[ZF] BoD meeting minutes 2012-10-02

Jens Vagelpohl jens at dataflake.org
Sat Oct 6 09:45:06 UTC 2012 

The following minutes are published online at:

http://foundation.zope.org/minutes/boardmeeting_20121002

Jens Vagelpohl
Secretary, Zope Foundation Board of Directors

---

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

Date and Time: Tuesday, October 2, 2012 12:00 UTC
Location: IRC meeting, irc://irc.freenode.net/#zope-foundation
Directors Present:
- Page, Rob
- Rush, Jeff (treasurer)
- Seaver, Tres (chairman)
- Souza-Leite, Aroldo
- Vagelpohl, Jens (secretary)

Guests present:
- Leonardo Rochael Almeida (later)


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
  - Explore PayPal for international wire transfers
  - Vote on VCS system and hosting
  - Updating the committer agreement and committer approval policy
  - Adopting a sane "patch policy" similar to the Plone Foundation's
  - Zope release manager selection
- Arranging the next meeting date
- Adjournment


Call to Order
-------------
The chairman calls the meeting to order at order at 12:02 UTC.


Treasurer's report
------------------
The treasurer has continued his work collecting papers and 
uploading some to the foundation website. Apart from Rackspace
and QuickBooks, no expenses have been recorded.

The PayPal account is not ready yet due to their documentation 
requirements. To facilitate paying the hosting fees, which 
would directly benefit from a working PayPal account, the 
secretary has set up a new customer account at the hosting 
provider drawing on the foundation's debit card.

On the topic of uploading documents to the foundation website 
the secretary asks the treasurer to use PDF format instead of 
DjVu so that working with the documents becomes easier.


Membership committee
--------------------
Two new nominated members have joined the Zope Foundation, 
Laurence Rowe and Matthew Wilkes.


Repository committee
--------------------
Both the secretary and the chair have not seen any new contributors 
join.


Tabled business
---------------
The tabled business items remain tabled.


New Business
------------
There's no new information about the nonprofit application.

The PayPal account application process is waiting for additional 
documentation. In the meantime, the treasurer will find out how 
the new bank handles international wire transfers so the 
outstanding hosting invoices can be paid.

Before voting on the VCS and code hosting issue the chairman 
recognizes Leonardo Rochael Almeida who has asked to make a new 
proposition for code hosting. In a nutshell, Leo proposes to 
host at least the Zope package code in a master on Zope 
Foundation hardware ("git.zope.org") and hook it up to a mirror
repository on GitHub so it looks and acts like a normal GitHub 
master repository. He argues this would satisfy those who want 
hosting on GitHub as well as those who don't want to use it and 
who could use the master on git.zope.org directly. This new 
solution would be easy to set up, and Leo would volunteer to 
handle this integration with funding and support from Nexedi.
During the long discussion which follows it becomes clear that 
the board does not believe such a setup could satisfy the 
clear wish expressed by the foundation membership in the 
"straw poll". In the end, the board decides to take the vote 
as planned originally. The secretary moves the board adopt the 
outcome from last week's straw poll and allow Zope Foundation 
projects to be hosted on GitHub under a Zope Foundation-managed 
GitHub account. The motion is seconded by Aroldo and passes 
unanimously without any further discussion.

Since the decision to allow code hosting on GitHub itself is 
just a first step, the chairman points out several tasks that 
need to be worked on, such as...

- the existing GitHub organization account "zopefoundation" 
  must be put under Zope Foundation control
- the committer agreement needs to be vetted for any language 
  implying a specific kind of repository or login mechanism. 
  If it is not generic enough to allow GitHub projects then it 
  needs an update and re-signing by any contributor who wants to
  contribute to Zope Foundation projects on GitHub.
- the committer approval policy document needs to be vetted and 
  updated to reflect the new situation.
- the Zope Foundation needs a patch policy for contributions by 
  non-contributors
- any code in the current "zopefoundation" GitHub repositories
  that is valuable enough to be retained may need a one-off 
  assignment from its authors

The secretary volunteers to write up a complete list of tasks 
to be discussed on the board mailing list and Aroldo volunteers 
to help the secretary where needed.

The chairman asks the board to look at the Plone Foundation patch
policy[1] to see if it can be re-used for the Zope Foundation. 
The board agrees that it's a good basis and the chairman will send 
a draft suitable for the Zope Foundation to the board list for 
discussion and voting.

The chairman calls for a motion on the Zope release manager 
selection agenda item. Leo graciously volunteers for that position 
even if his preferred GitHub/git.zope.org combination solution is 
not selected. The chairman asks Leo to set up a proof of concept 
repository combination to show us how it works in practice. 
Instead of a vote the chairman brings up the question how the 
release manager position is defined. Leo will write up a job 
description for the board to consider.


Arranging the next meeting date
-------------------------------
The chairman will set up a Doodle for the next meeting date.


Adjournment
-----------
After an unopposed motion by the secretary to adjourn, seconded by 
Rob, the chairman adjourns the meeting at 13:34 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 October 6, 2012.

The chairman bid the secretary keep these minutes on file.


[1] https://plone.org/foundation/materials/foundation-resolutions/patch-policy-052011

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