This was extracted (@ 2024-11-19 16:10) from a list of minutes
which have been approved by the Board.
Please Note
The Board typically approves the minutes of the previous meeting at the
beginning of every Board meeting; therefore, the list below does not
normally contain details from the minutes of the most recent Board meeting.
WARNING: these pages may omit some original contents of the minutes.
Meeting times vary, the exact schedule is available to ASF Members and Officers, search for "calendar" in the Foundation's private index page (svn:foundation/private-index.html).
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it no longer in the best interest of the Foundation to continue the Apache Public Relations Committee, an ASF Board Committee, due to the overly broad scope of the committee, and WHEREAS the Board of Directors has before it resolutions that create several separate Vice President roles that will assume the remaining duties of the Apache Public Relations Committee, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Apache Public Relations Committee be and hereby is no longer responsible for handling public relations, managing the Apache brand and image, performing outreach and announcements, and raising funds as necessary tasks to sustain the operation of the Foundation and assist the creation and maintenance of open-source software for distribution at no charge to the public; and be it further RESOLVED, that Shane Curcuru is relieved and discharged from the duties and responsibilities of the office of Vice President, Apache Public Relations Committee; and be it further RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Apache Public Relations Committee" is hereby terminated; and be it further RESOLVED, that the Apache Public Relations Committee is hereby terminated. Special Order 7E, Terminate the Apache Public Relations Committee, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.
= = = PRC Update - Activities Undertaken 1 October - 13 November = = = ITEMS NEEDING BOARD ATTENTION Status of Individual Thank You letters? Phil Steitz stated that he'll help Geir get these done. These seem to not have gone out yet. PRC restructuring: please see resolutions disbanding the PRC board committee and instead creating several VP's to manage more focused parts of the activities of the PRC. = = = GENERAL INFO Jim resigned from PRC. Numerous proposals regarding the reorg of PRC: Sally (again), Shane, Jukka, and Craig were sent out and discussed. After much debating, polling, jabbing, and voting, Shane is the new VP PRC. Sally notes that nobody seems interested in ASF Marketing & Publicity. No ack or response from a single soul to her second request for participants. Bertrand received a prc@ subscription request from a PMC chair who's not a member who wants to participate on the PRC list. Request declined. = = = COMMUNITY OUTREACH Bertrand followed up regarding their experience at the Open World Forum, both onsite, as well as with the organizers. Sally sent a 5-point proposal for improving our working relationship with them moving forward. It's an important event to participate in, with 1,500+ attendees, and a likely one for us to want to become more involved in. The UInnsbruck-MIT Branding Study team followed up with participating in the next stage in their study on Apache. Sally sent out a call to the Membership and ASF Sponsors to help streamline the online survey which will be disseminated to the general public. Leo Simons forwarded a request from Rachel Willmer, who was seeking sponsorship and nominations for the UK Open Source awards (November 2009). We don't plan to sponsor or have a formal presence at the event. Received a conference Participation Request for S&SV's Open Source Expo/Nov 2009 - Isabel Drost and Simon Wittenour will be doing this, with Ross as the mentor. Justin James, a reporter/blogger who's covered ApacheCon, is seeking any interested Apache folk to speak at their CodeCamp/Jan 2010 in South Carolina. No takers yet. = = = COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT A new group spun out of the PRC, was dubbed "Outreach Sub-committee" for a bit and then created as the Apache Community Development PMC, with Ross as VP (during board retreat meeting). "ComDev" held their first meeting onsite at ApacheCon during the BarCamp with plenty of attendees. Sally suggests they take on the chairing of the Community Track at ApacheCon. The board also minuted that they should consider taking on oversight of community@ and women@. = = = MEDIA AND ANALYST RELATIONS See the board resolution creating a VP, Marketing & Publicity to take over duties in this area in the future. Sally and Justin connected with PRNewswire to renew our 10-release nonprofit flat-rate package (our package purchased for 2008-2009 expired in August; we submitted 8/10 releases). The rate remains the same -- $4,000 for 10 x US1 distributions (with no overage charges, vs. retail rate of ~$650 for the first 400 words, plus overage charges). Even though we didn't use the entire package last year, we saved at least $1,200. We have already issued two press releases since the renewal (i.e., 8 remain). Received request to provide quote in SAP press release. Declined, but helped review and wordsmith announcement. Received request to review/approve a press release from SpringSource. Received request to review/approve a press release from Yahoo! on the Traffic Server code "Comments" on Foundation blog were backed up in moderation - now fixed. Sally forwarded Progress FUSE newsletter to demonstrate how we can leverage our supporters to help spread the word. Received request for ASF support for help share cost of live/archived video streaming at ApacheCon with CollabNet. Request granted after several negotiation go-rounds regarding license and content distribution details. Concom is organizing the post-con video streams; the provider will give concom the files under the Apache License after 90 days. Tim Morin from fama PR requested the list of registered press. Sally declined, as the company he represented (Organic) was neither a conference sponsor or exhibitor (often PR firms who seek the list without providing background information try to poach our contacts). Cliff asked that we give it to them nonetheless, considering that he co-founded the company with Brian. The list was forwarded; they confirmed that they had no direct need for the list nor our assistance at the time. Sally worked very closely with PageOne in creating the PR strategy and overseeing day-to-day tactics for ApacheCon. We had a PRC table onsite at ApacheCon which was staffed by PageOne and PRC team members on Wednesday and Thursday. The PageOne team filmed "MyApache" shoutouts and handed out ApacheCon swag from the archives in exchange for going on video. HALO coordinated interviews, Filmworks appointments, meeting rooms, press room, Sponsor meetings, ASF booth schedule, etc., during conference. Busy! We helped publicize trainings as well as general conference activities and special events on the ASF's Twitter account. http://twitter.com/theasf Published more Filmworks clips and filmed "MyApache" shoutouts at the conference http://www.youtube.com/user/TheApacheFoundation Media Partner TheBitsource posted a series of interviews to promote ApacheCon, including Brian Behlendorf's keynote, The President's Post with Justin, The Essences of the ASF with Jim, Erik Hatcher on Apache Lucene and Solr Search Applications trainings, Filip Hanik on Everything Tomcat training, and Apache Hadoop training with Aaron Kimball. Thanks, everyone! Guest blog entries by Jim, Justin, Shane, and Gianugo were published on Media Partner Ostatic's site. Bertrand's is MIA; Sally is hunting it down. MS issued media statement announcing ASF Sponsorship renewal; highlights recent interview w/Justin http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/11/02/a-chat-with-apache-software-foundation-president-justin-erenkrantz.aspx Our own Isabel Drost and Simon Willnaur covered ApacheCon for Heise Online (Germany). Raise a Glass campaign resulted in numerous press mentions, as well as dedicated recognition from the Eclipse Foundation, NLUUG (The Netherlands), and the Aeturnum team in Sri Lanka. 3 press releases issued: ApacheCon Keynotes + Sponsors; SVN joining the Incubator (released on the CollabNet wire account); and Post-con/10th Anniversary closing. Jukka pinged us regarding re: press release for the upcoming Jackrabbit 2.0; will do this after ApacheCon. Alex Karasulu pinged us re: press release for the new alliance between the OpenLDAP and Apache Directory Projects; draft in progress. Sally held Media Training at ApacheCon @ full capacity. Michael Cote of RedMonk attended the session and held additional briefings/meetings with select participants afterwards. ASF birthday wishes from ApacheCon Europe/AMS Filmworks now online We received 1 city proclamation for Apache Software Foundation Day (Oakland) and 1 letter of recognition (State of California). 14 members of the press attended ApacheCon. Total 656 press hits, including mentions by "friends" and on blogs; 467 from the week of ApacheCon alone. = = = BRAND, TRADEMARK, AND LOGO USAGE See the board resolution creating a VP, Brand Management to take over duties in this area in the future. Jim forwarded a proposed mission for this group. Matt Hall requested clarification for proper attribution for the ASF for an article he's writing for the technical magazine of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. Benson Margulies followed up on his query about the possible use of several names related to Lucene for a commercial product, including "Rosette Search Essentials for Lucene". Iliya Bazlyankov inquires about using "Apache" in a domain name - his client plans to use the website to give localized content about Apache. Hasmin AbdulCader from WSO2 wanted to clarify if its OK to use the term "Powered by Apache Projects"; we suggested that they use the "Powered by" logo. Henning states that the logo is rather ugly; Sally mentioned that she'd sent Upayavira an email asking if he can take this on now whilst the other "branding/house style" stuff (such as the Website) is in Discussion Mode. We approved the use of the Apache/ASF projects logo/names for the track border and/or car skin for the TORCS-NG racing game project http://www.neeneenee.de/torcs-ng/gallery/ . Robert Burrell Donkin committed his suggested layout + instructions for scaled business/MOO cards to be used at ApacheCon. Mladen Turk was seeking the ASF Feather logo in windows .ico format in resolution larger then 16x16 pixels. Sebb forwarded an "offer" received from www.sedo.com to purchase www.apache.be: declined/ignored. The PRC worked with the ApacheCon Asia Roadshow team re: the logo for their upcoming event. Inquiry received from a student at the University of Alabama re: marketing analysis on Web Services and Axis2. He was referred to the project dev list. Steve Klabunde contacted us to ensure he's using the proper trademark and attribution to ASF for Apache in documentation. Gianugo points out that he has some issues with Shane's ownership and use of TheApacheWay.com which elicited followup discussion. No changes were made. Jim requested the SpringSource team to provide the proper attribution (trademark statement) on several pages on their Website. Corrected. Yonik Seeley states that there is a disconnect with some members on the Lucene PMC regarding to how liberal we should be in granting trademark use to others, and what's actually best for the projects. He's requested that the Lucene PMC at least be consulted before decisions are made or measures are taken against others when they involve Lucene project trademarks. Claudine Bianchi contacted us on behalf of Basis Technology on how to best use the Apache Lucene/Solr logos in a paper that details their products' use of Lucene/Solr. The ASF banner will be transported to EU, and possibly returned to the US in 2010 - Simon and Isabel will take it with them for the Open Source Expo event in Germany, then will ship it to Nóirín for the Apache Retreat in Ireland. We will be using the ASF FedEx account to cover the transport costs. Lincoln Sayger requested advice from us regarding the use of the ASF logo in a slideshow on Web design, and the concept of a LAMP stack. Danny Angus requested that the event banners need updating at http://www.apache.org/ads/bannerbar.html as he uses that content on his blog; forwarding to concom@ since it's currently only used for ApacheCon and event related items. Team-wide discussions re: "The Foo Company" (Foo = Apache Foo project name); the Foo PMC and related players are also actively involved in the conversation. = = = SPONSORSHIP and FUNDRAISING See the board resolution creating a VP, Fundraising to take over duties in this area. Justin sent forth a proposed mission for this group. Status of Individual Thank You letters? Phil Steitz stated that he'll help Geir get these done. Long-winded communication problems with a former Bronze Sponsor ensue; per request, all actions regarding this sponsor are being handled at the board level. Onsite meetings arranged with Sponsors at ApacheCon. Greg Stein has requested to join Jim, Justin, and Sally in the meetings as he reportedly will assume Sponsor relations activities from HALO. Successful meetings held with Microsoft, Progress, and HP; SpringSource and Google had declined to meet in person (Mark/SpringSource wasn't in attendance; Chris/Google was returning from travels and was unavailable). A permanent contact/liaison at Yahoo! has yet to be named, and our meeting requests were unanswered. In addition, they also met with representatives from the CodePlex Foundation. Received portion of Platinum Sponsorship fee from Microsoft. Received Platinum Sponsorship fee from Yahoo! = = = FULL MINUTES FROM PRC CALLS 6 October --------- Attendees -- Shane, Craig, Upayavira, Sally, Jim, Larry * Branding/Graphic designs - Upayavira discussed the graphic redesigns that he's been working on, in consultation with Sally. He will post some of the designs and/or text to the prc@ list so people can see where they're at. He and Sally are leading on some new versions of printable flyers, cards, etc. that we can use as collateral for events. - Sally's graphic redesign goal is to create two versions of a common copy deck, with different graphical flavors. Then the PRC can vote to select which overall design is preferred. We hope to see a few drafts of what Upayavira and Sally are thinking of, but hope they can complete the draft versions on the side, and the whole PRC can choose between the end results. * Organization - We spent a while discussing how to organize PRC and make it more effective. Expect to see more discussion on the list, as well as a specific proposal from Craig. - Splitting mailing lists: a number of people (Shane, Upayavira included) have expressed difficulty in following the current list traffic. Expect to see proposals to split functional groups into separate mailing lists, which will concretely help some volunteers participate. For those who don't like splitting lists, you can always subscribe to them all and filter them into one folder. - Strong leadership: we all agreed that having responsible leaders or point people for each functional area is needed. - Specific functional leaders need to be discussed on list, but we did discuss potential VP, PRC candidates - i.e. an overall chair for the existing PRC board committee. Sally, Shane, and Craig's name came up as potential VP's. Larry cast a vote of confidence in saying that most of the PRC participants could make fine VP candidates. - We discussed issues to address if Sally is selected as VP, PRC. -- Craig wants to ensure that we're not setting wider precedent or example of having paid committee chairs (i.e. if Sally is chair, she's also still going to be contracting via HALO, and thus is paid for some of her work). -- Shane noted that we would need to clearly document the reporting structure for the paid contract, to ensure there's no conflict of interest. -- Larry suggested that if VP, PRC is such a complex and time-demanding position, why not hire staff for it? - Craig plans to submit a PRC plan to the list, and suggests he'd be willing to serve as VP, PRC, if that would make other decisions easier. - In any case, Jim noted that he'd really like to see a PRC-acceptable nominee for VP and chair by next week's telecon on Tuesday, so that we can show progress on organizing the PRC to the board. * Sponsorships - Microsoft has paid part of their platinum sponsorship renewal; rest is going to be invoiced. - Sally notes that we expect to have sponsor meetings at ApacheCon, likely with Sally/Jim/Justin. Microsoft in particular may want to talk to infra folks about other ASF needs. * Communications - PR release going out tomorrow about ApacheCon, featuring keynotes and sponsors. * Trademarks - Shane to add Craig's comments and Nóirín's Concom section to the DRAFT Trademark guidelines, and post the completed doc to the list for a vote. * Events - Sally notes the Open World Forum issue: they were disorganized, how do we work with them / do we want to work with them going forwards? - Sally also notes a potential booth and stage space at the Open Source Expo in Germany, produced by S&S Verlag. They are very interested in Lucene, and Isabel Drost may volunteer to speak. Sally will forward details to prc@, concom@Lucene. Sally will forward the proposal to prc@, concom@ for discussion/approval. 13 October ---------- Attendees: Shane, Nóirín, Larry, Justin, Sally. Jim, Craig, Jukka all wanted to attend but had conflicts. Agenda ====== * Re-org proposals / VP volunteers Larry asks about voting procedures; should we have a secret ballot or other mechanisims? Shane points out that other similar votes are held on pmc lists; i.e. private to the membership. Justin suggests we just break it up now - we already have several specific subgroups; we could simply create those groups right now. Nóirín and Larry both hope to see a specific VP to tie together PRC related activities - even if the subgroups do the work separately, they hope to see one point of contact that rolls up reports, ensures the subgroups communicate, etc. Discussion of the website thread on members@: while PRC folks definitely do want to improve the website, our focus is on organizing the content, and ensuring the website is easy to update. While it's a great topic, it's not something we can completely focus on quite yet. * Trademark policy [VOTE] Is out for a vote. Larry asked if Karen saw any of her changes that got missed; no response yet. * ApacheCon or related marketing heads-up (if any) Sally: no particular ApacheCon related announcements scheduled this week. Normal marketing continuing and regular tweets are continuing to go out. Note: we are not currently publicizing the BFBB as free (it's currently only for registered con attendees). The After Party on Wednesday will be free to invited guests (and we have a number of them) only. Sally: Berkeley is only .edu that responded to post ApacheCon stuff on campus; still hoping to get any other edus to respond, ... Justin has contacted Richard Taylor at UCIrvine to ask for ideas there as well.
Shane informed the board that he signed a four month extension contract with HALO.
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors heretofore appointed Jim Jagielski to the office of Vice President, Public Relations, and WHEREAS, the Board of Directors is in receipt of the resignation of Jim Jagielski from the office of Vice President, Public Relations, and WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee has chosen by vote to recommend Shane Curcuru as the successor to the post; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that Jim Jagielski is relieved and discharged from the duties and responsibilities of the office of Vice President, Public Relations, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Shane Curcuru be and hereby is appointed to the office of Vice President, Public Relations, to serve in accordance with and subject to the direction of the Board of Directors and the Bylaws of the Foundation until death, resignation, retirement, removal or disqualification, or until a successor is appointed. Special Order 7E, Change the Public Relations Committee Chair, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of The Apache
Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve its purpose
through the periodic update of its membership; and
WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose
membership must be approved by Board resolution; and
WHEREAS, the Board is in receipt of Jim Jagielski's resignation
as a member of the PRC,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF
member be removed from the list of Public Relations Committee
members:
Jim Jagielski <jim@apache.org>
Special Order 7A, Update Public Relations Committee
Membership, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors
present.
**Board-Level Attention Required on the following items: General: proposed PRC re-organization/restructuring, VP replacement The PRC discussed potential VP candidates to forward to the board for consideration. Three nominees were named: Jukka, Sally, and Shane. The PRC voted to recommend Shane as the new VP, PRC. A change of chair resolution is submitted as Special Order 7.E above. Fundraising: individual thank-you letters (see section below) = = = PRC Update: Activities Undertaken During September = = = GENERAL INFO Continued discussion on possibly splitting or reorganizing the PRC. Jim suggested an internal sort into distinct sub-committees with its own lead responsible for its operation. Justin suggested three primary areas: fundraising, communications, and branding; Bertrand suggested the addition of a fourth area, 'outreach', which would address activities such as GSoC and other related student activities. Sally's 2006 proposal refers to this as 'community outreach', that includes conferences. Bertrand and Justin draft mission statements for the Communications, Fundraising, Branding, and Outreach sub-committees/groups. Several PRC members confirm their interest in participating in the various groups. We will very likely be creating a new "Powered By" logo as part of the new house style. Robert Burrell Donkin proposes we use the following image for the back of our mini cards for ApacheCon http://www.apache.org/images/10yearsASF_170x101.jpg ; he has also committed scaled images and instructions in Subversion Justin sets up weekly PRC teleconferences on Tuesdays at 10AM PT (now 9AM PT) on the dedicated Covalent/SpringSource/VMware bridge Discussion about promoting the BFBB as an event that's open to the public; however, due to the low sponsorship monies in at present at ApacheCon, this is not a possibility Larry asked to be removed as a voting member from the PRC: he'll still participate and provide counsel, but does not want to be involved with official votes Ross suggested we consider creating and publishing quarterly reports, similar to those being done at the Gnome Foundation http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/gnome-report-2009-Q2.pdf Jim suggested some sort of pub-crawl get-together between PRC and ConCom on the Thursday evening of ApacheCon Sally is composing a schedule of PRC-related activities onsite at ApacheCon that includes PRC planning meeting, possible worksession with (Michael) Cote of RedMonk (he'll be there to do the Media Training final exam with Sally and participate on her Business Track panel), Sponsor meetings, press briefings, etc. Sally sent a note to PMCs imploring them to help promote their Projects' presence at ApacheCon, and reminded them that Media Training is available to all PMC members free of charge. The only group to ack/respond is Apache Cayenne, who won't be at ApacheCon, but are likely to have a release shortly after the conference. = = = COMMUNITY OUTREACH Jim, Justin, and Sally had a teleconference to discuss the launch of the CodePlex Foundation (announced by Microsoft) with Robert Duffner of Microsoft and Sam Ramji (now ex-Microsoft, and acting CodePlex Foundation president). Sally, Sander, Emmanuel, and Bertrand attempted to follow up with the Open World Forum organizers, as the conference was taking place 1 October and few details were confirmed two weeks before the event Alan Cabrera inquired as to whether we should consider consolidating several ASF-related LinkedIn groups Gianugo gave the closing keynote at the first openSUSE conference. There he distributed the ASF promo cards and had shown the promo video shot at OSCON featuring Brian Behlendorf, Justin, and Sander Striker http://www.youtube.com/user/TheApacheFoundation#p/u/5/LLY8M9JiH98 Alan Cabrera assisted Sally in shipping ASF promo cards to the openSUSE conference organizers, as well as to Emmanuel Lecharny for distribution at Open World Forum Sally suggests we have a PRC + ASF/Project table at the ApacheCon Expo, where there will always be a member of the PRC and/or PageOne available to act as an ASF ambassador/information desk, and to promote the MyApache video shout-outs (say Happy Birthday on video and get a t-shirt, etc. from the ApacheCon swag archives). Also, the table would be available to any ASF project if they want to hold 'office hours' to the conference attendees, press, etc. = = MEDIA AND ANALYST RELATIONS Sally still working very closely with PageOne on PR strategy and day-to-day tactics for ApacheCon Press release issued on 15 September re: ApacheCon program and special events http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-15-2009/0005094070&EDATE= Interviews from OSCON with SDTimes, TechRepublic, and IT Business Edge were published Darryl Taft published a slide show on eWeek from our "ASF 10th Anniversary" presentation that we've been pitching the press. He also finally met Jim in person, after 4 attempts. Thanks, Jim! Sally forwarded the section that covers the ASF from Datamonitor's report on Open Source in the Enterprise. Secured guest blog opportunities with GigaOM's OStatic to help promote ApacheCon. Received commitments from Jim, Justin, Shane, Bertrand, and Gianugo to contribute. Jim and Justin completed their drafts, which Sally edited and forwarded to OStatic. Jukka inquired about the process to start publicity --particularly a press release-- for Jackrabbit 2.0; possibly in time for ApacheCon Justin received and responded to a UK-based media inquiry on the CodePlex Foundation; PageOne forwarded a media inquiry from eWeek on CodePlex shortly after it was announced (Sally declined to PageOne: 'This is news to us, so we're unavailable for comment at this point. We don't know anything about this initiative other than what's on their Website. To state a position at this stage doesn't make sense for us.') Next set of ASF Filmworks clips (Mike Bates, Arje Cahn, Timo Rantalaiho, Bill Rowe, and Greg Stein) were completed and forwarded by Michael Wechner; Sally published them on YouTube and has been promoting them http://www.youtube.com/user/TheApacheFoundation Total 220 press hits, including mentions by 'friends' and on blogs. = = BRAND, TRADEMARK, AND LOGO USAGE Permission granted for Brian Pendleton of Cluster Resources to use the Apache logo in a PowerPoint presentation Sally spoke with Cloudera CEO Mike Olson regarding proper attribution of the Apache Hadoop name; request to correct 'Hadoop is a registered trademark of the Apache Software Foundation' (they need to remove the 'registered' part) has been acknowledged, with the promise they'll fix this with their next site build. Also the same was addressed with respect to marketing the Hadoop World event. Larry forwarded a press release pertaining to the misuse of the WWF brand Received request from Daniel Smith of iContact, who want to name their flag football team 'The Spam Assassins' Larry forwarded guidelines on choosing a trademark -- the nutshell: 1) Pick a good trademark; 2) Search for similar or competitive software; 3) Claim your mark; 4) Refer complaints/issues to legal-internal: don't try to resolve it yourself. Received inquiry from Eckhard Jäger of the TORCS-NG racing game project to create an ASF-branded track border and racing car skin. Examples at http://www.neeneenee.de/torcs-ng/gallery/ Ross Gardler forwarded suggested wording for PRC approval for the Apache Wookie (Incubating) project's MeetUp in London on 13 October. J. Aaron Farr forwarded negative community feedback on the new Drupal trademark policy with an alert that this is something we must avoid when formalizing our policies http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9irly/drupal_trainwreck_new_official_trademark_policy/ Justin forwarded guidelines/policy with respect to names, as developed by Roy, Jim, and Justin on earlier discussions on prc@: 1) "Apache <project name>" is a protected name; 2) "<project name>" is a protected name only when "<project name>" is not "generic"; 3) Except when nominative use applies, all third party use of names derived from our protected names are prohibited; 4) Protected names only apply to software. Received query from Martin Hall of Karmasphere seeking approval on a new product name scheduled to be launched at Hadoop World; have agreed to 'Karmasphere Studio for Apache Hadoop' Gianugo noticed and objected to the thawte name alongside the Apache Feather as sponsors of the httpd.conf track; the graphic has been adjusted accordingly Larry forwarded a revised draft of the ASF Trademark policy that incorporates PRC feedback, as well as that from Karen Sandler. (Ref -- date: Tue 15 Sept 2009; Subject: DRAFT: ASF Trademark Policy); edits and comments continue. Revised version incorporates a ConCom-specific issue as brought forth by Noirin (Ref -- date: Thu 24 Sept 2009; Subject: DRAFT Proposed addition to DRAFT Trademark Policy) Request received from Diane Pither-Patterson of Viforce, who is seeking to use the primary Apache/ASF logo on their Website. Suggested she use the 'Powered by' logo instead. Larry clarifies his usage preference of definite and indefinite articles: he will not use the word "the" except to refer to a definite instance of a general noun (as in this sentence). I.e., he will never state "the The Apache Software Foundation"...neither should we. Jukka opens a vote to license the Apache feather logos under ALv2; Justin clarifies that he logo is not under the terms of the ALv2, and that Jim's commit should stay. Results: STET -- +1 Jukka Zitting; -1 Justin Erenkranz; -1 Lars Eilebrecht. Debbie Moynihan of Progress Software alerted us to new products coming from the FUSE team, and worked with us to ensure proper wording. The product names will now be: "Support for Apache XYZ" and "Servicepack for Apache XYZ". Mark Thomas alerted the team that the SpringSource Website seems to be misleading with its use of the ASF Feather (only; vs. 'Powered By') as part of its promotion http://www.springsource.com/support/apachesupport/activemq -- Jim has followed up with them to make the necessary changes Sam Jebeile of Inspired Digital Solutions requested the use of the ASF logo on his Website as part of their services offered. Jacob Hookom sent a note to Marko Gargenta stating that the logos he created using the ASF and Tomcat logos on both his Website and Facebook advertising his training services are in violation of the ASF logo usage policy. Thanks Jacob! A formal "ASF Trademark Policy" based on the version from Larry with modifications (as discussed on list and earlier in this report) was voted on and passed (7 binding +1s and 1 non-binding -1), and is now published at http://apache.org/foundation/marks/ = = = SPONSORSHIP Geir sent an invoice to renew Yahoo!'s Platinum Sponsorship Jukka suggests we use a tool to track Sponsor activity; Sally prefers we don't employ yet-another-tool, as it may disrupt her pre-existing (but private) system. The challenge is transparency: there is none to the PRC team. Discussions continue regarding Tetsuya's communications on the community@ and related lists. = = = FUNDRAISING Status of Individual Thank You letters incomplete. Phil Steitz stated that he'll help Geir get these done, yet no update has since been received. = = = PRC CALLS Conference calls were held: 11 September, 22 September, and 29 September Minutes are available in the PRC@ archives; future calls take place 9AM PT on Tuesdays on the ASF/SpringSource bridge
Discussions on whether the PRC calls will continue. The answer to that depends on what the future status of PRC.
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of The Apache
Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve its purpose
through the periodic update of its membership; and
WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose
membership must be approved by Board resolution; and
WHEREAS, the Board is in receipt of Larry Rosen's resignation
as a member of the PRC,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF
member be removed from the list of Public Relations Committee
members:
Larry Rosen <lrosen@rosenlaw.com>
Special Order 7B, Update Public Relations Committee
Membership, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors
present.
The Public Relations Committee is still without an active chair after Jim's
resignation a few months ago. Justin's recent proposal to split the PRC into
three distinct groups (Sponsorships, Public relations/Communications,
Marks/Licensing) has sparked discussion about what to do with the PRC.
There is general agreement that restructuring is needed, but no consensus yet
on whether that should be done within PRC or at the board level. Input from
the board would be helpful in resolving the question.
Beyond the organizational issues and the lack of a VP, PRC, work has continued
on all PRC areas. There has been lively debate about our policy on trademarks
and their licensing, and Larry's recent proposal seems to be generally
acceptable. Much of the PR activity is targeting the ApacheCon US and our
ten year anniversary, and our sponsors are being taken care of.
There were no PRC conference calls in August. Summaries of the September
calls will be included in the next PRC board report. See below for an update
on the other PRC activities since our last report.
PRC Update – Activities Undertaken During August
= = =
GENERAL INFO
- Various discussions continue about splitting the PRC into separate
subcommittees.
- Jukka suggests/recommends we resume use of the PRC Jira. 34 new issues
have been filed and 10 issues resolved/closed since our last report.
- Ross Gardler suggested we consider using http://www.hootsuite.com to
manage multiple Twitter accounts.
- Jukka mentions that Sally's posts to announce@ had gotten caught in the
Spam filter due to the use of both a question mark and exclamation point
in the subject line.
- J.Aaron is giving a talk on The Apache Way at the Hong Kong Software
Freedom Day.
- Larry Rosen, Noirin Shirley, Henri Yandell, Sanjiwa Weerawarana and
Jukka Zitting were added to the PRC in August.
- Larry is concerned about possible misinterpretation/conflicts in
communications between PRC discussions and those on legal-internal, and
asks to be removed from the PRC. See the proposed resolution for the
required board action.
- Yonik Seeley has stated that he'll be taking a break from participating
in future trademark discussions.
= = =
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
- Larry forwards an email from the "Foundations" mailing list requesting
information on how the ASF's offerings differ from SPI or the Software
Conservancy for potential Apache Incubator initiatives. Shane responds
with two fundamental differences:
1) guidelines – the ASF's as defined by The Apache Way, plus the
Incubator's specifications;
2) licenses – any ASF project requires the Apache License;
the SPI, however suggests GPL.
- Sally is working with the folks at openSUSE conference to get them to
distribute the ASF/ApacheCon promo cards at their event.
- Sally is working with the folks at OpenWorld conference to get them to
distribute the ASF/ApacheCon promo cards at their event.
- Robert Burrell Donkin wants to revive the use of ASF business cards to
incorporate new encryption keys and in time for ApacheCon.
- "Happy 10th Anniversary, Apache" promo video now on YouTube;
"My Apache" campaign begun.
- Ross Gardler forwarded detailed ideas on ways to publicize MeetUps
and related non-ApacheCon sessions.
- Upayavira begins to work with Sally on redesigning the ASF promo card as
part of overall redesign of ASF brand/collateral look and feel.
= = =
MEDIA AND ANALYST RELATIONS
- Sally working very closely with PageOne on PR strategy and day-to-day
tactics for ApacheCon.
- Jim interviews with Pam Derringer from Linux.com.
- Justin interviews with Andrew Binstock from SDTimes/InfoWorld.
- Phil Steitz interviews with Alex Handy from SD Times on Commons Math
2.0.
- Sally received a call from Ellen Messmer of Network World who is filing
a story on reported critical vulnerabilities in various XML libraries;
both Dims and Mark Thomas responded with excellent resources and links.
- Larry wrote an article for Open Source lawyer continuing education that
included several mentions on the ASF.
- Jukka acknowledges the success of Sally's modified boilerplate for use
in release announcements. The follow-up discussion questioned whether
and how contributors should be named in such announcements.
- Total 284 press hits, including mentions by "friends" and on blogs;
a tremendous amount of coverage received within 24 hours of the ApacheCon
hosting site hack.
= = =
BRAND, TRADEMARK, AND LOGO USAGE
- Received request from Apache Maven committers Arnaud Heritier and
Nicolas De Loof to use the Apache feather and Maven logo on the cover
on an upcoming book on the subject. Craig Russell drafted and sent
approval note (PRC-39, resolved).
- Larry suggests we add a small "TM" to the right of the Maven logo.
- Received request from Jörn Kottmann to create a "sponsorship" page for
Apache UIMA that recognizes those organizations (such as IBM and Infopaq)
who are paying their staff to build and support the project. The request
was denied (PRC-9, closed).
- As a followup, a more generic policy on links to external companies
was drafted and approved by PRC (PRC-13, closed). See the new policy
document at http://www.apache.org/press/requirements.html.
- Received request from Stephen Wensley of Vanquish Media to use the ASF logo
on a business card and Website, stating "...proudly used and supported";
the Website would link to the ASF (PRC-16, open).
- Noirin noted that there are several Hadoop-based events that are presenting
content very similar to that at ApacheCon, but cost considerably less money,
and seem to not have any formal connection to the ASF.
- Santiago forwarded a link that detailed trademark issues with
Canonical vs Ubuntu.
- Jukka inquires about the terms under which the feather logo now licensed,
and if they are compliant with the policy set by ASF legal (PRC-8, open).
- Grant Ingersoll forwarded numerous instances of potential trademark
violation for both Apache CouchDB as well as Apache Solr (PRC-11, open).
- Damon Logiudice of Oracle requested we confirm the preferred trademark
acknowledgment format for Apache Jackrabbit (PRC-10, closed).
- R. Chandra Sekaran alerted us to a Nutch admin site that links to unrelated
Websites at http://wiki.apache.org/nutch/FrontPage
- Brett Porter requested to use www.effectivemaven.com for book content.
- Santiago suggests we create a brand/trademark checklist that we can
forward to PMCs for them to follow, particularly useful with donated code.
- Phil Steitz points out that the current trademark policy is challenging
for projects that don't have logos, as it states that shall the project
pages must "clearly mark their primary project logo(s) as trademarks."
- Shane opens a formal vote on Core Trademark Principles. Vote is cancelled
due to lack of consensus, but followup discussion resulted in a new proposed
draft by Larry that seems to be gaining consensus (PRC-35, open).
- Continued discussion on the difference between trademark and copyright
licenses, particularly in their use in books and Websites, and whether
we need to embed a "TM" symbol on all logos. Also discussion on
enforceability ensues.
- Jim noted a promotional link at the search box of the Apache Lucene site.
- Leo Simons is seeking clarification regarding the policy/validity of his
self-created artwork for the logo for Apache Excalibur - he presumes that
due to his signing a CLA that the art is contributed to the ASF and the
copyright is available under the Apache license.
- Simon Laws re-requests that he be able to be able to use the Apache Tuscany
name in the title of a book he's authoring for Manning. NAK on his initial
request.
- Larry creates draft PRC Trademark Policy for Third Parties.
- Brian Pendleton requests permission to use the Apache feather on a
PowerPoint slide.
= = =
SPONSORSHIP
- Sally secured the correct contacts at Yahoo!, and has been working with
Geir to invoice them for their Platinum renewal.
- Sally has been in touch with Debbie of Progress; everything is in synch,
and Sponsorship renewal funds have been received.
= = =
FUNDRAISING
- Geir reports receiving a donation check from Roxtel Corp for $71.01.
Brett noted that the PRC JIRA issues and actual access levels (PRC private) don't match.
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve its purpose through the periodic update of its membership; and WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose membership must be approved by Board resolution, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF members be added as Public Relations Committee members: Larry Rosen <lrosen@rosenlaw.com> Noirin Shirley <noirin@apache.org> Henri Yandell <bayard@apache.org> Sanjiva Weerawarana <sanjiva@opensource.lk> Jukka Zitting <jukka.zitting@gmail.com> Special Order 7C, Update Public Relations Committee Membership, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.
ACTIVITIES COMPLETED IN JULY 2009 OVERVIEW + GENERAL INFO Staffing: Sally remains on medical leave and will continue to work part-time through September; Jim will remain on as PRC chair at a minimum through ApacheCon but has already submitted his resignation in advance. The PRC is now able to become involved with ApacheCon should Concom require PRC involvement GENERAL + COMMUNITY OUTREACH A new YouTube account has been set up for ASF promotion at the Foundation level (including 10th Anniversary); we are also using Shane's TheApacheWay channel for ApacheCon and community-related promotions. We have launched the first 5 video clips of the ASF Filmworks (shot at ApacheCon Europe 2009); we will be kicking off the "My Apache" campaign for the community to record their thoughts on the ASF, their Apache projects, as wish the ASF happy 10th anniversary. http://www.youtube.com/user/TheApacheFoundation The ASF returned to exhibit at OSCON after several years' absence. Attending/assisting were: Justin, Sander, Paul Querna, Alan Cabrera, and Craig Russell. There we launched the first of the ASF Filmworks videos, and had the team from the ApacheCon PR firm film the ASF team in action, Justin's presentation, capture birthday wishes/"My Apache" interviews, and sign some folks up for the conference. We also created a new version of the ASF 'brochure", this time as a large-scale two-sided postcard. We plan to use this card at other events, such as the Open World Forum. Ross Gardler suggests we arrange a worldwide 10th anniversary celebration, so that those unable to attend ApacheCon are able to share in the festivities in their own local event, and are able to toast the success of the ASF at the same time/day. Sally will look into promoting this. Robert Burrell Donkin suggests we use the following footer for announcement lists: - --------------------------------------------------------------- 2009 Marks 10 Years Of The Apache Software Foundation https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the_asf_is_ten_years Happy Birthday Apache! - --------------------------------------------------------------- Nóirín suggests the "I Remember When" campaign, to include notable historic/entertaining trivia items from 1999. Sally will look into incorporating this into the "master story" in our 10th Anniversary promotions. Jukka suggests the PRC assumes oversight on the community@ list – This was taken over by Infra. Received and approved Sponsor request to mirror the documentation parts of apache.org. MEDIA AND ANALYST RELATIONS Michael Cote of RedMonk briefed with Greg Brown and Todd Volkert from the Pivot team; his summary is at http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2009/07/02/apache-pivot-brief-notes/ Paul Fremantle interviewed with Brian Gopalan of Washington CORE regarding OSS/Apache licensing strategies Justin and Sander completed 8 interviews at OSCON with: Roberto Gallopini (blogger), Justin James (Tech Republic), Alex Handy (SD Times), Gavin Clarke (The Register), Leah Rosin (TechTarget), Michael Calore (Wired), as well as follow-up interviews with Andrew Binstock (SD Times/blogger) and Paul Anderson (OSS Watch). Justin also recorded a podcast with Bradley and Karen from SFLC. Media Alert announcing the ASF's participation at OSCON written and distributed via email blasts prior to OSCON Total media hits during July: 282 (includes mentions by affiliates/friends, as well as mailing lists) BRAND, TRADEMARK, AND LOGO USAGE Authorized press release draft announcing Sigil becoming a sub-project of Apache Felix Requests received from Laurie Morrison and Ruth Hoffman to include the OFBiz logo in several books they intend to publish. Larry reminds them to use "Apache OFBiz" throughout, and Sally forwarded .eps files of images J Aaron asks about the PRC policy on non-sponsor links on TLP sites; Jukka thinks it's OK, Sally replies listing is OK, but links are not We are working on cleaning up the SVG versions of the Apache feather logo; also have style guide on the wish-list. Upayavira is taking the creative lead on the projects, and will be working with Sally to get this done Request received to establish store.apache.org. Shane developed a list of marks at "http://apache.org/foundation/marks/merchandise.html". Larry will help draft the appropriate trademark license agreements once PRC decides the appropriate policy. Rich Bowen follows up with a suggested "Buy Stuff" link on the main site Doug Cutting seeks sign-off on pre-existing Hadoop, Nutch + Lucene stores already running on CafePress Benson Margulies noticed that there isn't a list of the official marks stated on our draft trademark policy Mark Thomas forwarded misuse of the Apache Tomcat brand at www.tomcatsurvey.com Larry suggests that the SpamAssassin trademarks shouldn't be renewed every six months unless we intend to use those marks properly on our website Henri Yandell suggested a get-together during OSCON to discuss trademarks. In essence. Lunch with Larry/Craig/Henri; chat with Karen/Craig/Henri; dinner with Justin/Paul/Sander/Henri; dinner with those 4 and Henning/Sandor/Brian also touched on it but Henri doesn't recall who or how much. Basically wasn't a get together but was me being dull and talking about nothing else ;) LOTS of discussion regarding drafting our existing trademark policy. Some topics in this regard are: - "Apache claim to the Hadoop name" discussion - "Apache Foo vs. Foo Marks" discussion - misuse of the brand at hadoop.org - "example of TM" mail thread - "Apache Solr vs. Apache Solr" - possible CouchDB trademark violations - proposed trademark policy - Hen's summary on "Apache vs. Acme Product" names SPONSORSHIP Who will manage Sponsor Relations (i.e., augment HALO contract vs. retain Delia Frees) remains undecided. Justin met with Microsoft during OSCON. They'd like us to keep them informed about developer-centric events, and are interested in making non-US MS subsidiaries aware of our events. They're holding an internal Open Source Day at Microsoft mid/late November, and are seeking a speaker to talk about the Apache way (similar to Jim's TuxTalk at HP; either Justin or Jim will do this). They requested we ship a stack of our new promo cards to help promote the ASF internally, as well as to begin holding a 30-minute monthly call; Justin is organizing these both. They're now focusing on improving Java and Python on Windows, and may be contributing to Tomcat to help performance. Justin also discussed a MSFT build farm for ASF projects; he will connect Infra to see what MS can provide. Microsoft Platinum Sponsorship will be renewed; Justin will be coordinating payment/invoicing with Geir. Yahoo!'s Platinum Sponsorships expires in August; Sally has been working on securing their renewal, but has been experiencing difficulty following through as the two primary contacts no longer work there. FUNDRAISING Upayavira sent over a draft thank you note for individual donors.
The board is pleased with the news on MSFT sponsorship and is cautiously optimistic about the progress being made in the PRC. Jim specifically thanked Henri and Jukka for stepping up.
Justin asked if Yahoo sent a contact? Doug indicated that Yahoo! intends to continue to be sponsor, and if there is any problem, contact him. Jim indicated that he thought he had seen a contact name.
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee was chartered and responsible for organization and oversight of efforts to handle public relations on behalf of The Apache Software Foundation, including trademark licensing and other issues regarding management of the Apache brand and raising of funds, but excluding the ApacheCon conferences (which shall remain a responsibility of the Apache Conference Planning Committee); and WHEREAS, the Apache Conference Planning Committee would benefit from the oversight and expertise of Public Relations Committee in relation to the Apache brand, and coordination in the raising of funds; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Public Relations Committee, an ASF Board Committee, hereby is rechartered pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be it further RESOLVED, that the phrase, "excluding the ApacheCon conferences (which shall remain a responsibility of the Apache Conference Planning Committee)" is struck from the Public Relations Committee charter; and be it further RESOLVED, that the Public Relations Committee be and hereby is responsible for organization and oversight of efforts to handle public relations on behalf of The Apache Software Foundation, including trademark licensing and other issues regarding management of the Apache brand and raising of funds. Special Order 7C, Change of Public Relations Committee Charter, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.
OVERVIEW + GENERAL INFO
Staffing:
1) Bertrand returned from leave, but decided to depart again; Also,
Ted and Yoav have requested to leave and were removed from the PRC
at last month's board meeting.
2) Sally will be part-time through September,
- work anticipated to be completed as committed
Discussion continued regarding engaging RedMonk at $5K/year; vote put out
by Jim: 6x +1; 7x -1 --
+1 (Sally, Justin, Niclas/non-binding, Martijn/non-binding, Ross, Jim)
-1 (Sanjiva, Lars, Santiago, Cliff, Phil/non-binding, Henri, Craig)
Request received from Kathey Marsden to join PRC list to observe; followed
up by Ross, along with discussion on suggested code awards + mentoring
Hen raised the question on what does the PRC do, and answered it himself,
along with his understanding of who manages the actual tasks:
1) Provide a general contact point for the ASF as a whole via press@,
prc@ and human-response@ mailing lists;
2) Define trademark policy for users;
3) Contact third parties regarding trademark abuse;
4) Organizing booths at conferences;
5) Responsible for sponsorship;
6) Responsible for acquiring new sponsors;
7) Responsible for retaining sponsors;
8) Responsible for changing the thanks.html page on sponsorship change;
9) Responsible for report to the board;
10) Point for all press releases going out from the ASF;
11) Liaison for all joint press releases with sponsors;
12) Approver of press releases from non-sponsors
GENERAL + COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Emmanuel Lecharny forwarded a request from the upcoming Open World Forum
(October/Paris): are we interested in participating? What's our message?
What materials should we bring, etc. PRC feel that it's a worthy event, and
would like to participate.
ASF received offer to participate at the OSCON dot org pavilion. PRC
decided that we should participate, and Sally worked with the OSCON team to
secure the booth {T-23; next to the OFBiz guys}.
Sally is working with Michael Wechner on getting first set of 5 ASF
Filmworks videos online on the ASF's official YouTube channel for OSCON
(20-24 July; status: still in editing cycle, should be complete in time);
this will dovetail with the "My Apache" campaign, where we ask users,
projects, etc. to post their videos on YouTube describing how Apache has
changed their lives, as well as to record birthday wishes for the ASF,
which we'll likely showcase during ApacheCon.
Sally shortens the ASF boilerplate for use at OSCON (limit of 50 words);
also scales to meet Jukka's request for boilerpate needed for release
announcements: "About The Apache Software Foundation Established in 1999,
The Apache Software Foundation provides organizational, legal, and
financial support for more than 100 freely-available,
collaboratively-developed Open Source projects. The pragmatic Apache
License enables individual and commercial users to easily deploy Apache
software; the Foundation's intellectual property framework limits the legal
exposure of its 2,500+ contributors. For more information, visit
http://www.apache.org/"
Niclas sends a detailed report on the Malaysian Open Source Conference
2009, and states: "All in all, this conference was 'better' than the
ApacheCon's that I have attended, in terms of 'food', 'price/value',
premises and attendance."
Sally is exploring options for the Big Feather Birthday Bash at ApacheCon,
and awaiting details from Danese re: possible "rave" concept.
Sally discussed a possible press release with Felix Meschberger re: press
announcement for Apache Sling as TLP; suggests using Qpid announcement as a
model
MEDIA AND ANALYST RELATIONS
Sally and Justin worked with Yahoo!PR team regarding their Cloud computing
press release for Apache Hadoop
http://investor.news.com/cnet/?GUID=8511908&Page=MediaViewer&Ticker=INTC ;
and accurately attributed by the press
http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009/06/10/yahoo-releases-internal-hadoop-
source-code/ however, there seems to be a persistent issue on the side of
Cloudera regarding implication of Hadoop's "ownership". Larry states: "what
Cloudera is doing is just rude and insensitive and inaccurate, not majorly
illegal, so perhaps he (Cloudera CEO) can apologize to us by having his
company become a big-time Apache sponsor? Will money make us happy?" Both
Sally and Larry know Cloudera CEO Mike Olson and have offered to discuss
the issue with him; Larry will follow up.
A similar concern springs from this issue, where discussions on the use of
the Hadoop name, specifically as "Hadoop Summit", where Larry stated
internally that the two-word phrase, "Apache Hadoop", as an ASF trademark
for certain software, and that the PRC should ensure there is a "TM" notice
in the proper place and that we ensure that the press know to refer to our
software with the adjective "Apache Hadoop".
Sally gave a top-level overview of Hadoop to MIT Technology Review for
their Cloud computing roundup; repeated attempts to purchase the article
online have failed - if anyone has access to the 23 June edition and can
scan the article, please let us know!
Drafted and distributed "Registration Is Open" press release for ApacheCon
Press Release - issued 30 June
http://news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/06-30
-2009/0005052657&EDATE=
PRC discusses creating a new "In the Press" page at apache.org; need to
fine-tune what constitutes "news"
Hen forwarded a press opportunity with the Financial Times to discuss the
ASF's position on Oracle/Java/Sun etc. PRC reiterates its decision from
several weeks back that there is no official ASF statement on this topic,
and is unable to pursue any such interaction. Craig reminds us that
"there's nothing that Apache should say except 'very interesting...'."
Sally spoke with Mark Thomas regarding a possible press release on the
final Tomcat 4.1.x release; is awaiting follow-up from the Tomcat team
Total media hits during June: 329 (includes mentions by affiliates/friends,
as well as mailing lists)
BRAND, TRADEMARK, AND LOGO USAGE
Shane stated that we're starting to define our trademark policy to include
a list of ASF trademarks (checked in), a procedures doc for PMCs to update
their websites (trying to write from Larry's email today), and a task list
for concretely forming official policy in terms of how we treat and defend
our trademarks. One of the key items in trademark-plan.txt is figuring out
what we think our trademarks are.
Hen subsequently updated the trademarks page, and has "moved the following
down because we are not the original releasers": ActiveMQ, Buildr, Cayenne,
CouchDB, POI, iBatis, Lucene, MyFaces, Roller, ServiceMix, Tapestry, Tiles,
and Wicket; he kept SpamAssassin in the top list as we've gained ownership
of the trademark itself. In addition, the following have been moved to the
Common words section: HTTP Server, HttpComponents, Portals, Web Services,
and DB; ownership of the following needs to be determined: XML, XMLBeans,
TCL, OpenEJB, and OpenJPA, as well as possibly HTTP. Outstanding issues
involve questions regarding acronyms such as CXF, STDCXX, APR, ODE, etc.
Larry discusses Tomcat and JSecurity trademarks with Ralph Goers. Hen
states: "'Apache JSecurity' is a good name and benefits the Apache
trademark 100%. Security is clear and J is somewhat clear as a common way
to say 'Java'; 'Apache Tomcat' is a poor name because it says nothing about
this software from the Apache people and the benefit to our brand is split
between Apache and Tomcat." Larry stresses that we need to decide whether
or not we want to treat "Tomcat" as our trademark, and weigh what that
exactly would entail; "Apache Tomcat" is already a trademark of the ASF.
Larry has also been discussing the history of other ASF marks, related
trademarks, and adding "TM" symbols to select logos; and stresses that PRC
needs to publish better guidelines. He is also concerned about the many
versions of the Apache feather logo in existence, as it dilutes the
strength of the brand; also, how does one know which brand marks which
goods.
Niclas sent over two revised SVG version of the ASF logo (with and without
text) - based on the original created by Thien (?); these two were later
improved upon by Upayavira.
Lars forwarded a site that contains mirrors of various Open Source tools
and system software, but also contains ASF Web pages http://us2.yoper.com/
appears to be a copy of the ASF Web site. Hen tracked down the domain
owner, and discussions are underway to determine if there's a legitimate
problem with the usage.
Niclas forwarded a request from the founders of Qi4j (himself included),
who want the Qi4j trademark to be as free as the source code is (Apache
v.2.0); Larry recommends the discussion be moved to the legal-discuss list
Jukka registered the ASF logo the icon (with TM) for git@git.apache.org at
http://github.com/apache
Mark Thomas noted that David Calavera has a new project which uses the
Tomcat product name but does not follow the guidelines at
http://tomcat.apache.org/legal.html; he forwarded them to that page but has
not pursued the issue further.
Niclas shared a conversation he had with the organizers of the
government-backed Malaysian Open Source Conference, who were very
interested in organizing an ApacheCon in Kuala Lumpur in 2010 or 2011. Of
particular interest are training sessions. The discussion and related
details are on the ConCom list.
Luc Maisonobe informed us that he was requested by CNES (the French space
agency) to give a presentation on commons-math as part of their public
symposium dedicated to high performance computing. Craig confirmed that his
use of the Apache name and logo, as well as his professional and ASF
affiliations (he's a member of the commons-math PMC) are acceptable by the
PRC.
Larry requested the ASF name/logo get included at the list for the upcoming
Community Leadership Summit http://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/ ;
Sally followed up with organizer Jono Bacon, who promised to add the ASF
logo to the site the week of 29 June, but hasn't done so yet (followed up
twice since then).
SPONSORSHIP
Who will manage Sponsor Relations (i.e., augment HALO contract vs. retain
Delia Frees) is still undecided.
Progress/IONA's payment for renewing for 2009 at the Silver level has not
yet been received. Sally discussed this with Debbie Moynihan twice in June.
HP's commitment for renewing for 2009 at the Silver level has the extra
request for us extend them Gold Sponsorship status - a.k.a.
"Vermeil/upgraded Silver" level in recognition of their ongoing
contributions. No decision has been forwarded to Scott Lamons yet. Jim gave
an excellent presentation on the ASF for HP's "Tux Talk" on 18 June.
SpringSource has committed to renew for 2009 at the Silver level, and will
advise regarding their billing cycle (2009 vs. 2010 FY/budget).
Larry contacted Bob Sutor at IBM regarding a possible Sponsorship, and
suggested Sally to follow up. He also suggested we create specific "Why IBM
should sponsor Apache" talking points.
PRC has decided that Emeritus Sponsors will not be listed on the
Sponsorship page.
Yahoo!'s and Microsoft's Platinum Sponsorships expire in August; Sally
following up on this, along with the possibility of Justin and Sander
meeting with all ASF Sponsors during OSCON.
FUNDRAISING
Phil has volunteered to lead the team in writing individual donor thank you
letters, particularly those past due, to keep in compliance with IRS
regulations.
Roy: I would add to Hen's list: Resp. for content of press kit. Jim: I will pass 'press kit' info to PRC.
Geir: Progress/IONA money was received.
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve its purpose through the periodic update of its membership; and WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose membership must be approved by Board resolution; and WHEREAS, the Board is in receipt of Bertrand Delacretaz's, Yoav Shapira's and Ted Leung's resignation as a member of the PRC, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF members be removed from the list of Public Relations Committee members: Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacretaz@apache.org> Yoav Shapira <yoavs@apache.org> Ted Leung <twleung@sauria.com> Special Order 7F, Update Public Relations Committee Membership, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee was chartered and responsible for organization and oversight of efforts to handle public relations on behalf of The Apache Software Foundation, including trademark licensing and other issues regarding management of the Apache brand and raising of funds, but excluding the ApacheCon conferences (which shall remain a responsibility of the Apache Conference Planning Committee); and WHEREAS, the Apache Conference Planning Committee would benefit from the oversight and expertise of Public Relations Committee in relation to the Apache brand, and coordination in the raising of funds; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Public Relations Committee, an ASF Board Committee, hereby is rechartered pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be it further RESOLVED, that the phrase, "excluding the ApacheCon conferences (which shall remain a responsibility of the Apache Conference Planning Committee)" is struck from the Public Relations Committee charter; and be it further RESOLVED, that the Public Relations Committee be and hereby is responsible for organization and oversight of efforts to handle public relations on behalf of The Apache Software Foundation, including trademark licensing and other issues regarding management of the Apache brand and raising of funds. Special Order 7A, Change of Public Relations Committee Charter, Tabled as the vote is still ongoing.
GENERAL INFO
Concom has voted on and requested that the PRC charter be expanded to
include oversight of ApacheCon publicity. A vote is progressing in
PRC.
Charel/SCP has agreed to retain PageOne PR to help drive publicity for
ApacheCon US/OAK in connection with the 10th Anniversary Big Feather
Birthday Bash. Sally has scoped the project and has begun the dialogue with
Jim to help PageOne prioritize outreach activities and coordinate
messaging. Sally is meeting with PageOne weekly to track progress.
Received request from ConCom for PRC to officially oversee the ApacheCon
Business & Community Track
The PRC --specifically Sally-- was tasked with the oversight, planning, and
management of the Big Feather Birthday Bash at ApacheCon/OAK in November.
Jim will be her counterpart on these activities.
Jim stated he had intended to resign as PRC chair, and later agreed to stay
on through ApacheCon/November following discussion on the PRC list,
particularly with his role as co-lead on BFBB/ApacheCon PR oversight with
Sally. Both Shane and Sally were nominated as his replacement; there was
debate regarding possible conflict of interest for Sally, as head of HALO,
in "managing" her own contract.
Shane submitted an in-depth vision statement of where he'd like to see the
PRC heading if elected Chair, and that he intends to reorient his primary
attention from ConCom to PRC.
Jim offers to buy anyone he's offended a drink.
Sally requested the Twitter login credentials; in updating the Foundation
blog she broke the Roller stylesheet by cutting-and-pasting from MSWord.
Gavin corrected the immediate problem, but there doesn't seem to be a
long-term solution. Apache.org, etc. are out of date
ASF received a Linux Journal Readers' Choice category winner again :-)
Sebastian ("sebb") noticed that the directory
http://apache.org/foundation/press/ is a flatfile as it doesn't have an
index and suggests that we possibly redirect to
http://apache.org/foundation/news.html for now
Jim has received some queries about the "influence" that Progress Software
appears to have on Apache Camel, CXF, ActiveMQ and ServiceMix, particularly
that the majority of committers to these projects are employed by Progress,
and that the direction of the projects may be corporate and not
community-- driven.
Jim wants to hold monthly concalls to discuss the PRC reports in advance of
the Board meetings
Jim clarified to the Board the current draft budget is accurate: Whether or
not we contract HALO to do the sponsorship or go with an external (a
different external) person/agency, $30K is projected for the Sponsor
development activity.
Jim clarified a charge from PRNewswire for additional distribution channel
for the OFBiz announcement to (eCommerce focus)., as well as $1,560 for the
ACEU09/10th Anniversary press release distributed outside of our usual wire
outlets.
Jim requests folks to update their membership status. Diffs: Yoav and Ted
Leung pull out; Noirin, Larry, Sanjiva, and Henri want to join. Jukka wants
to be obliquely involved.
Matthias wants a slide master template.
Hen suggests a suggestion for the PRC on organization to help the
volunteers know what their tasks are: 1) List the general things the PRC
does; 2) List the ones that have been outsourced to HALO; 3) Work out which
ones are independent and which require PRC involvement. For the volunteer
tasks, identify process to follow in each case. Break the emails press@
gets into a few categories: Analyst asking for general phone call; Analyst
asking for specific expertise phone call; PMC asking to send out press
release; Sponsor query.; etc etc.
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Niclas Hedhman notified the PRC that he has accepted an invitation to
represent the ASF on a panel on the commercialization of Open Source at the
MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference on 1 June.
Jukka requested a technical boilerplate for releases; Sally created one:
"About The Apache Software Foundation: Established in 1999, The Apache
Software Foundation provides organizational, legal, and financial support
for more than 100 freely-available, collaboratively-developed Open Source
projects. The pragmatic Apache License enables individual and commercial
users to easily deploy Apache software; the Foundation's intellectual
property framework limits the legal exposure of its 2,500+ contributors.
For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/"
Shane wanted to know what boilerplates exist: we have the long official
"marketing" one http://apache.org/press/media.html#about , the shorter
"marketing" one that's used in press releases "the 'who'" at
http://apache.org/foundation/press/pr_2009_03_04.html , and the 50-word
"technical" one above.
Craig forwarded an invitation from O'Reilly to participate in the .org pods
on the expo floor of OSCON. Sally will attend, with Justin, Paul Querna,
and Craig (possibly others). We selected the booth next to OFBiz (brand
continuity!)
We approved a draft press release for Hippo
Isabel Drost asked that we help publicize the Hadoop GetTogether in Berlin
on 25 June (Sally hasn't done this with her editing problems; not sure if
anyone else has volunteered to do it)
Received request from NLUUG for members of the ASF Board to attend their
conference the week before ApacheCon; officially declined but may have
someone from EU not attending ApacheCon who may be interested
Sander is speaking in Dirk's place at the Fuse OSS Day
MEDIA AND ANALYST RELATIONS
Lars responded to an inquiry by David Worthington of SDTimes (referred to
us by Paul Fremantle) regarding the security development lifecycle within
ASF Projects.
Sally gave a top-level overview of Hadoop to MIT Technology Review for
their Cloud computing roundup; the article is expected to be available
after 23 June.
Sally briefs analysts Datamonitor for their report on Open Source in the
Enterprise technology market
Approved draft of press release for Hippo
Cote of RedMonk has requested a briefing for Pivot (in the Incubator)
Still no decision whether or not to formally engage RedMonk. A formal
vote on it is in process.
Total media hits during May: 212
BRAND, TRADEMARK, AND LOGO USAGE
We're starting to define our trademark policy, including a list of ASF
trademarks (checked in), a procedures doc for PMCs to update their websites
(trying to write from Larry's email today), and a task list for concretely
forming official policy in terms of how we treat and defend our trademarks.
Created trademark-plan.txt; key issue is figuring out our trademarks
Craig has worked on updating the OpenJPA web site master pages to include
Apache trademarks in an obvious but not obtrusive way. See
http://openjpa.apache.org/unit-tests.html
David Crossley requests that we review trademark statements about Apache
Forrest: "Apache, Apache Forrest, the Apache feather logo and the Apache
Forrest logo are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation. Copyright
(C) The Apache Software Foundation. Licensed under Apache License 2.0."
Larry states that there is no need to the "The" in the name.
Larry brings to our attention that "...of potentially far greater
importance than the notice itself is our filing of a registration of the
copyright with the U.S. Library of Congress. The procedures are simple,
online, and inexpensive (~ $40). I'll bet that nobody has budgeted for
that."
Santiago carried a branding-related discussion over from legal-discuss
regarding acceptable trademark usage stemming from a question regarding a
VCL project name. He's seeking policy regarding semi-automated permissions
for usage of trademarks of services such as hosting providers (who sell
Apache Vhosts); (Apache) Tomcat Provider/servlet containers with Tomcat;
etc. and that explicit rules stating when it is OK to use the brands are
required to minimize the number of queries and erroneous attributions.
Larry explained that we're not yet ready for a semi-automated system for
our trademarks, as the following situations need to first be clarified: 1)
ASF-owned products (e.g., "Apache" and the Apache feather, particularly as
distributed by others); 2) applying ASF certification marks to third party
goods under certain circumstances (e.g., ingredient brand: "Powered by
SpamAssassin", similar to "Intel Inside"; we need to specify and monitor
the certification requirements); 3) statements that don't require our
permission: "XYZ Hosting for Apache VHosts", "ZZZ Provider for Apache
Tomcat", etc.; 4) uses that infringe Apache's trademarks: "Apache Hosting
Provider", "Apache Tomcat Provider".
Hen stresses that some items cannot be trademarked, such as "Web Services",
HTTP, TCL, and XML, as they're not ours. He also shares his concern with
broad use of TM on a community website, as it's both a new thing in
community-driven Open Source, as well as sends out a strong message with
its corporate overtones
Received request from HotWaxMedia to pursue the sale of Apache-branded
goods. (this also opened up the use of the TM in the ASF name, as well as
using the "The" in the name; our suggestion of donating a part of the
proceeds to the ASF; and the need to pre-approve the design to ensure it
meets our standards)
Martijn Dashorst forwarded a request from Craig Tataryn to use the Wicket
logo for a brochure and website promoting his training services. Permission
granted.
Ted Husted responded to an inquiry to use the ASF logo on a South African
Web development consultant's Website. Responded that it was approved for
the "Powered by Apache" usage only. Larry stated that the information on
the ASF Website doesn't tell the whole story, and has offered to draft new
trademark FAQ questions for http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/once the
rules are delineated and agreed to.
Shane summarized that the current situation is that we're starting to
define our trademark policy, including a list of ASF trademarks (checked
in), a procedures doc for PMCs to update their websites , and a task list
for concretely forming official policy in terms of how we treat and defend
our trademarks. He feels that the biggest issue with trademarks is getting
enough of the PRC members to vote on basic policy: we need to have the
start of a formal policy decided - either by vote of the PMC, or by fiat by
the VP, so we can have a base that is truly the policy of the ASF. The next
hard step will be working with each PMC to get them to put the TM and
"Apache Foo is a product that does blah" statements on their websites.
Besides the general complaining that the ASF is becoming too bureaucratic,
that will take work working with each PMC and sometimes just submitting
patches to the variety of website management systems that different projects
use.
Shane also stated the issue on trademark-plan.txt is figuring out what we
think our trademarks are. First let's get consensus within the PRC of what
we think our trademarks are (we can pass any *specific* questions by
legal-internal@ later). See http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/list/ to
reference.
Larry stated that the feather logo and the graphics and words at the top
ought to be standardized by PRC for use by all projects. Trademarks should
be used as adjectives, not nouns, with standardized wording at the bottom
of our web pages, in small print: "Copyright (C) 2009 Apache Software
Foundation. Licensed under Apache License 2.0 (see www.apache.org). Apache
and the Apache feather logo are trademarks of Apache Software Foundation."
He's hoping there will be a page at www.apache.org that will list all our
trademarks, which will become the official list and the official notice.
Michael Dick suggested that keeping pages up to date could be problematic.
Having a template banner / footer might be well received by a lot of
projects, like http://www.eclipse.org/projects/listofprojects.php
Martijn is concerned that we seem to be turning into "Trademark Enforcers"
Sebastian noticed that the Apache feather logo is used on the main Apache
site, www.apache.org, as well as on various project sites, e.g.
jakarta.apache.org, httpd.apache.org, etc., but is inconsistent (mirror
image, color variances, etc.), where other projects such as
lenya.apache.org/ use a completely different version of the feather
altogether. Also, that the published SVG version of the feather at:
http://apache.org/foundation/press/kit/feather.svg is a mirror image of the
one actually used on the ASF website.
Bill Rowe moved discussion on example of "Apache Ki" from legal-internal,
where Larry stresses that we have to associate that feather indelibly in
consumers' minds with "Apache Software Foundation" and with the software
available at "www.apache.org". All our other trademarks are secondary to
that brand graphic and to the trademark "Apache" itself.
We declined the "offer" to purchase apacheproducts.com domain; Larry
suggests (internally) that the company 'make a charitable donation of their
domain name to our non-profit Apache Software Foundation and perhaps it
will prove useful to us later. We remind you that "Apache" is a famous
trademark for software from the Apache Software Foundation. Your domain
name cannot be used for distributing software or related products or
services, by you or any third party, without our express permission.' Go
Larry.
Henning came across http://www.apachefriends.org/en/contact.html, which
reads "XAMPP and Apache Friends are registered trademarks of Kai Seidler."
This non-profit German support forum for running Apache web servers fails
to mention the Foundation anywhere. We should contact him to include the
ASF trademark notice. @@has this happened?
Received request to include ASF logo on diploma and technical documentation
from course that employs XAMPP-Package. @@has this happened?
Larry drafted usage policies for projects in the Incubator and is
investigating "first in time use" for projects at the ASF
Discussion on distributing ASF Member shirts at ApacheCon
HotWaxMedia has requested the use of the ASF logo to produce swag
Jim rejected request for use of ASF logo in the ICT Handbook from UK author
the image was malformed, and therefore wasn't approved
SPONSORSHIP
Who will manage Sponsor development (i.e., augment HALO contract vs. retain
Delia Frees or another candidate) is still undecided. In the meantime,
Sally is continuing stewardship-related activities.
Shane wants us to formalize record-keeping for sponsor activities.
Google has committed to renew for 2009 at the Platinum level; Geir has
processed their invoicing against the Google purchase order. In addition,
they have agreed to pay the ASF 50% of the back money owed during the 2007
time period.
Progress/IONA has committed to renew for 2009 at the Silver level, and have
stated that they are currently processing payment to the ASF. Once their
renewal is in place, we need to update the Sponsor Thanks page to "Progress
Software" and their logo, vs. IONA.
HP has committed to renew for 2009 at the Silver level, but have asked that
we extend them Gold Sponsorship status a.k.a. "Vermeil/upgraded Silver"
level in recognition of their contributions. We also forwarded a copy of
their CCLA per their request.
SpringSource/Covalent has committed to renew for 2009 at the Silver level,
and will be in touch regarding when we should invoice them. They stated
that the chance for us to reclaim back money due is extremely slim, as
this was initially a Covalent budget line item; now that the company is
gone (acquired by SpringSource), the funding is no longer available.
However, they will see if they can do something for us. In addition, they
would like to keep their cash contribution to 75% of the Sponsorship value,
with the maximum allowed 25% allocated to in-kind contributions (e.g.,
donation of teleconference bridge, hardware, etc.) Once their renewal is in
place, we need to update the Sponsor Thanks page to "SpringSource", along
with their logo, vs. Covalent.
Matt Mullenweg confirmed he renewed his Bronze Sponsorship in January 2009
Tetsuya Kitahata confirmed that he will not renew his Bronze Sponsorship.
FUNDRAISING
Ross Gardler suggested we consider using CiviCRM to track smaller donations
should we choose to pursue a formal method for this. Karl Fogel offers his
help as well: "feel free to ping me privately, or find me on
irc.freenode.net ("kfogel")."
Larry invited Donald Lobo and his sponsors from CiviCRM to become ASF
Sponsors, as they collectively donate more than $500K annually to various
foundations and seem amenable to switching over to the Apache license.
Sally to follow up, pending Board decision on who will oversee Sponsor
development.
There will be an official vote on the new members, expect a resolution next month.
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee was chartered and
responsible for organization and oversight of efforts to handle
public relations on behalf of The Apache Software Foundation,
including trademark licensing and other issues regarding
management of the Apache brand and raising of funds, but
excluding the ApacheCon conferences (which shall remain a
responsibility of the Apache Conference Planning Committee); and
WHEREAS, the Apache Conference Planning Committee would benefit
from the oversight and expertise of Public Relations Committee
in relation to the Apache brand, and coordination in the raising
of funds;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Public Relations
Committee, an ASF Board Committee, hereby is rechartered
pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the Public Relations Committee be and hereby is
responsible for organization and oversight of efforts to handle
public relations on behalf of The Apache Software Foundation,
including trademark licensing and other issues regarding
management of the Apache brand and raising of funds.
[c.f. http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2006/board_minutes_2006_11_15.txt ]
Special Order 7D, Change of Public Relations Committee
Charter, tabled.
Aaron to suggest a process forward on board@.
OVERVIEW + GENERAL INFO Discussion continued about PRC budget, both for external PR agency as well as any "extra" costs associated with ACUS09. Discussion continued re: possible restructuring of the PRC with Jim leaving chair and Sally taking over. Discussion continued regarding possibly engaging RedMonk regarding their feedback/input on our external exposure to analysts and others. Discussion initiated regarding purpose of ApacheCon US '09 (also involved was Concom). Received request from ConCom for PRC to officially oversee the ApacheCon Business & Community Track. Reminder of ASF Mission statement posted to Foundation blog + Twitter Apache HTTP Server is a Linux Journal Readers' Choice category winner again GENERAL + COMMUNITY OUTREACH Note sent to PMCs regarding opportunities to post to blogs.apache.org Follow-up with Michael Wechner/ASF Filmworks progress of editing cycle; an example can be seen at: http://www.wyonapictures.com/movies/apache/doug-cutting_v2_43-letterbox.mov ---please keep confidential; it's not ready for distribution yet! Follow-up with the MIT/UInnsbruck Branding study on the ASF Request for ASF involvement in upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting; suggested request be forward to the XML Graphics PMC MEDIA AND ANALYST RELATIONS Edited ApacheCon Europe 2009 wrap-up press release Completed and distributed Press Release for OFBiz Release Branch 9.3 Discussions continued on benefits of engaging analysts RedMonk (see above) Discussions continued on retaining PageOne PR to help drive publicity for ApacheCon US/OAK in connection with the 10th Anniversary Big Feather Birthday Bash. Update May 18th, 2009: SCP has hired PageOne to work on the ACUS09 show. Coordinated with Web Host Industry Review on article featuring Apache httpd. Coordinated Yahoo!'s press announcement on Cloud computing initiatives using Apache Hadoop: http://investor.news.com/cnet/?GUID=8511908&Page=MediaViewer&Ticker=INTC Discussed possible ASF position on Oracle's acquisition of Sun; Justin interviewed with InfoWorld reporter via Eclipse Foundation Apache HiveMind's retirement to the Attic received media attention http://www.itworld.com/open-source/66829/apache-retires-hivemind-component- project Tracking old press releases on PR Newswire archives to post to http://www.apache.org/foundation/news.html --it's currently out of date Received request for possible interview by Web Host Industry Review Total media hits during April: 211 BRAND, TRADEMARK, AND LOGO USAGE Permission granted for screenshots to be used in textbook on Applied Information Security Denied request to use ASF logo on http://www.mi-design.co.za/web-design.php Received request to use Apache Wicket logo to promote Wicket trainings on http://www.basementcoders.com/ Website Followed through on further unauthorized content on Hadoop; content on Google site has since been corrected Followed through with Hyperic relating to their founders' "role" with the ASF Discussions on Trademark "SpamAssassin" and "Powered by SpamAssassin" trademarks Received query from Legal team regarding Xerces' trademark status Received request from Legal team to include (tm) notice on Apache icon SPONSORSHIP Discussion re: sponsorship - should this fall under the PRC's bailiwick? Follow up with Google on renewal and back-billing, as well as renewal for Progress/IONA PRC still discussing possibility of retaining Delia Frees to manage overall ASF sponsorship program FUNDRAISING Discussion re: fundraising –-should this fall under the PRC's bailiwick? Received request from HotWax Media who want to merchandise Apache products online Discussion on alternate methods of bringing funds to the ASF: 1. Lower barrier for ‘Thanks' donations --possibly "Copper" level @ $1K/year. Also individual donations at a monthly deductible via PayPal @ +/-$5/mo. 2. Hardware Donations; update wishlist at http://apache.org/dev/hardware-wish-list.html and create a list of proposed equipment needed. Folks can either donate actual systems or PayPal funds directly for dedicated use. 3. Sponsored Tutorials site. Allow Projects to post tutorials and HowTos, with ability to raise sponsorship money by having entire site sponsored as well as individual page and/or tutorial sponsors (i.e., the Website version of sponsored "Hadoop Track" at ApacheCon, for example) 4. Tutorials in printed Magazines, as well as possibly payment for syndicated tutorial content online
Bill plans to bring up remove restrictions on PRC w.r.t. concom as new business.
Jim to report back on the expired sponsorships continuing to appear on the ASF Thanks page.
(Report by Sally K.)
OVERVIEW/GENERAL INFO
Craig Russell and Sally Khudairi were voted in as new members of the PRC
New PRC Guidelines and supporting documents were published online;
available at http://apache.org/press/
Discussion about budget: increasing funds to include PRC-related travel for
specialty publicity (e.g., Justin, Sally, * to attend OSCON)
PRC met during ApacheCon: Sally wants to publish internal guidelines on how
PMCs can get the word out (specifically step-by-step instructions on press
releases). Discussion also about making Media Training mandatory for PMCs
Jim's posted an open letter to the US President regarding Open
Source and Open Standards and the implied growing interest in the
current US administration.
W3C Membership Activated for The Apache Software Foundation
Jim initiates discussion re: possible restructuring the PRC with Sally in a
stronger leadership role. Options include VP nomination, reviving CMO role,
changing PRC to a President or Chairman's committee, etc.
Sally now can publish to apache.org
GENERAL + COMMUNITY OUTREACH
New blogs.apache.org launched at ApacheCon Europe on first day of con, 23
March; second post published on 25 March re: 10th anniversary + cake
cutting, but has gone quiet since; need to better coordinate outgoing +
moderating comments
PRC discussed guidelines for blogs.a.o and planet.a.o
PRC stepped in to fund ApacheCon items:
-- 10th Anniversary cake at Welcome Reception
-- Lightning Talks beers (posed negative fallout to ASF brand
and low perception of the event)
Received informal comments re: some folks have issue with PRC using the
phrase "The Apache Way"
Sally coordinated 30 interviews with ASF Filmworks shoot at ApacheCon over
3 days, and created ASF Photo/Video Release Form
Sally coordinated 18 interviews in a single afternoon for the
MIT/UInnsbruck Branding study on the ASF (3 dozen additional contacts in
follow-up list)
Sally held Media training on 23 March. 2 no shows (were in Hackathon and
forgot schedule)
MEDIA AND ANALYST RELATIONS
Edited and distributed the press release on Qpid as a TLP w/members of the
Qpid PMC
Wrote and distributed the 10th anniversary press release on 25 March, along
with new "ASF Highlights" page and Chairman's Letter. More than 350 press
and hits to date; several areas of feedback from within ASF community on
additions/changes to the "Highlights" document, which Sally is
incorporating
Sally reviewed and edited ApacheCon 18 March and wrap-up press releases for
ApacheCon
Sally updated the ApacheCon boilerplate to be used in every press release
at any event, irrespective of location
Jim did a podcast interview to promote ApacheCon and focused on the ASF's
upcoming 10th anniversary
Jim also met with UK reporter Gareth Kershaw onsite at ApacheCon
Sally reviewed/edited the Hippo press release for ApacheCon
Sally reviewed/approved the SpringSource press release for ApacheCon
PRC reviewed/amended the Yahoo! press release on expanding Cloud
initiatives into academic sector ("M45 runs Hadoop, an Apache Software
Foundation open-source distributed file system and parallel execution
environment that allows users to process large amounts of data.")
PRC reviewed/amended the Siemens SIS Press Release on ESME (in Incubator –
"The ESME project has recently been accepted into the Apache Incubator of
The Apache Software Foundation {ASF} for consideration as an official ASF
Project. Siemens is an active partner in the Open Source Community.")
Sally drafted a press release with OFBiz team announcing 9.04 release
branch; will be distributed either 15 April or 20 April, depending on PRC
feedback
PRC discussions on getting news items on the Foundation's News page
PRC discovered several instances of Hadoop being mentioned in the press
with no attribution to ASF – particularly the articles in NYTimes – and
followed up with the journalist to request possible correction
PRC discussions on engaging Open Source-centric industry analysts Redmonk
at $5K/yr nonprofit rate
Media Alert for 10th Anniversary Press Conference issued; due to low press
turnout, it was rescheduled to take place during the conference, just
before the Welcome Reception. ASF-invited press all reported on the event;
the sole ApacheCon reporter in attendance (Kershaw) did not yet post a
story on the news
Geir handled several interviews regarding "Apache's decision not to support
the release of Java EE 6"
PRC debated accepting an interview request on JSPA by The Register due to
previous inaccuracies in reporting
Discussions regarding retaining PageOne PR to help drive publicity for
ApacheCon US/OAK in connection with the 10th Anniversary Big Feather
Birthday Bash
BRAND, TRADEMARK, AND LOGO USAGE
Permission granted to use screenshots in textbook on Applied Information
Security
Permission granted to use Hadoop logo for IBM Book
Permission granted to Ross Gardler to use ASF image for
BarCampApache/Oxford09 souvenir mugs
Permission pending (?) for Edgar Camacho to Apache trademarks in
configuration management listing
Permission granted/corrected for including Apache HTTP Server in Symantec
ISTR XIV Report
Ted Husted followed up on ProCheckUp request for use of ASF logo on their
Website
Bertrand Delacretaz followed up on Michael Minella's generic request on
using the Apache Trademark on his Website
Henri Yandell updated us on the issue of dead project names and their
migration to/from the Apache Attic
Doug Cutting worked with the PRC on making the Apache
affiliation/attribution clearer on the Hadoop pages
Santiago Gala discussed the new ApacheCon group on LinkedIn as it ties into
the overall ASF brand
Christophe Bisciglia sent us a heads-up on unauthorized content in Mandarin
on hadoop.org; PRC is seeking localized follow-up assistance from J Aaron
Farr
SPONSORSHIP
Sally discussed Progress/IONA renewal with Debbie Moynihan, no word back on
their budget/decision
PRC discussion of possible budget release for informal/lightweight sponsor
"meet and greet" at ApacheCon; general concept approved, event canceled as
only two formal Sponsor contacts were in attendance
Discussions with Tetsuya Kitahata re: using Apache name on DubLi
fundraising; also discovered that he had "sponsored" a TAC recipient with
additional funds for on-the-ground logistics
Updated Sponsor page with BlueNog Inuit, and Joost; PRC discussion as to
when they're added to the SponsorshipThanks page (e.g., when contract is
signed vs. monies received)
PRC in discussions regarding retaining Delia Frees to manage overall ASF
sponsorship program
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve
its purpose through the periodic update of its membership; and
WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose membership
must be approved by Board resolution,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF members be
added as Public Relations Committee members:
Sally Khudairi <sk@haloworldwide.com>
Craig Russell <clr@apache.org>
Special Order 7B, Update Public Relations Committee
Membership, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors
present.
The last 4 weeks has seen quite a bit of work within the PRC, with a number of outstanding items finally "done". o The Logo/Trademark page is now up! This is, as is the 3rd party licensing page, a work in progress, but is a substantial step in the right direction. o We are busy with PR activities for both our 10th anniversary and with ACEU (in support of that) o We are adding SallyK and CraigR to the PRC (see above resolution) o Worked on and released QPid PR at the start of the month. o Worked on and released 10 Anniversary Press Conference Media Alert o Coordinated discussion between Geir and OpenSource Release Feed regarding our NO vote on Java EE 6 o "Finalized" budget for PRC o It looks like Intuit is officially a Bronze sponsor. o Sally has been in contact with current Sponsors, in the hopes of coordinating a meet-and-greet at ACEU09. Unfortunately, a number of sponsors will not be attending, so we will have a somewhat smaller get-together than originally planned. HALO's report is as follows: During ApacheCon: - MIT/UInnsbruck study on Apache as online brand leading community-driven innovation kicks off; researchers will be onsite on Tuesday (only) for face-to-face interviews; - ASF "Filmworks" project will kick off on Wednesday and run through Friday of next week. We will sponsor Michael Wechner as director and two additional film crew members; this covers travel and hotel expenses for three days; - Coordinating 10th Anniversary celebration cake to be unveiled at the Welcome Reception on 25 March; - trying to launch "greeting card" campaign on blogs.apache.org for folks to send their well-wishes and comments to the ASF (honoring 10 years of excellence, etc.) HALO's been in touch with all the Sponsors, having finally connected with Google (good call; notes to follow) and Progress/IONA/FUSE (their Sponsorship is up for renewal this month). All Sponsors have also been invited to participate in the branding study and ASF Filmworks projects. Follow up with NYTimes on Hadoop story and related ASF branding; Shane wants to follow through with Larry's suggestion on getting all our projects/marks properly attributed, working with the PMCs, and a clear(er) policy on the Website. We also have an Overview page for the PRC, as well as Media and Analyst Relations guidelines (includes information on writing press releases), and ASF Highlights 1999-2009 document.
apache.com again raised as an issue Intuit confirmed as a bronze sponsor.
Work continued on requests for use of logos/marks, including approving the use of the Apache ActiveMQ, Tomcat and ServiceMix logos in the SOPERA ToolSuite product, after some work from Sopera in clarifying in their UI that these were Apache marks. Justin drafted a budget for the PRC, to assist in the ongoing work of developing a budget for the Foundation. PRC decided on an event name and tagline for the 10th Anniversary celebrations. These are "Ten Years of Apache", and "Celebrating a Decade of Open Source Leadership", respectively. Delia Frees developed a 10th Anniversary logo for ApacheCon, and accepted feedback from the PRC on this. The PRC agreed to co-sponsor the Members' & Committers' Reception at ApacheCon EU as part of their community outreach and public relations efforts. The OWF organisation have expressed an interest in a better interaction with The ASF. Other speaking opportunities were also floated - at Jazoon and at CeBIT's Open Source Forum. A group at MIT and U. Innsbruck requested that we send a survey to committers as part of their research into community driven brands. The PRC agreed to sending out the survey in principle, but Justin noted that we should keep this kind of activity to a minimum. Draft web pages for The PRC, Media and Analyst Relations, and Trademark and Logo Guidelines have been circulated to the committee, and are currently under review. Apache Ivy's 2.0 release hit heise-online Communications guidelines for two incubating projects were provided: 1) Qpid (requested by Carl Trieloff) 2) Shindig (requested by Brian McCallister) David Sean Taylor and Ate Douma had a briefing with Forrester Research on Jetspeed 2. Lars noted a speaking opportunity about Apache/ASF at the Open Source Forum of the CeBIT Expo in Hannover (www.cebit.de). He indicated that he most likely would not be able to make it and asked if there were any volunteers. Lucid Imagination was contacted regarding their usage of ASF marks in the names of their products. The product names have been updated to remove the mark violation.
The last 2 months have dealt with both the normal PRC-related
issues (requests for use of logos, mark and license queries,
etc...) as well as updates to better handling our visibility
to the outside world (such as a PRC JIRA and a draft logo/mark
usage guide). It is nice to see some PRC members getting more
involved and helping to see these issues getting closer to
closure.
A PRC concall was held on Dec 11, 2008; in attendance were
Craig, Jim, Sander, Shane, Justin, Sally. Topics included the
focus of PR for the coming year, which of course is the ASF's
10 year anniversary. Also discussed was suggested content for
the Year In Review PR to be drafted and released early this year.
There was also discussion about some centralization of news
related topics under the PRC, to provide oversight as well
as focused interest. Coordination and having enough people
with enough time to cover this remains the main blocker.
In a related note, a twitter account was created (TheASF)
and Email was sent to all PMCs encouraging them send their
ASF news items to Jim so they can be posted.
Forrester Research requested a briefing for Jetspeed 2. David
Taylor is expected to cover this for us.
InfoWorld requested some additional information, mostly from
the Harmony community, regarding our continuing position (and
voting) regarding fair use and TCKs. Geir will cover this
for us.
A Letter Of Support was drafted, approved and sent for a FOSS Education
project proposal to the Joint Information Systems Committee, c/o
Ross Gardler and Justin.
A Press Release for Apache Shindig is in process.
HALO has been working steadily on sponsor relations as
well as tracking sponsor renewals. HALO is also working steadily
on the year in review report.
Below is HALO's report ("I" refers to HALO):
SPONSORSHIPS:
<## Below to be "sanitized" for public minutes... no need to
mention PokerListings.com for example or Lucid Imagination. We
can instead just say potential sponsors ##>
Potential: 1) In 8th round of discussions with PokerListings.com, who have
offered us $7,000 for a Bronze Sponsorship (the extra $2K for an active
link), or the chance to feature a custom made poker section for apache.org
(!) as of 9 January. Received confirmation of "sorry no" reply from Jim
and Justin; will decline offers today. 2) Anil from Lucid Imagination has
gone radio silent after sending me a meeting confirmation for 15 December
(he was a no-show), but hasn't replied to any emails since mid-December.
I've pinged him again on 9 January.
Existing: Google - still awaiting response from Chris DiBona's assistant,
Erum Rahman-Subedar, to schedule a tele-meeting. I've copied Chris on my
message from 9 January and received an auto-responder from Erum indicating
that he's out of the office from 15 December through 12 January.
General: Drafting New Year email/newsletter with updates on new Members,
new TLPs, and new releases. Also advisory on 10th Anniversary and ApacheCon
activities.
COMMUNITY RELATIONS:
Following several email exchanges with Tim Berners-Lee, Jim, Justin, and I
met with Ted Guild of W3C during ApacheCon/New Orleans to discuss a more
formal working relationship. We have agreed to "join" W3C, where the
Consortium would waive the Membership fees for ASF, and that the ASF would
be able to be called upon as invited experts on certain W3C working groups
(HTTP, for example). In turn, the ASF will help act as conduits for select
W3C team members regarding specific technical issues that may arise (on the
Apache HTTP Server mailing lists, for example).
We completed and submited the W3C Membership form. Jim will be serving as
the Advisory Committee Representative (similar to Geir with the JCP). Ted
Guild has waived any fees required to join once our paperwork is received.
PUBLIC RELATIONS:
ASF 10th Anniversary: Drafting taglines, soundbites, and press
announcements/releases. Originally planned to be ready by 16 January, but
need decision on this urgently to dovetail into the promotional activities
for ApacheCon Europe.
Jim intends to have W3C reports monthly, at least initially.
Bill, suggests that we follow the basic pattern of monthly for three months, then quarterly.
The PRC requests skipping this months report and will submit an extended report in Jan 2009 which includes our End Of The Year PR activities.
includes Summer of Code 2008 final report) During the ApacheCon conference this month, held in NOLA, HALO coordinated and attended meeting with various sponsors (Yahoo!, Microsoft, HP, Progress/IONA and Springsource/Covalent) to get their feedback regarding the success of the Sponsorship Program. Another topic of discussion was how could the program be more beneficial to current and future Sponsors. A common theme was more frequent and "direct" communication between Sponsors and the ASF, such as a quarterly newletter or some similar mechanism. The overlap between the ASF Sponsorship and ApacheCon sponsorship was also discussed as well. Additional feedback from Sponsor meetings also included strong interest in learning how to better work with us to leverage the Apache brand -- whether in press interviews, product packaging/description, or developer/community outreach and events (e.g., user group meetings). There was also concern for clearer understanding/detail on how the funds donated are being utilized. Each sponsor we had spoken with seemed supportive of the possibility of evolving the *structure* of ApacheCon, and were very interested in the opportunity to participate in smaller, more community-driven events (such as an Apache/*/GetTogether). Industry Analyst Briefings were also head at AC (coordinated by HALO). Whilst Cote was here, he had three hour-long briefings on the ASF's State of the Feather, as well as several projects in the Incubator. In addition, he had 5-7 minute "snapshots" of ASF initiatives with ten of the Media Training participants. (So basically it was a 1/2 day of briefings, which is A Good Thing for any organization) The HALO contract was revised and renewed (and the same annual rate as last year). The revisions were around focusing more on the Sponsorship tasks, and coordinating with our Sponsors. As with previous years, Media Training was held during the ApacheCon conference. From all accounts, it was a successful and warmly received event. In attendance were: Hans Bakker, Keith Chapman, Deng (Maria Odea) Ching, Torsten Curdt, Martijn Dashorst, Ross Gardler, Deepal Jayasinghe, Brian McCallister, Felix Meschberger, Debbie Moynihan, Craig Russell, and 2 non-ASF guests. Microsoft has indicated their desire to have their Port25 site be more an open forum for various open source topics and communities. As such, Justin and Jim were asked to consider posting entries to the site, using their ASF perspective. Exact details are still being worked out. We are welcoming 2 new Bronze sponsors: Intuit and BlueNog. A PRC concall was held on Oct. 23rd. In attendance were Sally, Justin, Shane, Craig and Jim. Meeting notes were posted to the PRC list. A PR regarding the Tuscany graduation and 1.3.2 release was drafted and released on Oct. 13. This PR, as with pretty much every other one, was substantially organized and managed by HALO. Tracking PRC issues and tasks is still something that needs to be closed. Henri put a lot of work into setting up JIRA for us, and, unfortunately, Jim was not able to close up with Henri at ACUS to complete this. This was some discussion regarding using OFBiz and some CRM, which may better align with what we want to do, especially with invoicing and the like. The ASF still has an open invitation for a "free table" at the SpringOne show in December in FLA. Also, the ASF was contacted (via various people to various people) regarding the Open World Forum 2008 in Paris. They were hoping to get some advice and insight from us regarding what would make a good show, suggest and recommend content and sessions, etc. Emmanuel LŽcharny and Raphael Luta will close the loop on this. Summer of Code 2008 final report: The Google Summer of Code was in its third year this year. We received 186 applications, of which 31 were slotted. 22 of these projects passed both the mid-term and final evaluations. 5 of these passed the mid-term, but failed the final evaluation and a further 4 failed at the mid-term. This pass rate is below the average rate for the whole GSoC program, however, it was felt by the mentors and admins that this reflects the high standards expected of contributors to the ASF. This year we had three administrators: Bertrand Delecretaz Ross Gardler Luciano Resende Having more administrators is a good thing and seemed to work well since the most experienced of these admins was able to spend some time documenting the GSoC processes on the wiki. Selection Process In previous years the application RankingProcess worked reasonably well. However, this year there were insufficient numbers of mentors reviewing all proposals. This resulted in some well represented projects receiving an artificially high ranking. The admins attempted to ensure that the final rankings were as fair as possible, but there can be no doubt that the RankingProcess needs to be revisited for GSoC2009 (assuming there is a GSoC 2009, of course). This has already been discussed on the code-awards mailing list and we believe a fairer system, which does not rely on significant numbers of mentors reviewing all applications, was provisionally agreed upon. However, it should be noted that no ranking system will be perfect and there will, undoubtedly, always be someone who feels the system has failed them. We hope that the system adopted for 2009 will be good enough and encourage all interested committers to oversee the definition and execution of the process on the code-awards list. Success Stories A number of success stories were collected on the code-awards list, the full text of all SoC2008SuccessStories is available on wiki.apache.org, whilst some edited highlights are included below: Milinda Lakmal Pathirage is now a committer for Apache ODE. Both Robin Anil and Deneche Abdelhakim contributed code that has been committed to Apache Hadoop, and both did a good job of working with the community by answering questions and participating in the process. Wojtek Janiszewski is now a committer on Apache Tuscany Douglas Leite is now a committer on Apache Tuscany Oscar Castaneda is now a committer on Apache Tuscany Andrey Razumovsky became a committer on Apache Cayenne and is described as one of the most active Cayenne committers as of now. Andras Belicza and Tharindu Mathew provided a useful new module and numerous bug fixes for Apache Harmony. Lahiru Gunathilake got his committer rights for Apache Qpid in September. This means that the ASF gained at least six committers in this years Google Summer of Code. The administrators would like to thank all mentors for their hard work during the Summer of Code. Mentor Summit (report from Luciano) Every year after Summer of Code is over, Google hosts a summit at its headquarters in Mountain View to foster sharing of mentors experience, and also to learn first hand what could be improved for next year program. Luciano Resende attended the Summit on behalf of ASF. This year, the summit followed the unconference idea, and various groups of people gather together to discuss Summer of Code and other OSS related topics. Various of the suggested themes were around how to successfully go from recruit to project delivery without having the student to disappear. Some mentors/organizations were trying to make the student selection very strict and really follow a job recruitment procedure, where others were more towards given an opportunity for the students to learn and enjoy working with open source software.
It's been a pretty busy month, and a pretty productive one as well. We renewed the HALO revised contract and are currently working on scheduling a "kick-off/update" concall. A Tuscany PR was written regarding its TLP graduation and its release of version 1.3.2. It was released Oct. 14, 2008. We are looking at use JIRA to help with internal issue tracking as well as external requests. Henri setup a prelim implementation which looks really good, and will likely serve as the foundation. Hopefully this will help with the "dropped ball" syndrome as make it easier for others to get more involved. Jukka has done a lot of work on drafting a logo-guideline policy. Quest is looking to donate to the ASF foundation wide JProbe licenses. Thanks to Alex Karasulu for organizing this. We have approved a new Cafepress store's use of the Wicket logo. The store itself is located at: http://www.cafepress.com/apachewicket
During the last month, initial discussions with OSCON were started regarding how the ASF could get more involved (and visible) at the conference. It was noted that Sam Ruby and Craig Russell are on the OSCON Program Committee. Since the initial query, there has been no update as of yet. A concall was held on September 9th between the PRC (attending: Justin, Sander and Craig) and HALO regarding the "next steps" in how to utilize HALO over the next few months in anticipation of the renewal of the contract later this year. The general consensus was that tasking HALO to primarily handle the Sponsorship relationship and renewals was of prime importance. Other tasks, such as PR review will (hopefully) by taken up by PRC members. Tuscany is currently working on a PR. Also being worked on is a Press Announcement on ApacheCon US and our "voluntourism" plans for the conference, drawing more people and more community participation for the event. The PRC was contacted regarding our opinion on whether to file the Actual Use documents for the SpamAssassin trademark. The PRC indicated that this was acceptable. A new Bronze sponsor is in the works. The PRC was made aware of an online store using the Apache Wicket mark without approval. The store was contacted and asked to stop. The Wicket PMC was then contacted to see if this was a mark usage that they would like to see; they indicated it was. The PRC indicated that we needed a formal agreement to allow for the use and drafted one. This issue is still in progress, but various members of the Wicket PMC are not happy with the speed in which this is being handled. A discussion was started on the PRC list regarding using some sort of tracking mechanism (eg: JIRA) to help coordinate activities. The HALO contract is up for renewal this month. A resolution has been added to the agenda authorizing the PRC chair to negotiate the renewal, which will be at the same rate as last year. Finally, the chair is getting quite upset that, even though the ranks and roster of the PRC increase, very few PRC members participate in activities or discussions or even help with various tasks or issues. Certainly having a JIRA (or similar) in place will help decrease the number of dropped balls, but what will really help is if more people were doing the juggling. HALO Report below: The activities below reflect the tasks undertaken during the 1-31 August 2008 timeframe. CONTENT DEVELOPMENT o (no ASF-issued announcements made during this time period) o Reviewed Tuscany draft announcement o Drafted outline of Sponsorship newsletter OUTREACH & LIAISON o Planning ASF Sponsor Liaison meeting at ApacheCon MEDIA RELATIONS/COORDINATION o Handled several press inquiries on general sponsorship process (triggered by July's Microsoft announcement)
Geir notes that he too is on the OSCON program committee.
Clarification: Wicket was not happy with the PRC
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve its purpose through the periodic update of its membership; and WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose membership must be approved by Board resolution, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF members be added as Public Relations Committee members: Sander Striker <striker@apache.org> Special Order 7B, Update Public Relations Committee Membership, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.
The HALO contract is up for renewal within a few months, and so we have started discussions regarding what has, or has not, worked with. The PRC is very strongly leaning towards renewal and we are operating under that assumption, so mainly we are looking how to better utilize the talents and resources of HALO and how to not so much be the "choke point" in the whole PR process. Ideally, this would mean a much more active PRC roster, and it is hoped that the recent additions (as well as adding Sander, as per today's resolution) will alleviate a lot of this. Over the last month the big news was the addition of Microsoft as a Platinum Sponsor of the ASF (as announced at OSCON). Quite a lot of work was done by various people to see this through, but Sally should be noted with special commendation in being a crucial part of this. Not only did Sally see things through, but coordinated efforts with myself, Justin and others regarding the whole media effort. The Microsoft sponsorship started a discussion regarding Sponsor Logo sizes as displayed on the Thanks page. The issue is that forcing logos, especially those with widely variant aspect ratios, into our allowed space, is detrimental to some sponsors. There was a suggestion to make it "same area" but there was concern that this would also result in unfair visual space being applied to some logos (the general concept is that each logo should have the same "visual impact"). Unfortunately, this has not reached closure yet. In anticipation of this, we have received a new Yahoo! logo, however. Justin coordinated with Yahoo! for a new contact regarding their Sponsorship. Renewals by Google and Springsource (was Covalent) is on track. PRNewswire updated their Nonprofit Rate packages, which offer significant discounts over what we had been paying previously. We elected to choose their "10-pack" offering, in which we prepay for 10 releases, and pay extra (akthough still a very reduced rate) for any releases past 10. Tuscany is interested in doing a combo "Graduation to TLP/New Release" PR, to help drum up interest and community around Tuscany. It is anticipated that this will happen within a few weeks and before next month's board meeting. HALO's report is as follows: The Apache Software Foundation Promotion and Outreach Campaign Kindly Note: The activities below reflect the tasks undertaken during the 1-31 July 2008 timeframe. CONTENT DEVELOPMENT - (no ASF-issued announcements made during this time period) - Reviewed Wicket draft announcement - Coordinated with Microsoft on sponsorship announcement on Port25 OUTREACH & LIAISON - Coordinated CXF press release review process with IONA's PR team - ASF Sponsor Liaison: final workings with Microsoft on ASF sponsorship - Follow-up with Microsoft on ApacheCon sponsorship MEDIA RELATIONS/ COORDINATION - Liaised media inquiry on Apache MDM project (ex-Apache CXF announcement) - Handled several press inquiries on Microsoft sponsorship
Jim indicated that in the future he will trim the link sections for purposes of board reports.
A pretty "short" month since last report, with just a handful of updates. First of all, the issue regarding the apache.com and the theapachecommunity.com sites and the usage of the Apache marks has been resolved. I contacted the organizations and they have updated the site to mention our marks as well as clarify that they are not affiliated or endorsed by the ASF. Secondly, we are in the continuing process of renewing the currently expiring Sponsorships. We are also working on a new Sponsor and hope to have an update available for that shortly. Finally, we sent out a mid-year report PR regarding the ASF and its activities since the start of '08. The HALO report follows: CONTENT DEVELOPMENT - Drafted and distributed mid-year/momentum ASF release http://www.apache.org/foundation/press/pr_2008_06_17.html OUTREACH & LIAISON - Coordinated CXF press release review process with IONA's PR team - ASF Sponsor Liaison: education and outreach with Microsoft's Open Sourceand PR teams on both ASF and ApacheCon sponsorship (ongoing) MEDIA RELATIONS/COORDINATION - Coordinated Dennis Byron/IT Business Edge interview on CXF with Benson Margulies (backup Daniel Kulp) CLIPPINGS, MENTIONS, AND POSTS http://www.cnbc.com/id/25211021/ http://apache.sys-con.com/read/592928.htm http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2008/06/22/june_2008_web_server_survey.html http://www.linux-mag.com/id/6250/ http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/06/17/451-caos-links-20080617/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9964505-16.html?hhTest=1&tag=bl http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=579 http://sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32250 http://www.temme.net/sander/category/apache/ http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/06/10/the-elephant-in-the-room/ http://samisa-abeysinghe.blogspot.com/search/label/Reviews http://www.ericmmartin.com/2008/06/ http://sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32444 http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/osb/?p=403 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-9977879-62.html?hhTest=1&tag=bl http://sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32459 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9970322-16.html?hhTest=1&tag=bl
Jim to provide feedback to Sally, asking her to only include "significant" links.
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve
its purpose through the periodic update of its membership; and
WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose membership
must be approved by Board resolution,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF members be
added as Public Relations Committee members:
Santiago Gala <sgala@apache.org>
Special Order 7D, Update Public Relations Committee
Membership, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors
present.
As noted in HALO's report below, the big news is that we released a
Mid-Year "Status" release, which went live on the 18th. There was
quite a lot of activity, feedback and comments during the drafting
of the release, which was good since it indicated, at least to me,
a growing perception that PR is becoming more and more useful and
valued within the ASF.
We received a few of the normal "can we use your logo" type of
inquiries; this really shows the importance of the need for the
accepted public and published policy that J Aaron Farr is working
on.
The website 'http://wickettraining.com' was deemed as using our
marks in an un-approved manner. They were contacted and the
required and requested changes were made. Unfortunately, the mark
issue with Apache.com (www.apache.com, which redirects to
http://apache.chasehosting.com/) appears to have resurfaced.
At the present time, they have not yet been contacted however.
It should be mentioned that the IONA PR noted in the HALO report
went through a number of iterations resulting in one which was
acceptable to the ASF, mostly because it removed all mention or
implication of ASF "approval" of the PR (for example, the 1st draft
had a quoted attributed to myself). Once done, the only real activity
was timing of the 2 releases, nothing more.
HALO's report now follows:
HALO WORLDWIDE PR-RELATED ACTIVITIES
1-31 MAY 2008
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
- Reviewed IONA announcement supporting CXF graduation to TLP
- Drafted Press Release: ASF 2008 Mid-Year/Momentum Activities
OUTREACH & LIAISON
- Review/audit media lists for quarterly update
- Follow-up with Scott Lamons/HP re: ASF Sponsorship + presentation at
ApacheCon
- Coordinated press release timeframe + process with IONA's PR team
- ASF Sponsor Liaison: education and outreach with Microsoft's Open
Source/Linux team and PR team on both ASF and ApacheCon sponsorship
(ongoing)
MEDIA RELATIONS/COORDINATION
- Forwarded and reviewed "Jetty Web Server Closes Gap on Tomcat"
announcement with PRC for possible brand misuse
- Met with Robert Mullins/SD Times re: article on future of J2EE and
liaised interviews with Jeff Genender and Geir Magnusson (article to
be published in June)
- Met with Newton Chan of SDForum re: general ASF activities
- Met with Howard Dykoff of Linux Gazette re: general ASF activities
- Met with Mike Rohde of DevX re: general ASF activities
CLIPPINGS, MENTIONS, AND POSTS
- Apache HTTP Server wins "Favorite Web Server" in the Linux Journal 2008
Readers' Choice Awards: "Rather than offer a Favorite Web Server category,
we should just ask 'Do you use the Apache Web server, yes or no?' and leave
it at that. Apache wins with 90.9% of your votes."
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10065
- The ASF tops the SD Times 100's list of Influencers in 2008 -- "Apache
stayed on top of its game, continuing to offer enterprise-class sever
software at a price not even Microsoft could match" -- and made a second
appearance in the "Application Servers" category, with both Tomcat and
Geronimo on the list.
http://sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32189
other clips:
http://sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32047
http://www.xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4250
http://nvd.nist.gov/nvd.cfm?cvename=CVE-2008-2168
http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/530435.htm
http://bill.burkecentral.com/2008/05/
http://www.javaposse.com/index.php?post_id=344432
http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=265
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39419829,00.htm
http://sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32267
http://www.ebizq.net/topics/open_source/features/9525.html
The issue with the outstanding invoices for the PR Newswire have really been fixed now, as far as the invoices being paid. There was positive feedback regarding the Media Training Sally performed at AC EU. This does seem a popular and worthwhile "session" to maintain. A request was received regarding an external company's request for an ASF quote regarding the company's support plans for Apache ServiceMix. We responded that we do not provide such quotes, especially for companies that have no interaction or involvement at all with the ASF. There was posting by Santiago Gala regarding a company's interest in organizing a 1/2 day "Unconference/BarCamp" related to some Apache technology. Santiago is following this effort. Justin is taking the lead on our involvement with a workshop being sponsored by Google and the National Science Foundation (NSF) related to large scale computing in universities. What exactly is requested and expected, as far as our involvement, is still being discussed, but likely be such things as a letter of support, some sort of promotion, etc... Sally is working on a Mid-Year PR Update, to be sent out via the normal channels. This assumes that no further issues with PR Newswire pops up. www.apache.com is a problem again, brand and trademark-wise. The site (which redirects to http://apache.chasehosting.com/) is purposely confusing, misleading and misappropriating our brand. A PRC volunteer will follow up. A vote was called to add Santiago Gala to the PRC. Unfortunately, it was called too late to allow for the results to be final by this board meeting. We hope to add him to the PRC next month. HALO's report is as follows: A quick update on April's busy-ness. My apologies for keeping this a bit short, but I'm flying in a few hours and am not nearly close to the end as originally envisaged. Hey-ho. I. On the PR side of things, it's been quiet both proactively and reactively. I've spoken to a few analysts on a background level, as well as the two Dutch journalists invited to participate in the Media Training during ApacheCon (more on that below). I'm also beginning to draft the ASF mid-year momentum press release, with intended release timeframe mid-June (following the Member meeting). II. Sponsorship-wise, I've been in touch with Scott Lamons and Paul Holland of HP (Gold Sponsors), with whom I've requested to submit two talks for ApacheCon/US in November in spite of the CFP deadline having passed. One talk has been accepted; the other is on the fallback list -- nobody has been notified of this yet. They also seem to be pursuing additional funding internally to sponsor ApacheCon again, and, hopefully, renew their Sponsorship as well. Also on the Sponsor outreach & education side of things, you know that I've been working closely with Microsoft's Open Source/Linux team and PR corps on both ASF and ApacheCon sponsorship through their partnership with Sourcesense (Apache POI). I've been helping them learn how they can become more proactively (and properly!) involved with the ASF, from ApacheCon participation to ASF Sponsorship. They seem quite interested and are discussing internally ways to get involved. I take this as an very positive sign. III. Media Training at ApacheCon/Amsterdam: this was the first time that we held a formal Intermediate class (not just beginner), with all participants staying on for both sessions. Overall, I think the class went quite well (see feedback below) ... in attendance were: Noirin Plunkett Shirley, Bertrand Delacretaz, Craig Russell, Wendy Smoak, Jukka Zitting (refresher from Austin '06!), Emmanuel Lecharney (refresher from Amsterdam '07!), and Mylene Reiners (paid registrant). ... please see post-training feedback from attendees at end pf document. I've also Secured Michael Cote/RedMonk as partner for Media Training (he'll cover the ASF's activities during ApacheCons & will begin with ApacheCon US/New Orleans). IV. Outstanding items: leaflet production (hadn't been addressed during ApacheCon) ... and I'm still looking for some place/way to post the PRC Process and Media Training content. Preferably online, and somewhere on apache.org. Any volunteers to help with this? I've got TortoiseSVN on my system (I'm a light user with one of my OS clients); perhaps this is a way we can get this project going?
The big news is that we have a new Silver Sponsor: IONA. The site has
been updated to reflect this fact. Also, the www.apache.org site has
a new skin, which was "approved" and "released" during ApacheCon EU 08.
Also regarding the Sponsorship Program, we have received verbal
confirmation that Google, HP and Covalent/SpringSource will be
renewing their sponsorship for another year. Both Google and
Covalent/SpringSource have confirmed at the same level.
We have (re)started discussions regarding creating marketing collateral
for the ASF. There seems enough continued interest by enough people
that this may actually reach closure!
The PRC provided approval for http://www.cafepress.com/sawsafg for
ASF logo merchandising, as with other select vendors.
The ASF has taken over billing responsibility for our PR Newswire
account after the previous billing party terminated paying for
the account with no real advanced notice at all.
HALO Activities are as follows:
ACTIVITY: Strategic Planning
DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE:
- Communications Plan/Announcement Schedule (need input from PMCs)
- Researching/Updating Editorial Calendars
ACTIVITY: Content Development
DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE:
- Revised ASF boilerplate
- Reviewed/Edited Press Release: Synapse 1.1 announcement
- Edited Press Release: 13 December - Yahoo! Platinum Sponsorship
- Drafted Press Release: ASF 2007 Year In Review
- Issued Press Release: ASF 2007 Year In Review
- Drafted Press Release: ApacheCon Registration Open
- Issued Press Release: ApacheCon Registration Open
- Reviewing/Updating ASF/Top-level Project/activity positioning
- Drafting Copy deck: Website News section/second tier page
- Research Archives: ASF-issued press releases post June 1999
- Drafted Press Release: Apache Synapse as TLP/v1.1.1 Available
- Issued Press Release: Apache Synapse as a TLP/v1.1.1 Available
- Potential: ASF GHOP Grand Prize Winner (did not receive ack on request
to pursue)
- Potential: Apache Lenya v2.0 (did not receive ack on request to pursue)
- Reviewed/Edited ASF Sponsorship presentation for ApacheCon
ACTIVITY: Outreach & Liaison
DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE:
- Purchased new media lists (quarterly)
- Honing database (ongoing): additional media, influencers, and bloggers
- F2F Meeting with analysts at Forrester and Gartner
- Contacting industry analysts (pre-report time)/influencers: RedMonk,
Gartner Group, Forrester, The451, ZapThink, O'Reilly, InfoWorld,
Elemental Media Coordination: Yahoo!, Mark Logic, Radar Networks,
IT Conversations
- ASF Sponsor Liaison: HP > onto ApacheCon sponsorship Outreach to
Tim Berners-Lee re: clarification on "Apache/W3C relations"
- Coordinate with Arje Cahn and Hippo PR team to translate/distribute
ApacheCon press release in Dutch
- Liaising with Delia Frees re: ApacheCon Business Track panel sponsorship
- Response to Markus Stiegler, XDEV Software, re: CeBIT; liaise with
Charel Morris
- Forwarding contact - Ilan Rabinovitch re: SCALE; liaise with Charel
Morris
- Forwarding contact - Armijn Hemel re: Dutch Java Users Group and
Utrecht Linux Users Group; liaise with Charel Morris
- Re-pinged Tim Berners-Lee re: clarification on "Apache/W3C relations"
(no return ack)
- Coordinate ASF logo to Arje Cahn/Hippo PR for ApacheCon press release
in Dutch
- Met with New Orleans officials re: possible community
outreach/voluntourism for ApacheCon US in November
- ASF Sponsor Liaison: IONA > reviewing press release
+ ApacheCon sponsorship PR
- Forwarded response from Tim Berners-Lee re: clarification on
"Apache/W3C relations"
- ASF Sponsor Liaison: IONA > - reviewing/editing/following-up/signoff
press release + ApacheCon sponsorship PR
- Liaised preview of Sourcesense/Microsoft press release with ASF
- Outreach to Scott Lamons/HP to support ASF Sponsorship presentation
at ApacheCon
ACTIVITY: Media Training
DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE:
- Secured David Waddington as backup for Media/Analyst training at
ApacheCon Europe (he'll be on the Business Track Panel)
- Secured Armijn Hemel for Media/Analyst training at ApacheCon Europe
(possibly joined by Gijs Hellenius)
- Secured Pieter-Paul Spiertz for Media/Analyst training at ApacheCon
Europe
- ApacheCon Europe Media Training registrants - for both beginner and
intermediate classes:
1 Leo Simons
2 Noorin Plunkett Shirley
3 Bertrand Delacretaz
4 Craig Russell
5 Wendy Smoak
6 Arje Cahn
7 Jukka Zitting (refresher from Austin!)
8 Mylene Reiners (paid registrant)
- Secured Michael Cote/RedMonk as partner for Media Training + cover the
ASF's activities during ApacheCon
- will begin in ApacheCon US/New Orleans
ACTIVITY: Process
DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE:
- Developing "How to Work with the PRC" (will be part of Intermediate Media Training offered at ApacheCon)
- Developing Announcement Guidelines, Tips, and Timeframes
- Incorporating process into Intermediate Media/Analyst Training for Amsterdam
- Flagged + forwarded 2 instances of process violation of the ASF name/brand by Intaglio; action taken by the PRC
- Process clarification on coordinating "Intro to the ASF" talk with Jim and CDC
- Confirmed/established stock response: no purchase policy for reprints
- Reviewed inquiry on false entry at AboutUs
- Confirmed/established stock response: no book review/endorsements
ACTIVITY: Media Relations/Coordination
DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE:
- Elise Ackerman/San Jose Mercury News re: Doug Cutting on Wikia Search
- Joe Barr/Linux.com re: Security Infestation
- Dennis Byron/ebizQ.net re: ASF 2007 Year in Review (article will appear in 15 February newsletter on Open Source); podcast to be scheduled
- Dennis Byron/ebizQ.net re: Sun-MySQL acquisition
- Clint Boulton/eWeek re: Oracle-BEA acquisition
- Followed up on Jim Jagielski podcast with ebizQ.net
- Followed up with PRNewswire to corrected missing content on Synapse release
- Pamela Jones/Groklaw: re: official ASF policy on Sourcesense/Microsoft/POI/OOXML
- Nick Hoover/CMP: re: POI progress
Additional clippings to list previously sent:
http://lwn.net/Articles/267833/
http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/open_source/2008/03/oss_march_7_podcast_talking_wi.php
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve
its purpose through the periodic update of its membership; and
WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose membership
must be approved by Board resolution,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF members be
added as Public Relations Committee members:
Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacretaz@apache.org>
Ross Gardler <rgardler@apache.org>
Special order 7B, Update Public Relations Committee Membership,
was approved by Unanimous Vote.
The PRC has started contacting current sponsors whose sponsorship is up for renewal in a few months. We anticipate all Silver and above sponsors will renew. We are also in final discussions with a new Silver sponsor. We anticipate that this will complete in 1-2 weeks. An "ASF Outreach Committee", an outgrowth of the Summer of Code work done by various ASF people, was discussed, with the decision being made that this was really best suited to be "folded into" the PRC. Hence the resolution to add Bertrand and Ross to the PRC membership. They will be focusing on these issues as well as general PRC topics. J Aaron Farr has started crafting an ASF Trademark & Logo usage policy. Currently its inspiration is the Tomcat policy and the Eclipse policy. Included below is the HALO report for the last month: ACTIVITY: Strategic Planning DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Communications Plan/Announcement Schedule (finalizing dates) - Researching/Updating Editorial Calendar Opportunities ACTIVITY: Content Development DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Revised ASF boilerplate - Reviewed/Edited Press Release: Synapse 1.1 announcement - Edited Press Release: 13 December - Yahoo! Platinum Sponsorship - Drafted Press Release: ASF 2007 Year In Review - Issued Press Release: ASF 2007 Year In Review - Drafted Press Release: ApacheCon Registration Open - Issued Press Release: ApacheCon Registration Open - Reviewing/Updating ASF/Top-level Project/activity positioning - Drafting Copy deck: Website News section/second tier page - Research Archives: ASF-issued press releases post June 1999 - Drafted Press Release: Apache Synapse as TLP/v1.1.1 Available - Issued Press Release: Apache Synapse as a TLP/v1.1.1 Available - Potential: ASF GHOP Grand Prize Winner (did not receive ack on request to pursue) - Potential: Apache Lenya v2.0 (did not receive ack on request to pursue) ACTIVITY: Outreach & Liaison DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Purchased new media lists (will be updated quarterly) - Honing database (ongoing): additional media, influencers, and bloggers - Face-to-Face Meeting with analysts at Forrester and Gartner - Contacting industry analysts (pre-report time)/influencers: RedMonk, Gartner Group, Forrester, The451, ZapThink, O'Reilly, InfoWorld, Elemental Media Coordination: Yahoo!, Mark Logic, Radar Networks, IT Conversations - ASF Sponsor Liaison: HP > onto ApacheCon sponsorship Outreach to Tim Berners-Lee re: clarification on "Apache/W3C relations" - Coordinate with Arje Cahn and Hippo PR team to translate/distribute ApacheCon press release in Dutch - Liaising with Delia Frees re: ApacheCon Business Track panel sponsorship - Response to Markus Stiegler, XDEV Software, re: CeBIT; liaise with Charel Morris - Forwarding contact - Ilan Rabinovitch re: SCALE; liaise with Charel Morris - Forwarding contact Armijn Hemel re: Dutch Java Users Group and Utrecht Linux Users Group; liaise with Charel Morris - Re-pinged Tim Berners-Lee re: clarification on "Apache/W3C relations" (no return ack) - Coordinate ASF logo to Arje Cahn/Hippo PR for ApacheCon press release in Dutch - Met with New Orleans officials re: possible community outreach/voluntourism for ApacheCon US in November - ASF Sponsor Liaison: IONA > reviewing press release + ApacheCon sponsorship PR ACTIVITY: Media Training DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Secured David Waddington for Media/Analyst training at ApacheCon Europe - Secured Michael Cote'/RedMonk as partner for Media Training + cover the ASF's activities during ApacheCon ACTIVITY: Process DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Developing "How to Work with the PRC" (will be part of Intermediate Media Training offered at ApacheCon) - Developing Announcement Guidelines, Tips, and Timeframes - Incorporating process into Intermediate Media/Analyst Training for Amsterdam - Flagged + forwarded 2 instances of process violation of the ASF name/brand by Intaglio; action taken by the PRC - Process clarification on coordinating "Intro to the ASF" talk with Jim and CDC ACTIVITY: Media Relations/Coordination DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Elise Ackerman/San Jose Mercury News re: Doug Cutting on Wikia Search - Joe Barr/Linux.com re: Security Infestation - Dennis Byron/ebizQ.net re: ASF 2007 Year in Review (article will appear in 15 February newsletter on Open Source); podcast to be scheduled - Dennis Byron/ebizQ.net re: Sun-MySQL acquisition - Clint Boulton/eWeek re: Oracle-BEA acquisition - Followed up on Jim Jagielski podcast with ebizQ.net - Followed up with PRNewswire to corrected missing content on Synapse release SELECTED CLIPPINGS: http://lwn.net/Articles/264525/ http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9852945-16.html?tag=head http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS135655+15-Jan-2008+PRN20080115 http://www.thewhir.com/marketwatch/011608_The_ASF_Shares_2007_Milestones.cfm http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-01-16-013-26-OS-CY-SV http://www.linuxelectrons.com/news/roundup/15756/2007-earns-apache-more-feathers-its-cap http://lwn.net/Articles/265182/ http://apache.sys-con.com/read/485557.htm http://www.nabble.com/The-Apache-Software-Foundation-Wraps-Up-2007-As-Its-Strongest-Year-to-Date-td14858613.html http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2039 http://www.covalent.net/about/news/pressreleases.html?pressid=106 [NOTE: not sure if this should be posted as a "Covalent press release"] http://www.openpr.com/news/36000/REGISTRATION-NOW-OPEN-FOR-APACHECON-EUROPE-2008.html http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080123/clw053.html?.v=101 http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS139357+23-Jan-2008+PRN20080123 http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/408827/ http://apache.sys-con.com/read/489398.htm http://ajax.sys-con.com/read/489398.htm http://www.lanmagazine.nl/site/jsp/nieuws.jsp?art_iID=9043 http://usstock.jrj.com.cn/news/2008-01-23/000003218199.html http://howsoftwareisbuilt.com/2008/01/24/interview-with-justin-erenkrantz-president-apache-software-foundation-part-i/ http://www.persberichten.com/persbericht.aspx?id=45978 http://www.ajaxworld.com/read/171022.htm http://www.ebizq.net/hot_topics/open_source/features/8862.html http://www.crn.com/software/206504026 http://www.pronetworks.org/index.php/microsoft-news/2141 http://osofbiz.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS151245+05-Feb-2008+PRN20080205 http://blogs.msdn.com/dotnetinterop/archive/2008/02/06/interesting-microsoft-may-become-platinum-sponsor-of-apache-software-foundation.aspx http://apache.sys-con.com/read/496070.htm http://www.itnews.com.au/News/69265,google-summer-of-code-headed-down-under.aspx http://www.hippo.nl/en/agenda,200/ApacheCon-Europe-2008---Amsterdam-.html http://port25.technet.com/archive/2008/02/26/the-apache-visit-to-microsoft-campus-day-one.aspx http://port25.technet.com/archive/2008/02/28/the-apache-visit-to-microsoft-campus-day-two.aspx http://port25.technet.com/archive/2008/03/03/the-apache-visit-to-the-microsoft-campus-day-three.aspx http://lwn.net/Articles/267833/
Greg requested that the "selected press clippings" be trimmed. Jim agreed to do so for future meetings.
The last month has seen normal PRC activities: handling requests and questions about logos and trademarks, responding to media inquiries, etc. Yoav and J. Aaron have taken the lead on crafting an Acceptable Logo and Trademark Usage document, that we can place on the website and share. On the Sponsorship side we added one new Bronze sponsor (Matt Mullenweg) and are in discussions with a potential Silver Sponsor. It should be noted that renewals for Google, HP, Covalent and Tetsuya Kitahata are coming up quickly (currently expire June 1, 2008). Below is the activity report from HALO: = = = ACTIVITY: Strategic Planning DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Communications Plan/Announcement Schedule (finalizing dates) - Researching/Updating Editorial Calendar Opportunities ACTIVITY: Content Development DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Revised ASF boilerplate - Reviewed/Edited Press Release: Synapse 1.1 announcement - Edited Press Release: 13 December - Yahoo! Platinum Sponsorship - Issued Press Release: ASF 2007 Year In Review - Issued Press Release: ApacheCon Registration Open - Reviewing/Updating ASF/TLP/activity positioning - Drafting Copy deck: Website News section/second tier page - Researching Archives: ASF-issued press releases post June 1999 [awaiting PRNewsire announcements] - Drafted Press Release: Apache Synapse as TLP/v1.1.1 Available ACTIVITY: Outreach & Liaison DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Purchased new media lists (will be updated quarterly) - Honing database (ongoing): additional media, influencers, and bloggers - Face-to-Face Meeting with analysts at Forrester and Gartner - Contacting industry analysts/influencers: RedMonk, Gartner Group, Forrester, The451, ZapThink, O'Reilly, InfoWorld, Elemental - Media Coordination: Yahoo!, Mark Logic, Radar Networks, IT Conversations - ASF Sponsor Liaison: HP > onto ApacheCon sponsorship - Outreach to Tim Berners-Lee re: clarification on "Apache/W3C relations" - Coordinate with Arje Cahn and Hippo PR team to translate/distribute ApacheCon press release in Dutch - Liaising with Delia Frees re: ApacheCon Business Track panel sponsorship - Response to Markus Stiegler, XDEV Software, re: CeBIT; liaise with Charel Morris - Forwarding contact - Ilan Rabinovitch re: SCALE; liaise with Charel Morris - Forwarding contact Armijn Hemel re: Dutch Java Users Group and Utrecht Linux Users Group; liaise with Charel Morris ACTIVITY: Media Training DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Secured Michael Cote/RedMonk as partner for Media Training cover the ASF's activities during ApacheCon [NOTE: may need backup for ApacheCon Europe due to possible scheduling conflict] ACTIVITY: Process DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Developing "How to Work with the PRC" (will be part of Intermediate Media Training offered at ApacheCon) - Developing Announcement Guidelines, Tips, and Timeframes ACTIVITY: Media Relations/Coordination DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Elise Ackerman/San Jose Mercury News re: Doug Cutting on Wikia Search - Joe Barr/Linux.com re: Security Infestation - Dennis Byron/ebizQ.net re: ASF 2007 Year in Review (article will appear in 15 February newsletter on Open Source); podcast to be scheduled - Dennis Byron/ebizQ.net re: Sun-MySQL acquisition - Clint Boulton/eWeek re: Oracle-BEA acquisition SELECTED CLIPPINGS: http://lwn.net/Articles/264525/ http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9852945-16.html?tag=head http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS135655+15-Jan-2008+PRN20080115 http://www.thewhir.com/marketwatch/011608_The_ASF_Shares_2007_Milestones.cfm http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-01-16-013-26-OS-CY-SV http://www.linuxelectrons.com/news/roundup/15756/2007-earns-apache-more-feathers-its-cap http://lwn.net/Articles/265182/ http://apache.sys-con.com/read/485557.htm http://www.nabble.com/The-Apache-Software-Foundation-Wraps-Up-2007-As-Its-Strongest-Year-to-Date-td14858613.html http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2039 http://www.covalent.net/about/news/pressreleases.html?pressid=106 [NOTE: not sure if this should be posted as a "Covalent press release" ...] http://www.openpr.com/news/36000/REGISTRATION-NOW-OPEN-FOR-APACHECON-EUROPE-2008.html http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080123/clw053.html?.v=101 http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS139357+23-Jan-2008+PRN20080123 http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/408827/ http://apache.sys-con.com/read/489398.htm http://ajax.sys-con.com/read/489398.htm http://www.lanmagazine.nl/site/jsp/nieuws.jsp?art_iID=9043 http://usstock.jrj.com.cn/news/2008-01-23/000003218199.html http://www.persberichten.com/persbericht.aspx?id=45978
It was noted that it is time to start reaching out to sponsors for renewal.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
For this month's report, we asked HALO to provide a summary of their efforts over the last month, as well as a summary of the agreement that we have with them (a response from member requests when this contract was announced). The following is the report from HALO: As promised, below is a summary of our activities to date ... keep in mind that things in the PR world tend to shut down for about three weeks during the December/New Year timeframe. I'm offering an additional month of service gratis to the ASF as we had a slow start. Many of the items below are in progress and/or ongoing projects. Items of note include: 1) 2008 Kickoff press release (draft forthcoming) which will be issued no later than 23 January, as well as 2) a slight shift in ApacheCon media relations. I will continue to write the press releases/announcements for the conference (per usual), exclusively on behalf of the ASF. I will manage ASF PR activities at the conference (Media Training included) but will *not* be representing the conference itself, nor its producers. I think this makes the relationship absolutely clear, and that my focus will remain on the ASF's initiatives. ACTIVITY: Project Launch DESCRIPTION: Strategic Plan; Program Timeline, Press Audit; Crafting Messages; Hone Positioning; Writing and Editing Press Pak; Drafting/Editing/Disseminating News Releases; Maintaining Media/Analyst Contacts; Media Relations and Introductory Liaison; and Pursuing Editorial Calendar Opportunities. ACTIVITY: Strategic Planning PROGRAM DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Communications Plan/Announcement Schedule (finalizing dates) - Researching/Updating Editorial Calendar Opportunities ACTIVITY: Content Development PROGRAM DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Revised ASF boilerplate - Reviewed/Edited Press Release: Synapse 1.1 announcement - Edited Press Release: 13 December - Yahoo! Platinum Sponsorship - Drafting Press Release: ASF New Year kickoff - Drafting Press Release: ApacheCon Registration Open* - Reviewing/Updating ASF/Top-level Project/activity positioning - Drafting Copy deck: Website News section/second tier page - Researching Archives: ASF-issued press releases post June 1999 ACTIVITY: Outreach & Liaison PROGRAM DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Purchased new media lists (will be updated quarterly) - Honing database (ongoing): additional media, influencers, and bloggers - Contacting industry analysts (pre-report time)/influencers: RedMonk, Gartner Group, Forrester, The451, ZapThink, O'Reilly, InfoWorld, Elemental Media Coordination: Yahoo!, Mark Logic, Radar Networks, IT Conversations - ASF Sponsor Liaison: HP ACTIVITY: Process PROGRAM DELIVERABLES IN PROGRESS/COMPLETED TO DATE: - Developing "How to Work with the PRC" (will be part of Intermediate Media Training offered at ApacheCon) - Developing Announcement Guidelines, Tips, and Timeframes *NOTE: HALO will be writing all press-related materials for ApacheCon on behalf of the ASF exclusively, and will manage ASF PR activities at the conference, but will *not* be representing the conference itself, nor its producers. All Media and Community Partner outreach will now be the responsibility of Stone Circle Productions.
Some confusion over the report; this was cleared up when it was explained that "project" meant "ASF" in this context.
Additional feedback on the report: it needs a Sally/HALO component. Clarify that branding is a PRC (not HALO) responsibility. Aaron volunteers to help.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
Justin and Jim met with HALO while at ApacheCon to discuss some very preliminary ideas regarding pure marketing and community outreach. A HALO contact was added to the PRC mailing list. The big news is that we have a new Platinum Sponsor, Yahoo!. This was "announced" at ApacheCon during the State Of The Feather, but Y! just released their PR a week ago. There was some discussion regarding re-adding a "hardware section" to our Thanks page, with 2 main categories: Hosting Providers and Equipment Providers. The latter would be a simple plain-text notice. Jason van Zyl requested the approval for the use of the name MavenForge, designed to be a site that provides infrastructure for groups developing Maven-related tools and applications. Both the PRC and the Maven PMC are mulling over if this is a good idea or not. A Terracotta PR was forwarded to the PRC for approval; it had a very tight turnaround time, with the result that 2 semi-conflicting messages were relayed to Terracotta. Nonetheless, they worked with us to incorporate the changes. This is something that we will really need HALO to help with - making our processes and procedures for handling external PR requests (and feedback) clear and defined both internally and externally.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
In the last month we have signed a retainer agreement with HALO Worldwide for PR and Marketing support. They have already jumped in and helped with a few open issues already, including 2 draft PRs. The Bronze sponsorship level had previously been changed to add 'nofollow' to the sponsor's links (Silver and above are not affected). This is just applicable to any new Bronze sponsors.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
This last month saw 2 significant events in PRC land. The first was that we received a proposal from HALO Worldwide for outsourced Marketing and PR support to the ASF via the PRC. The amount of the agreement ($60,000 US for 12 months) is in alignment with what was discussed with the board at previous meetings. The duties associated with the proposal are also inline with our current needs and expectations. Therefore, the PRC has elected to accept this proposal. The PRC is currently in process of informing HALO (main point of contact was offline for a period of time) and coordinating the ramp up. Secondly, we have a second Platinum sponsor: Yahoo! Y! has also been working with Infra regarding additional hardware donations as well. There was some discussion regarding Bronze sponsors actually having followable links on the ASF Thanks! page. It was noted that due to its location on the ASF site, the "value" asssociated with the link was significantly more than the $5,000 US. It was therefore decided that Bronze sponsorship links with have the 'rel="nofollow"' attribute. Current Bronze sponsors are not affected. The PRC is looking into a Fast Feather track at AC US 07 to spread the word about the Sponsorship program.
A question was asked as to whether the dollar amounts associated with the contract should be published. The answer was that they must be.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve
its purpose through the periodic update of its membership; and
WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose
membership must be approved by Board resolution.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF
member be added as Public Relations Committee member:
Ted Husted <husted@apache.org>
Special Order 7D, Update Public Relations Committee Membership, was
approved by Unanimous Vote.
Not too much to report this month. We had 2 ASF PRs go out, one regarding the 2.0 release of Geronimo and the other regarding the renewal of the Open Group Compliance for ApacheDS. J. Aaron is working a draft ASF Logo usage document, using the Eclipse policy as a starting point. Issues regarding the ApacheLounge site was brought to PRC attention from the httpd dev@ lists, where it was observed that they were using the feather logo in an unacceptable way, as well as misuse of the Apache mark. The feather usage was resolved and they are currently reworking the site to address the other issues. We are close to closing the maven.org issue, with final resolution depending on Infra's feedback on the management and oversight of the Maven repository. Jim has been working on obtaining a proposal regarding a retainer relationship with an external marketing/PR organization. More detail will be provided to the board at the meeting if any exists. And finally, as noted in resolution 7D, the PRC has voted Ted Husted for membership within the PRC.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
The last month has seen limited activity. On the plus side, we received notice that Yahoo! has agreed to a Platinum Sponsorship. An invoice was received, signed and returned to Yahoo! for payment. Two Sigma Investments is also a new Bronze sponsor. There was some confusion since the payment, and a note detailing their desire to be a Bronze sponsor, was sent directly to the lockbox. The Sponsorship page has since been updated to make it clear that all Sponsorship donations should be coordinated with the PRC. Kernel Concepts has made the PRC aware that the agreed-to ASF Feather Pin is now available. It looks quite nice. We have also been informed that they have submitted $198.02 (via Paypal) to the ASF in relation to the T-shirt sales. A press release regarding the release of Geronimo 2 was finalized and sent to the wire for release on August 28th. The PRC is discussing how to better document acceptable logo usage. As reported previously, we are looking at the Eclipse guidelines as a starting point for ours. Some of this came about due to Emails on the dev@httpd list and ApacheLounge. We are discussing the potential for a dedicated ASF marketing and PR person attending AC Asia / OS Summit Asia. If agreed to, the PRC will be requesting funds from the ASF to support this effort. It is also possible that some sort of contractual retainer effort will be the better solution. In any case, it is becoming more clear that PR and Marketing, a necessary evil, might be the next area where we need to outsource expertise.
We discussed what it would talk to properly fund this activitity properly (i.e., with staff). Ballpark estimate was $60K/year + expenses (note: > 25% of annual ASF expenditures?) vs. strong support for the need for this function. This statement of support was backed up by numerous requests by sponsors. Should we find this unsatisfactory, we could simply cancel or not renew the contract.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
Status since last board meeting: o The PRC confirmed its approval to KernelConcepts to sell an "Apache Feather Pin" in addition to their current T-shirt offerings. As with the the shirts, the ASF will receive a percentage of any sale revenues. o HP requested a change in the URL link on the sponsors page (from their corporate site to their "open source community" site). The site was updated with the new link. o Looking into releasing ASF PR about new board, officers and Sponsorship Program. Sally has been working this issue and it will likely be a more comprehensive "state of the ASF" PR in addition to the above notices. This makes the PR more news-worthy and time-appropriate. o Jim floated the idea of dropping/destroying the CMO position from the PRC. As of this date, there have been no "vetos" of this idea, even from the current CMO. It is expected that this will be formally requested at next months board meeting (since the office was created by Board Resolution on July 28, 2005).
Jim indicated an intent (over the next few months) to step down.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
Status since last board meeting: o The ASF Sponsorship and Thanks Pages are complete and live. All sponsors have rec'd their official "ASF Sponsor" logos o Axis2/C 1.0.0 Press Release done (PR Newswire) o Synapse 1.0 Press Release done (PR Newswire) o Review of external non-ASF specific PRs (WSO2, Luminus). These are not "joint" PRs in any way, but the people releasing them wanted us to look over the drafts to ensure there was nothing in them that we would have trouble or issues with. o OpenJPA PR in process; a rough draft has been received and preliminary feedback has been provided. o Rec'd emailed questions from Ed Burnette (SAS.com and Zdnet) regarding AL 2.0 and GPLv3 compatibility. Justin handled this request. o Looking into releasing ASF PR about new board, officers and Sponsorship Program.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
The PRC was informed on April 29, 2007 that the maven.org domain
will be "shutting down" over the next month or so. It is expected
that the domain will cease to exist around June 1, 2007. Thus, the
trademark issue regarding the usage of "Maven" will be moot.
The PRC make a request to Infrastructure for a Vhost/redirect
record for 'sponsor.apache.org'. Sponsor logos are ready to
be provided to current sponsors and the Thanks Page is currently
designed but not yet committed.
There are 3 news releases in process: A Covalent PR which the
PRC was asked to review and "approve" and 2 actual ASF releases:
Synapse 1.0.0 release and Axis2/C 1.0.0 release. These are
currently being reviewed by the PRC and Sally.
The PRC (and others) received a request from Information Week
for "photos" and other material (such as code screen shots)
to support an article by Charlie Babcock where he selected
Apache HTTP Server as the "greatest web software ever written."
It was noted on the PRC list that "we" do a terrible job manning
conference booths. It was noted that there are several reasons why
this is the case:
1. The ASF doesn't pay for people to attend these conferences, so when
we do man the booths, it's because we are there anyway. But we are
there anyway because either:
a. Our companies are there, so we have booth time
with that booth
b. We are attending because we want to see presentations;
c. We are attending because we're presenting.
All of these imply limited time to man a booth.
2. We have no marketing collateral.
3. For whatever reason, manning a booth is not deemed a "priority".
Certainly the PRC should help with #2.
Finally, there was a trademark issue that was not handled by the PRC
directly, but under the Tomcat PMC. In summary: Filip Hanik spotted a
site that was vaguely using the Tomcat logo and name. Mark Thomas asked
that site to "change its ways" on behalf of the Tomcat PMC. The site
owner complied quickly and fully.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
Because of some of the training sessions at the AC EU 2007 show being cancelled, Sally and I discussed the possibility of holding a "marketing training" session for ASF committers (members preferred) during one of those "open" slots. There was discussion regarding pricing, whether holding such a session at the venue was an "efficient" use of funding and, finally, how the costs associated with the session would he handled (specifically, if the ASF could directly pay for that). Justin contacted legal and they indicated that they did not see a problem or conflict with this. At the latest it appears that we are currently awaiting an invoice and letter from Delia and Charel that this is independent from our ApacheCon contract and that this money is solely to facilitate committers attending the media training. KernelConcepts has requested, and received approval, to have another shop in Germany resell their (KC's) already-approved T-shirt. KC will also bring their donation status up-to-date. The PRC was kept in-the-loop regarding 2 separate issues: the Open Letter to Sun regarding the JCP (TCK license) and the need for additional ApacheCon EU 2007 sponsors. Also handled were the normal FAQ's regarding logo and trademark usage. No progress on the maven.org trademark issue, as we are waiting to see how the infrastructure discussion pans out.
Approved by General Consent.
6. Committee Reports
Since last month, the Velocity PMC had requested that a PR be released announcing the release of Velocity 1.5. This request made clear that the PRC needs to make it clear that it requires sufficient lead-time in order to review, approve and actually release any PRs. Upon further review of the draft PR, and upon contacting Sally for her feedback, it was agreed that the draft PR was not really a suitable PR. In other words, the intended audience of the PR was not those who normally read PRs. As such, spending funds to release the PR did not seem prudent, and it was not released. Needless to say, this did not go over well with Velocity, which we understand completely. To avoid this in the future, the PRC will be sending Email to all PMCs informing them that (1) All potential PRs will require at least 2 weeks notice and (2) that PRs must be intended and directed to those entities and organizations that read PRs. PR Newswire information was made available to the PRC Chair. A draft PR from Covalent and IBM regarding a code donation was submitted to the PRC for approval. Comments were sent back and will be incorporated into their final PR. The PR did not contain any ASF quotes. We did respond to a couple of "acceptable logo usage" questions, prompting Yoav to suggest that we take the Eclipse policy as a good starting point and craft our own, a suggestion approved by the whole PRC. The draft Forrester Report, being handled by Ted, was sent to the PRC for review, comments and feedback. The PRC membership list in PRC STATUS and committee-info.txt were synced to reflect reality.
Henri asked if the note to PMCs, noted in the report, will explain what kind of people read PRs. Jim noted that it would.
Approved by General Consent.
7. Committee Reports
Since last report, a PRC area under the private foundation repo was created to allow for PRC members to better track (via a STATUS file) ongoing issues within the PMC. As with the list, all ASF members have read access to this directory. A "private" JIRA project is also being created as well. The ASF Sponsorship program has its own page on the ASF site (http://www.apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html). We will likely be requesting that sponsor.apache.org be setup to redirect to that page. The current "Thanks" page is being reworked to become the Sponsor Acknowledge page. Candidate Platinum sponsor logos are being voted on within the PRC. The candidates can be found at: http://people.apache.org/~jim/sponsor-logos/ Once approved, it will serve as the "basis" for the other logos. As far as sponsors, we have, at this writing, 4 sponsors: Google: Platinum HP: Gold Covalent: Silver Tetsuya Kitahata: Bronze We are currently in discussion with other potential sponsors. Ted Leung is working with Michael Goulde, of Forrester Research, on Michael's Open Source report on the ASF with a specific focus on SOA projects and podlings. On January 12, 2007, we received the official request from Maven.org to use the ASF "Maven" mark. Of particular note in this request is the "overlap" between the PRC and Infrastructure on how to best proceed. This is due to the fact that currently Maven.org is hosted at Contegix (via donation) and one potential idea is to fold the Maven.org infrastructure into the ASF. There are still issues to be resolved, since licensing is a major consideration (the AL is not required at Maven.org). The feasibility of whether or not major aspects of Maven.org can be moved to the ASF will determine how this is resolved. A couple of mark violations have been discovered, and the PRC have contacted those entities. We anticipate no problems getting these resolved.
Jim also updated the board on the status of the trademark violation noted by Cliff. The violator has made some requested changes, but continues to use our trade names in a way that may mislead consumers. The PRC is continuing discussions with the violator.
Approved by General Consent.
7. Other Committee Reports
WHEREAS, The Board of Directors deems it to be in the best
interests of the Foundation and consistent with the
Foundation's purpose to establish an ASF Board Committee
charged with handling public relations, managing the Apache
brand and image, performing outreach and announcements, and
raising funds as necessary tasks to sustain the operation of
the Foundation and assist the creation and maintenance of
open-source software for distribution at no charge to the
public.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that an ASF Board Committee, to
be known as the "Public Relations Committee", be and hereby is
reestablished pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be it
further
RESOLVED, that the Public Relations Committee be and hereby is
responsible for organization and oversight of efforts to handle
public relations on behalf of The Apache Software Foundation,
including trademark licensing and other issues regarding
management of the Apache brand and raising of funds, but
excluding the ApacheCon conferences (which shall remain a
responsibility of the Apache Conference Planning Committee);
and be it further
RESOLVED, that Jim Jagielski shall serve at the
direction of the Board of Directors as the chair of the Public
Relations Committee and have primary responsibility for
management of the projects within the scope of responsibility
of the Public Relations Committee; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the persons listed immediately below be and
hereby are appointed to serve as the members of the
Public Relations Committee:
Shane Curcuru
Lars Eilebrecht
Justin Erenkrantz
Jim Jagielski
Alex Karasulu
Geir Magnusson Jr.
Ted Leung
Yoav Shapira
Cliff Skolnick
Susan Wu
Special Order 6A, Reestablishing the Apache Public Relations
Committee, was approved by Unanimous Vote.
Status report for the Public Relations Committee
The PRC is making the transition to the new chair, which
was approved by the board last month. There has been
discussion on the PRC list regarding ways and methods
of better tracking PRC open issues. Potential
methods include:
JIRA:
The issue is that there are some non-ASF
members who have admin view privs on JIRA;
it is generally accepted that the PRC deals
with sensitive issues and at the very most,
ONLY ASF members should have view access.
Whether this can be worked around is being
investigated.
Wiki:
Investigation into ACL viewing capability is
also being done, for similar reasons as
detailed in the JIRA section.
SVN:
A PRC area under the private foundation repo
is likely the leading candidate. All ASF members
will have view access, and whether write access
should be limited to PRC members is being discussed
Mailing List:
Jim proposed separating the singular prc@ list
into 2: one which would deal with "policy"
discussions, etc and the other that would
have traffic focused on open issues and day-to-
day operations. The reason, according to Jim,
was to allow a better avenue for the PRC to
track and follow action items via a list with
a better signal/noise ratio. Heated debate about
this; some people did not like the idea at all,
others were confused about the idea (due to
misleading names for the lists) and others
had no problem with it (as long as they were
open to all ASF members).
Working is progressing on adding the Sponsorship
program to the ASF website, most likely as its own
page and line-item (on the main site). PRC and board
members are relaying to the PRC contact information for
potential sponsors.
New members are expected to be voted in at this months
board meeting; additionally, non-active members are
expected to be removed, but with the gratitude of
the PRC.
IBM had a potential PR for the UIMA podling. After ensuring
that the PR would not be released until the podling had
reached the stage that allowed branding, feedback
was sent to IBM. IBM has postponed the PR.
Ted Leung working with Michael Goulde, of Forrester
Research, on Michael's Open Source report on the ASF
with a specific focus on SOA projects and podlings.
Ongoing Items:
- Logo Policy Guide (Susie)
Susie has a initial draft, which is looking great. This should
help us with a lot of the mundane stuff that PRC handles, waiting for
feedback from people before it progresses
- PRC Toolkit proposal from David Reid. (for handling press releases and
things like that)
Approved by General Consent.
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors heretofore appointed Brian Fitzpatrick as chair, Public Relations Committee, and WHEREAS, the Board of Directors is in receipt of the resignation of Brian Fitzpatrick as chair, Public Relations Committee; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that Brian Fitzpatrick is relieved and discharged from the duties and responsibilities of chair, Public Relations Committee, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Jim Jagielski be and hereby is appointed chair, Public Relations Committee, to serve at the direction of the Board of Directors as the chair of the Public Relations Committee and have primary responsibility for managing the Public Relations Committee. Special Order 6D, Changing the Public Relations Committee Chair, was approved by Unanimous Vote.
Achievements: - Jim presented the ASF sponsorship policy/project @ apachecon. - ASF sponsorship program is now softlaunched, and is being driven by Shane + Jim - Chair Replacement: Jim expected to be assigned as chair - Fresh Blood. We have received several applications from members to join the PRC (see separate email for the list). This should help us get the momentum back. - Several PR announcements from Apachecon. Thanks to Sally K for driving this. - Geronimo PR Handling (Azul) -- Shane - Contacts from Journalists/Analysts.. Thanks again to Sally K + others Still Working on: - choosing how to structure the PRC group moving forward to best achieve its goals (all). It is expected that the board will be re-establishing the PRC as a way to help this process along. - Logo Policy Guide (Susie) Susie has a initial draft, which is looking great. This should help us with a lot of the mundane stuff that PRC handles, waiting for feedback from people before it progresses - Novel Market Start (no one assigned) - PRC Toolkit proposal from David Reid. (for handling press releases and things like that) - Establishment of a repository and JIRA area to help PRC keeping the balls in the air (Thanks David Reid, Jim is following up) - creation of a public-facing website (no one assigned)
Approved by General Consent
6. Special Orders
It was noted that Ian Holsman had sent a draft report to the PRC mailing list, but no one commented on it and no report was submitted.
6. Special Orders
Apache Public Relations Committe Quarterly Board Report, August 2006 Summary -------------- The PRC continues to discuss several issues as detailed below, and we believe we are making progress. There are no issues requiring direct attention from the Board at this time. Sponsorship Program ------------------------------- We have made progress in determining the levels of sponsorship to be made available, identifying some initial sponsors at various levels, and discussing publicity around sponsorship. We hope to make the finalized program, including guidelines for new sponsors and announcement of the first one or two actual sponsors, public by ApacheCon US 2006 later this year. Jim Jagielski is taking ownership of this effort. Jim and Susan will be working on pulling together the needed components of the sponsorship program, based upon a proposal that was sent to the PRC list on July 17th. Documentation ---------------------- We have made progress towards creating and publishing some public relations documentation. We hope to establish a wiki in the near future (possibly two, one for public consumption and one for private debate) where we publish guidelines related to press releases, logo usage, trademarks, working with the PRC, and more. The name space for this is likely to be something like www.apache.org/press, analogous to the dev documentation at www.apache.org/dev. Logo Usage ----------------- We continue to monitor instance of inappropriate Apache logo usage within and outside the Foundation, and correct these situations in a professional way as soon as possible. This quarter we had an interesting case with a custom Jackrabbit logo that is still being resolved. Overall we believe we are dealing with these situations efficiently and professionally, and that we have established a fairly routine process for doing so. As part of our efforts to create more documentation around our work, we will create and publish an official logo guideline policy, in part based off of the earlier guidance we provided to the Geronimo logo contest. We will coordinate our efforts with the Legal Affairs group at the ASF. Trade Shows ----------------- The Foundation officially participated with a booth presence at OSCON. We had a professionally created banner that was donated by Covalent. The booth functioned well as a central meeting point for all of the various ASF attendees at OSCON, and we will look to have a similar presence at other non-ASF conferences and events in the future. Currently, the banner is being stored for us by Covalent, so in the case that we will need to access it in the future, members are encouraged to email Jim Jagielski. Covalent has also agreed to donate funds for the purposes of us developing collateral for distribution at events. We envision developing three pieces of collateral: - a one page flyer relating to "What is the ASF and how you can contribute" - a one page flyer relating to the Incubator: "What is the Incubator and how does it work?" - a one page flyer listing all of our projects and perhaps a one line summary about what each does. Vendor Relations ----------------- We issued a press release to announce the release of Geronimo version 1.1. We have continued to provide guidance to vendors such as Virtuas and IBM about their promotional activities around Geronimo. We are aware of the "Open Source Marketing Group's" effort to create a vendor support group to Geronimo. To date, we have given them the advice that any usage of the word "Geronimo" in their name or URL will not be approved.
Jim noted that the report did not include notice of Fitz's request to step down, even though they are not yet ready to propose a replacement yet.
Approved by General Consent
Despite some vociferous discussions on should speak to press, analysts, and in general "on behalf of the ASF", the PRC has been remarkably subdued lately. We've successfully dealt with some people using the logo without permission (OvernightPrints, Lambda Probe [which was TomcatProbe]). We still need to speak to someone at LogicBlaze regarding publicity on incubated projects (ActiveMQ/ServiceMix) not mentioning incubator. We had a Gartner inquiry on Tomcat, which was dealt with by the Tomcat PMC, and Tomcat references on http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/websphere/ werecorrected (added "Apache") thanks to our IBM ASFers. Lastly, ask.com generously donated two Dell PowerVault SCSI Disk Arrays and also two Dell PowerEdge Servers.
Jim noted that the PRC did not mention OSCON booth which was donated to the ASF and was staffed by ASF members during OSCON.
Approved by General Consent
Despite some vociferous discussions on should speak to press, analysts, and in general "on behalf of the ASF", the PRC has been remarkably subdued lately. We've successfully dealt with some people using the logo without permission (OvernightPrints, Lambda Probe [which was TomcatProbe]). We still need to speak to someone at LogicBlaze regarding publicity on incubated projects (ActiveMQ/ServiceMix) not mentioning incubator. We had a Gartner inquiry on Tomcat, which was dealt with by the Tomcat PMC, and Tomcat references on http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/websphere/ werecorrected (added "Apache") thanks to our IBM ASFers. Lastly, ask.com generously donated two Dell PowerVault SCSI Disk Arrays and also two Dell PowerEdge Servers.
Tabled due to time constraints.
No report.
There was significant press this month around the Kabuki incubation and open source Ajax, in general. We were cited extensively in a report on the launch of a new Open Source Geospatial Foundation that is being modelled after the ASF. We also sent a follow up correction to that particular reporter to modify some misperceptions about how the ASF works. We were featured extensively in the Enterprise Open Source Journal (the link is here: http://www.eosj.com/issues/eosj_06_0102.pdf) - with one article on "What is the Apache Software Foundation" and the other in a Gartner commentary on open source mergers & acquisitions. We are in the process of responding to the Gartner analyst to correct some errors in his report. Other Activities: Cliff Schmidt and Susan are speaking at OSBC this week. We are engaging Halo Worldwide, Sally's PR firm, as our public relations agency. We are in the process of determining how best to engage with and manage the agency. We are in the process of retooling our sponsorship program - we are reviewing logo guidelines, sponsorship tier structure, and creating a list of sponsors who will be grandfathered into the program. Outstanding Issues: PRC@ has ~60 subscribed to the list, but only 5-6 people are regular contributors. We are debating creating a prc-private@ which would be for PRC PMC members only, where we could discuss issues of a sensitive and confidential nature (for example, issues relating to sponsors). Overall ASF Strategy: we continue to have discussions around what our "brand" is and what leadership role the PRC should play in leading this discussion. Overall infrastructure: how best should the PRC interact and work with PMCs for PMC-specific marketing activities? Timeliness and responsiveness: Many general public inquiries have been falling through the cracks and we haven't done a good job of responding in a timely manner. We are debating whether or not to install a bug tracking system so as to prevent these inquiries from falling through the cracks.
Approved by General Consent.
The ASF was given a free booth at JavaOne by IBM/Gluecode. The booth was staffed by ASF members, and collateral was designed, purchased, and distributed. Logo and brand management continue to consume PRC time and resources. We still haven't formulated an official logo usage policy. A Public Relations budget was proposed and rejected before being passed along to the board. A press release from Roguewave regarding their code donation to the incubator (stdcxx) was released with an inaccurate quote from the ASF and after much drama, a retraction was issued by Roguewave. Susan was granted the title "Chief Media Officer" by means of a board resolution over the summer. The PRC has continued to improve its process for doing press releases as well as its process for interacting with the press. Covalent has again indicated a desire to grant an award in the ASF's name, but no action has been taken yet. The PRC continues to be short on resources.
No report received or submitted. Sam to contact Fitz regarding status.
WHEREAS, the Public Relations Committee (PRC) of
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expects to better serve
its purpose through the periodic update of its membership; and
WHEREAS, the PRC is a Board-appointed committee whose
membership must be approved by Board resolution.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the following ASF
members be added as Public Relations Committee members:
Ian Holsman <ianh@apache.org>
Yoav Shapira <yoavs@apache.org>
Special Order 6A, Update Public Relations Committee Membership,
was Approved by Unanimous Consent.
The PRC has seen quite a bit of activity over the last few months. Gluecode/IBM donated booth space to us for JavaOne and it was staffed by ASF volunteers. We printed up folded brochures to hand out as well as some signage for the booth. A "light" version of this booth was setup and staffed at ApacheCon Europe. We still haven't come up with a comprehensive budget, but discussions continue slowly. The Google Adwords Grant ended on 7/25/2005. Our total grant "expenditures" were $13,212.08. This comprised 20,577 click-throughs and 1,045,418 impressions. Apache James was the big ad "winner" with $6,041.60 "spent". Google's Summmer of code program kicked off with Apache mentoring 38 individuals as part of the program. Upon completion, this will result in a $19,000 donation to the ASF (based on $500 per award mentored, whether or not the award was successfully completed). We renewed our license agreement with the "Rodent's Cache" for another year. We licensed the ASF logo for use on KernelConcepts T-shirts at the rate of 1 EUR per shirt sold. We appointed Susie as our Chief Media Officer via board resolution in July. We continue to monitor press releases and work with companies crafting releases around ASF software.
Approved by General Consent.
Cryptocard complied with our informal C&D regarding their use of the feather logo, removing it from their website and print collateral. Logo design and implementation still stalled pending development of logo guidelines. We've improved our response time to standard press requests, and Ted Husted has setup a prototype "online bookstore" with the intention of bringing in affilliate revenue from various booksellers, such as Amazon. We received a Google Grant for use towards Google Adwords advertising. We set this up and informed PMCs about its existence, but most PMCs haven't taken advantage of it. Ben Hyde and Jim Jagielski are talking with O'Reilly Media regarding a possible collaboration between the ASF and O'Reilly. Covalent indicated a desire to grant "scholarships" in the ASF's name, and there's been some discussion about it. In recent weeks, interest in formulating a preliminary budget has reawakened and we've seen some progress on that. The PRC continues to be short on resources as PRC members are generally pretty busy these days.
Apache Public Relations report approved as submitted by general consent.
6. Special Orders
We've worked out a miscommunication with Jinx Hackware and are in the middle of signing a new 2 year contract with them. They sent us a check for $1,000.00 of our profits from selling ASF T-Shirts. As of 22 Feb 2005, our affiliate account balance at Jinx is $335.41. We have received a Google Grant award and are in the process of using the grant to setup one or more AdWords campaigns to garner more recognition for the ASF on Google. We've finally received money from the Car Program LLC for the car that Roy donated. Ken Coar's "Rodent's Cache", a licensee selling ASF merchandise, earned $19.03 in licensing fees for the last quarter of 2004. After a lot of back and forth, the PRC finally submitted a vendor's contract to USC in order to permit them to cut a check in the amount of $2,350.00 to us (donations from their Open Source study). We sent a kindly worded cease and desist letter to Cryptocard on 18 Feb 2005 asking that they stop using the feather by March 1. We haven't heard back from them yet, and the feather remains on their website as of 22 Feb 2005. We continue to be short on resources as PRC members are generally pretty busy these days.
Public Relations Committee report approved as submitted by general consent.
Support Needed: - Hiring additional personnel to help execute fundraising programs. - Financial resources to allow more frequent PRC face-to-face meetings. - Financial resources to contract out for new logo designs - Treasurer follow-up on donateacar.com as we've 'lost' cars that were donated. - Clarification of licensing terms of feather with respect to ConCom ==== We had a productive face-to-face meeting of the PRC at ApacheCon. At the meeting, we felt that the PRC is heavily limited by the fact that we are all volunteers (as no one has the time desired) and amateurs (as no one is really experienced in this area as much as we'd like to be). We discussed the possibility of having more frequent face-to-face PRC meetings, as resources permit. (i.e. a two or three day session where we can hammer out details like a sponsorship and logo policy.) We've received a very nice external donation from Omidyar Network and we've been in coordination with them about what they will post about the donation. PayPal still continues to be our largest source of revenue to date. Our sponsorship program is on hold until we can acquire enough resources to execute the program. We continue to work with PMCs on press opportunities and are using them as a learning experience on how to set our policies. Our current policy is to defer the decision of involvement with a press release to the appropriate PMC and then act as directed by the respective PMCs. We are continuting to investigate branding and logo usage guidelines. Sally Khudairi has forwarded us the W3C publicity guidelines that she helped create. In the coming quarter, we expect to make progress towards the adoption of standard logo policies with an initial investigation towards contracting out to a logo design firm for 'refreshed' logos. (The PRC has decided against running any sort of logo contest and wish to seek professionally designed logos.) We have also had some preliminary discussion with our legal counsel (via legal-internal@) regarding registering the ASF feather as a trademark in the US. At this time, we do not have a formal recommendation to make as we're still collecting information from our legal counsel about what course to take. The PRC has started the process of terminating the Jinx contract as we haven't been receiving any income from this 'partnership' over the last several years. Ken's 'Rodent's Cache' site brought in modest revenue for Q3 and is expected to grow in the about-to-complete Q4. The PRC recommends that our treasurer to follow up with donateacar.com (as apparently we have 'lost' cars that we know were donated to us) or switch the authorized contact to be prc@ so that we can follow up on this. We've signed up with Booksense (and perhaps Amazon?) for book affiliates deals and expect to start posting pages in this next quarter. The PRC has also agreed that the ConCom should be licensed by the PRC to use our feather in respect to conference promotional material, but they have no other rights to sub-licensing the feather without explicit PRC approval. We'll note that Security Travel took it upon themselves to authorize use of our feather to third parties without ASF approval. This has caused us a number of issues in dealing with companies that are using our marks (in non-ApacheCon venues) without approval as Security Travel approved their usage. So, the companies were acting in good faith, but Security Travel was not authorized to do so.
Public Relations Committee report approved as submitted by general consent.
----------------------------------------- Attachment J: Status report for the Apache XML Graphics Committee --- General Comments -- This is our first status report as new TLP. So far, we have the TLP creation form sent to the infrastructure people and have started to prepare a website for the XML Graphics project which will go live as soon as we have the necessary infrastructure. On top of the todo list is also the project charter. --- PMC arrivals, departures --- No changes. Initial PMC list is still valid. --- Issues needing attention --- * Is it ok if we report at the same schedule as the XML project? (Feb, May, Aug, Nov) --- Batik --- No releases. More license header changes. Submitted a build of Batik for testing against SVG 1.2 Some rearchitecting underway to support SVG 1.1 & 1.2 --- FOP --- No releases, but steady progress. New committer: Luca Furini
No report was submitted.
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it to be in the best interests of the Foundation and consistent with the Foundation's purpose to establish the office of "Vice President, Public Relations;" and be it further RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Public Relations" be and hereby is created, the person holding such office to serve at the direction of the Board of Directors as the chair of the Apache Public Relations Committee, and to have primary responsibility for management of public relations, press, and fundraising activites within the scope of responsibility of the Public Relations Committee; and be it further RESOLVED, that Brian W. Fitzpatrick be and hereby is appointed to the office of Vice President, Public Relations, to serve in accordance with and subject to the direction of the Board of Directors and the Bylaws of the Foundation until death, resignation, retirement, removal or disqualification, or until a successor is appointed. RESOLUTION 5E, Appoint Brian W. Fitzpatrick as a Vice President of the PRC, was APPROVED by Unanimous Vote.
Special Order 5 C, Appointment of Brian Fitzpatrick as a Vice President, was tabled. There was discussion on what value or additional power this granted to Brian over what he currently has.
The PRC has been very active since its inception in June, with most of the efforts going towards determining what the exact mission of the PRC will be. Beyond that, our goal is to document a set of processes for dealing with press and fundraising inquiries. There have been a number of discussions concerning possible avenues and goals for fundraising and PR, including: Hiring an Executive Director, forming an ASF Sponsorship program, and other fundraising and budget opportunities. The acceptance of Derby into the Incubator provided the PRC with a prime opportunity to learn the pros and cons of working with an external entity under non-disclosure. The PRC is currently discussing how to better handle these cases in the future. Lastly, in the last two weeks, numerous members have joined the PRC mailing list in the hopes of observing and (hopefully) assisting.
Approved by General Consent.
WHEREAS, The Board of Directors deems it to be in the best
interests of the Foundation and consistent with the
Foundation's purpose to establish an ASF Board Committee
charged with handling public relations, managing the Apache
brand and image, performing outreach and announcements, and
raising funds as necessary tasks to sustain the operation of
the Foundation and assist the creation and maintenance of
open-source software for distribution at no charge to the
public.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that an ASF Board Committee, to
be known as the "Public Relations Committee", be and hereby is
established pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be it
further
RESOLVED, that the Public Relations Committee be and hereby is
responsible for organization and oversight of efforts to handle
public relations on behalf of The Apache Software Foundation,
including trademark licensing and other issues regarding
management of the Apache brand and raising of funds, but
excluding the ApacheCon conferences (which shall remain a
responsibility of the Apache Conference Planning Committee);
and be it further
RESOLVED, that Brian W. Fitzpatrick shall serve at the
direction of the Board of Directors as the chair of the Public
Relations Committee and have primary responsibility for
management of the projects within the scope of responsibility
of the Public Relations Committee; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the persons listed immediately below be and
hereby are appointed to serve as the initial members of the
Public Relations Committee:
Aaron Bannert
Brian Behlendorf
Shane Curcuru
Lars Eilebrecht
Justin Erenkrantz
Brian W. Fitzpatrick
Geir Magnusson Jr.
Steven Noels
Cliff Skolnick
Greg Stein
Susan Wu
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Apache
Fund-Raising Committee is hereby terminated.
Greg noted that this is the same resolution as last time, for the
most part. Brian and Dirk noted that they still had reservations
but willing to move forward and help. (Geir had indicated same in his
commit message when adding to PRC).
By unanimous vote, the PRC was approved.
WHEREAS, The Board of Directors deems it to be in the best
interests of the Foundation and consistent with the
Foundation's purpose to establish an ASF Board Committee
charged with handling public relations, managing the Apache
brand and image, performing outreach and announcements, and
raising funds as necessary tasks to sustain the operation of
the Foundation and assist the creation and maintenance of
open-source software for distribution at no charge to the
public.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that an ASF Board Committee, to
be known as the "Public Relations Committee", be and hereby is
established pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be it
further
RESOLVED, that the Public Relations Committee be and hereby is
responsible for organization and oversight of efforts to handle
public relations on behalf of The Apache Software Foundation,
including trademark licensing and other issues regarding
management of the Apache brand and raising of funds, but
excluding the ApacheCon conferences (which shall remain a
responsibility of the Apache Conference Planning Committee);
and be it further
RESOLVED, that the Brian W. Fitzpatrick shall serve at the
direction of the Board of Directors as the chair of the Public
Relations Committee and have primary responsibility for
management of the projects within the scope of responsibility
of the Public Relations Committee; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the persons listed immediately below be and
hereby are appointed to serve as the initial members of the
Public Relations Committee:
Ken Coar
Shane Curcuru
Justin Erenkrantz
Lars Eilebrecht
Brian Fitzpatrick
Jim Jagielski
Geir Magnusson Jr.
Greg Stein
Susan Wu
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Apache
Fund-Raising Committee is hereby terminated.
This resolution created a lot of discussion. The main issue was
whether it was appropriate for the 2 efforts of PR and Fundraising
to be linked and performed by a single entity. At issue was not
so much the oversight or potential conflict of interests but
rather on the appearance to the community. The vote on this
resolution was tabled pending further discussion on the
mailing lists.