The Apache Software Foundation Board of Directors Meeting Minutes September 11, 2010 1. Call to order The meeting was scheduled for 9:00am (Eastern) and began at 9:35 when a sufficient attendance to constitute a quorum was recognized by the chairman. The meeting was held at the Harvard Club, Boston, MA, USA. 2. Roll Call Directors Present: Shane Curcuru Doug Cutting Bertrand Delacretaz Roy T. Fielding Jim Jagielski Geir Magnusson, Jr. Sam Ruby Noirin Shirley Greg Stein Directors Absent: none Officers Present: Justin Erenkrantz Philip M. Gollucci Craig L Russell Officers Absent: Sander Striker Guests: Andrei Adamchik Rahul Akolkar Serge Knystautas Sally Khudairi Davanum Srinivas Carl Trieloff 3. Special Orders A. Executive Officer Appointments 1. Chairman of the Board: Jim Jagielski Doug Cutting (elected; unanimous) 2. President: Jim Jagielski (elected; unanimous) Noirin Shirley Sam Ruby 3. Secretary: Craig L Russell (elected; unanimous) 4. Asst. Secretary: Sam Ruby (elected; unanimous) 5. Treasurer: Geir Magnusson, Jr. (elected; unanimous) 6. Asst Treasurer: Hadrian Zbarcea Andrus Adamchik Geir does not believe an Assistant Treasurer is needed at this time. This position will not be filled for this year. 7. Executive Vice President: Greg Stein Noirin Shirley (elected; unanimous) 8. Vice Chairman: Greg Stein (elected; unanimous) 4. Discussion Items A. Needs, outlook, and plans for legal resources in general. There is a need for legal resources for such items as contract review (e.g. employment, services), intellectual property issues, and corporate filings. There is no consensus among the board that there is a need for a General Counsel at this time. B. Move the time slot for the board meetings, either just for the Sept 22nd meeting, or as a permanent change. Third Wednesday of each calendar at noon Pacific will be changed to 10:00 Pacific (not GMT as daylight savings is not a GMT concept) for all board meetings until changed. C. Discuss director thoughts on when & how the ASF should take public positions on advocacy items (patents, licenses, whatever) Once Apache takes an extreme public position, it's very difficult to change as time goes on. Apache as an organization doesn't generally advocate for specific behavior with regard to software development, but does exhibit a well-organized and well-justified model for this behavior. With regard to policy statements, e.g. on software patents, patent lawsuits, licenses; where there is board consensus on important issues it is appropriate to take public advocacy positions. The board does not see any such issues at present. With regard to defense of Apache policies and practices, the board will actively defend Apache policies and practices, and the people who implement them. D. How can we balance the budget while preparing to approve EA expenses. Executive Assistant position is out for bid although it is not in the current budget. Once a suitable candidate is approved, the budget will be amended to include the cost. In any event, the budget should be updated mid-year (November). 5. Review Outstanding Action Items 6. Unfinished Business 7. New Business The future of ApacheCon: It is generally agreed that Apache as a public charity needs to justify expenditures and activities consistent with its charter to provide software to the public at no charge. Activities in direct support of this charter include recruiting new projects, recruiting new committers to projects, and education of the public as to how to use the projects. With that in mind, it's hard to justify big, expensive conferences in big, expensive hotels. It's easy to justify small, inexpensive conferences such as barcamps, retreats, etc. But it's difficult to find people willing to do the local coordination (venue planning). Apache does and should continue to work with local coordinators, including corporate planners, to put on local events. Just for example, it would be fine to have an ApacheCon-style event that cost $400 per head for 1200 people, but not $1200 per head for 400 people. And it's probably worthwhile for outreach for Apache to spend $50 per head to reach people who might not come to a big conference. It's also good to target specific (underrepresented) demographics when deciding whether to support an event. And it's not good for Apache to take on the risk of failed conferences since that could put a big bite on our finances. So let's turn the problem around, and solicit proposals from people who want to run events with the right target demographic, with the right cost per person, and the right event organizers. These events will earn the Apache branding rights. Sponsorships: It would be good to have a goal of having smaller contributions, and many more of them. Are there things that we can offer the community, like logos for individual business cards, individual web pages? Honorifics like "founder", "contributor" that can be applied to individuals and corporations? The state of the financial books: Jim intends to have an internal audit of the books this year. He will work with Geir to accomplish this goal. 8. Announcements Noirin has been appointed to the Open Cloud Initiative www.opencloudinitiative.org Congratulations Noirin! 9. Adjournment Scheduled to adjourn by 5:00pm (Eastern) Adjourned at 4:49pm.