[ZF] BoD meeting minutes 2011-02-15

[Jens Vagelpohl]

The following minutes are published online at:

http://foundation.zope.org/minutes/zfbod-minutes-20110215

Jens Vagelpohl
Secretary, Zope Foundation Board of Directors

---

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

Date and Time: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 19:00 UTC
Location: IRC meeting, irc://irc.freenode.net/#zope-foundation
Directors Present:
- Richter, Stephan
- Poster, Gary (Treasurer)
- Seaver, Tres (Chairman)
- Smith, Jan (Vice chair)
- Theune, Christian
- Vagelpohl, Jens (Secretary)

Guests present:
- None

Agenda
------
- Call to Order and welcome to any guests
- Treasurer's report
  - treasurer turnover process
- Membership committee
  - new members since last meeting
- Repository committee
  - new committers since the last meeting
  - repository policy monitoring and community communication
- Message/communications
- Projects
  - website progress
- Tabled items
  - domain name transfer Zope Corporation to Zope Foundation
  - migrating the SVN repository to a ZF-controlled host
- New Business
  - Next steps in board election process
  - New/revived nonprofit application status
  - 2010 tax preparation/interfacing with the accountant
  - Purchasing QuickBooks online
- Arranging the next meeting date
- Adjournment


Call to Order
-------------
The chairman calls the meeting to order at 19:01 UTC.


Treasurer's report
------------------
Before the meeting the treasurer circulated his report to the board
mailing list. Highlights from the report include:

- current funds are $65,803.88
- all physical foundation membership papers given to the treasurer
  when taking over from the last board have now been shipped to
  the secretary
- Contact with the foundation accountant Sean O'Connell has been
  established and the treasurer will follow up for the 2010 tax
  filing and the non-profit status. The accounting firm also
  invoiced the 2009 tax filings.
- For the new QuickBooks Online accounting solution all attempts
  to convert the old Peachtree files have failed. QuickBooks
  customer support offered to handle the conversion for a
  $50 fee, which the Treasurer will pursue.
- For the next board period Gary would like to leave the treasurer
  position. He promises to do everything necessary to leave a
  "clean ship" for the next treasurer, including the Peachtree
  file migration and 2010 tax filing.


Membership committee
--------------------
No new foundation members have been signed up since the last
meeting.

The treasurer notes that sponsor members should have received
membership fee invoices. The secretary promises to create and
send invoices for all past-due memberships as soon as possible.


Repository committee
--------------------
No new contributors have signed up since the last meeting.


Message/communications and projects
-----------------------------------
Andreas Jung is not present so the website agenda item
is skipped.


Tabled business
---------------
The domain name transfer and Subversion repository move
items remain tabled.


New Business
------------
As requested by the secretary the board had a short discussion
about the next steps in the board election process. At first
the current treasurer wanted to decline his nomination, which
would have left us one person short of filling the entire board.
The board managed to convince Gary to stay on, though, which
means the number of nominees who accepted their nomination is
equal to the number of open seats on the board of directors. For
this reason the secretary moves to consider the new board
members elected by acclamation. They are:

- Jung, Andreas
- Poster, Gary
- Rush, Jeff
- Seaver, Tres
- Smith, Jan
- Theune, Christian
- Vagelpohl, Jens

The motion is seconded by Christian Theune and passed unanimously.
The secretary will draft an email announcing the
changed election process to all members. No further action is
required until the annual meeting on March 16[1], where
the membership will get a chance to vote on the new board.

The treasurer-related items were addressed in the treasurer's
report (see above).

Following up on a discussion about the future of Zope started by
Christian Theune during the last board meeting[2] he has sent
an email detailing his observations and ideas to the board
mailing list, to be discussed at this meeting. Several problems
were noted. The community has splintered into many sub-communities
and it's hard for newcomers to find their way. The entity Zope
itself has become ill-defined and hard to explain. A perceptible
lack of innovation is coming from what we consider the Zope
developer community.
On the one hand it might be useful to simply acknowledge that a
state of maturity has been reached. There are many stable and
well-maintained projects under the foundation's auspices, such as
Zope 2, ZODB, zope.component, among others, and many people look
for exactly that kind of stability.
On the other hand innovation remains an important differentiator
among web framework solutions. Ideas how to activate and harness
the community's potential for innovation are needed. One such
idea is to support a distributed version control (DCVS) system
for our code repository. Another idea is to focus more on the
core software pieces, even if it means a controversial
concentration on very few projects.
The chairman will draft a "president's report" to highlight how
the foundation has been doing in reaching the goals set out at
the start of the current board period.


Arranging the next meeting date
-------------------------------
The vice chair will set up a Doodle to plan the next meeting date.


Adjournment
-----------
The chairman adjourns the meeting at 20:01 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 February 22, 2011.

The chairman bid the secretary keep these minutes on file.


[1] http://foundation.zope.org/board/agenda-agm-20110316

[2] http://foundation.zope.org/minutes/zfbod-minutes-20110125