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Zope Foundation Board of Directors meeting minutes - 2011-01-25

Date and Time: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 13:00 UTC
Location: IRC meeting, irc://irc.freenode.net/#zope-foundation
Directors Present:
- Jung, Andreas
- Richter, Stephan
- Seaver, Tres (Chairman)
- Smith, Jan (Vice chair)
- Theune, Christian

Guests present:
- Groszer, Adam

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
  - calendar.zope.org: Links from www.zope.org and RSS feed
- Tabled items
  - domain name transfer Zope Corporation to Zope Foundation
  - migrating the SVN repository to a ZF-controlled host
- New Business
  - FOWABE project: Board resolution to appoint an official ZF
    representation in Europe
  - New/revived nonprofit application status (Gary)
  - 2010 tax preparation/interfacing with the accountant (Gary)
  - Purchasing QuickBooks online (Gary)
- Arranging the next meeting date
- Adjournment


Call to Order
-------------
The chairman calls the meeting to order at 13:02 UTC and
welcomes Adam Groszer as guest.


Treasurer's report
------------------
The treasurer is absent and his report is skipped.


Membership committee
--------------------
The secretary is absent so his report in his role as membership
committee member is skipped.


Repository committee
--------------------
Rok Garbas and Thomas Massmann have signed up as new
contributors.

In terms of repository policy compliance Christian Theune
reports about project compliance work within the z3ext
namespace that is otherwise considered stalled. It turns
out one person had done this work not out of interest in
the particular project but as a formality.


Message/communications and projects
-----------------------------------
Andreas Jung is currently waiting to hear back from the
principal coders of the new zope.org website, Michael
Haubenwallner and Johannes Raggam.

The vice chair had asked if the new zope.org calendar
website at calendar.zope.org offers an RSS feed. It turns out
such a feed exists, it just isn't advertised in any
obvious places. Browsers will pick up on it automatically,
though, since the site sets appropriate header flags. Jan
will follow up with Andreas Jung to make sure a link is put
in a visible spot on the main page itself.


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


New Business
------------
On request by the absent secretary, Christian Theune moves
that in the event the FOWABE project receives funding the Zope
Foundation will establish an official representation in
Europe before the FOWABE contract is signed. The motion is
seconded by the vice chair. After a short discussion the motion
passes with four votes - Stephan Richter had disappeared from
the keyboard and the chairman rules to record his potential
vote as abstention.

All remaining items under New Business are treasurer-related
and are skipped due to his absence.

Christian Theune is concerned about how declining activity in
the various Zope-related projects have led to a declining scope
of tasks and influence for the Zope Foundation. He is wondering
where the foundation is headed in the next several years. The
chair notes that while there are several high-profile projects
that are well-maintained such as the ZTK, Grok, BlueBream,
Zope2 and the ZODB, there's not a whole lot of obvious
innovation happening within the Zope Foundation-governed
projects. Both Christian Theune and the chairman agree that this
lack of new directions needs to be addressed. Several options
to increase participation and lower the barrier to contributions
are mentioned, such as a distributed versioning system, tie-ins
to social networking or the notion of a project incubator. Tres
Seaver specifically mentions the repoze project which has left
the umbrella of Zope projects because the current development
processes involve too much friction or "stop energy". Christian
Theune mentions Grok as another community that has moved to use
their own set of mailing lists as opposed to the more general
Zope development lists. Specific steps he took to improve the
situation, such as the weekly developer meetings on IRC, ended
up producing more overhead than value as participation dropped
away. Christian feels that the general lack of direction for
Zope in general is even discouraging him from doing code
improvements. He mentions Zope2 as an example where it's
not clear if spending time on ongoing improvement is well spent.
Technology has passed us by, it seems. The chairman asks Christian
to put his thoughts in writing and draft an email for the board
which will be sent to all foundation members after board-level
discussions. That way we can get new ideas from a wider audience
than just the foundation board.

The chair mentions that the board needs to start organizing the
Zope Foundation annual meeting and directors' elections. He
proposes March 16 as a potential meeting date that would stay
within the timing guidelines set forth in the foundation bylaws.
The chair will send a draft membership meeting and election
announcement email to the board, based on last year's mailing.
The board agrees that having a wider discussion about future goals
and a new vision as discussed before the annual meeting agenda item
will not fit into this timeline, it needs to be handled as an
ongoing process independent of election deadlines. To cap the
annual meeting date discussion the chairman moves to hold the
meeting on March 16, 2011 in the #zope-foundation IRC channel on
irc.freenode.net at 15:00 UTC. The motion passes unanimously.


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 14:03 UTC.

These minutes were written by the secretary, Jens Vagelpohl,
according to the notes taken by Andreas Jung during the meeting.

These minutes were posted to the [email protected] mailing
list and approved by all participating directors on January 27, 2011.

The chairman bid the secretary keep these minutes on file.