[ZF] BoD meeting minutes 2011-12-06

[Jens Vagelpohl]

The following minutes are published online at:

http://foundation.zope.org/minutes/zfbod-minutes-20111206

Jens Vagelpohl
Secretary, Zope Foundation Board of Directors

---


Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors
==============================================

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 foundation-board at zope.org mailing
list and approved by all participating directors on December 09, 2011.

The chairman bid the secretary keep these minutes on file.