Board minutes 2016-11-11

Attendees

• Jim Perrin
• Fabian Arrotin
• Johnny Hughes
• Mike McLean
• Ralph Angenendt
• Tru Huynh
• Karsten Wade
• Karanbir Singh

Quorum achieved.

Agenda & notes

Budget

Do we want to have the Board manage part of the budget from OSAS/RH?

• Yes, on a year-over-year evolution of how things are managed.
• It’s RH money run on behalf of ...

What do we want to make public?

• Spending for community travel
• Swag & support provided out to community events directly
• Constraints on paying people back
• First year -- PayPal only, receipts require
• Budget limit per number of people, e.g. $150 for 50 people, etc.
• SIGs
  • Community SIG leads …
  • Cover up to $X of travel
  • May cover some of RH expenses …
  • Talk to management
  • Cover up to $X of travel
• What is the definition of community in this context?
  • Contributors from a vendor are still a community, but their employer should see the value of sending that person.
  • Contributors from a project sponsored/run by a foundation should be able to find a way of sending a person.
  • Contributors on own time & dime, should find a way to sponsor and support from project as much as possible.

Process

• Need a write-up.
• Three people with at least one Board member to oversee budget management, can do in Year One.
• Dollar amount to take to the Board for approval.
• Spending for all vendors coming in managed by the finance committee.
• Follows the same process.
• Year one - all run by Board for initial trial
• All should have a title in the project based on an existing chain of trust.
• Year two - look for people interested in helping

Getting outside funding

• Need a relationship with an open source program office.
• Run it on behalf of -- they spend at our direction.
• No pay to play … need to trust the community as to what we want to spend.
• Build trust in initial year …
• Community fund …
  • E.g. CPanel wants to give $10K to sponsor people to their conference.
  • Use the same process for decisions as for spending direct money.
  • Transparency of multiple supporters shows diversity.

Equipment budget

• Solve problems the Board identifies
  • E.g. signing for SIGs
  • Strategic and tactical

• Oversight of the Infra Team …

• Putting an annual plan together

• Keep a 10% slush to cover all of above

Credit Suisse

• Sponsoring millions in EOL hardware for suitable charities and non-profits
• Sep 2017 is first set of kit coming available
• Get CentOS running on the laptops given away
• How should CentOS Project be involved?
• Can we use any of that hardware?

Actions

• Full process write-up.
  • Define what community means in this context.
  • Process to be public.
  • By 1 March.
• Pick the finance committee.

Advisory capacity (Board)

• Getting advice from:
  • Representative of each Team about running the Project.
  • From a specific user / audience?
  • Who are using CentOS, maybe we can help make things better for them, then we get a voice into that community.
  • Senior enough to have influence in that group and able to represent.
• What can they do?
  • Come from existing contributors
  • Provide wider perspective
• What does it mean to be on the Advisory Board?
  • Provide advice to the executive leadership
  • Examples
    • Linux Foundation groups have an exec board, then a technical committee and community committee to advise.
• Proposal:
  • Pick two areas, e.g.:
    • VoIP
    • High Energy Physics
  • Identify four people in each area
  • Arrange a monthly communication channel with those people and an identified CentOS person, with Board members involved.
  • Ask Leslie Hawthorn to facilitate and manage the process.
  • Each Board member identifies two areas of personal interest
  • Two Board members research the areas to find people to be recommended
  • Advisory Board is not a for-life thing, some privilege to be there
  • Articulate the process publicly

Metrics for SIGs

Infra SIG & Fabian as Chair