12-06

<alanc> good afternoon
<alanc> Matthias sent mail last week saying he'd be unavailable today due to vacation
<agd5f> hello
<alanc> hmm, seem to be missing anholt, bart, and keith (assuming dberkholz is here, just quiet)
<dberkholz> here!
<dberkholz> not even mobile for once
<alanc> oh, I guess keithp is in channel too
<alanc> agd5f: any election or 501(c)3 update to get us started with?
<alanc> or any treasurer report from stukreit ?
<stukreit> I don't think I have any thing to do on that
<agd5f> alanc: the delaware franchise fee requires an ACH transfer or credit card.  any objections to me paying with my card and xorg reimbursing me?
<stukreit> or.. $0 in, $0 out
<agd5f> I believe the fee is like $25
<alanc> right, I thought stuart already sent on a check for that
<stukreit> alanc:  As treasurer, I recommend this, we don't have a good way to send money out
<alanc> I have no objection to that
<stukreit> I did, but it apparently didn't get past keith
<stukreit> I would like to put an issue on the agenda:
<agd5f> alanc: they don't take checks.  just ACH transfers and credit cards.  At least there doesn't seem to be any easy way to pay via check
<alanc> stukreit: didn't you get a debit card on the X.Org account you could use for that?
<stukreit> let me read it- I have it here
<stukreit> well, it's a mastercard debit card.
<stukreit> Can you use that over the phone?
<agd5f> stukreit: if you have the financial data together for the 1023 form, we should ping Karen
<alanc> in any case, the board approved the $25 dollars for the Delaware fee, as long as the money leaves our bank account and gets credited to our fees due in delaware, whatever path it takes to get there is an implementation detail I'm happy to leave to you & stuart to work it
<stukreit> Was the unformatted stuff I emailed sufficient?
<alanc> work out even
<agd5f> stukreit: I don't remember seeing that.  we need like 4-5 years of history for the form
<stukreit> I'll have to dig thru my email. Does anyone here remember getting these reports from me?
<agd5f> best bet would probably be to forward what you have to Karen and cc me.  And she what else she thinks we need
<stukreit> alanc:  Perhaps this meeting ought to have a more affirmative roll call
<alanc> stukreit: you mean besides the board members just saying some variant of "hello" at the beggining?
<stukreit> agd5k: ok, will have to search. fyi the firefox I'm running is awefull at search, I'd prefer to do it from my home mac.
<agd5f> stukreit: that's fine
<stukreit> you have a hello from mherrb, agd5f, dberkholtz, alanc, stukreit.
<alanc> yes, and no response from keithp - the other members aren't in the channel at all
<stukreit> sigh, I guess we don't have enough going on.
<agd5f> as to the elections, only mherrb replied to my proposal.  Did everyone else on the election committee get it?
<mherrb> since the 2 other members aren't there, don't expect an answer now 
<alanc> yeah, other 2 members would be keithp & emmes 
<alanc> matthias didn't say how long he would be on vacation, just that he wasn't planning on being near a net connection today
<agd5f> yeah. it'd be nice if they could respond at some point.  I've already sent two proposals over the last 2 months, but only mherrb has responded.  If you are reading the minutes, the proposed changes are on the election wiki on the board site
<alanc> stukreit: you started saying earlier you wanted to add an item to the agenda - did we cover it already or did you still have something?
<stukreit> It was about the Intel donation. I've tried a few times including phone messages to the Intel person to get confirmation of the funds
<stukreit> I guess I should spend my time working on HSBC to get the security dongle/web access that they promised me months ago
<alanc> the $15k for the XDS2010?  would be helpful if keithp was watching this channel
<stukreit> yes
<stukreit> that one
<stukreit> We got as far as them handing me off to their 3rd party bill paying contractor.  I really need to bang on HSBC to get web access. 
<alanc> okay, so now that I think we've got everything else out of the way, do we want to discuss the repository vandalism that filled the lists since our last meeting?
<mherrb> at some point we should clarify the hosting of the project x.org vs freedesktop.org and so on. but it's difficult without someone really committed to take care of this.
<dberkholz> what clarification is required?
<dberkholz> my understanding of the current status is that fd.o provides hosting for some of the x.org services, and there is some overlap between fd.o administrators and x.org contributors
<alanc> the fd.o admins have also taken over administration of the x.org machines as well I believe
<mherrb> yes. I think this could be stated on the wiki somewhere, may be with some contact information.
<agd5f> not to change the subject, but we really need a postal address for xorg.  Something we need to look into at some point.  getting a new PO box or some such.
<alanc> I ping tollef now when I see that my board meeting minutes/reminders haven't gone out because mailman has failed again on expo.x.org
<mherrb> there is also still the question of the cost of hosting machines at mit, at least I still don't know how much we're paying and what services we get in exchange.
<alanc> so at some level, the misuse of root on freedesktop.org to disable the commit notifications temporarily is a matter for freedesktop.org to handle, and I believe that currently, fd.o doesn't really have a well-defined governance model, just keithp as occasional ringleader when a figurehead is needed
<dberkholz> maybe it's just me but i tend to see it as an abuse in both roles, fd.o and x.org
<alanc> certainly they took actions as X.org developers that reflected badly on the project and were intended to (and succeeded at) causing turmoil with other developers
<stukreit> Re. MIT Hosting:  we paid them $3000 on 3/10/2010
<alanc> I believe we have one active machine and two gathering dust there
<stukreit> pretty steep cost for that amount of utility.
<alanc> so the question for the board then is if there's any action we should be considering taking - there were some suggestions about transparency and such, though I'm not sure if investigations into compromise/vandalism happen enough to need a formal policy
<mherrb> I was not necessarly thinking of a formal policy. Just trying to honestly describe the non-formal situation and who's doing what.
<dberkholz> that said, is the board even able to take action beyond a note of censure or recommendation? 
<alanc> we could also consider something along the lines of a code of conduct (like Ubuntu & other projects have) or a statement of respect (like Jono Bacon's recent efforts) to formalize that trying to piss off other developers is not something developers should do
<alanc> in terms of the specific case, the board can't really dole out punishments - we can expel members, but the death penalty for vandalism seems extreme, and that just keeps them from voting, not participating
<alanc> as far as I know, the board has never gotten involved before in deciding who can and can't have direct git commit access, which is about the only thing we could take away now that they voluntarily gave up root
<mherrb> in this case I don't think any more punishment is needed, but we need to have something in place for the future. 
<mherrb> as far as I know, anyone with xorg membership can commit to any of the repositories. Even if git makes recovery possible, brute force vandalism can make it a pita.
<mherrb> and without a minimal rule that legitimates closing the account, whoever decides to close it can be in trouble
<alanc> commit access is regulated by the xorg group on freedesktop.org - I don't think there's any connection to membership in the X.Org Foundation
<mherrb> Yes, sure. the question is more if this group needs to be more formal or not, including its relation with the foundation.
<alanc> but since our hour is almost up, and we're missing almost half the board, perhaps this is where we table this for further thought on what to do better in the future
<stukreit> Suggestion:  Assign one person the Access Czar, so that if something wierd happens, that person can act without getting a chorus of who the F. are you?
<alanc> that might be useful anyway, since we also have a bunch of account requests waiting for someone to ack, and no one taking responsibility for them
<alanc> anything else before we adjourn for the day?
<agd5f> problem is not all project on fd.o are directly related to X.  but it would probably make sense for X projects
<alanc> right, I was thinking of for handling access to the xorg group (in the /etc/group or LDAP sense), not access to the machines overall
<mherrb> lets continue this discussion in a next meeting. May be it can also be discussed during the election's campaign...
<alanc> okay
<alanc> thanks for coming everyone, see you all in two weeks
<mherrb> Zzz time here. bye.