee, the "GNOME Circle" committee, as described
in https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/167 Appoint the following
committee members:
* Allan Day (chair)
* J Arun Mani
* MartÃn Abente Lahaye
* Jordan Petridis
3. Adopt the GNOME Foundation policy on official GNOME software, as
described in issue https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/165
* +1 unanimous
* Board handover arrangements
* Allan: The new board takes effect at midnight tonight. There is a
training tomorrow for new and returning board members. The following week,
the new board will vote on officers, so Carlos will remain treasurer until
that vote occurs. Then, in a couple of weeks, we will have the handover
meeting, which the outgoing directors are encouraged to attend. The one
question I had was when do we cut off access for the outgoing directors? It
seems it would be useful to retain that access until the handover meeting.
* Tristan: It seems important to have access to !GitLab issues for the
handover meeting.
* Rob: It's less important to have overlap now that we have
overlapping directors.
* Tristan: The mailing list could have sensitive information.
* Allan: Let's remove access to the mailing list and chat channel, and
retain access to !GitLab until after the handover meeting.
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