GNOME Foundation Meeting Minutes :: 6th September 2007 Present: Behdad, Lucas, Anne, Quim, Zana Regrets: Jeff Absent: Vincent
1) Zana's Report Things are going well. Zana has been working on sending out some Paypal fits. She sent some updated account figures to the list before the call. Quim commented that these were really useful and asked if Zana had been checking the figures against the budget to see where we stand. Zana replied that she hadn't, and really only getting to grips with GNUcash, and that it might not be the best tool for budgeting. Quim mentioned that we need to be careful about accumulating money, as it might show the wrong impression to our paying advisory board members. Zana commented that the fiscal year closes at the end of this month, and that she didn't know if the budget was for the fiscal or calendar year. Board agreed during a post-call discussion to provide Zana with 12 weeks maternity leave, and to monitor her progress during this time. Zana offered to do some basic admin during that time as when necessary. ACTION: Quim to contact Zana about her maternity leave. 2) Sponsorship Requests (Brazil, Izabel) Izabel has asked for sponsorship for hosting 4o. Forum GNOME this year, as part of a wider conference http://www.ensl.org.br/. The request includes travel for a few people, accommodation and money to print t-shirts and/or badges. All agreed to sponsor $4000 USD for this. ACTION: Lucas to mail Izabel about GNOME Foundation sponsoring the event. ACTION: Zana to send Izabel the sponsorship money. FOSS.in is planning a project day for GNOME. There's an opportunity to sponsor this event, and the board will monitor the progress. There are a few sponsorships pending for the Boston GNOME Summit to organize an Accessibility summit, and Java-GNOME meeting. As yet there are no details about the breakdown of the sponsorship costs. ACTION: Vincent and Behdad to follow up with those people looking for sponsorship. 3) Boston GNOME Summit Still need confirmation about the venue before we can announce the summit. Jeff has proposed a few options that are still under investigation. We hope to be able to announce the dates soon. 4) GNOME Mobile Meeting in Madrid There has been no confirmation of the event in Madrid. Lucas thinks it may already be too late to organize something, and suggests that it needs to be discussed on the GNOME Mobile list. ACTION: Quim to ping the GNOME Mobile list about a meeting in Madrid. 5) Referendum for Changing the Bylaws Lucas received a reply from Behdad, Quim and Vincent to agree with his proposed schedule, but doesn't feel comfortable about announcing it. Quim will ping Jeff about where things are at with James Vasile and the wording of the changes. ACTION: Quim to ping Jeff about status of the bylaws change and corresponding announcement. 6) OpenXML vs ODF The announcement of the first ISO vote on OOXML has been published. A second very important vote will take place in February in Geneva and only technical comments will be considered by ISO at that time. Anne believes that GNOME should have a position on OOXML as an open standard. Even if GNOME can not influence the first vote, GNOME can still air a general view on the standardization at stake. Quim believes that we still owe an answer to Richard Stallman about the Foundation's position. Anne will work on this. Quim mentioned that he had concerns about how to approach this - should be very clear when we are speaking as a board rather than our personal opinions. ACTION: Anne to work on shorter statement draft and send to board-list. 7) Planet GNOME Quim thinks that we still need to provide a response to the ongoing Planet GNOME maintenance issues. While he doesn't think it's a board responsibility, it's an ongoing issue, and we should state our position. Anne commented that Vincent's proposed guidelines look reasonable, and we should continue to discuss them on the list. Glynn sympathized with the pressures of maintaining a Planet, and feels that it should be a privilege rather than a right to some extent and important to maintain the readability and relevance of the site. Quim agreed on the editorial line, but simple maintenance was still an issue. Planet GNOME is one of the most important and popular pages that we have, and not necessarily the task of a single person. Lucas commented that the issues are separate - one is the guidelines, the other being the maintenance. Anne commented that it would be good if every contributor to Planet GNOME was a Foundation member. ACTION: Quim to draft mail about Planet GNOME and send to board-list for comments before sending to foundation-list. _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list