The Apache Software Foundation

                  Board of Directors Meeting Minutes

                            March 28, 2007


1. Call to order

    The meeting was scheduled for 10:00 (Pacific) and was begun when
    a sufficient attendance to constitute a quorum was recognized by
    the Chair at 10:02.  The meeting was held by teleconference,
    hosted by Jim Jagielski and Covalent:

            US Number       : 800-531-3250
            International   : 303-928-2693

    IRC #asfboard on irc.freenode.net was used for backup
    purposes.

2. Roll Call

    Directors Present:

        Justin Erenkrantz
        Dirk-Willem van Gulik (arrived 10:13)
        Jim Jagielski
        Sam Ruby
        Cliff Schmidt
        Greg Stein
        Sander Striker
        Henri Yandell

    Directors Absent:

        Ken Coar

    Guests:

        Jukka Zitting
        Geir Magnusson Jr

3. Minutes from previous meetings

    Minutes (in Subversion) are found under the URL:

        https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/foundation/board/

    A. The meeting of 

       See: board_minutes_2007_02_21.txt

       Minutes of the meeting of February 21, 2007 were tabled,
       awaiting Geir's report.

4. Executive Officer Reports

    A. Chairman [Greg]

       Greg presented at a conference in Beijing with his Apache hat
       on, and with great interest and questions from Chinese
       attendees. His presentation covered the role of Apache in the
       rise of the web, open source, and its eventual impact on the
       software industry in general. Greg is scheduled to attend
       and/or speak at several more conferences over the next few
       months, answering similar questions.
       
       He has nothing to report on the Foundation at this time... we
       appear to continue running on all cylinders with rapid growth
       and interest, and the various committees appear to be operating
       properly and covering their areas of responsibility.

    B. President [Sander]

       The Infrastructure hardware list[1] has been the same for quite a while.
       Actually the list has grown a bit, but has not been updated yet.  For
       instance, good old minotaur is more than ready for retirement.
       It has become clear that seeking out sponsors for the hardware proofs
       harder than expected.  More of a problem is that as soon as the
       needed hardware is on the list, we actually have a use for it straight
       away.  The wait of X months only causes initial planning, and motivation
       to execute on the planning to disappear.

       The way forward is to procure the hardware on the list for which the
       donation timeframe is clearly past.  There was a plan to shuffle
       machines around, given that all machines hosted in the Netherlands are
       in need of retirement.  It seems to be more efficient to procure locally
       than to ship machines.
       The cost for the new hardware is likely to be a significant amount;
       $40k ballpark.

       No progress has been made on the Contegix proposal.

       Sander will be presenting the "State of the Feather" at ApacheCon EU
       in Amsterdam early May.  He will sent a copy for review before the
       program goes to print, to ensure no significant events were left out.

       [1] http://www.apache.org/dev/hardware-wish-list.html

       General consensus was that spending $40k US for hardware
       was no problem at all and that Sander and the Infra team
       should continue with detailed costing.

    C. Treasurer [Justin]

       For our sponsorship program, we have received partial payments from
       Covalent and are awaiting the first payment from HP.  A new invoice
       for the second installment for Google has not yet been issued, but
       will try to get it out next month.

       Unimaginably, PayPal has gotten even worse - as we have now been the
       target of a phishing scam where innocents have received fake receipts
       from PayPal that are duplicates of a real receipt from the ASF.
       Joshua Slive has assisted in responding to the hundreds of complaints
       received so far, but more rounds of the phishing scam continue.

       Per the last meeting, contracts were extended for the System Admin
       position and the Secreterial Assistant.  Jim should now be in receipt
       of the signed contracts.

       Our fiscal year will close on April 30.

       Current balances (as of 3/27/2007):

        Paypal             $    574.94 (-$  1,635.57)
        Checking           $ 31,247.11 (-$  2,441.22)
        Savings            $202,832.98 (+$    436.74)
        Total              $234,655.03 (-$  3,640.05)

        Justin noted that ~$70k US, for the sponsorship program,
        in currently not invoiced, but will be within the next
        months.

    D. Exec. V.P. and Secretary [Jim]

       Things have been relatively quiet and consistent the last
       month. We are in receipt of the signed contract extensions for
       the sysadm and secretarial assistant. We have received one
       check from Car Program, LLC, which was forwarded to the
       ASF lockbox on the 26th. We have also received some faxes
       concerning the Paypal phishing scam Justin notes in his
       report. This have also been responded to via Email using
       the form letter that Joshua crafted.

       Email was sent to the membership to get some initial feedback
       on 4 potential dates for the annual members meeting. It is
       still too early to gleam any real info, but it is looking as
       though a mid-late May date will be the most viable.

       We have received no correspondence that requires board attention.

5. Additional Officer Reports

    A. VP of Legal Affairs [Cliff]

       I have proposed a new Legal Affairs Committee to 
       distribute the current legal affairs workload to a 
       coordinated group ASF members, to assign responsibility 
       for legal policy deliberation and decision making to the
       same group under the supervision of the board, and to 
       provide a structured means of participation and 
       familiarization for those interested in taking over the 
       Legal VP job one day.  The resolution is on the agenda.  
       It is currently written as an Executive committee, but 
       we can discuss if that is best.

       I've worked with Geir on issues related to the JCK 
       licensing problems, but I will let him report on that.

    B. VP of JCP [Geir]

       Only item of major interest to the board is the ongoing 
       impasse with Sun regarding the license for the TCK for
       Java SE, also known as the "JCK".

       Last month I attended the quarterly JCP EC f2f 
       meeting and was able to give a presentation on our JCK
       issue.  I first described a hypothetical case that 
       was "structurally" similar to ours - where an imple-
       mentor was being deliberately denied a usable TCK 
       license due to the business strategy of the spec
       lead.  I then argued why such behavior was 
       prohibited by referring to the relevant sections of
       the JSPA.  Once I felt that the basics were clearly
       explained, I conducted a "straw poll" (informal, 
       unrecorded) and IMO demonstrated that the EC generally
       agreed with our assertion that the JSPA prohibits
       field of use limitations in a TCK license.
       Once this was estabilshed, I informed the EC of the
       basic details of our dipute with Sun, after which 
       followed a vigorous and somewhat heated general 
       discussion.  I'm satisfied that our issue is 
       clearly understood by the EC.

       In other related activities, we've asked the SFLC
       for help in this area, specifically to validate our
       interpretation that the offered TCK license is in 
       violation of the JSPA from the perspective that the
       terms prevent us from distributing under an open source
       license,  and also act as a liaison between us and Sun,
       as Eben is prominently positioned by Sun as a supporter
       of their recent OpenJDK project.  They did agree with
       our interpretation of terms, and engaged in discussion
       with Sun (to no avail).

       I've also asked some other industry notables that
       are independent from the ASF and the various commercial
       actors in the Java ecosystem to appeal to Sun on our 
       behalf.

       Given the lack of any material progress on this issue,
       I recommend that we explore what options and next steps
       are available to us. This will be done with the 
       consultation and approval of the membership.
       
6. Board Committee Reports

    A. Apache Security Team Project [Mark Cox / Greg]

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