Zope Foundation Board of Directors meeting minutes (2012-10-02)
Date and Time: Tuesday, October 2, 2012 12:00 UTC
Location: IRC meeting, irc://irc.freenode.net/#zope-foundation
Directors Present:
- Page, Rob
- Rush, Jeff (treasurer)
- Seaver, Tres (chairman)
- Souza-Leite, Aroldo
- Vagelpohl, Jens (secretary)
Guests present:
- Leonardo Rochael Almeida (later)
Agenda
------
- Call to Order
- Treasurer's report
- treasurer turnover process
- Membership committee
- new members since last meeting
- Repository committee
- new committers since the last meeting
- Tabled items
- domain name transfer Zope Corporation to Zope Foundation
- migrating the SVN repository to a ZF-controlled host
- New Business
- New/revived nonprofit application status
- Explore PayPal for international wire transfers
- Vote on VCS system and hosting
- Updating the committer agreement and committer approval policy
- Adopting a sane "patch policy" similar to the Plone Foundation's
- Zope release manager selection
- Arranging the next meeting date
- Adjournment
Call to Order
-------------
The chairman calls the meeting to order at order at 12:02 UTC.
Treasurer's report
------------------
The treasurer has continued his work collecting papers and
uploading some to the foundation website. Apart from Rackspace
and QuickBooks, no expenses have been recorded.
The PayPal account is not ready yet due to their documentation
requirements. To facilitate paying the hosting fees, which
would directly benefit from a working PayPal account, the
secretary has set up a new customer account at the hosting
provider drawing on the foundation's debit card.
On the topic of uploading documents to the foundation website
the secretary asks the treasurer to use PDF format instead of
DjVu so that working with the documents becomes easier.
Membership committee
--------------------
Two new nominated members have joined the Zope Foundation,
Laurence Rowe and Matthew Wilkes.
Repository committee
--------------------
Both the secretary and the chair have not seen any new contributors
join.
Tabled business
---------------
The tabled business items remain tabled.
New Business
------------
There's no new information about the nonprofit application.
The PayPal account application process is waiting for additional
documentation. In the meantime, the treasurer will find out how
the new bank handles international wire transfers so the
outstanding hosting invoices can be paid.
Before voting on the VCS and code hosting issue the chairman
recognizes Leonardo Rochael Almeida who has asked to make a new
proposition for code hosting. In a nutshell, Leo proposes to
host at least the Zope package code in a master on Zope
Foundation hardware ("git.zope.org") and hook it up to a mirror
repository on GitHub so it looks and acts like a normal GitHub
master repository. He argues this would satisfy those who want
hosting on GitHub as well as those who don't want to use it and
who could use the master on git.zope.org directly. This new
solution would be easy to set up, and Leo would volunteer to
handle this integration with funding and support from Nexedi.
During the long discussion which follows it becomes clear that
the board does not believe such a setup could satisfy the
clear wish expressed by the foundation membership in the
"straw poll". In the end, the board decides to take the vote
as planned originally. The secretary moves the board adopt the
outcome from last week's straw poll and allow Zope Foundation
projects to be hosted on GitHub under a Zope Foundation-managed
GitHub account. The motion is seconded by Aroldo and passes
unanimously without any further discussion.
Since the decision to allow code hosting on GitHub itself is
just a first step, the chairman points out several tasks that
need to be worked on, such as...
- the existing GitHub organization account "zopefoundation"
must be put under Zope Foundation control
- the committer agreement needs to be vetted for any language
implying a specific kind of repository or login mechanism.
If it is not generic enough to allow GitHub projects then it
needs an update and re-signing by any contributor who wants to
contribute to Zope Foundation projects on GitHub.
- the committer approval policy document needs to be vetted and
updated to reflect the new situation.
- the Zope Foundation needs a patch policy for contributions by
non-contributors
- any code in the current "zopefoundation" GitHub repositories
that is valuable enough to be retained may need a one-off
assignment from its authors
The secretary volunteers to write up a complete list of tasks
to be discussed on the board mailing list and Aroldo volunteers
to help the secretary where needed.
The chairman asks the board to look at the Plone Foundation patch
policy[1] to see if it can be re-used for the Zope Foundation.
The board agrees that it's a good basis and the chairman will send
a draft suitable for the Zope Foundation to the board list for
discussion and voting.
The chairman calls for a motion on the Zope release manager
selection agenda item. Leo graciously volunteers for that position
even if his preferred GitHub/git.zope.org combination solution is
not selected. The chairman asks Leo to set up a proof of concept
repository combination to show us how it works in practice.
Instead of a vote the chairman brings up the question how the
release manager position is defined. Leo will write up a job
description for the board to consider.
Arranging the next meeting date
-------------------------------
The chairman will set up a Doodle for the next meeting date.
Adjournment
-----------
After an unopposed motion by the secretary to adjourn, seconded by
Rob, the chairman adjourns the meeting at 13:34 UTC.
These minutes were written by the secretary, Jens Vagelpohl,
according to the notes taken during the meeting.
These minutes were posted to the [email protected] mailing
list and approved by all participating directors on October 6, 2012.
The chairman bid the secretary keep these minutes on file.
[1] https://plone.org/foundation/materials/foundation-resolutions/patch-policy-052011
