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- Original The Apache Software Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting Minutes
September 11, 2010
1. Call to order
The meeting was scheduled for 9:00am (Eastern) and began at
9:35 when a sufficient attendance to constitute a
quorum was recognized by the chairman. The meeting was held
at the Harvard Club, Boston, MA, USA.
2. Roll Call
Directors Present:
Shane Curcuru
Doug Cutting
Bertrand Delacretaz
Roy T. Fielding
Jim Jagielski
Geir Magnusson, Jr.
Sam Ruby
Noirin Shirley
Greg Stein
Directors Absent:
none
Officers Present:
Justin Erenkrantz
Philip M. Gollucci
Craig L Russell
Officers Absent:
Sander Striker
Guests:
Andrei Adamchik
Rahul Akolkar
Serge Knystautas
Sally Khudairi
Davanum Srinivas
Carl Trieloff
3. Special Orders
A. Executive Officer Appointments
1. Chairman of the Board:
Jim Jagielski
Doug Cutting (elected; unanimous)
2. President:
Jim Jagielski (elected; unanimous)
Noirin Shirley
Sam Ruby
3. Secretary:
Craig L Russell (elected; unanimous)
4. Asst. Secretary:
Sam Ruby (elected; unanimous)
5. Treasurer:
Geir Magnusson, Jr. (elected; unanimous)
6. Asst Treasurer:
Hadrian Zbarcea
Andrus Adamchik
Geir does not believe an Assistant Treasurer is needed at this time.
This position will not be filled for this year.
7. Executive Vice President:
Greg Stein
Noirin Shirley (elected; unanimous)
8. Vice Chairman:
Greg Stein (elected; unanimous)
4. Discussion Items
A. Needs, outlook, and plans for legal resources in general.
There is a need for legal resources for such items as contract review
(e.g. employment, services), intellectual property issues, and corporate
filings.
There is no consensus among the board that there is a need for
a General Counsel at this time.
B. Move the time slot for the board meetings, either just for the Sept
22nd meeting, or as a permanent change.
Third Wednesday of each calendar at noon Pacific will be changed to
10:00 Pacific (not GMT as daylight savings is not a GMT concept)
for all board meetings until changed.
C. Discuss director thoughts on when & how the ASF should take public
positions on advocacy items (patents, licenses, whatever)
Once Apache takes an extreme public position, it's very difficult to
change as time goes on. Apache as an organization doesn't generally
advocate for specific behavior with regard to software development,
but does exhibit a well-organized and well-justified model for this
behavior.
With regard to policy statements, e.g. on software patents, patent
lawsuits, licenses; where there is board consensus on important issues
it is appropriate to take public advocacy positions. The board does
not see any such issues at present.
With regard to defense of Apache policies and practices, the board
will actively defend Apache policies and practices, and the people who
implement them.
D. How can we balance the budget while preparing to approve EA expenses.
Executive Assistant position is out for bid although it is not in the
current budget. Once a suitable candidate is approved, the budget will
be amended to include the cost. In any event, the budget should be
updated mid-year (November).
5. Review Outstanding Action Items
6. Unfinished Business
7. New Business
The future of ApacheCon:
It is generally agreed that Apache as a public charity needs
to justify expenditures and activities consistent with its charter to
provide software to the public at no charge. Activities in direct
support of this charter include recruiting new projects, recruiting
new committers to projects, and education of the public as to how to
use the projects.
With that in mind, it's hard to justify big, expensive conferences in
big, expensive hotels. It's easy to justify small, inexpensive
conferences such as barcamps, retreats, etc. But it's difficult to
find people willing to do the local coordination (venue planning).
Apache does and should continue to work with local coordinators,
including corporate planners, to put on local events.
Just for example, it would be fine to have an ApacheCon-style event
that cost $400 per head for 1200 people, but not $1200 per head for
400 people. And it's probably worthwhile for outreach for Apache to
spend $50 per head to reach people who might not come to a big
conference. It's also good to target specific (underrepresented)
demographics when deciding whether to support an event. And it's
not good for Apache to take on the risk of failed conferences since
that could put a big bite on our finances.
So let's turn the problem around, and solicit proposals from people
who want to run events with the right target demographic, with the
right cost per person, and the right event organizers. These events
will earn the Apache branding rights.
Sponsorships:
It would be good to have a goal of having smaller contributions, and
many more of them. Are there things that we can offer the community,
like logos for individual business cards, individual web pages?
Honorifics like "founder", "contributor" that can be applied to
individuals and corporations?
The state of the financial books:
Jim intends to have an internal audit of the books this year. He will
work with Geir to accomplish this goal.
8. Announcements
Noirin has been appointed to the Open Cloud Initiative
www.opencloudinitiative.org
Congratulations Noirin!
9. Adjournment
Scheduled to adjourn by 5:00pm (Eastern)
Adjourned at 4:49pm.
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