Wiki location: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20200113
Note: These were approved in the board meeting of 27 January. Due to
traveling to FOSDEM, it slipped my mind to publish them and I didn't
realize it until now. My apologies for the lateness.
= Meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 13 January 2020,
15:30 UTC =
== Attending ==
* AllanDay
* BrittYazel
* FedericoMenaQuintero
* NeilMcGovern
* PhilipChimento (leaving 16:00 UTC)
* TristanVanBerkom
* RosannaYuen (starting 15:42 UTC)
* CarlosSoriano (starting 16:05 UTC)
== Regrets ==
* RobertMcQueen
* CarlosSoriano
== Agenda ==
* Approve minutes of 9 December
* Linux App Summit 2020
* Splitting the directors into two classes
== Minutes ==
* Approve minutes of 9 December
* No amendments proposed.
* Minutes are approved.
* Linux App Summit 2020
* Allan: The LAS organizing committee is waiting for some form of
go-ahead from the Foundation to launch their call for proposals. The
organizers are keen to have the event again in 2020 in order to keep the
momentum and not let the Linux app ecosystem languish for attention.
However, that may pose a problem for our capacity to support it.
* Neil: Normally GUADEC is in July, then people generally want to go on
holiday, then comes GNOME.Asia, and by that time we have only one month
until November. I've talked to Aleix Pol and suggested that March would be
a better time to get support from the GNOME Foundation.
* Allan: One possibility is to do a lighter event in 2020 by co-locating
with another conference. However, I don't think they have any specific
ideas about what to co-locate with.
* Neil: Two that spring to mind are SeaGL and CCC.
* Federico: Would it be a problem to tack LAS onto GUADEC?
* Britt: That would make it by nature very GNOME-branded.
* Allan: That seems like something to work out between Neil and the LAS
organizers. However, that brings us to the second part of the question, how
important do we consider it to continue supporting LAS?
* Federico: I think it's important to have this conference to
emphasize why it's important to have software that runs on your own
computer. It's also an important tie between GNOME and KDE.
* Britt: Agreed. It's also attracting more parties and it seems
counterproductive to back out.
* Philip: Agreed that it is important; we also need to test it against
the goals of the Foundation and balance it with the other goals.
* Neil: It would seem to fit within the goal of having a thriving app
ecosystem, although for example GNOME.Asia fits within another goal of
outreach. The event seemed to go well and has opened up good lines of
discussion.
* Tristan: Agreed, would like to continue supporting it. I believe the
main concern last time we discussed was taxes. Has that been resolved?
* Rosanna: Tax issues tend to show up a year later, if there are
issues.
* Allan: I think we should continue to support it, with the caveat
that there seems to be some ambiguity about the audience of LAS. In a
certain way the conference is still finding its audience. It would be
useful to try to push the organizers to figure that out, and possibly use
the conference as a way to come to an answer to some of these thorny
platform questions.
* Allan: At this point we don't have a specific proposal to approve. We
can give our general positive assent to continuing to support LAS.
* Neil: It sounds like the board members are all in favour.
* Tristan: Is the call for locations blocking on us because of attaching
the GNOME name to it?
* Allan: Although we don't have to commit a specific amount at this
time, they are also waiting for us to say in principle that we will back
LAS financially.
* Splitting the directors into two classes
* Neil: When we adopted our bylaws changes, we split the directors into
two classes of three and four directors, to stagger the terms. That means
the board needs to decide this split. One proposal is to make the three
directors with the most amount of votes in the previous election up for
reelection in 2021, and the remaining four in 2020. That would seem to be
the most democratic option and might go some way towards easing the
concerns of people who had reservations about this change.
* Allan: Another idea is to make the shortest-sitting directors up for
reelection in 2021, and the longer-sitting ones in 2020.
* (Philip leaves)
* Britt: we could just see how many volunteers there are to sit for
another year, and base the decision on that.
* Some discussion about the lack of women on the board.
* Neil: If we were publicly listed in California, we would be legally
required to have female directors.
* Allan: If we were to have a rule about having a percentage of women in
the board, would that have to go in the bylaws?
* Neil: Yes.
* Tristan: I would like to see how many people run in the upcoming
election of a half board, as I don't know if enough people would run to
make up for that percentage.
* (Carlos arrives)
* Various discussion about who is willing to sit for another year. The
board agrees to keep this discussion going, with a view to agreeing on the
classes in the next few months.
* Announcements
* Allan: Next week is a working session; there are some pending issues -
please look at them.
* Britt: events.gnome.org is up and running! We can use that to
coordinate the Board hackfest.
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