20:00 < schultmc> *GAVEL*
20:00 < schultmc> [item 1, Opening]
20:00 < schultmc> Welcome to today's Software in the Public Interest Board Meeting, which
20:00 < schultmc> is now called to order. Today's agenda can be found on the web at:
20:00 < schultmc> https://www.spi-inc.org/meetings/agendas/2021/2021-01-11/
20:00 < schultmc> [item 2, Roll Call]
20:00 < schultmc> Directors, please state your name
20:00 < schultmc> Guests, please /msg your names to tpot if you wish your attendance to be
20:00 < schultmc> recorded in the minutes of this meeting.
20:00 < schultmc> .
20:00 < schultmc> tpot, do we have any regrets?
20:00 < Snow-Man> Stephen Frost
20:00 < schultmc> .
20:00 * lamby is Chris Lamb
20:01 < jconway> Joe Conway
20:01 < schultmc> Michael Schultheiss
20:01 < fsf> Forrest Fleming
20:01 < tpot> Tim Potter
20:01 < tpot> no regrets received at this stage
20:01 < schultmc> that's quorum so we can continue
20:02 < schultmc> [item 3, President's Report]
20:02 < schultmc> Continued thanks to SPI Vice President, Stephen Frost, for handling
20:02 < schultmc> contracting with SPI's contractors. Stephen continues to do a fantastic
20:02 < schultmc> job working with our contractors and legal counsel.
20:02 < schultmc> .
20:02 < schultmc> Online access to Merrill Lynch has been setup. Working with broker on a recent donation of stock.
20:02 < schultmc> .
20:02 < schultmc> Stephen, do you have anything you would like to add?</done>
20:02 < Snow-Man> yes. ..
20:03 < Snow-Man> I'm continuing to work with counsel regarding privacy policy and have scheduled a meeting on Wednesday to discuss it on the phone.
20:03 < Snow-Man> Counsel recommended that SPI retain a trademark counsel to address trademark issues.
20:03 < Snow-Man> Per discussion w/ the board, we have agreed to move forward with that.
20:04 < Snow-Man> I'm planning on signing the formal agreement shortly, barring any additional concerns.
20:04 < Snow-Man> We've recently been asked about handling of .eu domains
20:05 < Snow-Man> Board recommended that I reach out to counsel to discuss.  Counsel has responded that if SPI wished to formally be able to 'own' .eu domains, we would need to have an entity created in EU.
20:05 < Snow-Man> While that's possible, it's unclear if that's a reasonable direction to go in or not and we should discuss it.
20:05 < Snow-Man> I responded to a couple of new project inquries
20:06 < Snow-Man> Hopefully those are on the agenda to discuss later.
20:06 < Snow-Man> Our IT contractor has built out an initial RT instance using a modern version.
20:06 < schultmc> There's an agenda item 7.5 under items up for discussion for .eu domains
20:06 < Snow-Man> We are hoping to play with that and test things out and then will need to figure out how we migrate.
20:06 < Snow-Man> We do continue to move forward with our IT modernization efforts.
20:07 < Snow-Man> That's all I've got offhand atm.
20:07 < lamby> Thanks, Snow-Man :)
20:07 < schultmc> Thank you!
20:07 < tpot> Great work.
20:07 < schultmc> [item 4, Treasurer's Report]
20:07 < schultmc> zobel isn't currently here.
20:07 < schultmc> .
20:07 < schultmc> The SPI treasury team is continuing to process requests and is striving for
20:07 < schultmc> more timely ticket handling. The backlog is being processed but if there are
20:07 < schultmc> any board members who would like to assist with treasury tasks, additional
20:07 < schultmc> help is always welcome.
20:07 < schultmc> .
20:08 < schultmc> [item 5, Secretary's report]
20:08 < schultmc> tpot?
20:08 < tpot> Minutes are up to date but are experiencing issues with the website. It might be fixed in time for voting on said minutes.
20:08 < Snow-Man> see spi-private...
20:09 < tpot> Some progress on domain name transfers and looking at getting tbm to help out with that as I'm not in a good timezone for timely back and forth communication.
20:09 < tpot> Am in the process of renewing the SPI Apple Developer account currently used by 0.ad
20:09 < tpot> .
20:11 < schultmc> [item 6, Outstanding minutes]
20:11 < schultmc> The minutes for the 2020-11-09 and 2020-12-14 require approval.
20:11 < schultmc> .
20:11 < schultmc> We recently discovered some issues with the website and the minutes
20:11 < schultmc> aren't currently available on www.spi-inc.org. Our IT contractor is
20:11 < schultmc> actively troubleshooting.
20:12 < schultmc> It may be best to postpone voting on the minutes until next month.
20:12 < Snow-Man> +1
20:12 < jconway> +1
20:12 < fsf> I think that postponing makes sense
20:12 < Snow-Man> don't think there's any urgency to get them approved
20:12 < Snow-Man> we'll figure out what's going on with the website updates.
20:12 < schultmc> sounds good to me - moving on.
20:12 < lamby> wfm
20:12 < schultmc> [item 7, Items up for discussion]
20:12 < lamby> ^ also, weird with the website!
20:12 < schultmc> [item 7.1, Audit of financial statements for 2020]
20:13 < tpot> The question is would be like to assign tbm again to do this? I believe he needs a go-ahead from the board to start work on this.
20:13 < tpot> whoops - not quite
20:13 < tpot> Let me try again.
20:13 < schultmc> Although likely not legally required, it's a good idea for SPI to continue to have audited financial statements going forward.
20:13 < tpot> Do we want to have an audit of the 2020 financials by Gary and his firm again? If so we need to get started now.
20:14 < schultmc> I think yes, we should have an audit of SPI's 2020 financials.
20:14 < Snow-Man> I'm in support of continuing our annual audits, to ensure that we are meeting our NYS non-profit requirements.
20:14 < jconway> +1
20:14 < tpot> +1 for me too
20:14 < tpot> Any objections from anyone else?
20:14 < schultmc> I don't think we have time to switch to another auditing firm this year - we can select another firm in the future if desired
20:15 < jconway> seems reasonable
20:15 < Snow-Man> +1
20:15 < fsf> I support continuing our audits
20:15 < lamby> +1 here too
20:15 < tpot> awesome
20:16 < schultmc> [item 7.2, Status of potential new associated projects (PMIx and Moonwards)]
20:17 < schultmc> whose agenda item is this?
20:17 < Snow-Man> Both sound like good candidates for us, based on at least the discussion so far.
20:17 < tpot> There was an email a half hour ago from Moonwards which may merit some discussion.
20:17 < Snow-Man> hm, I've not seen the latest, tbh.
20:17 < Snow-Man> had other meetings ahead of this one.
20:17 < tpot> With regard to paying contractors or employees.
20:18 < tpot> I added this item just to keep it on peoples minds. Snow-Man's update is all that I was after.
20:19 < Snow-Man> hmm.
20:19 < Snow-Man> just reviewed
20:19 < schultmc> sounds like we can continue to review and update the february agenda as needed.
20:19 < schultmc> The Moonwards update does lend to further discussion
20:19 < Snow-Man> I'll respond but my general plan is to say that we really aren't in a position today to bring on employees, but we do work with contractors.
20:19 < Snow-Man> That might make it be a non-starter for them.
20:20 < Snow-Man> I'll also make it clear that we can only support efforts of open source projects and that proprietary or closed source projects are not something that we can support.
20:20 < Snow-Man> any objections or concerns wrt that being the response?
20:20 < Snow-Man> we can then see where things go from there.
20:20 < tpot> fine with me
20:20 < schultmc> sounds good to me
20:20 < lamby> No objections.
20:20 < jconway> wfm
20:21 < Snow-Man> ... seperately, does anyone have any concerns wrt PMIx?  Specifically that it's not a 'traditional' OSS project but is actually an open standard.
20:21 < Snow-Man> In considering our charter, and that there are OSS projects which use the open standard, I'm reasonably comfortable with including them.
20:21 < Snow-Man> but if anyone on the board feels like taking on such a project would be outside of our charter, please speak up.
20:22 < fsf> No concerns here - I think it's within our charter
20:23 < Snow-Man> ok, great.
20:23 < lamby> No concerns. In fact, I think it would be nice to add some non-software folks, despite the S in our acronym.
20:23 < Snow-Man> I'll continue that discussion with them then.
20:23 < Snow-Man> schultmc: think that wraps this item
20:23 < schultmc> [item 7.3, Assignment for Martin Michlmayr to work on DNS migrations]
20:24  -!- danvet_ <~Daniel@2a02:168:57f4:0:efd0:b9e5:5ae6:c2fa> has quit (Ping timeout: 480 seconds)
20:24 < tpot> Can we give tbm permission to work on DNS migrations? As mentioned above I'm not able to be as responsive as this needs to be.
20:24 < tpot> He has offered to take this on.
20:24 < schultmc> tpot: no objections
20:24 < Snow-Man> wfm
20:24 < jconway> no objections here
20:24 < lamby> +1
20:24 < schultmc> tpot: does he have availability in the desired timezones? As I understand it he's currently relatively close to you timezone wise
20:25 < tpot> I would have to ask which TZ he is in at the moment. TBH I am not exactly sure.
20:25 < schultmc> regardless, no objections if he's available at appropriate times regardless of his physical location
20:26 < schultmc> [item 7.4, Assignment for Martin Michlmayr for 2020 annual report]
20:26 < tpot> As mentioned above can we give tbm official permission to commence work on the annual report?
20:27 < schultmc> No objections here either - he's been excellent on gathering the needed information for our past 2 annual reports
20:27 < jconway> +1
20:27 < tpot> Yup - yay tbm.
20:27 < Snow-Man> wfm
20:27 < schultmc> [item 7.5, Status of .eu domain ownership]
20:28 < schultmc> the .eu registry requires .eu domains to be registered to individuals or organizations based in the EU
20:28 < schultmc> with brexit now in affect, .uk citizens typically no longer have EU citizenship thus cannot be the registrant of .eu domains
20:29 < Snow-Man> SPI's never had the ability to be the registrat of .eu domains.
20:29 < Snow-Man> *registrant
20:29 < Snow-Man> I don't know what the level of effort would be for us to change that.
20:29 < Snow-Man> We'd basically have to create an organization in .eu, as I understand it, which would be a subsidiary of some kind of SPI's.
20:29 < schultmc> our associated projects do have .eu domains and have requested assistance in changing .uk registrants to non .uk registrants
20:30 < schultmc> I don't think we need a full .eu subsidiary
20:30 < Snow-Man> In order for SPI to be the registrant, I believe we do.
20:30 < Ganneff> may i say something? (affects oftc)
20:30 < schultmc> the project I'm aware of has asked us to help switching from a .uk individual to a .de individual
20:30 < schultmc> (i.e. Ganneff)
20:30 < schultmc> Ganneff: please
20:31 < Ganneff> The interesting point would be that the project noiminates someone to hold the domain as registrant, but keep all the other parts (tech-c/admin-c) with SPI (or not that person). wouldnt be the first domain to be managed like this, has been a working "compromise" in the past already, and deals with the .eu requirements.
20:32 < Ganneff> It sure isnt perfect and can be abused, yes. but its better than losing the domain or not being able to have it.
20:32 < Snow-Man> I don't have any particular objection to that, to be clear.  What I had been doing was trying to figure out if there was some way for 'SPI' to own it.
20:32 < Snow-Man> (which I had thought to be the original ask, though I may have misunderstood..)
20:32 < Ganneff> *I* think its too much for SPI, there could be other non profits, but otoh that would mean splitting assets around, for the projects. not ideal.,
20:33 < Snow-Man> I don't know the level of effort required at this point, so hard to say if it's 'too much' or not.
20:33 < Ganneff> for spi to own it, legal something inside .eu.
20:33 < tpot> It does sound like something we should do, i.e ease the burden of managing domain assets.
20:34 < Ganneff> just switching the registrant to me (or anyone else in .eu from oftc): clicking inside web interface a bit
20:34 < Snow-Man> Clearly it would not be a near-term solution to something which we should really address sooner rather than later.
20:34 < tpot> agreed
20:34 < Ganneff> the .eu makes it hard time limit before end of march
20:34 < schultmc> As long as the .eu registry will accept s/.uk/.de/ or other EU country going forward I don't see the need for there to be an EU SPI entity at this time
20:34 < Ganneff> schultmc: they will, tjats what they state to do
20:35 < schultmc> Ganneff: ok - we can definitely switch over shortly then
20:35 < Snow-Man> My proposal would be- move the registration as requested by the project, but still have SPI spend a bit of effort to investigate what it would take to have a SPI EU entity.
20:35 < schultmc> sounds reasonable
20:35 < Ganneff> thanks. oh, and btw, please change registrars login pass at the same time, i still have the access, i shouldnt.
20:35 < tpot> "The registration of a .EU domain name is restricted to residents of the European Union, companies that have a registered office in the European Union, or businesses/organisations established in the European Union. Eligibility also extends to EEA members Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway."
20:35 * Ganneff out
20:35 < schultmc> I'll handle the specific registration update
20:35 < Snow-Man> schultmc: thanks.
20:36 < Snow-Man> Ganneff: thanks.
20:36 < Snow-Man> Any objections to my following up to ask what the level of effort would be to establish an SPI EU entity?
20:37 < tpot> Sounds good.
20:37 < schultmc> no objections
20:37 < Snow-Man> ok, great, I'll do that then.
20:38 < schultmc> [item 8, Any other business]
20:38 < schultmc> Anything to discuss?
20:38 < lamby> None here. :)
20:38 < jconway> none here
20:38 < tpot> Was there a resolution to the NY small business non-profit thing?
20:39 < schultmc> tpot: any progress on scheduling a virtual f2f?
20:39 < schultmc> I'm not aware of any benefit we get to renewing the NY small business non-profit thing
20:39 < tpot> Yeah apologies for forgetting again. Will get it started this time for real.
20:39 < Snow-Man> virtual fsf would be good
20:39 < Snow-Man> *f2f
20:39 < Snow-Man> lol
20:39 < lamby> lol
20:39 < schultmc> we've rented space outside of them most recently and as I understand it our D&O insurance isn't related to them either
20:40 < tpot> I'll reply to that thread and say that we are most likely not renewing.
20:40 < Snow-Man> +1
20:40 < tpot> Anyone else have any thoughts?
20:40 < jconway> not renewing makes sense to me
20:40 < schultmc> we can always re-sign up if needed in the future
20:42 < schultmc> [item 9, Next board meeting]
20:42 < schultmc> The next board meeting is scheduled for: February 8, 2021 at 20:00 UTC
20:42 < schultmc> Any objections?
20:43 < jconway> none here
20:43 < lamby> wfm
20:43 < schultmc> works for me
20:43  -!- tpot changed the topic of #spi to: Next SPI board meeting is on February 8th, 2021, 20:00 UTC on #spi. Agenda: https://spi-inc.org/meetings/agendas/2021/2021-02-08/
20:43 < tpot> Thanks everyone. That was a busy meeting.
20:43 < schultmc> *GAVEL*