We have a board meeting in 1h40m... would appreciate someone to step up as minute-taker ahead of time so we don't spend half the meeting on that again
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MattJ
I have most of a bot implemented, but not going to suggest we rush to use it this week (it needs a little more polish)
MattJ
Answering the discussion from last night, no, the bot does not summarize discussions - many organisation minutes do not, and only record actual motions and other things explicitly requested to go on the record
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MattJ
So the bot does this, but with links to the discussion logs of each topic
MattJ
Which seems a fine compromise to me
MattJ
Summarizing discussions accurately is one of the hardest tasks of minute-taking
MattJ
We have the advantage that all our discussions are already in text form and recorded
pep.
probably most important
pep.
the whole point of minutes to me is for people not to have to read the logs
MattJ
I'd rather let people see the outcome, and give them access to the raw data, rather than filtering through some other person
MattJ
It's very easy for someone to introduce accidental bias this way (related problem: we don't explicitly approve minutes currently)
pep.
well yes that's why approving minutes is necessary
Zash
Standard practice afaik is to have one minute taker and two to verify and sign off on the minutes.
MattJ
We can't even find one person to write the minutes :)
MattJ
and this has been going on for years
MattJ
They aren't going to magically appear - and we've tried alternatives (thanks nyco) where everyone collaborates on them, that didn't really work either though
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jonas’
I’ll be stuck in a work meeting until 15:00Z, sorry
MattJ
np jonas’
pep.
MattJ: I was on the pad helping nyco a bit. maybe if we'd all done so..
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MattJ
Sure, maybe if many things
MattJ
If we collectively think that's the solution, I'm not opposed to trying it again
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jcbrand
IMO, the XSF should consider paying for certain roles/positions that we continuously struggle to get volunteers for (touchy subject I know)
pep.
jcbrand: I agree
jcbrand
Or provide some other kinds of incentive, but I can't imagine what... swag?✎
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jcbrand
Or provide some other kind of incentive, but I can't imagine what... swag? ✏
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pep.
either that, or board takes responsability for it and we all contribute (we've agreed about one way to do this last week but there might be others)
MattJ
*shrug*
MattJ
Personally I strongly feel that a bot is the best approach
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MattJ
I think I'm alone in that though
Seve
MattJ: I'm with you on this, I agree on all you have said
jcbrand
Someone needs to write a bot then
MattJ
As above, I have one almost completed (but not ready to use this week)
MattJ
and I'm not going to attempt to push it on the group if everyone else is against it
jcbrand
ah sorry
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jcbrand
You could just enable it silently and then show everyone the awesome minutes that it takes
jcbrand
and then bask in glory
MattJ
Yeah, have pondered that :)
flow
jcbrand, do we have enough income to pay someone? how much could we pay someone? do we have someone who manages our funds?
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Zash
The IETF, while a fair bit larger than the XSF, does hire out administrative tasks to a company.
Seve
We have the raw data, and the outcome with the bot. It is perfect, less layers to access to what has happened. I have nothing more to say to what it has been already said by MattJ. I see it as a perfect fit.
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Guus
(Don't have time to read back, but I have no strong feelings either way about using a bot)
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MattJ
Hopefully by next week I'll have the bot polished off and some docs written, and then I'll propose that we switch to it
jcbrand
flow: Last I heard there are funds, although the XSF could definitely make more of an effort to woo sponsors
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jcbrand
The point is not to make someone rich or to provide a full-time job, but to at least make the task more palatable
flow
jcbrand, we sure have funds, but what can be spend on reappearing payments? also I think before we can seriously consider payming someone, we should look for a treasurer, cause I am not sure if PSA has the time to take care of that
MattJ
Did I mention I'll be offering the bot for a small fee?
MattJ
(muahaaha, etc.)
jcbrand
haha
jcbrand
If it's a once-off fee, then it's better than paying a human to do it
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jcbrand
flow my understanding is that the XSF has been sitting on cash for year, not really doing anything with it✎
Guus
flow we do have a treasurer, Peter.
jcbrand
flow my understanding is that the XSF has been sitting on cash for years, not really doing anything with it ✏
flow
Guus, I know, but only beause of our search for a new treasurer did not yield any results.
Guus
I have no inclination to dismiss his work or to assume that he's not able to perform in that role.
no, we searched for a new Executive Officer (which was also Peter). We never searched for a new Treasurer, afiak.
flow
Guus, no, not at all, but I think that peter would actually be happy if someone else would fill that role
MattJ
Was just typing what Guus said
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flow
Guus, we searched for a treasurer in 2015: https://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/members/2015-July/008117.html
Guus
I did not know that. But, since, Peter was asked to stand for another year repeatedly, and has never objected or mentioned he'd prefer someone else took over.
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flow
I'd speculate that this caused by a mix of it being currently not that mutch work (I assume) and the expectation that there is no one to step in
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Guus
Hey, if he does want someone else to take over, I'm perfectly happy to search for someone else. I'd just not postpone any other activity in the assumption that we need to refill the Treasurer role, as the person that's currently in that role did not give any indication that that's relevant.
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flow
My suggestion would be to ask peter of he is still willing to act as treasurer if we increase the workload
flow
that's all
Guus
right, we're more aligned than it initially appeared to me. 🙂
Guus
I don't think Peter will be silent if the work load becomes more than he's happy with.
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MattJ
I'll just prep another plugin for the bot in that case ;)
Zash
Heh, I was going to suggest that. Bots are better with numbers after all :P
MattJ
Yes, Lua has great floating point support
MattJ
What could go wrong?
MattJ
!spend €400
pep.
fwiw I have suggested going through SPI before (to handle finance, and they also provide legal council etc.), to stpeter at least, maybe that's something we can think about
MattJ
Actually that would be something I could get behind if necessary
pep.
They don't do minute taking yet
Guus
I wonder how much autonomy we give up by going through a party like SPI. I have yet to look into that deeper.
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pep.
!
Seve
Hello, all good?
MattJ
Hello :)
Guus
-·
MattJ
ralphm, ?
MattJ
(or is this a week he sent apologies?)
Guus
did he? I missed it if he did.
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MattJ
Seems not
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MattJ
Ok, I can step up if ralphm is absent
Guus
please do
pep.
k
MattJ
0) Role call
Seve
Very appreciated
Guus
ROLE!
MattJ
;)
pep.
!
Guus
(sorry)
Sevesays hi
MattJ
Let's start with
MattJ
1) Topics for decisions
Guus
somethignsomethingminutes
MattJ
1.1) Reevaluate the process for accepting XEP contributions
MattJ
Looks like https://trello.com/c/Y4Bfcnr3/399-reevaluate-the-process-for-accepting-xep-contributions from jonas’
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MattJ
(I'll send out minutes after the meeting)
pep.
Thanks
Guus
Jonas asks if we got legal council on the necessity of the (CLA) process.
Guus
I do not know.
Seve
Hate to say this but neither do I
Guus
I was involved in setting up the CLA bot, but only because it was a pending issue ('to-be-done')
pep.
What was before github?
Guus
I've looked back in my personal mail archive, but couldn't find much of a motive for this.
pep.
And how did people agree to the IPR
Guus
no, that was on github.
MattJ
I think it was implicit before Github
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pep.
I'm asking about before github
MattJ
Not sure if the editor kept any records, not that I'm aware (but stpeter would know)
pep.
(lag?)
MattJ
None of us are lawyers, though in my experience a lawyer's opinion on something like this tends to usually just be an opinion and "maybe"
Seve
Who can we reach to resolve "Q1"? (Actually confirm if we can ignore that step from the process)
Guus
I think we'll not get an answer with the people in this meeting. 🙂 Let's find someone who was involved at the time?
MattJ
Obviously having an explicit ack from the contributor is good for our records, should an issue arise
Seve
Yes..
MattJ
If we don't have that, I can see it being problematic if there ever was a dispute
pep.
jonas’ and I can go through standard discussions about switching to github and we may find why/who decided
pep.
But getting hints from someone who knows would be good
pep.
MattJ, sure but ACKs can take different forms
MattJ
Sure
Guus
oh, shoot.
Guus
I'm only now reading the rest of Jonas' question
MattJ
I'd be fine with any alternative to the bot if that's what we want
Guus
it was below a fold in trello
Guus
(reading)
jonas’
13:39:04 pep.> And how did people agree to the IPR
email
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jonas’
13:39:44 MattJ> Not sure if the editor kept any records, not that I'm aware (but stpeter would know)
I kept records for all users which did it via email
jonas’
(with me)
MattJ
Also, I may not be up to date on the latest on this thread, but I think we may not necessarily be moving off Github anyway?
jonas’
(there were one or two cases since I became editor which were handled via email)
MattJ
jonas’, thanks, good to know
jonas’
MattJ, clabot is a blocker for moving off gitlab, and I’m swaying towards "do a hybrid solution as a testballoon, long term Gitlab primary"✎
jonas’
MattJ, clabot is a blocker for moving off github, and I’m swaying towards "do a hybrid solution as a testballoon, long term Gitlab primary" ✏
MattJ
I'd be more comfortable if we kept an explicit IPR acknowledgement from contributors about IPR, I'm absolutely fine with any solution for that
pep.
As an editor I'd also prefer if we didn't have two venues as a long term goal
Guus
I think that getting clarification from a lawyer on this is both costly and time-consuming.
Guus
I'd suggest to find a way to not make this issue a blocker for other editor-process improvements.
jonas’
ok, so let’s skip the "did we get counsel" and move on to "what do you think about my proposed alternatives"
jonas’
(please read the card until the bottom :))
MattJ
I'm fine with the proposed alternatives
jonas’
Q2 specifically :)
MattJ
As you say, this is all info made public on contribution anyway
Seve
I like that is based on git
MattJ
Lawyers hate it ;)
Seve
heh :)
MattJ
GDPR issues, if someone wanted to be forgotten
jonas’
I’d like to have Board-ack on the option in Q2. Though we could also find a way to make the list non-public if board is uncomfortable with having a blatant list of PII world-readable on gitlab
Seve
Good point
MattJ
But I consider that a rare enough event that we can cross that bridge when/if we ever need to
pep.
Yeah.. I'm happy with sign-off but I'd like legal council tbh. It's not like we hadn't had contributions from companies with money in the past that could actually use this against us
jonas’
note that right for deletion is guarded by technical feasibility, only the right to rectification is unconditional.
MattJ
If anything, part of the acknowledgement should be that their info will be public in our repos
jonas’
true
MattJ
So make that explicit, and I'm in
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jonas’
maybe Board can make a motion on that :)
jonas’
and then I’ll do things
Guus
I don't want to vote on things now.
Guus
I desperately want more feedback on this
jonas’
(and I’m back in my $work meeting)
MattJ
Feedback from?
MattJ
Thanks jonas’
Guus
at least from (seniors in the) community, and possibly legal council.
MattJ
What exactly concerns you?
Guus
I don't like changing things that I'm unsure of why they were put in place in the first place.
MattJ
CLAs are quite common
Guus
as pep. hinted, legal repercussions _might_ be severe.
MattJ
and their purpose is well understood
MattJ
I don't understand
MattJ
There are two questions here... 1) do we need a CLA? 2) how do we process the CLA?
MattJ
My answers are (1) yes (2) however we want to
Seve
I just see moving from confirming on an email to a commit message? (excluding the clabot)
MattJ
clabot is not mandated by lawyers
MattJ
Most won't even know what it is
MattJ
It's just a convenient thing someone made
pep.
My answers are (1) maaaybe? and (2) We should get legal council to confirm that method is fine
MattJ
So if you're concerned about moving away from that, I don't think that's justified
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Guus
Right - I'm a lot less uncomfortable if we're not discussing the necessity of a CLA.
MattJ
I'm quite sure we didn't get legal counsel on whether clabot was acceptable
Guus
I'm happy to use another technical ways to replace clabot.
Guus
(to do the exact same thing, record the CLA)
MattJ
Plenty of other orgs do CLAs through other means, some insist on written signed forms
pep.
MattJ, re clabot, being a commonly used service I'd hope they have had legal council themselves, or they've been put to the test already.
MattJ
Many lawyers will probably will tell you that's necessary
MattJ
You only have to convince a court that someone had agreed to the IPR terms
pep.
I think I can draw a parallel to security here. Put as many resources to protect against what you think you'll have to face✎
MattJ
If we don't have any process, and it's implicit, I think that's very hard
pep.
I think I can draw a parallel to security here. Put as much resources to protect against what you think you'll have to face ✏
MattJ
If we have any kind of paper trail, then we're good
MattJ
(and paper includes email in this case)
MattJ
e.g. that's one concern - if we migrate off Github do we lose the CLAs of previous contributors?
MattJ
Ok, we're approaching full time
Guus
cla-assistent lets you export them, if memory serves
MattJ
Looks like we don't have enough to vote on, but maybe folks can think about this issue more and we can vote next week
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Kev
FWIW, as I remember the history here, we used to assert that just having submitted a commit was sufficient (that the contribution to the repo itself was enough). A prior board decided there had to be an explicit step added, so an explicit step was added.
pep.
Guus, I'm curious to know if an export is sufficient in court. Or if cla-assistant signs it or something
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Seve
Kev, thank you
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Kev
I think that's about the extent of what happened. I don't *believe* the Board got counsel, but I might be wrong.
Guus
Thanks Kev
MattJ
Ok, I don't see anything else on the agenda that's new, pressing, or that we'd have time to discuss, so I propose we close here
pep.
k
Guus
ok
MattJ
2) Time of next
MattJ
+1W
MattJ
3) Close
MattJ
Thanks all
Guus
wfm
Guus
Thanks
pep.
Thanks
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Seve
Thank you MattJ !
Seve
It really helps to know that, thank you Kev
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Kev
It's just my migraine-addled memory, I wouldn't take it as gospel :)
Seve
Haha
Kev
I mean, the first part is definitely (as sure as I can be) right. We used to just assert that by contribuing a XEP that said in it (once XSL was applied) that it was owned by the XSF that meant the author was assigning ownership to the XSF, and it was definitely decided to change that because it wasn't deemed safe.
Kev
The details of the decision process during the change are a bit fuzzier for me.
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MattJ
Minutes sent
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Guus
tx
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jonas’
Thanks Board
jonas’
that was useful as a guideline
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jonas’
The rough consensus that we do want a process which gets us an affirmative ACK is already important to me. Replacing CLAbot as a tool I don’t think is a problem in general, since it can’t do any magic either.
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jonas’
We’ll find a similarly powerful replacement for the GitLab platform, the process I outlined would be an example of that.
jonas’
regarding exporting the "signatures" of cla-assistant, I don’t think that’s of much use since they’re tied to github users, which is not quite a thing on GitLab ;)
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jonas’
though I guess we can restore some manually (and I’d be happy to) for the common contributors so they don’t have to go through the hassle; in the end, the cardinality of authors is rather low
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pep.
jonas’, they're useful though as a proof that existing contributors have ACK'd
Zash
Assuming it's only a one-time thing maybe that's okay as a way to test that it's not too annoying then?
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jonas’
Zash, what would be okay?
jonas’
(dangling reference in "that's okay as a way")
Zash
in-reply-to: "though I guess we can restore some [clabot signatures] [...] for the common contributors so they don’t have to go through the hassle"
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jonas’
Zash, so you would not do that to check with the common contributors if the process looks alright?
pep.
Yeah I'm also fine with re-signing. It's only a one-time thing anyway
pep.
yeah
jonas’
I see
pep.
It's one less (legally?) error-prone thing for editors to do as well
jonas’
indeed
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Zash
jonas’, I got the impression that we might find a replacement clabot thing. if that turns out too annoying to subject previous contributors to, then isn't it too annoying?
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jonas’
very true
jonas’
good point you make
Kev
Of the barriers that might be present in moving to gitlab purely for me, I wouldn't think going through the CLABot process again that problematic (assuming it was no harder than the current one).
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Kev
(Other aspects might be, but not that one)
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Zash
or "if that turns out so annoying that it's worth it to try to export previous data, then"
Zash
vacation mode. brain turned off.
pep.
disregarding of whether we want to restore ACKs, do we not have to keep an export?✎
pep.
disregarding whether we want to restore ACKs, do we not have to keep an export? ✏
Zash
could argue that it's implied in the merging of the PR
pep.
It was already decided to go with explicit ACK (and I agree with that)
Zash
if you assume in good faith that the bot did its job
jonas’
I’d still want an export for safety
pep.
Though I'm not sure I understand your sentence, Zash
jonas’
if github folds, we don’t have a record of what happened in the PR