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Zope Foundation Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors - February 23 2010

Date and Time: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 16:00 UTC
Location: IRC meeting, irc://irc.freenode.net/#zope-foundation
Directors Present:
- Faassen, Martijn
- Jung, Andreas
- Page, Rob
- Richter, Stephan
- Seaver, Tres
- Theune, Christian
- Vagelpohl, Jens


Agenda
------
- Call to Order
- Treasurer's report
    - Non-profit status update
    - Financial report
    - Treasurer transition
- Membership Committee
    - New members since last meeting
- Repo committee
    - New committers since last meeting
    - Changing the copyright attribution in the repo to the
      foundation
    - Announcing the copyright attribution change completion
      to the zope-dev mailing list
- Website
    - website progress
- Foundation message
    - Message formulation
    - Zope Summit?
- New business
    - Domain name transfer ZC to ZF
    - Release manager selection process for Zope 2 and others
    - Zope Toolkit governance issues
    - Certification of board election results


Call to Order
-------------
The chairman calls the meeting to order at 16:00 UTC.


Treasurer's report
------------------
The treasurer reports progress on the non-profit application. However,
he believes the current application is hampered by the fact that it
includes the previous bylaws as supporting documentation. The previous
bylaws gave special status to Zope Corporation, which turned out to be
an issue in the application process. He feels the new board
should consider a fresh application with the new bylaws. Although
he is leaving the board the treasurer is offering to assist with
any new application. The board voices its general agreement with
this course of action. The new board will have to find out if it is
possible to amend the current application with the new bylaws, or
if a whole new application needs to be drafted.

The treasurer has spent some time planning the transition to a new
treasurer. The transition will involve identifying the new officers
for the bank, checking signature authority, wiring authority and
the relationship with the current accountant. To speed up this
process he would like to see the new board elect its officers
quickly. His suggestion to schedule a board meeting for the new
board right after the general meeting on Wednesday, February 24 is
accepted unanimously.

The current financial situation is stable. Income is reported
at roughly $2000 per annum from 8 sponsor members. There are no
liabilities and about $68,000 in the bank.


Membership Committee
--------------------
The secretary reports no new members, but all expiring sponsor
memberships have been renewed.


Repo committee
--------------
Christian Theune and Andreas Jung have added several new
contributors since the last meeting:

 - Jean-Philippe Camguilhem
 - Gediminas Paulauskas
 - Erik Rose
 - Eric Steele
 - Simon Jagoe
 - Ilshad Kabilullin
 - Manabu Terada

The chairman suggests the new board consider some kind of new
contributor mentoring program. Either the reference contributor
from the application or somebody else designated by the
foundation may be drafted to keep an eye on new contributors
for a little while.

The copyright assignment script work by Christian Theune has
been delayed by unfinished discussions regarding what the
change is going to look like. There are no good guidelines
explaining how to handle copyright notices during a change
of copyright ownership. Tres Seaver moves to use a simple
replacement policy which replaces "Zope Corporation" with
"Zope Foundation", and not touch the years displayed in the
copyright headers. The motion is seconded and then accepted
by all board members except for Rob Page, who recuses himself
as Zope Corporation representative.

The chairman brings up a separate issue that has come up in
the copyright changeover discussion. Many packages in the
svn.zope.org repository lack a license file for the Zope
Public License, which is a required license for software
checked into the Zope Foundation repositories. Tres Seaver
moves to direct Christian Theune to add a LICENSE.txt file
with the ZPL version 2.1 to all toplevel packages where it
does not exist. The vote passes unanimously.


Website
-------
Negotiations between banality, the new design creator, and
DZUG e.V. as design sponsor have concluded. The design will
be released under a "copyleft" license to be available for
everyone. The only outstanding task is for banality to
invoice DZUG e.V. for their work. As it is not clear what
specific license "copyleft" means in this context Andreas Jung
is instructed to find out for the board.


Foundation message
------------------
The chairman will delegate this task to the new board. The
same is true for the Zope Summit discussion. Christian Theune
reports that gocept is stepping up to organize a Zope Summit
to coincide with the annual DZUG e.V. conference in Germany
in September 2010. The board is very happy about this show
of support. Final decisions will be made by the new board.


New business
------------
The domain name transfer from Zope Corporation to the Zope
Foundation has been held up on the question if the previous
trademark assignment, which would govern the zope.org
domain, has been executed correctly. The treasurer can't
recall paying out the symbolic consideration of $1 to
Zope Corporation. Tres Seaver moves to direct the treasurer
to make the payment, and the vote is passed unopposed.

Jens Vagelpohl is deferring the release manager selection
issue to the next board.

Christian Theune is going to take on the ZTK governance issue.
He will start working on the political obstacles over the next
few weeks and hopes to get a specific slice of time every
week to work on ZTK issues.

Tres Seaver had mailed the board election results to the board
mailing list before this board meeting. The new board will have
the following members:

 - Andreas Jung
 - Gary Poster
 - Stephan Richter
 - Tres Seaver
 - Jan Smith
 - Christian Theune
 - Jens Vagelpohl

The election results will be certified by the membership at the
general meeting on February 24. The secretary volunteers to mail
all candidates not present at this board meeting and inform them
of the election results. He will also send a reminder about
the general meeting to [email protected] to ensure
good participation. The chairman suggests for the new board
to approach Lennart Regebro, who was not elected, for various
tasks since he showed a willingness to volunteer his time for
board duties.

The chairman volunteers to create and publish the agenda for
the general meeting on February 24 and create a summary of
activities undertaken by the outgoing board.

Tres Seaver moves to thank Martijn Faassen and Rob Page for
their good work since they will not be part of the incoming
board. The motion passes unanimously.


Adjournment
-----------
The chairman adjourns the meeting at 16:59 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 directors on February 24, 2010.

The chairman bid the secretary keep these minutes on file.