2006-11-15 SqF board notes

Hi all--

     Thanks again to those of you who have submitted agenda item
suggestions[1]. Please keep them coming!

     The Squeak Foundation board meets online for one hour on the first
and third Wednesday of each month. At the 2006-11-15 meeting, Bert,
Cees, Craig, Marcus, and Yoshiki attended; Tim was absent.

***

     There were five action items from the previous meeting.

1.   Craig will make a second call for release team volunteers.

     I did this on 2006-11-03 (see [2]). We actually have some
volunteers now! Thanks to those of you who have responded. Again, the
board would like to make a decision about the release team during the
2006-12-06 meeting, so if you'd like to volunteer for the release team
and haven't contacted us, please do.

2.   Craig will make the contributor objects available in addition to
     the textual summary.

     I did this on 2006-11-03 (see [3]). Since then, I've incorporated
updates from Yoshiki, Kim Rose, and others. Viewpoints has prepared a
contributor agreement letter; Kim is now sending it out via email to
each known contributor. Watch for it!

3.   The board will discuss incorporation further via email.

     We didn't get to this before the meeting, but we did discuss it
during the meeting. There was mention before (when Cees wasn't present)
that Cees preferred incorporation in Europe for some reason. At this
meeting Cees said he actually prefers US incorporation, as it provides
the greatest access to tax-free donations. There was consensus on this
point amongst the board. I had previously mentioned a company,
Foundation Group[4] that will hold one's hand through the incorporation
and US IRS 501(c)(3) processes.

     We decided that I would get a quote from Foundation Group, then
decide whether to engage their services. From reading their website, I
expect the cost to be about USD 1500 for both incorporation and the
granting of tax-exempt status. We noted that we may want to incorporate
in other countries in the future (this is something I would bring up
during the US incorporation process).

4.   Craig will create a tree of passworded wiki pages for board meeting
     notes and team status reports.

     I haven't done this yet.

5.   Cees will make another gentle reminder to Jochen about the wiki
     move.

     Cees did this, and passed along word from Jochen that the situation
will be resolved by 2006-12-31.

***

     The meeting had seven agenda items.

1.   What shall we do about the upcoming loss of the Georgia Tech swiki?

     Cees and Jochen are handling this.

2.   How shall we ensure reliable access to the Squeak website and our
     other servers?

     Cees says he can set up a fallback system in a different datacenter
for about EUR 30 per month. We did not make a decision as to whether and
when to go ahead with this; it's on the next agenda.

3.   How shall we incorporate?

     See previous action item 3 above.

4.   Ken Causey suggests that someone from the board help guide
     discussion on squeak-dev (e.g., the recent Morphic/eToys threads;
     see [1]).

     While we think this could be a good idea, no one on the current
board has time to do this right now. We may have more to say about this
later, though.

5.   How should the community support the release and harvesting
     process? Stephane Ducasse suggests establishing test and build
     servers.

     Cees thought this was a good idea and pointed out that we have
ample server capacity for this. I suggested that coordinating this could
be the responsibility of the release team. Time ran out during this
discussion; we did not make a formal decision.

6.   Matt asks that we consider declaring a documentation policy, in
     which each SqueakMap package has at least a minimal usage
     description, a la the TalkBack package.
7.   What shall we do with regard to merchandising?

     We deferred these items.

***

     The action items from this meeting were:

1.   Craig will get a quote from Foundation Group for incorporating the
     Squeak Foundation in the United States and obtaining tax-exempt
     status for it.

2.   Craig will create a tree of passworded wiki pages for board meeting
     notes and team status reports.


***

     Currently, the next agenda is tentatively:

1.   discussion of previous action items

2.   How shall we make future contributors aware their submissions must
     be made available under the terms of the MIT license?

3.   How shall we ensure reliable access to the Squeak website and our
     other servers?

4.   How should the community support the release and harvesting
     process? Stephane Ducasse suggests establishing test and build
     servers.

5.   Matt asks that we consider declaring a documentation policy, in
     which each SqueakMap package has at least a minimal usage
     description, a la the TalkBack package.

6.   What shall we do with regard to merchandising?


     thanks!

-C

[1] http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/64.html
[2] http://tinyurl.com/y2porp (lists.squeakfoundation.org)
[3] http://netjam.org/squeak/contributors
[4] http://501c3.org

--
Craig Latta
http://netjam.org/resume

Craig Latta wrote:

> 2.   How shall we ensure reliable access to the Squeak website and our
>      other servers?
>
>      Cees says he can set up a fallback system in a different datacenter
> for about EUR 30 per month. We did not make a decision as to whether and
> when to go ahead with this; it's on the next agenda.

We could have the impara and/or sophieproject server (both Hetzner root
servers) as fallbacks.

Michael

This looks like pretty good progress to me.  Thanks to everyone on the
Board for continuing the fight.

Ken

Craig Latta writes:
 > 1.   Craig will make a second call for release team volunteers.
 >
 >      I did this on 2006-11-03 (see [2]). We actually have some
 > volunteers now! Thanks to those of you who have responded. Again, the
 > board would like to make a decision about the release team during the
 > 2006-12-06 meeting, so if you'd like to volunteer for the release team
 > and haven't contacted us, please do.

Would it be possible to post the list of volunteers to the list with
their proposals for the next release? Or better for the volunteers to
post their proposals here?  It would be great to know what direction
people would like to take Squeak in. A little public discussion and
and visibility would be great.

Keep up the good work.
Bryce

Hi Bryce--

> Would it be possible to post the list of volunteers to the list with
> their proposals for the next release? Or better for the volunteers to
> post their proposals here? It would be great to know [the direction in
> which people would like to take Squeak]. A little public discussion
> and visibility would be great.

     Squeak-dev has always been an open forum for that (far beyond a
little :). Volunteers should feel free, as always, to discuss what
they'd like to do for Squeak.

> Keep up the good work.

     Thanks!


-C

--
Craig Latta
http://netjam.org/resume

Hi Craig,

I would like to collaborate on Squeak 3.10 too but I need to know the
direction we want to go too. I hope that my vision of the next Squeak
development is clear - maximal modularization based on small kernel,
minimal morphic system, loadable eToys, test&build server.
I would like to know the view of the board on my work and if it is too
much radical or we will adopt it as the next official stream.

-- Pavel

On 11/22/06, Craig Latta <[hidden email]> wrote:

If etoys and everything will really be loadable at the end, then this sounds
very good to me.


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Hi Pavel, Craig,

Pavel's goals listed are of the kind that I agree with, and for what it's
worth, I'd like to offer my help towards those goals. Given my not so
extensive experience with Squeak (I mostly play with eToys etc) I would have
no problem for the board or team to ignore or decline; having said that I
estimate I should be able to dedicate 10 hours a week (perhaps more)  for the
release effort (on top of the other about 10 hours that it takes to read the
Squeak related lists :) ).  

Milan

On 2006 November 23 03:04, Pavel Krivanek wrote:

Milan, I'd suggest you chat with Ralph about what bits you could help  
with, what would interest you etc and see if you can make a  
comfortable team with him and Edgar. It doesn't matter much what any  
of the rest of us think of your capabilities - if you can work well  
with the team in any capacity it can only help the process.  
Conversely someone that can't get along with the team is just about  
useless even if they're a genius.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late

Hi Tim,

Thanks, good points - I emailed Ralph and Edgar and will go from there,

Later, Milan

On 2006 November 23 17:52, tim Rowledge wrote:

On Nov 23, 2006, at 23:52 , tim Rowledge wrote:

> Milan, I'd suggest you chat with Ralph about what bits you could  
> help with, what would interest you etc and see if you can make a  
> comfortable team with him and Edgar. It doesn't matter much what  
> any of the rest of us think of your capabilities - if you can work  
> well with the team in any capacity it can only help the process.  
> Conversely someone that can't get along with the team is just about  
> useless even if they're a genius.

Also, note that this discussion is still in the proposal stage. If  
someone strongly disagrees and would like to volunteer with a  
different plan, speak up now.

- Bert -