Zope Foundation Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors - April 21 2008
Date and Time: Monday, April 21, 2008, 13:00 UTC Location: IRC meeting, irc://irc.freenode.net/#zope-foundation
Directors Present:
Martijn Faassen, Rob Page, Eric Casteleijn, Jens Vagelpohl, Jodok Batlogg
Quorum Present: Yes
The chairman calls the meeting to order at 13h04m UTC.
The agenda is accepted as follows:
- Old minutes update (Eric)
- Any more minutes from 2006 or 2007 recoverable? What about the actual dates of meetings?
- Treasury update (Rob)
- Filing for tax returns (as per meeting 2008-03-11)
- quarterly update - when?
- Non-profit status (Rob)
- Non-profit questions draft response to list (as per meeting 2008-03-31)
- By-laws status (Martijn)
- No feedback received on modified PSF bylaws. Please read and comment. What about other documents?
- Trademark status (Martijn)
- Web site status (Jodok)
- Are people starting to write content? (Jodok)
- Reuse rights of design elements as designed for zope.org (Jens)
- New server status (Jens)
- Freenode IRC registration (Jodok)
- Summer of code (Martijn)
- Summer of code update on foundation news part of website
- Miscellaneous
- Adjournment
1. a. Old Minutes update (Eric)
All old minutest received by the secretary are published. Rob will look through his mail to see if there is anything more from 2006 that can be published.
2. a. Filing for tax returns (Rob)
There was no progress on filing for tax returns. An extension will likely be filed.
It may be that the foundation will owe tax on the Google Summer of Code revenue booked in January, but that will probably be offset by losses this year.
2. b. Quarterly update (Rob)
The quarterly report was sent to the board of directors mailing list.
The treasurer reports receiving a tax bill for the period before the foundation filed as a non-profit. He will talk to the accountants to see if paying it or fighting it makes more financial sense.
3. a. Non-profit status (Rob)
The treasurer is finishing work on answering the IRS' questions with respect to the tax exempt application. He will send that to the board of directors mailing list early in the week of april 28. It will need a quick review and turnaround in order to make the filing deadline.
4. a. By-laws status (Martijn)
Martijn posted the first version of the amended PSF bylaws to the bylaws mailing list but has received no comments. No progress was made on the other documents.
Martijn would like to arrange the copyright transfer somewhere this year, but the PSF bylaws are no help there, as they do not handle copyrights at all.
The membership status is holding up the copyright transfer. When the Foundation can bring in new members and accept software contributions, the copyright can be transfered.
The PSF bylaws deal with bringing in new members, so the bylaws mailing list members should read Martijn's drafts and comment.
For software contributions a licensing policy also needs to be worked out. (For instance with respect to dependencies with different licenses.)
It is agreed that for the next board meeting discussing the bylaws, membership status and contribution policy will be on the agenda, and they will be voted on in the meeting after that.
Eric agrees to start discussion on the bylaws mailing list after reviewing the documents.
5. Trademark status (Martijn)
ZEA is working on a document detailing their position.
6. a. Web site content (Jodok)
There is discussion about design and organisation happening, but not a lot of actual content being written.
Martin Aspeli gave people accounts on the site, and there is an outline for contributions.
Martijn suggests perhaps setting a deadline for the content, and perhaps going public with a smaller site than originally envisioned. Martijn will contact Martin asking that such a time based plan be devised.
6. b. Reuse rights of design elements (Jens)
The designer that made the new zope.org design is unwilling to share the design for reuse unconditionally. He was paid 2500 EUR for an exclusive license to use the design on zope.org. His main motivation does not seem to be money, but the integrity of the design. A possibility is offering some more money in exchange for completely freely reusable design elements, and perhaps a document outlining the way they should be reused. No conclusion is reached and as content for zope.org is deemed more urgent, this effort is put on hold.
6. c. New server status (Jens)
The server is ready for installation. Jens will start on that this week.
7. Freenode IRC registration (Jodok)
The registration is in the freenode queue, which appears to be quite long.
8. Summer of code (Martijn)
After originally being granted two projects, Martijn and Aroldo petitioned Google, and managed to increase that number to five. Martijn is going to write guidelines for mentors and students, focusing on constant communication.
The Plone Foundation was also granted five projects, and some of them are likely to benefit Zope as a whole.
9. Miscellaneous
No miscellaneous topics are brought up.
10. Adjournment
The next ZF BoD meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, 2008-05-06 13:00 UTC
The chairman adjourns the meeting at 14h02m UTC.
These minutes were written by the secretary, Eric, according to the notes taken during the meeting.
These minutes were posted to the [email protected] mailing list and approved by all directors on 2008-05-21
The Chairman bid the Secretary keep these minutes on file.