OpenID Foundation/Board/Minutes/2007-02-22
These are the approved minutes from the meeting of the 22nd Feburary 2007.
Present:
- Bill Washburn (Moderating)
- Johannes Ernst
- David Recordon
- Martin Atkins (Note-taker)
- Drummond Reed
- Scott Kveton
- Dick Hardt (joined at 20:15 UTC)
Apologies:
- Artur Bergman (unable to attend due to illness)
Meeting opened at 20:09 UTC
Contents |
Minutes of previous meeting
Johannes moved to approve the minutes of the previous meeting. Drummond Seconded.
This was unanimously accepted by everyone present.
Next meeeting
The next meeting will be at 20:00 UTC on Thursday March 1st
By-laws Subcommittee Report
Dick sent a summary to the board mailing list prior to the meeting containing some notes about membership and governance:
Operations
There was some debate about what kinds of IP the foundation would "hold and protect". There was consensus that trademarks and domain names would certainly be included, and that patents could potentially be included though at this time there aren't any plans to aquire patents. There was uncertainty about whether the foundation would retain copyright on specifications or whether this would be left to standards bodies.
It was also decided that the foundation would act as a conduit for the community's ideals and standards, rather than the foundation mandating principles onto the community.
Marketing
The foundation will, in the short term, attempt to co-ordinate marketing activities surrounding OpenID. It is hoped that this will present a more united message to defuse some of the misconceptions that are brewing about the technology and the community, and to avoid marginalization.
Dick proposed an amount on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars as a starting marketing budget, and to hire at least one member of staff to lead the marketing effort. There was agreement that $100,000 - $500,000 was a good target budget for the first year of the foundation. Marketing and staff were highlighted as a priority.
Some discussion was had about a "fallback" plan requiring only $10,000 - $50,000 in the first year, in case the budget target cannot be reached.
Speaking on behalf of the community
The board and foundation will primarily speak only on behalf of the foundation itself. In its role as a representative of the community it will aim to project the community consensus to the public as well, but only on subjects which concern the foundation such as intellectual property. The foundation will not comment on nor get involved with specifications.
The foundation will also only make united statements. Individual board members and other foundation staff will not speak on behalf of the board nor the community without prior discussion and agreement from the board as a whole.
Membership
Initially the foundation may need to focus on companies as members rather than individuals, because it needs to raise money quickly in order to bootstrap. In the longer term the foundation will consider how best to involve individuals as members once it is underway.
Policies and Procedures
Johannes posted an initial version of a Policies and Procedures document to the board mailing list.
Johannes proposed adopting a "release early, release often" approach to getting the policies and procedures document done. Dick seconded. This motion was unanimously accepted by all present.
IPR, Legal and Participation Rules regarding ability to exit
There has been some concern from potential contributors about the conditions of contribution, most notably the idea that once you've joined the mailing list you must contribute everything you do in the field. It was noted that this position needs to be clarified and in particular there must be a way to leave the community if a company or organisation deems it necessary.
David and Gabe will work on writing up a more complete policy.
Logo for "OpenID 2.0"
It was noted that the issue of a new logo for OpenID 2 was quite important to several members of the community, but the issue was largely forgotten about once the work on the foundation got going.
It was agreed that we can't make progress on this at the present time as it requires funds of some sort. The board will re-visit this issue once the bylaws and organisation structure is figured out so that we have some idea of how much money we can expect to have available.
Sub-committees
There already exists the following sub-committees:
- Budget (currently exists, but needs to be formalized)
- Bylaws
- Marketing (currently de-facto only)
It was decided to postpone further discussion on the matter of sub-committees in light of the fact that the foundation's law firm were due to offer some advice during the following week.
The meeting closed at 21:04 UTC
