The Apache Software Foundation Board of Directors Meeting Minutes 13 July 1999 1. Call to order The meeting was called to order at 10:15am PDT -0700. A quorum was recognized by the Chairman. Due to the previously notified absence of the Secretary, Brian Behlendorf volunteered to take notes. 2. Roll Call Board members in attendance: Brian Behlendorf Ken Coar Roy T. Fielding Ben Laurie Randy Terbush Ben Hyde (at 10:40am) Board members not in attendance: Jim Jagielski Sameer Parekh Dirk-Willem van Gulik Guests: Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP project) 3. Minutes Due to a procedural error, the minutes from the 22 June 1999 meeting were not approved. This item is postponed until the next meeting. 4. Officer Reports A. President [Brian] Brian reported that the ASF announcement appeared to go very well. B. Treasurer [Randy] Randy reported that the ASF's current balance stood at $81.77. Randy is investigating whether we can support Diner's Club contributions. He thinks we can, though it may involve an annual fee. C. Secretary [Jim] No report was presented since Jim was not available. Previous to the meeting Jim had reported that the ASF had been ordered and received. 5. Committee Reports [Apache Conferences Committee] Ken reported that the committee had selected Camelot/SIGS as the leading candidate for ApacheCon. The next step is to set up a meeting, perhaps at RTP, perhaps with some assistance to help some other concom members attend. It had not been decided whether a flat fee or a royalty would be pursued, but Ken is leaning towards royalty. Ken suggested we announce the selection of Camelot to the community, but Brian felt that this would be premature. 6. Special Orders A. PR post-mortem from June 30 announcement of The ASF 1) press experiences [Roy/Brian/Ben] Roy was extremely happy with the way it was handled. Randy commented that he felt the press's attention was more evenly balanced over the whole of the ASF rather than on specific individuals this time, which he saw as a good thing. Brian suggested that we try and draft more members to participate in press activities, to make their names available, so we can distribute those opportunities even more. 2) contract with ZOT Group Roy expressed happiness at the way Sally from ZOT Group conducted the ASF announcement. This began a discussion of the process by which the ZOT Group was hired, which was by Roy directly without a formal board action. By general consent, the board approved of Roy's actions and the contract with ZOT Group. A discussion began on the topic of officer actions with or without board pre-approvals. A consensus seemed to be reached that officer actions should at least require a straw poll of the board, but no parameters were set on that, so the discussion ended without resolution. B. Status on setting up projects 1) Jakarta Brian reported that he was still waiting for a contract back from Sun for the code, and was not comfortable proposing the formal creation of the project until that was in hand. He also commented that the project had been partially created, to the extent that there is a web site and mailing lists for it which are very active. Roy suggested formally creating the project anyways, with or without Sun's code. Action was postponed until a formal resolution could be drafted with candidates for the PMC. 2) Java-Apache Brian reported that this project would most likely be transitioned to Jakarta once Jakarta built up some steam, and that proposing it as a separate project may thus not be necessary. 3) mod_php Rasmus started to talk about PHP. He noted that the license concerns are being wrapped up in all but one situation, for which he asked for some assistance in convincing the developers of a crucial part of the new PHP code to allow their code under the ASF. Brian and BenL volunteered to help Rasmus with that issue. It was generally agreed that we need to do a better job of articulating why being an ASF project is a desirable thing for something like the PHP developers. 4) mod_perl Doug had not been talked with recently. Randy volunteered to speak with him. 5) ASF as an open source incubator Brian expressed an interest in supporting projects that are a good match for our existing direction, that are either currently productive projects or have a good chance (in our view) of becoming one. Brian also suggested we not try and "hoover" a lot of smaller projects. Randy likened the potential to something like a business incubator, and suggested we focus on smaller projects more than large existing ones. Roy said he preferred helping smaller projects as well. Consensus seemed to be around finding small, promising projects. Ben Hyde suggested we need to do a better job of managing what we've got on our plate today before taking new projects. C. Handling funds marked for use by specific projects 1) Policy for accepting general and project-specific funds 2) Policy for storing project-specific funds 3) Policy for accessing project-specific funds 4) Communication between accountant and projects These discussion points got rolled together into a sizable discussion about fundraising. The first point made by Randy was that very few people have contributed so far. Brian opined that without a solid set of documents describing what funds would be used for, soliciting donations is more difficult. Ken volunteered to write a document for the web site that would summarize our thoughts and needs, both short-term (incorporation expenses, etc.) and long-term (sysadmin, machines, etc.). Brian asked if it might be wise to have tiers of contributions, Ken suggested we bring it to the board list for discussion. As for contributions to specific projects, there was heated discussion. Randy expressed that it would be beyond his current capabilities to keep track of project-specific donations. Rasmus expressed a strong desire to be able to have the PHP community support PHP-specific development, without having to go through the ASF asking for apportions from the general fund. Others, however, expressed concern that the focus would turn away from the ASF, and that the precedent this was establishing would be dangerous. Roy felt that it was inevitable that we'd have to eventually offer this. No vote was taken and no consensus established. D. Licensing issues regarding projects 1) How do we decide what licenses are acceptable? 2) How do we update the Apache license? 3) GPL/LGPL discussion Tabled due to time (it was past noon PDT by now). E. Finishing up the corporate loose ends 1) Apache Group assignment of license/rights to The ASF 2) Members ballot for adding new members 3) Preparing a budget 4) Planning for quarterly/yearly reports Tabled due to time. 7. Unfinished Business None. 8. New Business A licenses committee was proposed by Brian, one whose charter would be to come up with a strategy for the ASF with respect to licenses we would use and we would allow ASF projects to use. This committee would endeavor to seek input on its ideas from the community at large, beyond ASF membership. By general consent, the Board established a licenses committee with Brian Behlendorf as chairperson. Brian was tasked to put together a list of other people to include on this board committee. 9. Announcements 10. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 12:20pm PDT -0700. The time and date of the next meeting was to be discussed and arranged via the mailing list.