Archive:Board meeting 2019-02-19

Meeting Minutes 20190219

Attendees

Richard Gertjan Simon Christian Marina Axel Sarah Ana

Agenda

- On Boarding New Members
- Thanks to Departing Members
- Handover
- Regular Board Meetings - To be continued? If so arrange time/frequency.
- Treasurer Appointment
- Face to Face Meeting Planning
- Suggestion from SUSE for Future Discussion (Richard)

Minutes

On Boarding New Members

Axel and Marina were welcomed to the Board. Neither had any questions before starting their first meeting.

Thanks to Departing Members

The Board thanks Ana and Sarah for all the exceptional work they did during their tenure in the Board. The Board wishes them all the best and look forward to their ongoing contributions to the Project. Ana took the opportunity to encourage the new Board to continue its efforts to improve transparency of its activities. This was accepted by all attendees with the expectation that Ana would give the Board a hard time on the appropriate mailinglists if they fail. Sarah expressed her thanks to both her Board colleagues and the community who voted for her in the recent election. Despite obvious disappointment at not being re-elected, Sarah expressed some relief that the circumstances would give more time for both her current studies and ongoing contributions to the Project.

Handover

The Board discussed a few dangling items that were involving previous Board members, specifically establishing a License for the content on news.opensuse.org AI: Richard to talk to Doug about moving forward with all future posts being appropriately licensed

Regular Board Meetings

The Board discussed the frequency and time of it's regular meetings. It was agreed to continue them bi-weekly at 2200 CEST on Tuesdays

Treasurer Appointment

As it is an appointed position, each new Board need to discuss whether or not to continue the role of Treasurer and whom to appoint it to. This was discussed, with the agreement to continue with Andrew in post, if he is willing to do the job for another year AI: Richard to talk to Andrew

Face to Face Meeting Planning

The Board discussed having a face to face meeting to discuss the big-ticket items for the Year, and meet with people from SUSE. It was decided to try and schedule this meeting for the 2 days before conference, ideally hosted at SUSE HQ in Nuremberg

AI: Richard to request sponsorship & support for the meeting from SUSE

SUSE/openSUSE relationship, openSUSE self-determination

Richard brought to the Board news of a recent discussion had within SUSE. With SUSE's independence from MicroFocus there is an increased interest, from SUSE, to better structure some aspects of the relationship between SUSE and openSUSE. There have been repeated and clear statements from every level of SUSE, there is absolutely no desire to reduce SUSEs contribution to openSUSE. But on topics such as legal, finance, and data protection there is scope for things to be restructured in a way that enables openSUSE to adopt more responsibility, sovereignty and independence.

A lot of these aspects are currently structured based on the needs of Novell when openSUSE was first formed. Many of the assumptions those decisions were based on are no longer true, and there are people within SUSE who can see the benefits for both SUSE and openSUSE to dismiss some of those old assumptions and arrange things appropriately for how things work today. Such an endeavour could help remove sources of tension and complexity between both organisations while potentially making it easier for both to work together and do what they need to do. But such an endeavour can produce a lot of work and has potentially huge implications for the Project, raising the need that any decision in this area is carefully considered before being enacted.

There are no concrete demands or requirements to address this at the moment. All discussions to date on this topic have been informal. Richard asked the Board to take this opportunity to consider the possibilities and begin discussions within the Board. It is expected that these discussions will continue for some time while the Board collectively piece together a picture of how they might wish to see things change, so that collective Board vision can form the basis of any future discussions with both SUSE, and of course with the openSUSE Project at large.

AI: All Board members to consider the possibilities and implications on this topic and continue discussions on the board@opensuse.org mailinglist for now