Meeting:Board meeting 2011-02-21

Fedora Board Meeting - 2011-02-21

Roll Call

Present

Tom Callaway (secretary)
Toshio Kuratomi
Joerg Simon
Jared Smith
Jaroslav Reznik
Stephen Smoogen
Máirín Duffy
Rex Dieter
Jon Stanley

Agenda

Updates Board business

Updates

Alpha Blocker meeting (last Friday)

• Good feedback, number of items on the blocker list, not able to cut an RC on Friday, may be slightly behind on schedule
  • RC not cut due to open blockers
• If you have the time, help is encouraged (or encourage others to help).
• Two blockers at the time of this meeting (two proposed also)
  • Several other "nice-to-have" bugs, not blockers

F15 wallpaper

• Fedora Design Team has been hard at work to make "compromise solution"
  • GNOME asked if Fedora would use their striped wallpaper as default in F15 GNOME
  • Pushback from Fedora Design team and community
  • Desire to highlight GNOME 3, but not to the detriment of Fedora community or alternate desktop
  • 5-6 weeks worth of work on picking design theme and compromise solution to make both parties happy
  • Compromise wallpaper with stripes for GNOME, but no stripes for alternate desktop
  • If GNOME is okay with compromise, then we'll use that. If not, then Design Team will make decision (or escalate to Board).
    • Jon: Board really shouldn't be making that call
    • Jared: Would hope that Design Team makes that call
    • Mo: Board gave powers to Design Team, so they are escalation if necessary
    • Jared: Optimistic about compromise, but ultimately it is Fedora's call.

L10N update

• Discussion at FUDCon Tempe amongst Fedora Infrastructure team and some L10N team (igorps; glezos via IRC)
• Currently running older version of Transifex
• Not enough manpower available to keep it running and updated (manpower keeps dropping on this).
• Transifex offered to let Fedora use hosted version
• Jared met with translation team to hear concerns about proposed move
  • Translation team voted to support move to transifex.net, assuming we could always move back if needed as a fallback plan
• Jared then met with representative from L10N team, FESCo members, Doc Team leader, Fedora Program Manager to make sure that everybody was okay with that decision
• Need to act quickly because L10N team said that tools were not useful for F-15 translations
• Did the migration to transifex.net last Friday, packaging of client tools this week, announcement going out shortly to mailing lists to explain changes
• Faster than we would have liked, but unavoidable
  • Jon: Discussion with docs team about the move
  • Jared: Some folks in Red Hat Brisbane who were concerned about it, Jared reached out to internal Red Hat folks, got no input, then after meetings, they threw up a complaint "hey, if we get someone to do the work on our side, will that change?" Jared redirected them to Fedora Infrastructure to get more formal committment, do not want people who disappear.
  • Toshio (with FI hat on): Would rather visit that for F-16 or F-17 or later
  • Jared: We need a working solution now in order to get work done for F-15, happy to revisit later. It is a lot of work, not just a simple "update and disappear".
  • Smooge: The "disappearing help" problem is the primary problem, why FI is not interested in these sorts of "hail mary" passes.
  • Jared: Hosted code is same code we'd be using locally, lots of other consumers, widens translator community.
  • David: Are we compensating them?
  • Jared: They offered to do it for free. My personal opinion: If Fedora ever became a burden on them, then we should look at some sort of compensation ($$$, hardware) or move it back locally. Right now, they're very happy with doing this at no cost.

Board business

Mairin Duffy leave of absence from Board

• Very busy with work & life
• Toshio: How long?
• Jared: Approx 6 weeks.
• Toshio: Due to slow pace of board, I feel there is no reason to seek temporary replacement.
  • Multiple board members agree
• Smooge: 6 weeks will be about time for new elections, by the time we worked out replacement process, 6 weeks would have passed as is.
• Toshio: Wait for community responses from mailing list
• David: Concerns about how this is communicated (Mo vs Board), make sure that it is not seen negatively
• Jared: No control on how people perceive it
• Approved by board

French NPO

• Setup in France, legal concerns with them using the Fedora trademark in name of Non-Profit entity
• Red Hat is not sending money to this NPO at this point because of trademark use
• Jared spoke with representatives at FOSDEM, had their annual meeting this past weekend, chose new membership, elected officers
• They're willing to work with us to come up with some sort of solution (e.g. changing their name)
• The intent is to continue to support French community
  • Toshio: what are the problems? Is is just trademark? Do we send money to them?
    • Jared: Right now we send directly to ambassadors. In the past, we sent them a chunk of money to manage. They prefer that model.
    • Jared: Problem is use of trademark in their name, no trademark license, no explicit permission
    • Spot: Red Hat Legal is not able to grant trademark permission to this usage.
    • Jared: Trademark law in US requires more proactive enforcement. Not an attempt to shut down community, just a legal requirement. They are currently investigating renaming options, other option is to close Non Profit entity, but we hope they do not have to do this. Also outstanding: Still missing a signed copy of one of the Trademark license agreements (either non-software goods or domain name), waiting on confirmation.

Fedora Legal

• All legal issues, including trademark now going through Fedora Legal
  • Toshio: Does that include trademark approvals?
  • Jared: Still feels that Board should have involvement in trademark approvals. Problem is inconsistency between FPLs, hard for information to pass on between leaders over time.
  • Jon: What happens when Spot doesn't do Fedora Legal? Potential for inconsistency.
  • Toshio: Fedora Legal not always consistent, law changes
    • Spot: Anytime you see Fedora Legal being inconsistent, please point it out and ask for clarification.
    • Trac ticketing system to be set up soon for Fedora Legal, privacy enabled, provides private history of decisions (if Spot is eaten by raptors and replaced, new Fedora Legal victim^Wvolunteer would see history)
• Russian Fedora? Trademark permission? (Board Ticket 11)
  • Spot: Will follow up on this separately.
  • Smooge: Never get a consistent answer from multiple lawyers (or same lawyer on different days)
    • Spot: Good news, Red Hat Legal generally decides by consensus among multiple lawyers to minimize that

SQLNinja update (from spot)

• spot met with Red Hat Legal in person
• Red Hat Legal feels that there is no risk in including sqlninja in Fedora at this time.
• Ensure that we have clear language about proper use of Fedora Security lab on website
  • Jon: I see no reason to block sqlninja at this point
• Unanimous agreement to lift block on sqlninja

Goals

• Narrow down to two or three, four at most to focus on over next several releases
• Get tactical items from each group (FESCo, FAMSCo, Docs Team, Design, etc) for these goals (chosen by these groups)
• Joerg: Working on one goal already in FAMSco on "It is extraordinarily easy to join the Fedora community and quickly

find a project to work on." (#4) goal.

• • Rex: Any reason not use goals we already liked?
  • Jared: Would like to narrow it down, 2-3, four at most.
  • Goals that FAmSCo preferred: #11 #4 #1 (#3 tie #12) (http://blogs.fedoraproject.org/wp/board/?p=27)
  • Goals that FESCo preferred: #1 #3 #15 (http://blogs.fedoraproject.org/wp/board/?p=41)
  • Goals that (some of) Board preferred: #1 #3 #4 #11 #12

1    Improve and simplify collaboration in the Fedora Community.
2    Provide infrastructure to help people control their content and devices.
3    Improve and encourage high-quality communication in the Fedora Community.
4    It will be extraordinarily easy to join the Fedora community and quickly find a project to work on.
5    Recruiting new / less-common skillsets into the project (e.g., project managers, designers)
6    “Access from Anywhere” strategy
7    Encourage open standards
8    Improve remote real-time & high-bandwidth collaboration
9    Get more involved with upstream / sidestream FLOSS Communities
10    Improve awareness and utilization of available Fedora community resources
11  Expand global presence of Fedora among users & contributors
12  Improve education & skill sharing in community
13   Sharing responsibilities (mentorship, documentation of tasks / SOPs, sharing skills)
14    Evaluate late-breaking technologies for inclusion/interaction with Fedora
15    Improve the Fedora developer experience

• Goals 1 and 3 universally liked
• Spot: Can we merge 4 and 11? (next two)
  • Proposed Merged Goal (4+11) It will be extraordinarily easy to join the Fedora community from anywhere in the world and quickly find a project to work on.

• Jared: Not set in stone forever, these are just for now
• Spot: How many releases do we want to work on this for?
  • Several folks: 2
  • Rex: including 15?
  • Jared: No not 15, but time left on 15 plus all of 16 & 17.
  • Spot: Revisit and analyze after F-17 release.
  • Jared: Revisit in retrospective meetings after F16 and F17 releases (and F15 to a limited degree)?

• • Spot: Proposed vote on goals 1, 3, 4+11 merged
  • Unanimous agreement

• • Jared will announce to groups, widely

Other business

• Rex: What are we going to do with rough draft of governance talks from FUDCon Tempe?
  • Board/Possible_Future_of_Fedora_Governance
• Jared: Trying to tackle one or two items per board meeting. Governance stuff comes after Goals and Spins in order of precedence, doesn't necessarily have to wait, feel free to bring up on lists.
• Mo: Sounds like someone needs to claim governance as a project to shepherd
  • Smooge: I claim it. Will have a rough "Madison" draft with Toshio soon, done much research.
  • Toshio: Does the wiki page include day two?
  • Jared: yes, this is what spot emailed to me on Day Two.