PSF Meeting Minutes for Nov. 15, 2010
A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation ("PSF") Board of Directors was held over Internet Relay Chat beginning at 16:00 UTC, 15 November 2010. David Mertz presided at the meeting. Pat Campbell prepared the minutes.
All votes are reported in the form "Y-N-A" (in favor ? opposed ? abstentions; e.g. "5-1-2" means "5 in favor, 1 opposed, and 2 abstentions").
Contents
1 Attendance
The following members of the Board of Directors were present at the meeting: Raymond Hettinger, Marc-Andre Lemburg, David Mertz, Doug Napoleone, Jesse Noller, Tim Peters, Jeff Rush, Greg Stein, and James Tauber. Also in attendance were Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer), and Pat Campbell (Secretary & Administrator).
2 Minutes of Past Meetings
The 18 October 2010 Board meeting minutes were voted on and approved.
Approved, 7-0-2.
3 Votes Taken Between Meetings
There were no votes taken since the last Board meeting held on 18 October 2010.
4 Treasurer Report
The monthly Treasurer's Report was provided to Board members by K. Kaiser prior to the Board meeting.
However, during the board meeting, the treasurer did add that we will soon have a 990 filing.
5 Progress Report
The following board reports were submitted to the board mailing list one week prior to this month's meeting. Please see a summary of each board report listed below and a possible board discussion to follow:
5.1 Communication Status
D. Hellmann, Communication Officer, reports that a blog about the Google Summer of Code, a blog about Bug Weekend, and a blog about John Pinner's 2010 - 2nd Quarter Community Service Award has been posted by the newly recruited Mike Driscoll. Paulo Nuin is another recruited volunteer who has written a blog about Michael Foord, the recipient of the 2010 - 3rd Quarter Community Service Award. Foundation News can be found here: http://pyfound.blogspot.com/.
Board Discussion:
- Peters: "Mike Driscoll is a blogging machine."
5.2 Core Development Tasks
B. Cannon, Core Development Tasks Project, will begin working on this 2-month project in January 2011.
Board Discussion:
The discussion was deferred to email.
5.3 HAM WebPages/Links
P. Campbell, Honorary Associate Membership (HAM) WebPages Start-up Project, is currently working with our treasurer, Kurt Kaiser in order to setup the new Honorary Associate Membership fee payment system that will interface with the Python website. Andrew Kuchling of MatrixMaxx is currently onboard to tackle membership subscriptions & fee payments for-the-most-part. In other words, we are working on many technical aspects of the project at this point.
Board Discussion:
- Mertz: "Any word on when this is likely to be pinned down?"
- Campbell: "We are currently looking at the financial side of things."
K. Kaiser: "I have offered payment options, but the problem is: How is the whole signup, renewal, etc. going to be automated -- what website, what code, who is writing it, and who is tracking, etc.?"
This discussion was deferred to email.
5.4 Marketing Material
M.A.Lemburg provides a few comments on how the project is expected to progress:
"Since our last meeting at the German DZUG Tagung, a German Zope/Plone/Python conference in Dresden (http://www.zope.de/tagung/Dresden_2010) we have made good progress on getting the needed pricing information for the brochure.
We now have a draft budget plan which covers the pre-production, production and shipping costs for a 10.000 brochure edition with 20 pages of content that I will discuss with the board over the next few weeks.
In order to make the project as easy manageable for the PSF as possible, special care has been taken to have all aspects of logistics, shipping, packaging, etc. done by the production agency.
To refinance the brochure production costs we want to use ads ("Ad Sponsors") and a consulting company reference list ("Reference Sponsors") in the brochure. Our aim is to fully refinance the costs, with the PSF backing the project financially until all sponsor fees have been collected.
After production the brochure will be sent out to PyCon US (for 2012), each of the sponsors will receive a box and the rest will be stored at the production agency in Germany for on-demand shipping at the request of the PSF or based on direct orders received via a web form."
Board Discussion:
This discussion was deferred to email.
5.5 Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront
The project leader, M.A. Lemburg, Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront, provides a purpose for his project by saying, "The project is intended to improve the availability, uptime and performance of PyPI for use by automatic package installation tools.
The main idea is to make all PyPI static content available via Amazon Cloudfront, a content delivery network maintained by Amazon."
MAL hopes to get his project started by December 2010. He would also like to start recruiting for volunteers to help implement the startup facets of the project.
5.6 PyCon US Website
D. Napoleone, PyCon US Website Project, reports that the call for proposals, tutorials, and posters was very successful:
"The call for participation was a huge success, with very few problems with the new submission software from Eldarion. Jesse Noller, acting as the Program Committee Chair made a blog post on this subject": http://us.pycon.org/2011/blog/2010/11/12/pycon-2011-record-breaking-talk-and-tutorial-submi/
In addition, new activities for D. Napoleone will include the review system. He is also planning to launch PyCon US 2011 conference and hotel registration next month.
5.7 pyOpenSSL Status
J.P. Calderone, pyOpenSSL Project, has been working to improve the coverage provided by pyOpenSSl's test suite. He recently informed the board that he had completed the pyOpenSSL Project and that the release announcement can be seen here: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/3675e342b40310e9/157ae91ccee19151?show_docid=157ae91ccee19151
5.8 Sprint Committee
J. Noller, Sprint Committee Chair, provides board members with two resolutions to review and vote on. One relates to expanding the charter itself and the other relates to changing a leadership role on the Sprint Committee.
Board Discussion:
After some discussion, the board decided to modify the Sprint Committee Charter (see board resolution below). However, they decided to maintain the current Sprint Committee leadership role.
6 Fund 2010 SciPy India Conference
RESOLVED,that the PSF provide a $1250 US grant to help fund sprints at the 2010 SciPy India conference to be held in Hyderabad between December 13th to the 18th.
Approved, 5-4-0.
7 Uniblue Systems Ltd. Membership Application
RESOLVED, that the board recommends Uniblue Systems Ltd. as a pending sponsor member.
Aproved, 8-0-0.
8 Modify Sprint Committee Charter
RESOLVED, that the board approves the modification of the PSF Sprints committee charter to allow for the funding of sprints outside of the "python core" domain. The PSF and Sprint committee may also accept donations to the PSF to help further fund the Sprints project as a whole, but not to specific sprints via donor advisement.
Approved, 9-0-0.
9 Other Business
9.1 Assign Subdomain Pl.Python.org
RESOLVED, that the PSF will assign the subdomain pl.python.org to Piotr Tynecki and the Polish Python Coders Group, technical details to be arranged by the Infrastructure Committee.
Approved, 7-0-0.
10 Adjournment
- Mertz adjourned the meeting at 17:13 UTC.