Board Meeting 2010-02-04

This board meeting is scheduled for the 4th of February 2010 at 16:00 UTC at 16:00 UTC, on IRC (#osgeo).

Agenda

• Appoint meeting secretary
• Approve minutes for Board Meeting 2010-01-07
• Motion: Graduate deegree (Deegree Incubation Status)
• FOSS4G Budget status
• Approval of 501 c3 application status document (see Tyler's request from Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:41:13 -0800)
• Proposed Board Election Procedure
• OSGeo 2010 Budget
• F2F India update (Ravi)
• Setup Wolf to continue as Summer of Code admin contact for 2010 (Tyler)
• Report from Arnulf: US Export Restriction enforcement by sf.net renders some projects useless for OSGeo members. Discussion ensued in the Spanish list.
• New regular topics:
  • Update from each director
    • Markus' stay in Japan: OSGeo.jp and MEXT ministerial project
  • Committee reports

Minutes

• Full IRC log/minutes here starting at 06h00 server time.

Attendees

Directors:

• Frank, Howard, Jeff, Chris, Arnulf (Chair), Markus, Ravi

Staff:

• Tyler Mitchell (Secretary)

Action Items

• MOTION: Adopt previous meeting minutes. Chris moved, Arnulf seconded, all were in favour.
• MOTION: Graduate degree project from incubation. Arnulf moved, Frank seconded, all were in favour!
• Special meeting planned to discuss response to IRS (Board Meeting 2010-02-15)
• TODO: Chris to clarify export statement wikipage
• TODO: Frank noted he is working on 2010 budget and will present soon.

Details

. Chris moved, Arnulf seconded.

• MOTION: Adopt previous meeting minutes. Chris moved, Arnulf seconded, all were in favour.
• MOTION: Graduate degree project from incubation. Arnulf moved, Frank seconded, all were in favour!
• No budget discussion for FOSS4G. Pending request from Lorenzo/LOC
• Discussed 501c3 application. Question about education status, including educom. Some questions about whether 501c6 may be better suited for large donors, versus numerous small public donations assumed for 501c3 oftentimes. Though FOSS4G is largely public. Tyler getting tax advice from support consultant.
  • Education component may be important for keeping FOSS4G/conferences as a primary mission of the org
  • Tyler to dig up original application for reference (available here)
  • all sponsors feed into core mission
  • FOSS4G income shows broader support - this is important aspect to confirm eligibility as "public support"
  • Special meeting planned to discuss response to IRS (Board Meeting 2010-02-15)
• Setup Wolf to continue as Summer of Code admin contact for 2010
  • Arnulf moved to setup WOlf to continue as Summer of Code admin contact for 2010, Howard seconded, all +1, one +0.
  • Generally agreed, and pass thanks to Wolf for great work in 2009.
• TODO: Frank noted he is working on 2010 budget and will present soon.
• Changes to Proposed Board Election Procedure
  • Basically: "Voters may not cast multiple votes for one candidate."
  • Markus made motion to accept changes in [

http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?title=Proposed_Board_Election_Procedure&diff=44125&oldid=44122 Proposed Board Election Procedure], Chris seconded, all were in favour.

• • Expect to do similar for charter elections as well.
• Ravi joined late, discussion of India meeting postponed.
• Report from Arnulf
  • US Export Restriction "enforcement" by sf.net renders some projects useless for OSGeo members. Discussion ensued in the Spanish list. One of the spanish board members cannot use GeoNetwork (and others from sf.net) anymore.
  • Reference to US Export Restrictions. No code in our softare falls under the regulation (e.g. security stuff). Apache Foundation has found an additional bit in the law that exempts collabortaion on distributed projects. But once someone explicitly "exports" OSGeo software to an evil-axis state they have to be sure not to break the law in the uS.
  • TODO: Chris to clarify export statement wikipage
  • General agreement to encourage projects to move off sf.net and onto osgeo.org infrastructure.
• Other director updates...
  • Markus mentioned OSGeo.jp and MEXT ministerial project they are working on. Markus worked on GRASS internationalization and tutorials for Japanese satellite data. GRASS book translated now too.
  • Jeff working on OSGeo4W development while in Japan
• Committee Reports
  • Journal moving slowly but surely, with renewed team and great help from Landon.
• Motion to close meeting, Arnulf seconded, all were in favour.
• Some after meeting discussion with Ravi re: face to face meeting ideas.

Previous meeting follow-up

Action Summary

Remainders from previous meeting:

1. MOTION: Arnulf moved to approve the minutes, Frank seconded, all were in favour
2. TODO: Frank to make motion to accept changes to board and charter member election processs
3. TODO: Arnulf to put together plan for fundraising, Tyler to help
4. MEETING: Special board meeting voice call re: fundraising planned in 1 week: TIME LINK
5. TODO: Frank to draft minimal budget for approval at next meeting
6. TODO: Tyler to contact IRS re: status
7. TODO: Tyler to get advice/experience from other FOSS non profits and how they handled status
8. TODO: Directors to share their goals for 2010
9. TODO: Arnulf to summarise issues/questions about goals to Board list
10. TODO: Tyler, Arnulf, others - make an agenda for fundraising meeting, invite others on Discuss to join
11. TODO: Chris to set up voice call system
12. TODO: Tyler to distribute skypeout credits to directors as needed
13. Next regular meeting: Feb 4th - NOTE: one hour later than usual.
14. TODO: Tyler to look at how we can vote virtually via IRC instead of requiring voice.
15. TODO: Ari to follow up with EuroGI about associated organisation options.
16. TODO: Arnulf to follow up on idea of presenting comments on topics like FFI is for EU interoperability.