Evergreen Oversight Board: 2011-12-20

Present: Dan Scott, Amy Terlaga, Michele Montague, Jim Corridan, Ben Hyman, Galen Charlton, Lori Bowen Ayre, Steve Elfstrand, Bradley Kuhn, Tony Sebro, Steve Wills, Chris Sharp

The Board minutes of the last meeting without any corrections.

• Trademark policy: Dan Scott, Galen Charlton, and GPLS were to compile a list of any other trademark names or logos and forward that to Tony at the Conservancy. Jim Corridan asked the question as to whether the state specific names should be trademarked. Part of the trademark policy is to provide guidance regarding the use of the mark. There is a section on the prohibited use of the mark that addresses this somewhat
  • Action Item: The SFC will need to investigate the scope of Evergreen Indiana and the Michigan Evergreen project; both Evergreen Indiana and Michigan Evergreen will get information about their projects to the SFC. Bradley will get back to the Board regarding this question.
• Proposed Board Composition and Elections: We were to handle this via the mailing list; thread starts at http://list.evergreen-ils.org/pipermail/eg-oversight-board/2011-November/000038.html (Note for those who might be having trouble reading this, rename the file from a .zip to .docx so that something that can read MS Word 2007 and up) and continues at http://list.evergreen-ils.org/pipermail/eg-oversight-board/2011-December/000083.html
  • Dan suggested that we need to see how the complete set of suggested revisions fits into the existing rules of governance and recommended that we create a draft with the merged changes.
  • Lori asked what other groups connected with the SFC do to define the membership. Bradley explained that some use a technical definition – contributing code to the project. Bradley suggested one model of membership – where current members can vote new members in based on contributions to the project.
  • Galen remarked that the sustained contributor model already has buy-in from the Board. The conference would be the logical time to get the amended rules out for approval. Board elections could be done sometime after the conference and done remotely. Galen explained that it would make better sense for board elections to happen after the conference in case the members did not vote in favor of the amended rules of governance.
  • Dan recommended that we draft a mechanism for tracking who is a voting member.
  • Action Item: Dan will pull together a merged draft of the rules of governance. He will incorporate the board elections piece into it. If we don’t use the conference for the voting body, we would need to define the voting membership.
  • Action Item: Galen will research into electronic voting mechanisms and how other projects keep track of voting members.

(Conservancy)

For background, most recent thread begins here

Galen reported that ESI’s documentation from now on will be Creative Commons share-alike license; this will coincide with the beta release of the software. It will be CC BY-SA. The SFC is very supportive of this decision. Dan remarked that this should be very easy for the DIG to incorporate this into their documentation.

Galen brought up one question. Do we need to formally constitute the DIG?

Galen brought up an operational concern. Do we need to develop practices of attribution in a shared repository? Do we need to develop practices of attribution in shared documentation? Dan noted that the Equinox documentation is currently made available as a set of files outside of any version control system, and suggested that the provenance of the files would be much easier to track if they were maintained in a git repository. That way, DIG could pull the files into the existing DIG git repository and then generate the DIG documentation. The source of the files would be flagged as coming from Equinox, and any new or updated files from Equinox would be easy to identify. Likewise, it would be easy for Equinox to pull corrections or revisions from the DIG version of the documentation and maintain a detailed history of the contributions.

Bradley stated that he considered what DIG is doing now is fine for attribution purposes.

Bradley also stated that he considered that DIG is operating under the auspices of the SFC. Any license compliance issues should be raised with the SFC.

The Board thanked ESI for their consideration of the matter and the decision made.

Motion to adopt Conflict of Interest By-Laws language (Stephen Wills)

Tony explained that the SFC is also thinking of drafting a conflict of interest policy and are interested in this policy. They would like to have it drafted by the end of January. Steve explained that he would like to work with Bradley and Tony so that what is drafted reflects the needs of both the SFC and the Evergreen project. The Board will hold off on adopting this amended set of by-laws until Steve has had a chance to work with Bradley and Tony.

• Action Item: Dan will post a link to the rules of governance to the board list. The motion is tabled.

Proposed "Participation Guidelines for Evergreen Communication Channels" (Lori Bowen Ayre)

• Action Item: Lori would like the Board to respond to the revised participation guidelines on the mailing list.

(Dan Scott) as of 2011-12-20, here is the financial statement of the Evergreen Project:

          $19,285.98  Assets
          $16,023.91  Expenses
         $-20,237.89  Income
         $-15,072.00  Liabilities

Dan stated that these numbers reflect the current state of the Evergreen ledger in the SFC earmarked account, but admitted that he still finds it difficult to interpret the numbers and will ask for some guidance from the SFC.

We're using the Evergreen Oversight Board mailing list (eg-oversight-board@list.evergreen-ils.org) for archived discussions

The Evergreen Governance mailing list (evergreen-governance-l@list.georgialibraries.org) should no longer be used for new discussions. On that note, maybe new emails to this old list could simply be forwarded to the Evergreen Oversight Board?

The Evergreen Conservancy alias (evergreen@sfconservancy.org) is used for distribution to members of the Oversight Board and the Conservancy, but is not publicly archived. Suitable for conversations involving personal / confidential / sensitive matters.

Shauna reported that Jono Bacon will be the keynote speaker on Thursday of the conference. The program committee is meeting this week to finalize all of the programs for the schedule. Thirty-eight people are now registered for the conference. Twenty people have hotel rooms. They will be working with the group of the 2013 conference to help them with their planning.

• Ben Hyman posted their proposed budget for comment. Ben reported that the pricing was based on their top choice venue. It provides a meeting space and hotel. There is very little negotiation on the pricing for the meeting space.
• Ben addressed the down payment question. There is a tentative hold on the venue. Equinox will be willing to cover the cost on this since there are no available funds right now with the SFC.
• Ben wondered how much he needed to keep the Board in the loop in his communications with the SFC. Stephen Wills pointed to his proposed amendment to the Rules of Governance on the subject of 'Ad-Hoc Event Committees', as originally raised at http://list.evergreen-ils.org/pipermail/eg-oversight-board/2011-November/000052.html, and suggested that this mechanism would address Ben's concerns by giving the committee autonomy. Each committee will be empowered to do their work without the Board’s intervention as long as the Board is kept informed of any significant developments.

Dan apologized for failing to include this proposed amendment as an action item on today's meeting. He will ensure it is on the agenda for the next meeting and will also ensure that the SFC is in the loop.

There were no announcements.

The meeting adjourned at 2:25pm.