04-25

Notes form X.Org BoD telecon April 25, 2006

Present:
Stuart Kreitman (SK)
Stuart Anderson (SA)
Jim McQuillan n(JQ)
Leon Shiman (LS)
Kevin Martin (KM)
Egbert Eich (EE)

Topics
------
1. Moving more BoD discussions to email.
2. Bylaw review process.
3. State of X.Org machines.
4. Additional machines from SUN
5. Notes approval

1. Moving more BoD discussions to email.
   It was noticed that it is getting increasiongly difficult to hold
   a board call as board members have other obligations at the time of
   the call.
   - Last weeks call was canceled.
   - LS and EE announced that they will not be available for calls the 
     following two weeks. It was therefore suggested to cancel the next
     two calls.
   - Some board members were not able to join this call from the beginning.
p    It was therefore decided to move more discussions to email which would 
    give people who cannot make it at the time the calls are scheduled to 
    participate in the discussions.

2. Bylaw revision progrss
   Bylaw committee announced it had received the last set of reviews from
   board members. It will schedule a time for a call to discuss these issues.

3. State of X.Org machines
   Daniel Stone has repeatedly approached the board on the state of the
   X.Org machines. Presently freedesktop.org acts as the canonical upstream
   source for X.Org releases. 
   - ftp.x.org does not have the latest security patches
   - www.x.org doesn't announce the availability of these patches.
   Daniel pointed out that people looking for the availability of security
   fixes will  normally check the projects main web site. 
   Not announcing the availability of security patches there may in
   give those people a false sense of security.
   Therefore he started a discussion on the X.Org security mailing list
   making suggestions on how to remedy this problem.
   The board decided to move the discussion on how the community would
   loke to see the X.Org machines used to a larger audience. It was
   furthermore decided that the mailing list xorg@freedesktop.org
   would be the right audience.
   KM will make an announcement on the security mailing list suggesting
   to move the discussion and to repost the messages that were exchanged
   on the security mailing list on this matter to xorg@freedesktop.org
   if noone objects.
   Furthermore it was decided to not start a separate discussion on
   the web server issue as both matters belong together.

4. SK reported that the machines donated to X.Org by SUN Microsystems 
   had been shipped to MIT. These machines are explicitely titled to
   MIT and thus cannot be moved to a different location.
   He also mentioned that they are equipped with remote management 
   facilities.
   Thus they only require physical attendance for the initial setup 
   and the configuration of the remote management console.
   The taks to do this has not yet been assigned to anyone.
   SK furthermore mentioned that SUN would like to see OpenSolaris to
   be the OS used on these machines to demonstrate the capabilities
   of this other open source OS.
   It was pointed out that this would make it more difficult to find
   people who are willing to administrate these machines as the expertise
   in OpenSolaris is not too pelntyful in our community.

5. Notes approval.
   The notes of the last board meetings have not been read by all board
   members. Since they had been circulated almost two weeks ago it was
   decided that if no objection was raised within 24 hours they would
   be approved for publication.