Zope Foundation Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors - 2011-12-06
Date and Time: Tuesday, December 6, 2011 20:00 UTC
Location: IRC meeting, irc://irc.freenode.net/#zope-foundation
Directors Present:
- Poster, Gary
- Rush, Jeff (treasurer)
- Seaver, Tres (chair)
- Smith, Jan (vice chair)
- Vagelpohl, Jens (secretary)
Guests present:
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
- International wire transfer options for invoice payment
- ERP5 as alternative to QuickBooks Online
- Purchasing QuickBooks online
- Status gift for Michael Haubenwallner
- Status update server upgrade
- Selecting a new release manager for Zope
- Zope code on GitHub
- Date for the next membership meeting
- Arranging the next meeting date
- Adjournment
Call to Order
-------------
The chairman calls the meeting to order at 20:04 UTC.
Treasurer's report
------------------
The attempts at getting the local branch Gary has been using to
cooperate with the branch close to the treasurer are still
ongoing. Gary and Jeff will try once more to ask their contact
persons to call each other. The secretary moves to empower the
treasurer to open a new bank account for the Zope Foundation
should this last-ditch effort fail. The motion is seconded by
the treasurer and passes unanimously.
Gary as the previous treasurer has handled all bill payments
so far. There are no outstanding invoices at this point.
Membership committee
--------------------
No new members have joined since the last meeting.
Repository committee
--------------------
The repository committee report is skipped because Andreas and
Christian are absent.
Tabled business
---------------
The domain name transfer and Subversion repository move
items remain tabled.
New Business
------------
The chairman still has not managed to reach the foundation accountant
Sean O'Connell.
The previous treasurer has researched the international wire fees
charged by the current bank, which are very high. The secretary
suggests looking at PayPal for international transactions. The
treasurer and the secretary will look at their respective ends to
see if PayPal is a viable and cheaper option.
There hasn't been any further movement on the question about using
ERP5 instead of QuickBooks Online for accounting. No one has stepped
forward to explain how the foundation's requirements can be met
by ERP5 without requiring additional effort on the treasurer's or
the accountant's part. The secretary suggests dropping the issue
and proceeding with the original plan to purchase QuickBooks Online
once the current treasurer has the required banking access.
The proposed gift for Michael Haubenwallner to thank him for his
work as zope.org webmaster has not been purchased yet. Gary steps
forward to do it, he will contact the secretary for any necessary
details.
The server upgrade is complete. All services have been migrated to
the new server. The old server is scheduled to be decommissioned
by the hosting company on December 17.
For the Zope release manager decision the board has two options
to consider. Laurence Rowe has signaled interest, and Jens
Vagelpohl proposed a solution involving a steering committee like
we have e.g. for the ZTK. Unfortunately the release manager
selection process has become intermingled with the code hosting
issue. Therefore the chairman suggests making the release
manager question part of the agenda for the upcoming membership
meeting.
The board discussed the issue of Zope code being hosted on GitHub
and Laurence Rowe's request to "bless" these repositories as
official code repositories. Currently the board has asked
Laurence to consider these as "scratch pads" only, the official code
hosting still remains on svn.zope.org. The chairman doubts that
hosting code on GitHub fits the Zope Foundation's charter as
guardian of the Zope code base.
Several reasons against moving to GitHub were identified, such as
being able to maintain the legal trace of ownership through
a secure contributor identification mechanism or the added work of
switching the contributor signup and maintenance workflows to
GitHub. Furthermore, features argued to lower the barrier to
contributorship such as GitHub pull requests, which could be
picked up and checked in by a verified contributor, violate the
Zope Foundation contributor agreement which specifically bars a
contributor from checking in "significant" contributions that he
does now own. The contributor has to guarantee that he has the
right to the contributed code in order to assign copyright to the
Zope Foundation. Last but not least, the board does not know if
Laurence's opinion represents the majority of foundation members,
only they can make a binding decision on such an important topic.
On the flip side, board members mentioned that GitHub does indeed
offer a mode where contributor access can be controlled and
contributors safely identified.
The chairman suggests the foundation could handle Git/Gitweb
hosting using the foundation's own infrastructure. The secretary
in his role as admin volunteers to handle the setup if and when
that alternative is chosen, but a wholesale conversion of all
projects on svn.zope.org may represent a large chunk of work.
In the end the board agrees to put the code hosting issue to a
vote at the next membership meeting, which will happen in late
Q1/2012. The board will prepare draft resolutions for the
membership to vote on.
As for the next membership meeting date, the board decided on
Friday, March 16. As the US PyCon is held March 9-11 the
treasurer suggests holding a BoF-session at Pycon for inofficial
foundation input gathering.
Arranging the next meeting date
-------------------------------
The vice chair will set up a Doodle for the next meeting date.
Adjournment
-----------
The chairman adjourns the meeting at 21:05 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 December 09, 2011.
The chairman bid the secretary keep these minutes on file.