XSF Discussion - 2024-06-06

Hi all, i need an expert in deploying Ejabberd/XMPP chat servers and are available to assist with this project, I would greatly appreciate your guidance and expertise. Please let me know your availability for an initial consultation to discuss the project requirements in more detail and determine the scope of work. Thank you for considering my request. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

> Thanks Alex ! And welcome new member MSavoritias (fae,ve) ! 🎉 thank you ^^

o/

Mosazai: have you tried contacting ProcessOne?

Board meeting in 5 mins

Ralph sent regrets, so I’m happy to run the meeting unless someone else wants to.

yes

Thanks

OK!

I see Eddie, Matthew, and Peter here. Ralph sent regrets. Nicola, are you present?

🇮🇹?

Lets start

Hopefully he will join.

Yes.

OK, let’s briefly discuss the non-organizational topics while Nicola perhaps joins.

https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Board-Meeting-2024-06-06 says those are: Editor role, Infrastructure situation, GSoC

Eddie, GSoC?

Vadik and Assu have officially kicked of to work on Monal and Prav App. Looking forward what they do. Join the GSoC chat fir you have more questions. Welcome both of them and their mentors again. 100% newcomer setup

Great!

In that regard I can just call to think about Outreachy participation again

See my mail

OK

correspondence

Hi! I have an unstable connection. I might lost the meeting

Nicola: OK

Nicola: we started with other topics, perhaps your connection will stabilize in the next few minutes. :-)

emus: anything else?

Not on GSoC

stpeter: you got the pioneer mail right? :D

payoneer, yes. That’s all taken care of.

OK, infrastructure situation.

> payoneer, yes. That’s all taken care of. oh yes 🙈 ↺

I have not connected yet with Jerry, who runs the data center where we host things.

I will make sure to do that this week or likely next.

👍

stpeter: anyone that can help you instead? ✏

But I’ve talked with other members of the infrastructure team about some potential changes and they didn’t have concerns.

So the next step, after talking with Jerry, is to create a concrete plan.

I still have an open todo item to research alternatives and costs

Nothing more to report at the moment, I suppose.

MattJ: I’m happy to help with that.

which changes exactly again?

emus, moving (the remainder of) our infrastructure out of the current data centre

Likely moving from informally-hosted things in the data center (1990s-style deployment) to commercial services for things like DNS.

This will hopefully prevent future catastrophic outages...

ok fine.

Details TBD.

Next item: editor role. Do we have anything to discuss on this one?

Okay, yes, I missed we really considered to move

If not, I think we can remove “editor role” from returning business.

> Next item: editor role. Do we have anything to discuss on this one? I don't think so from current function, Daniel's doing stuff so quickly there's nothing left by the time I find time. So all looks good on that front. On the 'obsoleting the role', I don't know where we are.

stpeter: At least ask Daniel for his feedback?

Kev: good point, I’m not sure where we stand with that either.

Anyway, we’re halfway through our 30 minutes, so let’s discuss the organizational improvements / next steps

It seems to me we need to find volunteers to research this more completely.

Nothing has changed on the Editor front since last meeting's summary

Where “this” includes several options: a stronger / official European presence, actually moving from the US to EU, and maybe something else.

MattJ: thanks.

> It seems to me we need to find volunteers to research this more completely. Can we expose again for what, so people know ↺

ok you were faster

> Where “this” includes several options: a stronger / official European presence, actually moving from the US to EU, and maybe something else. From the gallery: I feel like all of these options are work and expense for dubious gain ↺

@singpolyma your feedback is appreciated 😊

(Also from the peanut gallery - and going both EU and US seems like the most insane amount of work for possible gain of all the options)

(agree)

Kev: being in two places at once indeed seems of dubious value.

It’s hard enough for a small organization like ours to be in one location. :-)

Exactly that.

So if research is happening, I as a member would be more interested in seeing proposals on value than on process of how to do it. Deciding if before how

I don't understand why this is insane amount of work (serious point)

> So if research is happening, I as a member would be more interested in seeing proposals on value than on process of how to do it. Deciding if before how nicola: ↺

emus: I'm not sure I would say insane. It's more work, so if more work is to happen it ought to be justified by concrete gains

ok

I also worry about who will volunteer over the long term to complete the required tasks (banking, legal, etc.). And if we *don’t* find volunteers then we should expect to spend money.

stpeter: one concern is you are slightly spof for the USA org atm yes?

I sent my proposals. I suppose everyone had the opportunity to examine them

singpolyma: Yes, that is one of my concerns.

I didn't mean it was an insane amount of work in the abstract. But that having twice the bus factors, twice the effort, etc., for no tangible benefit makes it the craziest choice.

stpeter: what is needed hypothetically for someone to be a second to you in that? USA residency? USA citizenship?

I proposed to move the legal office from the USA to the EU ✏

> I proposed to move the legal office from the USA to EU Yes, I think that is a reasonable thing to consider. I think someone mentioned on list having two legal offices, and that seems crazy to me.

Perhaps, as Stephen suggests, step one is to understand what the concrete gains would or could be. How much do we know about the potential for EU grants, for instance?

Sorry, did you read my emails? I explained that

However, we always used claim not to change anything because of efforts and work, which is basically fine. Still we cannot stale.

As one data point, the NGI grants do not strictly require a presence in the EU

I mean, most of our activity is not in North America these days, so in theory I’m supportive of actually moving things to Europe.

>> I proposed to move the legal office from the USA to EU > Yes, I think that is a reasonable thing to consider. I think someone mentioned on list having two legal offices, and that seems crazy to me. I would love not to give up existing offices ↺

Heh, our existing office is my house.

> Heh, our existing office is my house. I know ↺

> Heh, our existing office is my house. Great! 😀

>> Heh, our existing office is my house. > I know More about formailities noone will do again likely ↺

> Heh, our existing office is my house. Party at Peters place this summer - vote now 😉 ↺

The larger issue is that we have a legal existence in the U.S. - incorporated in the State of Delaware, banking relationship with Wells Fargo for 20+ years, etc.

> I mean, most of our activity is not in North America these days, so in theory I’m supportive of actually moving things to Europe. I agree in principle, though the EU is not one place and nothing prevents activity from shifting the other way for unknown reasons just at it did this way to begin with ↺

I suggest that we find a few people to research the options more thoroughly and report back.

nicola: nicola?

stpeter: so the main thing that depends on you is the bank (and the office being your house...) but really anyone inside the USA could be party to that yes?

> stpeter: so the main thing that depends on you is the bank (and the office being your house...) but really anyone inside the USA could be party to that yes? You're asking to move in with Peter? :)

😃

singpolyma: yes, anyone else could. But who will volunteer to take on that responsibility, potentially for years?

Haha, no. I'm saying having a second person on the bank seems possible

We’ve talked about having a second person on the bank before, but those people didn’t stay involved.

Well, it doesn't have to always be one person right? If we have two USA resident board members then we can have overlapping terms, etc

> singpolyma: yes, anyone else could. But who will volunteer to take on that responsibility, potentially for years? Can you tell what are you annual efforts you need to take? ↺

The tasks are not major - filing a form 990 with the IRS, reimbursing people for expenses (FOSDEM etc.), filing a report with the State of Delaware, perhaps a few other things.

(for the office I don't know what Delaware rules are but eg my own corporation has its head office in a ups mailbox)

So we have two conversations going on here.

One about the fact that I’m a single point of failure in the US.

Two about increasing our European presence.

> The tasks are not major - filing a form 990 with the IRS, reimbursing people for expenses (FOSDEM etc.), filing a report with the State of Delaware, perhaps a few other things. No disrespecting, but this does not sound we should give up our 503 organisation in US ✏ ↺

I think they're related, since the main motivation to do one is the other

Where two includes potentially moving the org to Europe.

And if we move to Europe we still need to find two people willing to do the bank work there etc

I think the main motivation for a stronger European presence is the potential for grants in Europe.

singpolyma: exactly, that is a concern of mine.

I'm unfortunately neither in the USA nor Europe, which makes me kinda useless. Though I can get to USA in under one day

But we won’t figure out all these issues in the next few minutes, which is why I propose that we assign a small team to do the research and report back.

(I'm in US, don't necessarily *want* to do those duties :) but I'm willing if needed or as backup or whatever)

I will try to help, but I have absolute no expierence with this

is it all about "how to make a non-profit organisatio in Eu?"

I’m sure that other open-source / tech foundations have gone through this process, and I can ask about it on the open-source foundations discussion list (a private list but I can report on what I hear).

that would be great

Here is a concrete proposal: I create a page on the wiki to structure our thinking.

👍👍

I will review the members@ email discussion and this chatlog, post to the foundations list, summarize Nicola’s proposal, etc.

What grants are available to EU only that the XSF would even be after? As MattJ said, NGI doesn't have such a restriction

Then we can start filling in the page with more details.

> (I'm in US, don't necessarily *want* to do those duties :) but I'm willing if needed or as backup or whatever) moparisthebest: no one wants to. But someone has to. This is the way if every org ↺

Yes

I’ve been doing this stuff for 23 years, more or less. I don’t think I’ll still be doing them 23 years from now, since I’ll be 80 years old at that point. ;-)

Indeed

Anyway, I will create the wiki page and post it to the members@ list.

And here.

The discussion here has been very open and constructive, which I appreciate!

Thanks stpeter

🧡

I want to be clear that my "let's only do work with value" position does not imply "so stpeter will keep doing everything forever" is my position, obviously we need a path away from that no matter what happens

So, any other business (AOB)?

> I want to be clear that my "let's only do work with value" position does not imply "so stpeter will keep doing everything forever" is my position, obviously we need a path away from that no matter what happens agreed ↺

I got one AOB: Everyone involved in XEP publishing - please consider my mail correspondence around using tags in the xeps to help newcomers with the specification.

emus: ah, thank you, I haven’t read that thread yet.

Date of Next Meeting - the first Thursday in July is Independence Day in the US, perhaps we can meet on July 11th instead?

ich cannot the 11

but 9th

Tuesday the 9th?

Let’s propose that on the Board list and see if Ralph, Matthew, and Nicola can make it. I would need to move something, but I can do that.

I can actually do the 4th, no big deal, so perhaps we’ll just keep that.

TBD.

Seeing no other topics, I propose that we adjourn.

Good plan, gotta keep it under 30mins :)

Thanks :)

Yeah, I prefer 30 minutes too, but we often seem to end up at ~40…

Thanks, all!

> Good plan, gotta keep it under 30mins :) I'd prefer to reserve time for these discussion than cutting it short ↺

Thanks all

well it's not too wrong.

https://stpeter.im/journal/731.html ;-)

stpeter, the important question is whether you recorded the song by now