This was extracted (@ 2024-04-17 21:10) 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).
In February, the secretary received 50 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, 4 software grants, and one membership emeritus request.
In January, the secretary received 77 ICLAs and two software grants. At the end of December and beginning of January, we worked with the Whimsy PMC to recreate our Whimsy server to address a security vulnerability.
In December, we received 36 ICLAs, 5 CCLAs, and 8 software grants. At the end of December, a security issue was reported to the Whimsy PMC where the Whimsy server was taken offline and patched before bringing up a new server instance. A big thanks to the Whimsy PMC members who addressed this issue!
In November, the secretary received 77 ICLAs and one CCLA.
In October, the secretary received 46 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, and 2 software grants.
In September, the secretary received 40 ICLAs, one CCLA, and one CoI affirmation.
In July, the secretary team received 49 ICLAs, 2 CCLAs, 1 software grant, and 3 CoI affirmations. In August, the secretary team received 59 ICLAs, 1 CCLA, and 4 CoI affirmations. The secretary would like to clarify that when individuals file an ICLA, they may use a pen name as their public name if desired. Pen names are subject to secretarial discretion; we will not accept offensive names, impersonations, or names that cannot be written or pronounced. The secretary will confirm with individuals filing under a pen name that it is indeed their intention to do so as most times when we receive ICLAs with what appear to be a pen name, this was done by accident by confusing the public name field with a username field.
No report was submitted.
In June, the secretary office filed 47 ICLAs, 1 software grants, and 19 CoI affirmations. We are still waiting for some CoI affirmations for this board term.
In May, the secretary received 39 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, and 1 CoI affirmation.
In April, the secretary received 34 ICLAs, 1 software grant, and 2 membership applications.
In March, the secretary received 53 ICLAs, 4 CCLAs, 44 membership applications, and 1 membership emeritus request.
In February, the secretary received 55 ICLAs and 3 membership emeritus requests.
During January, the secretary team received 81 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, and one membership emeritus request.
In January, the secretary received 51 ICLAs and 2 CCLAs. We're working with Infra and Whimsy to update our use of LDAP with their updated authentication requirements.
In November, the secretary received 76 ICLAs, one CCLA, and two software grants. Secretary has been working with Infra to define a policy around how to handle multi-factor authentication resets. The pilot MFA program has been halted pending a more thorough policy and implementation.
In October, the secretary team received 76 ICLAs, 7 CCLAs, 2 software grants, and 1 membership emeritus request. The team is working with Infrastructure on a policy around how to handle 2FA resets.
In August, the team received 46 ICLAs, 2 CCLAs, one software grant, and one membership emeritus request. In September, we received 77 ICLAs and 3 CCLAs.
No report was submitted.
In June, the secretary team received 39 ICLAs, 1 CCLA, and 3 software grants. Ongoing discussions with the Infra team around how to handle MFA resets.
In June, the secretary received 62 ICLAs and 2 membership emeritus requests.
In March, the secretary received 71 ICLAs, 2 CCLAs, 1 software grant, 51 membership applications, 19 CoI affirmations, and 6 membership emeritus requests. In April, the secretary received 55 ICLAs, 2 software grants, 1 membership application, 2 CoI affirmations, and 52 membership emeritus requests. The jump in membership emeritus requests is due to the upcoming second members meeting in June to address quorum issues from inactive members. In May, the secretary received 71 ICLAs, 2 CCLAs, 1 software grant, 6 CoI affirmations, and 19 membership emeritus requests. These emeritus requests are related to the upcoming members meeting in June. A glitch in publishing the monthly board meeting minutes was fixed, and missing minutes have all been added to our site. Secretary minutes were missing in the April and May board reports which are included in this month's board report instead.
No report was submitted.
No report was submitted.
In February, the secretary received 44 ICLAs and 1 CCLA.
In January, the secretary received 43 ICLAs and 2 CCLAs.
In December, the secretary received 73 ICLAs, 4 CCLAs, and 2 software grants.
In November, the secretary received 60 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, and 1 software grant.
In October, the secretary team received 32 ICLAs and 1 software grant.
In September, the secretary received 50 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, and 4 software grants. Secretary is working with VP, Data Privacy, to ensure an updated process for membership withdrawal requests is consistent with our privacy policies.
In August, the secretary team received 46 ICLAs, 2 CCLAs, and 2 software grants.
In July, the secretary received 58 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, and 3 software grants. We made a minor update to the ICLA form.
In June 2021, the secretary team received and filed 34 ICLAs, 2 software grants, and 2 CoI affirmations. Continued work on updating the ICLA form for better record keeping.
In May, the secretary received 107 ICLAs, 6 CCLAs, and 1 software grant. The team is working on improving our handling of personally identifying information and the instructions for people to file forms without inadvertently disclosing PII. Some mismatched data between LDAP versus iclas.txt is being worked out as well.
In April, the secretary received 53 ICLAs, 2 CCLAs, 4 software grants, 5 membership applications, and 15 CoI affirmations. We made a small adjustment to our ICLA form to specify an optional GitHub id for help with communities who tend to refer to each other by those usernames in vote threads.
In March, the secretary received 69 ICLAs, 2 software grants, 36 membership applications, and 10 CoI affirmations.
In February, the secretary received 56 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, and 3 software grants. We continue working with VP, Privacy, to plan out privacy policies related to document handling.
In January, the secretary received 50 ICLAs and one CCLA.
In December, the secretary team filed 48 ICLAs and four software grants.
In November, the secretary received 101 ICLAs, 10 software grants, and 2 CoI affirmations. The secretary team is currently working with VP, Data Privacy, to revise policy related to access controls over ICLAs and other PII.
In October, the secretary received 49 ICLAs, 4 CCLAs, 2 software grants, and 1 CoI affirmation.
In September, the secretary received 53 ICLAs, 2 CCLAs, and 2 CoI affirmations.
In August 2020, the secretary received 40 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, 3 software grants, and 2 CoI affirmations. We have a small number of outstanding conflict of interest forms remaining to collect for 2020.
In July 2020, the secretary received 43 ICLAs, 8 CCLAs, 5 software grants, and 18 CoI affirmations. The secretary would like to thank Craig Russell and the Whimsy PMC for making the CoI affirmation process super easy and efficient.
In June, the secretary received 61 ICLAs, 6 CCLAs, and 2 CoI affirmations. We added a conflict of interest affirmation form which was initially tested by the secretary team. We expect to receive most of the remaining CoI affirmations next month.
In the month of May, the secretary received 59 ICLAs, one software grant, and two membership emeritus requests. We have begun work on the conflict of interest policy and tooling around it over at the Whimsy project.
In April 2020, the secretary received 51 ICLAs, 1 CCLAs, 34 membership applications, and 9 membership emeritus requests. During April, the secretary worked with the Whimsy PMC to develop a feature in the secretary workbench for processing membership emeritus requests. This has helped during the yearly members meeting where an increase in paperwork typically happens. Future enhancements to Whimsy as well as experiments with using DocuSign along with self-serve forms for certain scenarios are all being executed on in one form or another to further modernize some of the secretary processes.
In March 2020, the secretary received 40 ICLAs and 3 CCLAs.
In February, the secretary received 74 ICLAs, 2 CCLAs, 4 SGAs, and 3 emeritus requests. Note that these emeritus requests are from the past three months are were not all sent in February; they were officially filed in February.
In January, the secretary received 67 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, and 4 software grants.
In the month of December, the secretary received 70 ICLAs, 1 CCLA, and two software grants.
In November, the Secretary received 50 ICLAs, two CCLAs, and two software grants.
In October, we received 64 ICLAs, 5 CCLAs, and 6 software grants.
In the month of September, the Secretary received 67 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, and 8 software grants. Beginning in October, the Secretary will be hosting the monthly board meeting via Zoom. The board agenda was updated to reflect the new dial in info.
In the month of August, we received 75 ICLAs, two CCLAs, one software grant. GPG key verification using the recent Whimsy updates continues to work rather reliably.
In July, there were 68 ICLAs, two CCLAs, five software grants, and one member emeritus request received. The tooling issue around GPG signature verification has since been fixed by the Whimsy PMC. Documentation on apache.org around submitting digitally signed documents was updated to reflect our current accepted methods and in particular, it points to sks-keyservers.net instead of keyservers we had previous problems with.
In June, we received 45 ICLAs, four CCLAs, three software grants, and one emeritus request. Just before the end of the month, there was a DDoS vulnerability announced for PGP key servers and clients. We mitigated this by temporarily switching to a more secure keyserver instance for verifying keys in the Secretary Workbench that limits the signature data returned on keys to mitigate this problem. This has caused some interruptions to key verification on documents received by the Secretary, though work is ongoing to fully return the service to full reliability once we can upgrade to the latest release of GnuPG which has its own mitigations in place for any keyserver and not just keys.openpgp.org. We have been working closely with the Whimsy PMC and Infra to continue improving the tooling in this area.
In May, there were 75 ICLAs, 5 CCLAs, and 6 grants were filed.
This is the first month that Matt has been Secretary while Craig has continued knowledge transfer and guidance on the position. The office of Secretary continues to run well with continued improvements in Whimsy tooling. In April, 77 ICLAs, two CCLAs, two software grants, three emeritus requests, and ten membership applications were filed.
In March, a system reconfiguration of the whimsy vm resulted in a several-day delay in acknowledging receipt of documents. The public key repository hosted at MIT that is used by secretary workbench has become unreliable and the technical solutions attempted to date are not adequate to the task. We will need to investigate hosting our own public key repository if the situation continues. As of today, all but one membership invitations from the March 2019 members meeting have been accepted. In March, 55 ICLAs, one grant, 23 membership applications, and two emeritus requests were received and filed.
Internal procedures were updated for emeritus members who wish to be reinstated. External documentation of the process is pending. Several discrepancies in the records have been fixed (missing and duplicate ICLAs). In February, 56 ICLAs, three CCLAs, and one grant were received and filed.
Processing of submitted documents with digital signatures was deteriorating due to dependence on an oft-overloaded public key repository. After this issue was reported, the Whimsy team stepped up and within a few days, Sebb had committed a change that significantly improved the reliability of the tool. In January, 54 ICLAs, four CCLA, and four grants were received and filed.
The office of Secretary is running well. The Secretary represented The ASF at the Flink Forward conference in Beijing, China in December and delivered the keynote speech. In December, 69 ICLAs, one CCLA, and three grants were received and filed.
In November, 101 ICLAs and three grants were received and filed.
The office of Secretary is operating well with plenty of support from whimsy and the Assistant Secretary. In October, 62 ICLAs, two CCLAs, and four grants were received and filed.
In September, 62 ICLAs, three CCLAs, and one emeritus request were received and filed.
The office of Secretary is running smoothly. In August, 73 ICLAs, five CCLAs, and one grant were received and filed.
After discussions with infra and legal, changes have been made to the release distribution policy to remove SHA-1 and replace it with SHA-512 or SHA-256 for new releases. In July, 47 ICLAs, four CCLAs, and three grants were received and filed.
In June, 60 ICLAs, two CCLAs, and two grants were received and filed.
In May, 54 ICLAs, four CCLAs, and two grants were received and filed.
The secretary office continues to run smoothly with active help from the Assistant Secretary. In April 52 ICLAs, three CCLAs, five member applications, and two grants were received and filed.
In March, 62 ICLAs, five CCLAs, 39 member applications, two proxies, two emeritus requests, and four grants were received and filed.
Matt Sicker has volunteered to help secretary, and has already been responsible for filing two dozen incoming documents. Please see Discussion item 8B to discuss appointing Matt to Assistant Secretary. In February 73 ICLAS, three CCLAs, and two grants were received and filed.
Progress on the new discuss/vote/invite/file tool continues. In January 64 ICLAS, two CCLAs, and one grant were received and filed.
Work continues on the new whimsy application for inviting contributors to file an ICLA. For a demo please visit whimsy.apache.org/project/icla In December 170 ICLAs, four CCLAs, and three grants were received and filed.
The project to invite submission of ICLAs has expanded in scope to now include the discuss and vote phases of invitation to submit an ICLA. In November, 52 iclas, four cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
Work is continuing on a streamlined approach to inviting new contributors, committers, and project management committee members to submit ICLAs. For a demo, please visit whimsy.apache.org/project/icla The day-to-day workload on secretary remains well within bounds. In October, 86 iclas, three cclas, and one grant were received and filed.
In September, 71 iclas, two cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
To help resolve questions about IP Clearance I updated the Licenses page to include discussion about Provenance and the requirements on projects and incubator podlings for IP Clearance. This should help projects clarify when a separate IP Clearance process is needed. In August, 77 iclas, five cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
I am looking to improve the IP Clearance process documentation which has raised a few questions recently. In July, 84 iclas and one grant were received and filed.
In June 88 iclas, six cclas, and three grants were received and filed.
Secretary has completed the process of identifying committers with no ICLA on file and requesting infra to disable these accounts. In May, 67 iclas, five cclas, and one grant were received and filed. One member requested to transition to Emeritus status.
Based on whimsy tooling, Secretary has begun to annotate accounts where the ICLA has gone missing and requesting infra to disable the accounts. If and when a replacement ICLA is filed, the account will be enabled. Secretary updated the Apache logo on the ICLA form with the new logo. Additionally, the options to fax or send physical mail have been removed from the form. These options are part of history but no longer have relevance. Secretary updated the CCLA form to remove fax and physical mail options, and to create a pdf form. The pdf form should be easier for the licensor to use than the txt document and easier for secretary to process. In April, 48 iclas, two cclas, and 64 membership applications were received and filed.
When the membership applications started to come in following the election of new members in March, we realized that the tooling was not in place to handle them. But thanks to heroic efforts on the part of Sam Ruby, the necessary tooling was put into place to handle the deluge of applications. Based on Whimsy tooling, there are a number of committers where the icla has gone missing. After discussion with infra, we have decided that accounts for committers without an icla on file will be disabled until such time as a new icla is submitted. The accounts will then be reinstated. In March, 81 iclas, one ccla, and one grant were received and filed.
Secretary continues to run smoothly thanks to excellent Whimsy tooling. In February, 94 ICLAs, one CCLA, and two grants were received and filed.
Secretary continues to run smoothly. In January, 81 iclas, four cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
December was an average month of document filing for Secretary. In December, 77 iclas, two cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
Secretary continues to run smoothly. In November, 68 iclas, 4 cclas, and 9 grants were received and filed.
The new Whimsy Secretary Mail tool is working well even in light of the record number of documents received in a single month. In October, 137 iclas, 10 cclas, and one grant were received and filed.
This month, Secretary transitioned from using Whimsy Secretary Workbench to Whimsy Secretary Mail. There were no significant changes to workflow and documents have been filed timely. In September, 72 iclas, three cclas, and five grants were received and filed.
Work continues on cleaning up the records to make sure that all committers have ICLAs on file and that records match. Work continues under the auspices of the Whimsy project on the new tool to process incoming documents. In August, 72 iclas, four cclas, and one grant were received and filed.
In July, 66 iclas, two cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
In June, 109 iclas, five cclas, and two grants were received and filed. I’d like to remind all PMC chairs that to help secretary help you to file requests for new committer ids, votes should be summarized with a [RESULT] [VOTE] message.
In May, 71 iclas, four cclas, and three grants were received and filed.
The project to replace missing ICLAs is progressing. No additional responses to the request to file replacement ICLAs for existing committers have been received. We are now working on tooling to make it easier to revoke credentials for committers without proper ICLAs. In April, 69 iclas, three cclas, five grants, and 13 membership applications were received and filed.
The project to replace missing ICLAs is progressing. 27 entries in iclas.txt with no active account and no ICLA on file were removed. There were two responses to the request to file replacement ICLAs for existing committers, included in the numbers below. In March, 84 iclas, five cclas, 4 grants, and 40 membership applications were received and filed. As of April 20, all invited members from the March member meeting have been accepted as new members.
The project to replace missing ICLAs is coming to an end. There are now 66 entries in iclas.txt with no ICLA recorded. Half of these have no valid forwarding address on file. The next step is for Secretary to remove LDAP entries for the committers with no ICLA; and remove notinavail entries with no iclas on file. It will be straightforward to reinstate privileges for committers who subsequently file ICLAs. In February, 90 iclas, two cclas, and one grant were received and filed. Two of these were in response to my request to file a missing ICLA.
Continuing the process of making sure that all committers have ICLAs on file, the number of discrepancies in the records is dropping but many still remain. Of the 64 requests sent out to the email address on file, 34 were undeliverable. Seven committers submitted new or found ICLAs (included in the totals below). We have begun the process of removing access for accounts that have no ICLA on file. In January, 91 iclas, three cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
A second round of requests for committers whose ICLA has gone missing has been sent out. This is based on recent whimsy tooling. In December, 87 iclas, five cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
The tool to detect discrepancies in the contributor license agreements has been useful to help ameliorate the problem. Notices were sent to all people whose ICLA was unaccounted for. Thirteen of the missing ICLAs have been resubmitted. In November, 69 iclas, seven cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
A number of discrepancies (around 100) have been found in the contributor license records of the foundation, thanks to some new tooling in the whimsy project. These discrepancies are being addressed. Cases of non-committers without iclas on file will be contacted to request new iclas, and if not received, the records will be removed. Cases of committers without iclas on file will be contacted to request new iclas, and if not received their accounts will be disabled. In October, 105 iclas, four cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
Most of the cleanup of icla.txt public names versus ldap full names has been completed. There is more work to do to clean up all of the missing/unsigned iclas. In September, 91 iclas, five cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
Thanks to some new tooling in Whimsy created by Sam, Secretary is reviewing and synchronizing icla.txt Public Names and LDAP Full Names. Most of the several dozen mismatches have been resolved. Once the remaining issues are taken care of, we will work on a process for people to request a change in their Public Name and LDAP Full Name. During the process of synchronizing these names, a number of anomalies in the records were discovered, such as missing ICLAs, non-standard file names for signatures, and wrong names in iclas.txt. Sebb has contributed a number of improvements in this area. Others are also being worked on. In August, 84 iclas, five cclas, and four grants were received and filed.
July was another reasonably busy month, with two documents per day to record. In July, 62 iclas, five cclas, and two grants were received and filed. Still no progress on filing ICLAs via email/web. Secretary will make more of an effort to get this back on track.
Secretary continues to be busy, although not at the earlier pace. In June, 66 iclas, five cclas, and three grants were received and filed. A few PMCs have inquired about the Web ICLA process. They have requested to prioritize this activity.
May was a busy month for secretary. In May 140 iclas, four cclas, and four grants were received and filed.
Secretary is running a bit behind at the moment with some issues with the board agenda tool. Many documents have been received in April: 66 iclas, two cclas, 12 grants, and 32 membership applications were received and filed. The prototype automated icla-by-mail has received several comments and secretary hopes to resolve issues with VP Legal to move this process forward. The Assistant Secretary has resigned and Secretary is looking for a replacement.
Secretary is running smoothly, with the Assistant Secretary picking up much of the workload. In March, a new record was set for activity, with 92 iclas, five cclas, 74 membership applications, four emeritus requests, and three grants received and filed.
The work of secretary continues apace. All proxies for the March members' meeting received as of March 18 have been filed. A total of 20 proxies are now filed. In February, 66 iclas, seven cclas, and three grants were received and filed.
Secretary continues to operate smoothly. In January, 65 iclas, three cclas, and five grants were received and filed.
Secretary is running well. An issue with submissions of modified license agreements was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, with no changes to license agreements necessary. In December, 57 iclas, eight cclas, and one nda were received and filed.
The errors in the computer program that prepares incoming documents for processing by the secretary continued to impact timely receipt and acknowledgement of documents. The problem appears to have been resolved. In November, 85 iclas, 11 cclas, and four grants were received and acknowledged.
A malfunction in the computer program that prepares incoming documents for processing by the secretary has contributed to delays in handling ICLAs, CCLAs, and grants. Apologies to everyone whose documents have been delayed. The problem may have been resolved. Secretary is working through the backlog of approximately 55 documents. In October, 60 iclas, one ccla, and two grants were received and processed.
The office of secretary is running smoothly. In September 53 iclas, six cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
Secretary is running well. During the dog days of August, 97 iclas, four cclas, and two grants were received and filed. There still is some confusion regarding under what circumstances a CCLA is required.
July was a busy month for secretary. 58 iclas, five cclas, and three grants were received and filed.
Secretary is running well with no issues. In June, 73 iclas, 6 cclas, 25 member applications, and three grants were received and filed.
The office of secretary continues to run well. A couple of cases of missed documents were related to tooling issues and the mail server outage but were resolved once the issues were brought up. Tooling for the secretary continues to improve, making the tasks of secretary possible with minimum effort. Many thanks to Sam Ruby for continuing to make significant changes to these tools. A new workflow for member emeritus status was proposed and implemented. In May, 59 iclas, 14 member applications, and two grants were received and filed.
Secretary is running well and the volume of documents has picked up. In April, 77 iclas, two cclas, and two grants were received and filed.
The office of secretary continues to run smoothly. March was another slow month for documents. 45 iclas, five cclas, and one grant were received and filed.
February was a short and relatively light month for incoming documents. 42 iclas, two cclas, and four grants were received and filed.
January was an average month after the December doldrums. There were 60 iclas and three cclas received and filed. The board subscription list received some overdue maintenance. LDAP subscriptions to pmc-chairs have been synchronized with PMC chairs in committee-info.txt. All but three PMC chairs are subscribed to board.
December was a relatively light month for secretary, with 46 iclas, six cclas, and two grants received and filed.
November was a modest month by recent standards. There were 44 iclas, two cclas, one nda, and three grants received and filed. I'd like to thank sebb for noticing and bringing to the attention of PMC chairs that many PMC membership changes have not been properly handled with regard to notice to the board and updating committee-info.txt.
October was another busy month for Secretary. There were 76 iclas, nine cclas, and four grants received and filed.
The office of secretary is running well. September was a relatively light month with 47 iclas, three cclas, one grant, and one trademark assignment received and filed.
August was another busy month with over 80 documents received: 72 iclas, nine cclas, and three grants were received and filed. A small number of documents, six percent or so, need special handling: non-standard form, duplicate of a previous document, missing digital signature, illegible name or email, etc. These issues are usually resolved within a few days.
Secretary continues to run without issues. July was a busy month, with 69 iclas and three cclas received and filed. Most documents are filed within a day or two of receipt.
Secretary continues to run smoothly. Our newly-appointed Assistant Secretary James Carman has assumed responsibility for filing incoming documents. June was a busy month, with 92 iclas, 2 cclas, 7 member applications, and four grants received and filed.
The office of secretary is running well with no major issues. May was a banner month, with 59 iclas, six cclas, four grants, one nda, and 30 membership applications received and filed.
The office of secretary is running smoothly. In April, 53 iclas, two cclas, one grant, and two ndas were received and filed. Thanks to Sam for filling in for this board meeting.
March was a busy month for document recording, with 69 ICLAs, four CCLAs, and four grants received and filed. There are still people who believe that they can write additional terms on Schedule A or Schedule B of CCLAs and these need special handling.
The office of secretary is running smoothly. Last month was an average month for incoming documents, with 48 ICLAs, three CCLAs, one grant, and one NDA received and filed.
Modulo a few hiccoughs due to changing the format of podling email lists, secretary is running smoothly. January was an average month for document filing. 54 iclas, five cclas, three ndas, and one grant were received and filed. James Carman continues to assist in the operation of the office of the secretary.
December was a slow month for document filing, with 36 ICLAs, one CCLA, and three grants received and filed. The secretary tools continue to make light work of the load. Secretary took a week off and James Carman filled in to file documents and Sam Ruby to take minutes at the board meeting. Thanks to both substitutes.
Document filing at Apache continues apace. In November 47 ICLAs, four CCLAs, and five SGAs were received and filed. During processing of incoming ICLAs, five account requests were made. A few companies requested changes to the standard contract and their requests were declined. During my vacation later this month, James Carman, a volunteer secretary-assistant-in-training has volunteered to fill in for me. Comment: Good job in recruiting another volunteer!
October was an average month for document filing. 51 ICLAs, four CCLAs, and three grants were received and filed. There were a few cases where the automated document receiving script failed to properly identify an email and these had to be handled manually. But largely, the tools are working well. I've had some renewed interest from volunteer secretary assistants. Hopefully this interest will translate into additional folks being able to assist in the operation of the foundation.
September was another uneventful month for secretary@. 56 ICLAs, four grants, and one CCLA were received and filed. As part of the process, 11 account requests were filed.
August, a traditionally slow vacation month, saw substantial activity at secretary@. 82 ICLAs, five grants, and six CCLAs were received and recorded. As part of the filing process 14 new account requests were made.
In July, 53 ICLAs, three CCLAs, and three grants were received and filed. During processing of ICLAs, 20 new account requests were made.
June was a relatively light month for Secretary. 42 ICLAs, seven CCLAs, two grants, and seven membership applications were received and filed. During processing of ICLAs, ten requests were made for new accounts.
May 2012 was a busy month with recording all of the new members. Secretary received and filed 76 ICLAs, three CCLAs, one grant, and 40 membership applications. During processing, 15 new account requests were made.
April was a normal month for secretary, with 58 ICLAs, one NDA, four CCLAS, and one grant filed. Eight account requests were made during the processing of incoming ICLAs.
March was a relatively light month for secretary. 37 ICLAs and one grant were received and filed. Six accounts were requested at the time of filing the ICLAs.
February was a busy month in secretary land. 60 ICLAs, three CCLAs, and three grants were received and recorded. If there is enough information regarding a new committer, in either the ICLA form itself, or in the email to which the ICLA is attached, then the new account request will be created upon filing of the ICLA. In February, six accounts were requested to be created as part of the ICLA filing process.
January was business as usual at secretary@, with 85 ICLAs, four CCLAs, one grant, and one updated CCLA schedule A received and filed. 27 new account requests were filed based on ICLAs with completed account and project information.
The office of secretary@ continues to run smoothly with help from official and unofficial volunteers. In December, 60 ICLAs and five CCLAs were received and filed.
This is the last board meeting of 2011 and I'd like to report that secretary@ is working well, with volunteers continuing to make process improvements and generally helping out. I'm especially happy to report that new committers generally get their credentials within a small number of days after submitting their ICLAs. In November, 48 ICLAs, four CCLAs and one grant were received and filed.
Filing of incoming agreements continues apace. In October, 61 ICLAs, seven CCLAs, and five grants were received and filed. We still receive corporate license agreements on individual license agreement forms, missing or blank pages, and mystery faxes. We still receive ICLAs that do not request to notify a project. But by and large, newly minted committers are getting quick service for their Apache ids. Based on a script crafted by Sam Ruby, we now have a cross check on subscribers to the board@ alias. There are two subscribers who are not members who are former PMC chairs; two PMC chairs who are subscribed using email addresses not registered in members.txt; and three PMC chairs who are not subscribed at all. These anomalies are being addressed via private emails.
Record-keeping continues to run smoothly, with many eyes and hands helping. Secretary is now responsible for updating the ldap permissions for retiring PMC chairs and new PMC chairs. In September, 58 ICLAs, eight CCLAs, three grants, and one NDA were received and filed.
The recording of documents received by secretary@ continues to be timely and smooth, with two eyes on the incoming mail basket. In August, 51 ICLAs, two CCLAs, nine grants, and one membership application were received and filed. The new ICLA form and process for requesting accounts are working well. At times only a few minutes elapse between receipt of an ICLA and the creation of an account for a new committer.
The process of filing documentation is running smoothly. In July, 34 ICLAs, two grants, 11 CCLAs, two NDAs, and 20 membership applications were received and processed. In August several changes were made to the process in order to expedite the creation of new committer accounts. The ICLA forms were updated to include preferred Apache id and requesting PMC. A new tool was put into service that allows the secretary to request root to create new accounts. Finally, more root members of infra were encouraged to create accounts. Results of these changes are already visible. A new record for account creation was set: just over 9 hours elapsed between receipt of an ICLA and the creation of the account for the new committer.
June was a record busy month in secretary-land due to the admission of OOo into the incubator. 112 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs and one grant were recorded. We occasionally receive a few documents that are incomplete, unsigned, or that use the wrong form, but nothing of concern. A discussion regarding privacy and duplication is leading to a privacy policy for members' personal information.
Business as usual. In May 2011, 44 ICLAs, three grants, and four CCLAs were received and recorded.
Good news: not much news. In April, 29 ICLAs, one grant, five CCLAs, and one NDA were received and filed.
Agreements are now mostly being received by email, which makes filing very straightforward. In March, 25 ICLAs, five CCLAs, and two grants were filed.
Documents continue to be filed timely, thanks to the continuous improvement of the Secretary Assistant Tool and both sets of eyes on the incoming documents. In February, 39 ICLAs, three CCLAs, three Grants, three Membership Applications, and one Nondisclosure were filed. One Mystery fax containing an unrecognizable ICLA was received.
Processing of documents continues to be smooth. Documents arrive on a regular basis and are dispatched generally within a day of arrival. January saw 44 ICLAs, 2 CCLAs, one NDA, and a raft of membership applications. Shane noted that all elected members have responded to their invitations. Is an announcement planned? Action item: Jim arrange for a public announcement.
License agreements filed in December include 46 iclas, 7 cclas, and 2 grants. The Delaware Annual Report was filed via the Corporation Service Company's filing service.
November saw 48 ICLAs, 3 CCLAs, 7 NDAs, and 3 SGAs received. Spammers have discovered the secretary@apache email address. It's not a huge problem (yet) so no action is being taken at the moment.
October was a busy month for grants and contributor agreements. Kinosearch (Apache Lucy) provided nineteen grants; 3 for Gora; 2 others. 23 iclas were recorded along with 2 cclas. One member went emeritus.
Contributor license agreements and grants continue to be processed timely: one grant; 25 iclas; and two cclas were processed in September.
Filing of grants and contributor license agreements is running smoothly. 40 ICLAs; one CCLA; and two software grants were received in August.
Despite the fact that some of the invites were caught by spam filters and other confusion, all membership applications were received on time. The number of active members is now 330. This number is now being maintained in the members.txt file itself. Minutes and document filings are running smoothly. Craig and I are beginning planning of our transition of roles. Approved by general consent.
Posting and drafting of minutes are both up to date. There is one document in Bills/received that need to be approved or otherwise disposed of relating to marketing and publicity. Some OSCON Marketing and Publicity expenses will be charged to the secretary's credit card (i.e., mine). This is likely to be a one-time occurrence; in the future this will likely be once again handled by the president. I've automated the processing of scanned/faxed/emailed member applications, and this is already showing improved productivity. Verification of PGP signatures is still a labor intensive effort. I've had the first occurrence in a long time of an ICLA not being promptly filed, the culprit was a snail mail pair of documents that I had placed in the wrong pile; a quick set of emails and this was promptly resolved. In all, things have been going very smoothly, due the combination of Craig's help and the investments in automation. When it becomes time to name officers for the next calendar year, it is my wish that Craig and I swap the secretary/assistance secretary roles. Craig supports this suggestion.
[verbal report] No issues for the board. ICLAs/CCLAs/Grants continue to be processed in a timely manner by Craig Russell. Thanks go out to Jim and the infrastructure team for resurrecting the automation of the updates to the committers.html file, as many PMCs rely on this.
verbal report Not much to report. Craig has been shouldering much of the workload. I'll talk to Craig offline as to whether or not he is interested in swapping positions the next time this comes up.
Verbal report. Processing of membership applications has not gone as smoothly as I would have liked. Issues include: PGP signatures are more common on membership applications than on CLAs and take more time to verify; my availability; confusion over roles between secretary/asst sec/infra. CSC indicates that the ASF Corporate Status is up to date. While I went through and updated the form (mostly providing current addresses for Directors, based on members.txt), and authorized payment, this was rejected as already paid. Apparently this was all cleared up automatically when the Delaware taxes were filed.
Minutes continue to be produced, documents filed, and acknowledgements sent. The software-grants.txt file was updated to include an email address to facilitate acknowledgements. In the past, the primary responsibility (or more appropriately: privilege) for sending out both the initial invitation and the final welcoming to the ASF fell on the person who nominated the individual in question. (I always double checked, but never found it necessary to intervene). It would be trivial to adjust the secretary workflow to send out the final acknowledgements, complete with pointers to documents as new-member-resources.txt. We should discuss whether or not this would be a good thing. As to the DE annual report story: I ran into a brick wall: our accountant and the state of Delaware don't seem to agree on whether or not our obligations to file a 2008 tax return have been filed. That's still being sorted out. Board agreed that to have the secretary send out membership confirmation emails.
Automation of the sending of confirmation emails is now complete.
Updates to the Software Grant document to include an email address are
being contemplated.
Once the LDAP migration was complete, I found myself in a position
where I did not have access to the secretary mail archives. Apparently
"officers" archives are only available to board members, not all
officers. As a stop gap measure, I requested that the secretary mail
archives be made available to all ASF members, and I have no problem
with that being the long term resolution to that specific problem.
That being said, there is a larger problem where, for example, the
Treasurer's assistant does not have access to the Treasurer's mail
archives.
I will remind everybody that there are:
23 documents in the "documents/received/to_geir" folder
6 documents in the "documents/received/to_jim" folder
1 document in the "documents/received/to_sam" folder
These documents need to be attended to.
Minutes were provided late this month, and for that I apologize.
Sam to open up a JIRAs on these two issues.
Minutes drafted, minutes posted for review, and minutes posted to the site. 35 ICLAs, 5 CCLAs, and 1 Grant processed this month, mostly via eFax, then by email, with a few postal mail. Craig continues to handle the bulk of these, and one working day turnaround is generally the norm. Some further investment in automation has resulted in additional streamlining. We are looking at revising the ICLA form itself to indicate that direct email is an acceptable alternative (in fact, it is the preferred alternative). We have had people send in, and we accept, pictures of signed documents, which we convert to a PDF for archiving. (Both svn and the mail archives show the full trace of all transformations) Finally, some time this month we plan to experiment with sending back email confirmations at the time a document is committed. This email will be sent to the email address in the document itself, and will copy the person who sent in the document, if the document was sent by email and the address is different.
Minutes drafted, minutes posted. Craig is shouldering most of the burden of keeping up with the various documents that are coming in, with occasional documents filed by me (including the ones that come in via the postal system). Sebb continues to audit. As a result of some discussion regarding names containing non-ASCII characters, Jim's committers.html page has been converted to utf-8 (Thanks, Jim!). Due to differences in how Macs and other operating systems handle Unicode characters in file names (svn bug 2464), we are restricting file names to ASCII characters at this time.
Minutes for both of the previous board meetings are available for review. A burst of faxes have come in recently (many due to the impending incubation of Subversion), and Craig has been doing an excellent job of keeping up with the deluge. Sebb has continued with his tireless job of auditing and cleanup. Joe Schaefer's auto-renewing Consultant Services Agreement was signed, scanned, and stored in subversion, as well as the three month Consulting Services Agreement for Gavin McDonald. A credit card for Philip M. Gollucci was received, and I will arrange for this to be forwarded to him.
Faxes and minutes continue to be filed in timely fashion. Nothing extraordinary to note. Should there be a desire to formalize Craig Russell's role as Assistant Secretary, I am fine with that. No action taken on formalization of Craig's role at this time.
Craig Russell continues to be an invaluable help, and processing time on inbound faxes continue to be consistently a matter of either same-day processing or at most a few days, through a combination of automation and distributing the workload. We have one inquiry as to a missing CCLA, and I have requested more information. Draft minutes are current and all approved minutes are posted. I want to remind people that a number of executive officers and additional officers have "to_<name>" folders in the documents received folder in SVN that need to be attended to. I am willing to either continue as Secretary for another term or transition the role.
An initial pass of scanning all the archived documents has been completed, as well as a match of archived ICLAs to iclas.txt. 95 other documents (non-ICLAs) were also scanned and need to be sorted, and then an audit (searching for archives for missing ICLAs) needs to be done. Craig Russell and Tim Ellison have both been assisting with the ongoing processing of incoming faxes. Often times this means that same-day response is now becoming the norm. Sebb, as always, continues to be helpful. Board minutes through July have been posted and are available for review.
Two thirds (literally: 14/21) of the membership applications have been received and processed. I've verified that everyone voted in has been contacted and will follow up closer to the deadline if there are any remaining stragglers. I had a number of people indicate that they wished to go emeritus, but only received two forms. Those have been processed. While my evil plan to get motivated officers to process CLAs and grants in accordance with their best interests hasn't attracted many volunteers, "where's my fax?" questions have all but disappeared. I guess that's an acceptable outcome. Given the investment in automation, and without the time pressure, the actual time it takes to read and enter one name and one email address per form isn't all that much of a burden. Once minutes are approved, they will be posted. And just so it is totally clear, and despite my previous indications that I intended to step down, I've agreed to stay on through September as Secretary, if that is the wish of the board.
No report submitted.
The experiment to provide the opportunity for Officers to process incoming faxes has had, at best, mixed results. Only two such officers, Jukka and Upayavira, participated (note: Sebb continues to be invaluable). On the other hand, providing the opportunity to participate removes the pressure to provide timely turnaround. That, coupled with all investment in automation, has reduced the task to a few hours a week. The Secretarial Assistant contract expires at the end of this month. The plan is to have all of the remaining backlog of ICLAs, CCLAs, and grants scanned to svn (but perhaps not sorted) by that time. The suggestion is to not scan the box of financial records, but shred the contents after seven years. Henning and Aaron agreed, Justin disagreed. Bill suggested that I check with legal.
No report.
5 grants, 74 iclas, 2 cclas were processed. This was a mix of arriving and archived documents. Curiously, quite a few documents in the archived box were encountered that were scanned prior to being shipped to Raleigh. Of course that wasn't noticed until after a large batch was rescanned... The Secretary Assistant purchased a new scanner with a document feeder. The scan quality also is improved. Small adjustments were made to the Workbench script in an attempt to reduce the error rate and to deal better with rescans. I can confirm the receipt of the bridging SA contract. Unless there has been activity that I'm unaware of, I'm extremely skeptical that a new EA will be selected, on board, and in a position to make a recommendation at the 2.5 months remaining. That being said, it should there be a need to create another extension for even as small as one month, that should not pose a problem. After a long period of appearing like clockwork, the SA did not receive payment for the month of February. The treasurer has been notified. We've recently had several cases where people have sent faxes and the've never been received. I've done some "dumpster diving" through the archives and not found them. Not sure what's going on. If anybody wants to participate, the apmail private-arch officers secretary archives are available. What would be helpful in such inquiries would be for people to provide approximate dates as to when the fax was originally was sent.
4 grants, 132 iclas, 4 cclas, and again this includes some more scanning of the archives. The final membership application that was in transit at the time of the last board report was received and filed. Bills/received remains empty. Bills/approved now addressed. The current contract for the SA expires at the end of this month. I've requested that this be discussion item.
2 grant, 93 iclas, and 2 cclas have been processed since the last report, this includes some scanning of the archives. Additionally, 16 membership applications, and two emeritus applications have been processed. One more membership application is reportedly in transit. I'm pleased to report that as of this morning, the Bills/received directory is empty! We now have two ICLAs that are PGP signed. Despite coming to apparent agreement in last months board meeting, feedback from one current and one previous Director came in after the meeting. Let's discuss. We got in an offer from our insurer to provide a quote for insurance for the servers as well as Public Liability, Automobile Liability, Media Liability, Errors & Omissions coverage and Security Liability. I'm comfortable either being self-insured on the servers, or handing this off to the Infrastructure VP. Details are in svn:documents/contracts. We reaffirmed that we are comfortable with PGP/GPG for ICLAs. People who are interested in pursuing insurance are encouraged to review the document in subversion.
1 grant, 34 iclas, and 3 cclas have been processed since the last report, as well as 14 member proxies. Minutes continue to be posted in a timely fashion. Two items remain in Bills/received, one dated 20 Oct, the other dated 13 Nov. If these could be attended to, I would feel confident in delegating this task to the secretary assistant. We have received on ICLA that was PGP signed. While we haven't previously endorsed that practice, I have no issue with the idea. Feedback welcome. There has been some grousing (<grin>) on the list about the combination providing the alternatives of IRC and fax and scanned signatures and PGP/GPG not being accessible enough for our members to participate. While I'm not entirely sympathetic to that argument, I would be open to the idea of allowing members SVN write r/w to the proxies-received directory, and to allow individuals to commit their own (not otherwise signed) proxy requests there. Jim agreed to process the two items that are currently in the Bills received directory. We agreed in the meeting to accept ICLAs that were PGP signed. [note: subsequent discussion on the mailing list indicated that not everybody thought this was a good idea, I plan to bring this up again in the next meeting to reconfirm]
6 grants, 60 iclas, and 4 cclas were processed since the last board report. Minutes continue to be made available in a timely manner and published once approved. Use of financials/Bills/received in svn as a process still is not as smooth as I would like, but I remain optimistic that this will eventually work itself out. At the moment, I believe that there are a number of items in "received" and "approved" directories that I believe are paid. I'd like to ask the Treasurer to review these items and move the documents as appropriate. Justin should have his physical credit card -- I mailed it to him in New Orleans. I've gotten a fax indicating that Wells Fargo needs verbal authorization to mail an additional card to an alternate address. I'll follow up today. Renewed Joe's contract for another six months.
2 grants, 61 iclas, 3 cclas processed since the last board report. This includes the first attempts by this secretarial assistant to address the backlog of unscanned documents. financials/Bills/received emails are now sent to the board; some progress has been made in getting these approved. One recent PR request and a number of infrastructure requests have yet to be be approved. The current plan is to hand Justin's physical credit card to him at ApacheCon.
2 grants, 32 iclas, and 2 cclas were processed since the last report. Jim approved the updated minutes for July, and the minutes for August are now available. Craig Russell commented on the rate of typos in data entry. The specific document he chose to highlight was processed by the previous secretary assistant, but the issue exists equally with the current secretary assistant. It has not proven to be a problem with the infrastructure team, Sebb continues to his audit both of historical and realtime documents, and when people note typos, they are promptly fixed. While I'm continuing to monitor this, I'm not treating it as an problem at this time. The Secretary Assistant has been proceeding on the assumption that her contract was renewed, despite it expiring at the end of last month. She's on break from school Sept 27 through Oct 12, and while she will will focus on the backlog of scanning archived documents at that time, if there is other work that needs to be done, she has more free cycles during that period. While it was my intention to delegate bills received to the secretary assistant once the process was running smoothly, invoices continue to pile up in the svn:financials/Bills/received directory. I have yet to forward Justin's actual credit card to him. He has access to the numbers and security codes. If it isn't urgent, I'll take care of this at ApacheCon. Otherwise, I'll mail it now. I have not received any additional credit cards (Paul, Sander). Filed a form 8868 income tax extension. Sam to mail credit card to Justin. Sam to redirect commit messages for the bills directory to board
0 grants, 50 iclas, and 6 cclas were processed since the last report. The draft minutes for the last minute provoked a discussion as to what should be minuted. I look forward to the agenda item below where this is to be discussed further. Four invoices are in svn:financials/Bills/received directory. As this process becomes more routine, it is my intention to delegate it to the Secretary Assistant (presuming that we have one). A modest request: if people have documents (such as invoices) that they want to be processed, please copy the secretary@ alias. I'm not suggesting that this is a hard requirement, just that it will hopefully reduce the number of documents that fall through the cracks. The lack of direct access to an ASF credit card increases the possibility of human error, and in the case of ordering hard drives from Sun, apparently mine. Aaron has already indicated that he will seek such a credit card. If I can do anything to help correct this issue, let me know. The mail forwarding issues will Wells Fargo seem to be (largely) corrected. Still a stray mail or two to address. Will work with Aaron. I have received a new credit card for Justin to replace his current (expiring) one. I've updated the (encrypted) financials/Accounts file with the new information, and will be making arrangements to forward on the actual credit card to Justin.
1 grant, 43 iclas, 2 cclas Membership applications were received for all duly elected members and recorded. Minutes were published in a timely fashion. Assisted with the purchase of equipment for infrastructure. I support the request that the VP of Infrastructure be issued a credit card. Awaiting confirmation from Jason van Zyl on the transfer of the maven.org domain name. I don't sense that access to the credit card is the gating issue. Despite an initial personal visit and two subsequent follow ups via phone, inexplicably the updating of forwarding address for the lockbox has not been completed. This is impacting the processing of ICLAs. If not addressed by end of month, I will adjust the mailing address on the xCLA forms to my address until the point where I can verify that the issue has been adequately resolved. My perception is that the tighter tracking of action items that we have been doing lately is reducing the number of "dropped balls". General request to no-one in particular: if you find yourself in a position where you don't have the cycles to push an item forward during the course of the month, see if there is someone who will volunteer to take over the action item.
8 grants, 58 iclas, and 6 cclas have been processed since the last board meeting. 16 new members were elected. To date, 14 have accepted. Forms are due by 05 July 2008. Reminders have been sent to the two remaining member-elects. 3 members went emeritus. It is my hope that we can eventually revise the process to make it easier for emeritus members who did so voluntarily (which I believe means all of them to date) can be easily and quickly reinstated. Of the 24 proxy requests received, 12 were via fax, and 12 were electronically signed. New credit cards were issued for Sam and Aaron. Current plan is for Sam to give Aaron his card at OSCON. New forwarding address established for the Wells Fargo lock box. The various licensing agreement documents were updated to indicate that they should be sent to the Wells Fargo address where they will be forwarded. While I have received mail from Wells Fargo, I have yet to receive forwarded mail, but this information was only advertised fairly recently. Sebastian Bazley has been effectively providing auditing services for the records; both realtime (as they are being captured) and historical. This is very much appreciated. The officers/iclas.txt and officers/cclas.txt both contain an indication that "It is always best to try and handle the CLAs entirely through the Secretary" -- something that various directors have chosen to interpret differently. To make things more consistent I would like to open things up so that any officer may update these files (as well as grants.txt) PROVIDED that they also place a scanned image of the documents in question into the private/documents repository at the same time. A records-discuss mailing list has been established to cover topics relating to record keeping in general at the ASF. This is intentionally broader than what the secretary is responsible for. Board minutes were made available for review promptly after the meeting. I've written an application to assist with the capture and publishing (both for internal review and to the external website) of minutes. Additionally, the board calendar now lists the special orders considered in each meeting. This has already proven to be handy. No change to the officers recording policy will be made at this time. Justin notes that as of a week ago, he was still getting mail which was sent to the lockbox. We will continue to monitor it.
3 grants, 79 iclas, 10 cclas were recorded this month. Minutes are up to date and available. A growing number of people have emerged with an interest in correcting typos, auditing, and suggesting improvements to the way records are being captured and recorded. As everything is completely under version control I see no issue with this, and am, in fact, thrilled it is happening. I plan to further enable this activity by asking that a secretary-discuss, or perhaps a records-discuss, mailing list be set up. There has been some confusion amongst directors as to who can edit iclas.txt. Since long before I was Secretary, it has been the policy that officers can make edits to it during periods when the secretary is unavailable. In most cases, the simplest thing to do when an officer gets a document that needs to be recorded is to fax it to the ASF fax number, as Jim has recently done. But directly recording it is OK, as long as it is followed up by either a fax or snail mail. At the present time there is document which was received by a director, and an availid issued, for a document which has not been either forwarded to the secretary or committed to the documents/icla folder. I requested that it be faxed, emailed, or committed 11 days ago, and followed up two days ago. While I had previously agreed to keep the mailing list address mentioned in the ICLA and CCLA documents, I now believe that doing such only adds confusion, delays, and additional possibility of transmission errors. I plan no action at this time, but unless Jim discovers an appropriate mechanism for a virtual physical address, I plan to recommend (or implement) to the incoming (or returning) secretary that these addresses be updated to reflect either the address of the current secretary-assist or the secretary (if that secretary intends to directly handle the relatively few documents that arrive via snail mail). It turns out that the ASF debit card that I was issued by Wells Fargo is effectively useless as we have imposed a standing requirement that any withdrawls require two signatures. To address an outstanding and overdue PRNewswire balance, I used a personal credit card and have been reimbursed by the ASF for the full amount. I have been told that correcting the signature requirement would require somebody to show up to Wells Fargo in person. I will be in the bay area next week and can take care of it then if it hasn't already been corrected. In the past 30 days, three paychecks have been issued to the secretary assistant. Discussion: * Justin and Sam to pursue Wells Fargo as iCLA, cCLA address * Greg to mail iCLA to secretary assist
0 grants, 42 iclas, and 1 ccla have been processed since the last board report. Board meeting minutes are up to date and posted. I've received my Wells Fargo check cashing card and PIN number.
2 grants, 59 iclas, and 5 cclas have been processed since 2008-03-01. No issues with eFax have been identified in the process. Training of the new secretary assistant is nearly complete. Outside of arranging for transportation of unscanned historical faxes, at this point the executive assistant's transitional duties are complete. I've developed a icla-check program that reports on common issues in that file. In the process I corrected a number of minor issues that had built up over time. Sebastian Bazley has been most helpful in this process. I've also developed a small web application to assist with the majority of common activities, hopefully reducing the error rates in the process. Updates outside of these common activities will still require direct editing of files and issuing of subversion commands.
Worked with Justin in drafting a revised set of responsibilities for the secretary-assist position. Investigated efax options. Some offerings are free for a low number of FAXes. What we want is something we can depend on, so a one line, for fee service seems appropriate. The cost works out to be about ten US cents per page, with a monthly minimum of 200 pages (i.e. $20). We perhaps could do better, but at these rates, we aren't cost sensitive. The plans are to start this concurrent with the renewal of the secretary assistant contract, with a new non-toll-free phone number. I still do not have access to the Wells Fargo account. Still no urgency to the issue at the moment, but at some point it needs to be resolved. We agreed to proceed with eFax using Justin's credit card.
Approved board minutes were posted to the website, and new board minutes were generated in ample time for review for this meeting. The above shouldn't have been noteworthy, but sadly, it is. Reverified expectations with the Secretary assistant. In summary, FAXes should typically be handled within a week, and questions and issues addressed to secretary@ should be addressed within a week. In the event that the latter does not happen, I will get involved and the expectation is that once that occurs all such issues will get resolved within a week. In the event that issues arrise that would prevent any of the above from occuring (example: vacation), it is the responsibility of the assistant to bring such things to my attention, preferably in advance. I've heard no word on my access to the foundation's funds, or on the credit card. Last I recall it was Aaron's todo? This is not an issue at this time, the concern is that down the road should it ever become an issue, it may very well be an urgent one. Is this something I should follow up on?
No report submitted.
Confusion between new secretary and contractor seems to be behind us. We discussed who should have access to the secretary mailing list. Justin took an action item to make it open to all members.
The minutes backlog has been addressed. I'll try to do better. The secretary transition issue that Jim alludes to above does seem to both have come to a head, and being rapidly resolved. I do have one minor suggestion that may help a lot: convert secretary@apache.org from a mail alias to a true mailing list, archived and everything. If there ever are any concerns, we could have a secretary-private, but I doubt it would be necessary. A signed renewal contract was sent to Joe Schaefer, and he has indicated that he signed it and returned it, but that FAX has yet to be processed. It was agreed that a true mailing list was not necessary for secretary@, an archive would be sufficient for these purposes. Justin to pursue making that happen. Additionally, Bill Rowe is planning to contact each project chair re: export requirements and should be able to report on the results of this in the next meeting.
I've heard nothing back from Wells Fargo. How should I follow up? This isn't urgent at the moment, but when it does become needed, it likely will be urgent at that time. I am in possession of a signed Consultant Services Agreement which extends Jon Jagielski's contract to March 1, 2008 and expands the scope include to "or other documents" received by FAX. I've seen two requests for information concerning a CLA that Gerolf Seitz allegedly faxed, but no response from the contractor. I appologize for the backlog of minutes, this will be corrected by week's end. Sam was directed to being the process for renewing Joe's contract.
As Jim indicated, the D&O insurance has been renewed. The invoicing
issue was not the only issue however, obtaining the policy also
involved addressing a number of workflow issues. I'm also seeing
a number of other workflow issues elsewhere, and have been trying
to figure out how I can help, but instead came to a low-tech
recommendation:
Let's create a calendar section in board/STATUS which lists
important upcoming dates which will require an officer of
the foundation's attention. Everything from D&O to 990 to
members meetings can be put in there.
Which reminds me, it is time to renew the contract with Jon
Jagielski, and unless there are any objections, I plan to just
do it, under exactly the same terms and duration as the last
contract.
Other than that, I see no other issues requiring board attention.
Tabled until next regular meeting
The most important task of the secretary is keeper of records. I'm in the rather uncomfortable position of not being either in possession of, or even in the work-flow (past or present tense) of these records. That being said, I had a phone discussion with Jim, and we agreed that the contract with Jon was working well and we would not be well served by disrupting it. Longer term (possibly over the course of years) we would like to move to everything being electronic, but over the short term we will only make changes should an issue arise; and in such circumstances, we will do so either in the direction the long term goal or towards me taking over that task, based on the urgency of the issue. I'm also concerned that we have never taken a careful enumeration of all the tasks that Jim has simply taken care of for the foundation, nor have we identified which of those tasks Jim operated as secretary or as a volunteer director. In any case, it is my intent to offload the new chairman of the board as much as it makes sense. As a concrete example, Jim is handing off to me the handling of the renewal of the D&O policy. I did take roll call and minutes at my first board meeting as secretary. Over time, I'm confident that that will become smoother. Over time, I also will make this role my own. A first example is increased tracking of, and focus on, action items. We have received no correspondence that requires board attention.
Tabled until next regular meeting
The big news, of course, is that the annual ASF Members Meeting
was held, via IRC, on June 5th through the 7th. Elections
were held for new members and a new board, with the following
results:
New Board:
Justin Erenkrantz, J Aaron Farr, Jim Jagielski
Geir Magnusson Jr, William A Rowe Jr, Sam Ruby
Henning Schmiedehausen, Greg Stein, Henri Yandell
New Members:
Curt Arnold, David Blevins, Nathan Bubna
Danese Cooper, Ate Douma, Graham Dumpleton
Ant Elder, Ruchith Fernando, Rony Flatscher
Jeff Genender, Ralph Goers, Richard Hall
Niclas Hedhman, Matt Hogstrom, Chris Hostetter
Deepal Jayasinghe, Simon Kitching, Emmanuel Lecharney
Trustin Lee, Noirin Plunkett, Craig Russell
Andrew Savory, Yonik Seeley, Mark Thomas
It should be noted that we have not yet received
acceptance from all new members, so the above list
is still ASF private.
The meeting went well, with over half of the membership attending
(including proxies) and about half voting. A slight change to
the voter tool was implemented to make the 'vote' line a
single line rather than 2 lines, to make it easier for script
junkies to "automate" their voting.
We have received no correspondence that requires board attention.
Jim mentioned that a summer project will be to replace the
current FAX machine with a FAX-Email gateway, likely by
using an old iMac he has available.
The big news is that the ASF Members Meeting was announced for June 5, 2007 @ 16:00 UTC, to be held via IRC. An Email call for new member nominations as well as new board member nominations was sent out. We are seeing a steady incoming list of nominees for both. The membership was reminded about the importance of keeping members.txt up-to-date since the Emails used for the ssh-based voter tool uses those Emails to send out ballots. I will be sending a "test issue" out later this week to hopefully see how well Emails are synced (and to allow people to adjust their SPAM filters, etc). We have received no correspondence that requires board attention.
A quiet but steady month. It looks like June 5 - 7, 2007 for the next members meeting is the best fit, so I will be looking for final verification from the rest of the board before I make it official and start planning/organizing the meeting. We have received no correspondence that requires board attention.
Things have been relatively quiet and consistent the last month. We are in receipt of the signed contract extensions for the sysadm and secretarial assistant. We have received one check from Car Program, LLC, which was forwarded to the ASF lockbox on the 26th. We have also received some faxes concerning the Paypal phishing scam Justin notes in his report. This have also been responded to via Email using the form letter that Joshua crafted. Email was sent to the membership to get some initial feedback on 4 potential dates for the annual members meeting. It is still too early to gleam any real info, but it is looking as though a mid-late May date will be the most viable. We have received no correspondence that requires board attention.
No real updates to report since last month. Scanning of docs proceeding, with all incoming FAXes being immediately scanned and filed, and the backlog being done as available. We finally (!) received the full, original copy of our D&O Insurance policy with the Carolina Casualty Insurance Company. This is being scanned and will be filed as well. We are due for a members meeting around May/June of this year. Candidate dates will be proposed and floated by the membership. All received donation checks have been forwarded to the ASF lockbox. We've received none since last month. Paypal issues have been resolved by "working" with Paypal. Justin and myself are now considered official contacts for the ASF by Paypal. We have received no correspondence requiring board attention.
Scanning of doc's is progressing on schedule. Will reorganize the 'iclas' directory soon, to avoid having it become a huge size (as in number of individual files in one directory). Will likely organize by last name. As Justin indicated, the 'ASF Donation Acknowledgements' have been sent out (15 via Postal Mail and 7 via Emailed PDFs). We have received 2 donation checks: One from Brewster Kahle/Mary Austin in the amount of $500 and the other from the American Express Giving Express (JustGive.org) program, in the amount of $124.14. The former was dated December 31, 2006 so we will likely need to send them an "Donation Ack" as well. Checks on are route to the drop box; the cover letters will be sent to Justin. We have received no correspondence requiring board attention.
Good progress is being made in scanning and archiving all ASF documentation. As a reminder, newly received iCLAs, CCLAs and grants get immediately recorded and scanned/archived. Older documents are being scanned in semi-priority order, with important ASF docs (like incorporation papers, etc), followed by grants, CCLAs and iCLAs. We are anticipating receiving the list of Donation Acknowledgement recipients from Justin. These are the "thank you" letters that we are required to send out to those who have donated above a certain level. This week we received a check from Car Program LLC and a bill from CSC. The check is being forwarded to the lockbox and the bill was paid using the ASF credit card. We have received no correspondance that requires board attention... Things have been slow, but steady.
Working in continuing on scanning all of our documents. All incoming iCLAs, CCLAs and grants get immediately recorded and scanned, with previously recorded documents getting scanned in a priority order. At present, all ASF membership applications have been scanned and are ready to be committed. I have created an Infra request to create a new 'documents' directory under the private repo, which will be used to locate all scanned documents. The secretarial assistant reported entering and scanning thirty-three new ICLAs, three CCLAs, one consultant services agreement, and four license agreements. The remainder of the membership application were completed in October, and several previously entered license grants were scanned. The ASF incorporation documents are also in process. The October Board Minutes were written based on our conversation and my notes. All approved minutes have been moved to the records section of the site repository. A proposal to hold an irc-based members meeting was floated to the membership. Out of a membership base of ~200 people, there was very little feedback. Because of what appears to be a lack of desire or need to have one, plus the proximity to the holiday season as well as work schedules, we will postpone the meeting and see if the start of 2007 looks any better. We have recieved no correspondence requiring board attention.
The previous month was spent mostly bringing the new secretarial assistant up to speed, and making the transition for him to do most of the iCLA logging and scanning. His report is added below. We did receive 2 checks, one from the Car Program service and the other from Google for the GSoC effort. These have been forwarded to the lockbox address. The D&O Insurance policy was scanned and added to the foundation SVN repo, under legal. The ASF Sponsorship program was announced at ApacheCon US 2006. 2 companies have already signed up as sponsors: Google at the Platinum level and Covalent at the Silver level (minimal). We should plan on having a members meeting, held via irc, sometime late November or early December, to allow for voting in new members, as well as keeping the members up to date. Secretarial Assistant Report: The first part of the month of September was spent setting up my system with the various accoutrements necessary for the work, e.g. Tortoise SVN and my ASF system accounts. After my system was sufficiently prepared most of my time was spent adding ICLAs. For September I added and scanned thirty-eight ICLAs. I also scanned six CCLAs. A lot of time was spent scanning old membership applications, I scanned 139 applications. The remainder will be scanned in October. The scanned documents are stored on my computer and will be added to the SVN location when complete. The scanned documents are in PDF format. This resulted in scans that were somewhat small in size but of good readable quality.
A request was placed to the infrastructure team to create the required SVN account and Email accounts for the secretarial support position. This was completed, and we have made the transition to Jon doing the incoming iCLAs. All incoming iCLAs are also being scanned to PDF format, although not yet being committed to any ASF repos. Other ASF documents are also scheduled to be scanned, and a priority list is being crafted for this task. The complete list of member applications is likely to be first on the list. We have received from Nicola Ken Barozzi to have his ASF membership moved to Emeritus status. A signed FAX with that specific request was received on September 14th. The members list will be updated to reflect this change. 3 checks from the Car Program ($480.90, $ 522.20 and $921.90) are on-route to the lock box. Cliff asked if just the iCLAs were being scanned as they were being received and logged. Jim reported that all incoming documents are now being scanned, including CCLAs and grants. Jim was asked the status of the increased D&O request. Jim reported that we did get quotes for additional coverage, and this was relayed to the board via the mailing list. There was discussion on how much D&O is "enough." Jim took the action item to see how much other similar-type foundations (eg: Mozilla, EFF) have.
Office-wise, this has been a slow month. For some reason, the checks from Car Program were not being sent to the lockbox address, and were instead being returned to the Car Program offices. I've contacted them and they have started delivering them again to the Munsey Drive address. I will simply continue sending them to the lockbox myself, and not tempt fate in trying to get Car Program to update the delivery address again. I have an update on the insurance issue, which will be provided at the meeting. I've contacted a few local secretarial services to help offload some of the more mundane tasks. Our situation is unique enough (and "techie" enough) that they kind of glaze over when I describe the tasks. No doubt we need some sort of web interface/automation if we want to be able to widen the pool of potential service providers in this area. We currently have 2 proposals. Jim reported to the board that the ASF has a new Director's and Officer's (D&O) insurance policy. Justin should be expecting the invoice in a day or so. Jim will scan and commit the D&O paperwork.
We have received signed member applications from just about everyone that was nominated and elected in last month's member meeting, with 2 noted exceptions: Simon Kitching had originally declined membership, due to current time constraints and his concern that he would not have enough free time in the short term to be very "active." On July 16th, he Emailed myself and Phil Steitz (who nominated Simon) and said that he had reconsidered and would be happy to accept. This means, of course, that we had not received a signed member application by the required 30days. I am willing to make an exception in this case if the board concurs. Secondly, despite several attempts, no one has heard back from Bill Barker regarding his acceptance of membership. Since we are past the 30 days, this means that Bill is not a member. Jim has an update on the open Insurance questions for the foundation. Discussion has been ongoing concerning secretarial support services for the Secretary and Treasurer; there are 2 proposals currently before the board. Other than the normal influx of iCLAs, CCLAs and grants, the ASF office has received no correspondence which requires board attention.
Jim reported that the Annual ASF Members Meeting was held last month and was pretty successful. A large number of new members were added and the new board was elected. Logistically, the meeting went off well with no real problems or hiccups. With each meeting, it goes more and more smoothly. It was asked if all newly elected members had been contacted by those who had nominated them, and were therefore responsible for informing them of their elected status. Jim took the Action Item to check into this.
The big news is that the ASF Members Meeting has been set for June 13, 2006 16:00 UTC, via Email notice to all members (Message-ID: <0902F4D8-F82F-4F69-B771-7EEF677240AA@jaguNET.com> on May 8, 2006). A call for new member nominations and board nominations also went out, and we are seeing some trickles of nominations coming in. I am in the process of obtaining D&O Insurance info from AON Consulting, as well as still working the St. Paul/Travelers option. I sent a draft "proposal" to the board list regarding a new policy regarding the acceptance of *CLAs and software grants, after discussion with Cliff and our legal advisors. This new policy will allow for scanned images of signed documents in addition to postal-mailed originals and FAXed documents. The scanned image Emails will need to be sent to the secretary@ and legal-archive@ Email addresses. The draft policy was sent on May 18, 2006 (Message-ID: <37B9829A-F14E-4B8C-8EA8-BDFC3766DCED@jaguNET.com>). Some further clarification was requested, and the policy statement will be refined to add such clarification. As always, there has been the steady receipt of iCLAs, CCLAs and grants. We have received no correspondance requiring board attention.
The membership was queried regarding the date and format of the annual ASF members meeting. The main discussion topics were whether it should be in May and completely virtual, or whether we should hold off until June (to match up with AC Europe) and have some sort of hybrid meeting. There was very little response, but the majority of those who did respond indicated that they would prefer it NOT be a hybrid. In any case, we will definitely need to use the voter tool, and not use paper ballots at all (even for the new member elections). Jim will be offline June 18-24th and would prefer it not be scheduled during that time. One possibility would be to start the meeting, virtually, on June 16th and recess the meeting until some time during AC Europe, where the meeting could continue and end via a hybrid setup (in-person and IRC). So far, 2 of the sent-out "Thank You For Your Donation" letters have been returned as undeliverable: Front Gate Tickets and Jason S. Friedman. I am holding onto these and will forward to Justin. No updates yet on the D&O Insurance, so I am looking at other brokers. Other than the normal *CLA/Grants/etc paperwork, we've received no correspondence requiring board attention.
Checks from the Car Donation service are still being received at the ASF office, instead of being sent directly to the lockbox address. I have resent to them a Change of Address request. The checks that we have received will be sent to the lockbox later this week. The donor letters, referred to above, had been sent out via US Postal mail on March 3, 2006. Our agent at St. Paul/Travelers has requested additional financial information regarding our D&O Insurance quote. I obtained the info from SVN and provided it to them last week. The next ASF Annual Members Meeting should be scheduled for this May. I will propose several dates on the members@ list and organize the meeting. We have not received at the ASF offices any items or correspondance requiring board attention.
As of today's date, I have not heard back from St. Pauls/ Travelers regarding our D&O Insurance policy application. I contacted them at the top of the month, and the application is still being worked on in underwriting; the delay has no negative or postive connotation. The Email list for the "Bylaws Recommendation" group was created, and discussions have commenced. It is hoped that a report can be made at the next board meeting. Other than the traditional influx of iCLAs, CCLAs and software grants, no items or notices have been received at the ASF office requiring board attention.
All newly elected ASF Members, from the December 2005 Members Meeting, have returned their signed member applications in time for them to be officially entered in as members. A D&O Insurnace application was sent to St. Pauls/Travelers for quotes but as of this date we have not yet received a response, due to the time it takes for them to generate one. A mailing list to support the Bylaws Recommendation "committee" was requested via the JIRA interface to infrastructure. We received our longest FAX ever: a 40 page monster from BEA which listed each and every file in their Tuscany codebase donation. Other than the traditional influx of iCLAs, CCLAs and software grants, no items or notices have been received at the ASF office requiring board attention. Jim additionally reported that the ASF received our annual invoice from CSC, which was forwarded to Justin for payment. Justin reported that the invoice had been paid.
On December 11, 2005, we had a special ASF Member's Meeting in San Diego, coinciding with ApacheCon US 2005. 87 (out of 151) members were in attendence (in person and proxy). During the meeting, 33 new members were elected to the ranks of the ASF. They are noted below. Those marked with a '*' have, as of this date, accepted membership: Jean Anderson* Stephane Bailliez* Donald J. Brown* Stephen Colebourne Bruno Dumon* Scott Eade* Antonio Gallardo* Ross Gardler Christian Geisert* Philip M. Gollucci Henri Gomez* Adam Jack Tom Jordahl* Hiroaki Kawai Antoine Levy-Lambert Nick Kew* Costin Manolache Brian McCallister* David Nuescheler Eddie O'Neil Srinath Perera* Joerg Pietschmann* Reinhard Poetz Eric Pugh Paul Querna* Jeremy Quinn Garrett Rooney* Gregor J. Rothfuss Alek Slominski* Phil Steitz* Mladen Turk* Jeff Turner* Michael Wechner* There was some discussion regarding getting outsourced help in scanning all ASF documents (membership applications, iCLAs, CCLAs, etc...) so that they can be committed to SVN and thus be available to all officers as needed. A budget is being worked on for this effort. The signed D&O Insurance Application has been received from Greg. Jim will fill the rest of it out and send in to obtain a quote. There was some discussion on, due the the number of officers we have, if it made sense to look into "just" Director's Insurance. Jim would as about this, to see what the price difference would be; but the current baseline is to proceed with full D&O. As usual, the steady stream of iCLAs, with the occasional CCLA and/or License Grant, are being received and filed. No items requiring board attention have been received within the last month.
The date and time for the ASF (Special) Members Meeting has been set for December 11, 2005, 4:30 local time, at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina, San Diego, which is the location of this year's ApacheCon US show. The 'foundation' repo has been loaded with the required Meetings/20051211 files, including the draft agenda and new member nominations. As of this date we have 29 new members proposed. The scheduling of the members meeting has rebooted the discussion on what to do about "inactive" members, and how we actually define inactive members. Scheduling an agenda item or BOF session regarding this topic might be a good idea. As usual, there has been a steady stream of incoming iCLAs, with the occasional CCLA and/or software grant. The SDTimes award for the Web Server was delivered and received last week. No other items or notices requiring board attention have been received.
Jim would like to schedule the annual ASF Member's Meeting to coincide with ApacheCon, as we have done in the past. Once a date is approved, Jim will start the normal process for the meeting (eg: notices to members, request for new member nominations, etc...). There has been no letters or deliveries sent to the ASF office requiring board attention.
I have received the ASF Credit Card, and am in the process of creating an ASF FedEx account. After discussions with the 2 insurance brokers, they have agreed to at least start the preliminaries regarding D&O insurance using the last 3 months worth of bank statements. They will still require full financials before the policy can be written, but at least this will allow us to compare policies. Other than the steady input of iCLAs (and the occasional CCLA and Software Grant), we have received no mailings requiring board attention.
The last month has been relatively quiet, ASF-office-wise. I've received hardcopies of some previously received FAXed documentation, as well including the agreement signed by Sander regarding our SURFnet colo, and the Spamhaus DNSBL Data Feed Subscription/Agreement signed by Justin. D&O investigation on hold, while we get the ASF financials in usable format. Full status in STATUS.
Other than the normal submission of CLAs and the occasional software grant, we have not received any correspondence which requires board attention. I have been looking into D&O Insurance for the ASF, with the possible "bundling" of more traditional property replacement insurance. Both brokers initially contacted (The Weiner Company and CCBsure) require a copy of our financials before they can work out quotes for us. Justin is working on obtaining these for me. There was also some interest in the ASF obtaining its own overnight delivery accounts (eg: FedEx). FedEx, UPS and DHL all require a credit card (at least) to open a corporate account. Justin indicated that we may be able to obtain one with our Wells Fargo account, although it would likely be one of those debit-credit cards. In the meantime, we can continue to use my FedEx account.
Jim reported that that big event in the last month was the annual ASF Members Meeting, which was held via IRC on May 24th. There was a good turnout and, in general, there were less complaints about advance notice or scheduling issues than in previous years. The ASF Voter Tool was used, with the additional result of renewed interest in updating and improving the tool, to be easier to use and possibly more self-contained. The 'voter-dev' mailing list was created to coordinate the efforts. We have received almost all the required member applications from the new members, and we are, as usual, receiving a steady input of iCLAs, with the occasional CCLA. No mailing has been received which requires board attention or action.
On the mailing list, we approved the scheduling of the annual
ASF Members Meeting for May 24, 2005 16:00 UTC. Email was
sent to the member's list announcing the meeting,
reminding members about proxies and member/board
nominations.
A SVN directory was created for the event:
svn:foundation/Meetings/20050524
The attendance list for all previous ASF member meetings
on which we have records was updated and added to SVN
(svn:foundation/Meetings/attendance.txt). From that list, I
created a short-list of members with the following
criteria:
a: Did not attend the last 3 meetings
- or -
b: Of the last 4+ meetings, attended less than 50%
- or -
c: Has not attended a meeting since election to the ASF
membership.
All members on that list were contacted via Email alerting
them to the fact, and asking whether they wished to request
Emeritus status or if they wished to remain active members.
Those who did not respond will be contacted via the phone to
follow up.
Jim agreed to look into whether we need some sort of
official Emeritus policy, and whether it makes sense
to add that to the member's meeting agenda.
Jim has the Action Item to "come up" with an
Emeritus Policy.
Other than the steady trickle of incoming iCLAs and CCLAs, there is nothing to report. Jim reminded the board that we are due for the annual ASF Member Meeting and the election of a new board. Jim was to handle the coordination and scheduling of the meeting on the members@ list.
We are seeing the steady drip of incoming iCLAs and the occasional CCLA; these are being logged. The office received a few checks from Car Program LLC, as well as an invoice from CSC, which have been forwarded to Chuck, who has noted his receipt of them.
Nothing really to report. The ASF office has not received any paperwork or notices requiring the board's attention. CLAs are being received and filed.
As per board discussion and direction at the Nov. 2004 meeting, the list of signed iCLAs has been made "public." Basically, the committers page at www.apache.org/~jim/committers.html has been adjusted to also list those with signed CLAs who do not have CVS/SVN ids (ie: lack commit access). When requested, pseudonyms are printed instead of their "real" names. As such, the clas.txt file, located in the foundation SVN tree, had been removed in favor of 2 distinct files: iclas.txt and cclas.txt, where the former lists signed iCLAs and the latter lists signed Corporate CLAs. The committers and project pages are now updated every morning. 2 checks from "Car Program LLC" have been received; one for $368.90 and another for $1,362.90. These are being forwarded to Chuck. Eric Cholet has officially requested Emeritus Status. His request was signed and FAXed, and he has been so moved.
Except for the trickle of CLAs (both corporate and individual) and the occasional software grant, the ASF office has received no notice that requires board attention. Due to the Thanksgiving holiday and the general crazyness of this timeframe, Jim was unable to draft the ASF Board and Member Meetings minutes; these will be submitted asap.
Jim's report centered around what ASF information should be deemed "public" versus "private." In particular, should the list of all received CLAs be made public or not. The debate within the board was twofold. The first issue was the reason and rationale for making the information public. One reason mentioned was that it allowed 3rd parties to verify that they could use ASF software by checking code with the CLAs. Some within the board thought that this was not a compelling reason; instead, 3rd parties should simply trust that the ASF was doing its job and obtaining the required "approvals" for folding in patches and code from contributors; if the 3rd parties did not trust that, then they were under no obligation to use ASF code. These 2 points of view were never resolved. The second issue was whether there was any expectation of "privacy" regarding CLAs; in other words, did the simple act of signing and submitting a CLA to the ASF, knowing what the ASF is, imply that the information could be open and public, as is the code itself. During the 2nd session it was generally agreed that it was in the best interest of the ASF, and the community especially, if the list of CLAs were made public, but with special consideration made for those who did not want their "legal" names made public (and they would therefore be noted by their pseudonym). This information was to be made public by January 1, 2005. Dirk and Jim were to inform the community of this in sufficient time for people to provide pseudonyms if required. The format would like follow the semi-public Projects and Committers pages Jim has under www.apache.org/~jim.
We continue to get a few CLAs occasionally. Sometimes we receive unreadable ones, which is a pain. We received a letter from "Car Program, LLC," the company handling car donations for the ASF. We have met the requirements for the "optional listing" on their website www.donateacar.com, and should be active November 2004. If we decide we do not want to be listed on the site, we need to let them know. I will forward this info to the Fund Raising Committee.
There has been a steady influx of CLAs (both Corp. and Individual) over the last month. The ASF office received a letter from Penelope S. Wilson, Intellectual Property Counsel for EMC Corporation which can be summarized as an "anti-CLA:" "EMC hereby disclaims any and all intent to make contributions to Apache, as defined in the Apache 2.0 license terms, unless EMC formally identifies its intention to do so..." The letter was scanned and placed in the foundation CVS under the Records directory as 'EMC-notcontribution.pdf.' Receipt of the letter was noted and discussed on the ASF board and member mailing lists. After Jim's report there was an extended discussion expanding on Greg's point that "we" tend to be focusing on issues that we really shouldn't be concentrating on. "We" seem to be bothering with details that we shouldn't concern ourselves with as well as, more importantly, treating any and all legal considerations as having the same weight. As a result, we seem to be almost "gun shy" in making some decisions and reacting in a "knee jerk" behavior with others. The general agreement was that we should trust our instincts and our experience, and allow others to do the same.
The ASF office has been receiving and recording the steady stream of incoming CLAs. At present, the ASF office is sharing the same phone number as Jim's home office. The number of calls to that line for ASF- related business is starting to increase (the vast majority of the calls are completely worthless, of course). To avoid confusion Jim is looking into obtaining another phone number exclusively for the ASF.
Jim reported CLA registration were up to date as of previous Saturday, with a steady-state stream of 3-5 a week. There are no big problems with current process, although noted that the process isn't currently scalable. Questions and discussions revolved around what small things can be done to improve process and help scale. The biggest problem according to Jim had to do with handwritten faxes, and Dirk offered to take up investigation on how a form-based PDF can help alleviate the problem. Jim also noted that he's starting to get more phone calls asking to speak w/ individuals - he advises them to send email. Discussion centered around adding a new phone line to add an answering machine - Jim will look into it.
Absent.
Not much to report this month. We have received some CLAs from present and potential committers and infrastructure has been creating the accounts as required. Now that we have elected 7 new members, I will be keeping an eye out on the (required) signed member applications. We did receive a "signed" CLA from the University of Memphis (Canty Robbins, Dir. of Purchasing) however with an amendment statement that requires our approval. A scanned copy of the 2 page amendment was provided to the board. Greg reported that the above amended CLA was not yet discussed or reviewed with Robyn, due to the board election and the potential change of the board. Greg said that he would now restart the discussions with Robyn on the outstanding legal issues. There was some discussion over the efficiency in which the board is propagating information to the members. It was noted, however, that the board mailing list is open to members and that it is a very good way for members who are so inclined to follow along with topics being considered and discussed by the board. It was also noted that Greg sends out (unofficial) board summary reports to the members mailing list as well. The use of actual board minutes were also discussed, but it was noted that the minutes aren't official until approved by the board, thus creating at least a one month delay. Jim noted that he could commit the draft minutes earlier and that the board could vote and and approve them on the mailing list, to reduce this delay.
Jim was not present. Prior to the meeting Jim had
submitted the following report:
"Notice was sent out to members regarding the scheduled
ASF Members' Meeting (to be held May 18th). We still
need to nail down some aspects of the meeting, such
as:
o Exact time
o Will we be using Roy's voting tool?
o Usage of proxies
o Members of record (this is on my plate)
On the office front, no ASF board related letters have
been received, although we are getting FAXed and posted
CLAs, which are being logged in, on average, once
a week. Covalent has a new Raindance account, so we'll
start using that (assuming I'm still on the board after
the next board election)."
The board discussed various timezone issues associated with the
meeting and agreed that the scheduled ASF members meeting would
take place at 12 (noon) Pacific time. The board agreed the
the voting tool would be used.
After almost daily updates to the CLA listing, due to the March 1 deadline before accounts were closed, we are back to weekly updates. Our annual CSC renewal was received and fowarded to Chuck for payment. Jim is requesting a monthly office budget of $100 to cover such expenses as paper, postage and inkjet ink. Jim also noted that the ASF office received notice that, due to the Sun vs. Microsoft trial, that Microsoft has requested "confidential" documents which may exist between Sun and other entities, including the ASF. The notice states that any documents provided will be marked as "highly confidential" and that serious restrains are placed on Microsoft over their allowed use of these documents.
Nothing special to report this month. We are continuing to receive CLAs, and the number of committers without signed CLAs is steadily decreasing. Even so, it looks like there will be several accounts "closed" by the deadline. No status on obtaining a conferencing service specifically for the ASF. There was a question whether the current method of handling CLAs is placing an undue burden on the secretary. Jim reported that once this "hump" is over, things should settle back down to reasonable levels.
We are seeing a steady flow of incoming CLAs. One "burst" was after v3 of the CLA (and the corresponding Corporate CLA) was approved for use, when a number of IBM committers sent in a signed CLA. I have also created a 'grants.txt' file in the foundation CVS which will list the Software/License Grants we have on file (ala 'clas.txt'). I was investigating the idea of the ASF obtaining their own conferencing account. An offering from MCI/Worldcom actually looked promising, since it was a "pay as you go" system with good pricing. Upon further investigation, their support for "overseas" calls was not good: they did not have an Internation toll-free line, instead requiring the operator to "dial up" an Internation participant. We will continue to use the current scenario. PMCs that require conferencing capability should contact me. It was noted at this time that the present system does not provide International toll-free and that the MCI system may, in fact, be on-par with what we are currently using. Because of this, Jim will "reboot" the process of investigating and obtaining this service.
No report due to Jim being absent.
A repeat of the report from the Member's Meeting: Jim reports that the ASF is receiving a steady stream of CLAs, thanks mostly to the Spam Assassin "donation" and the Geronimo development effort. The present method of handling CLAs is admittedly non-efficient. In many cases the FAXes are of poor quality and hard to read. Plus, it places a burden on infrastructure to know when to create accounts and on PMCs to know when someone can be given commit privs. There is a SOW, of sorts, in infrastructure to streamline this process. Occasionally, other items are received at the ASF "office," such as legal letters (eg: the JBoss letter) or deliveries for members. Items pertaining to the ASF proper, especially legal issues, are brought to the full attention of the board, for discussion and consensus. Deliveries are returned to the sender, with notice of the member's shipping address (obtained from members.txt).
The ASF office has received over the last month several signed CLAs relating to the Spam Assassin project, which is being accepted into the ASF Incubator. Other CLAs have also been received and logged. The infrastructure team has suggested a web-based form to ease the workload on this administrative task, one which the Secretary whole-heartedly approves. We received notice from Dunn & Bradstreet that they could "not confirm" operation of the ASF. Basically, there was no phone number associated with the ASF, although they had on record the FAX and mail address. To resolve this, I have given my home-office number (410-420-0140) as a "telephone number of record" to them. We should simply have the 1901 Munsey Drive address and contact information as the address of record for the ASF. Notice was sent to the members@apache.org list regarding the Special ASF Members Meeting to be held November 16th and 6pm (local time) at Alexis Park in Las Vegas during the ApacheCon event. A reminder, with actual room location will be sent out later this week. Included will be an attached Proxy form and a reminder of the duties required of an ASF member.
Jim reports that other than a slow but steady stream of
incoming CLAs, there is little going on, ASF-office wise.
In the past month we did receive 2 Software Grants:
XMLBeans from BEA (William Klein)
wsrp4j container/producer/pluto provider/JSR168 Jars
from IBM (Dirk Wittuopp)
The check for United Layer was co-signed and mailed
on Sept 8, 2003.
Jim reported that he is digging out from vacation and bringing the status of signed CLAs up to date. Jim noted that we were getting close to the time when the next payment to United Layer would be due and reminded the board that payment required him to co-sign the check, due to the amount of the check. This sparked discussion regarding the best way to accomplish this, such as auto-deductions from the ASF account. It was decided that raising the limit before co-signing was required was the way to go. Jim was to contact Chuck regarding getting this implemented.
Jim reported that both the clas.txt and members.txt files under foundation CVS are being updated with the received signed CLAs and membership applications. He also reported that checks to United Layer, for co-location fees, were signed and were going out via postal mail. The checks were for half of July and for all of August (pre-pay).
Jim has received, as requested, the "tally sheets" for the board and new member elections to be filed. He has also started to receive the signed member applications. An email will go out later this week to all new members reminding them to (1) edit members.txt as required and (2) to send in their signed member apps. Other than a few signed CLAs, the ASF office has received no other official items requiring board or officer action (eg: invoices, etc.) As of June 21, Jim has not rec'd copies of any correspondence, other than the original letter, regarding the TM issue. These really should be filed.
Jim reported that he has purchased a new FAX machine for the ASF. This is a "multipurpose" machine, that does printing, FAXing and scanning. Now that the new FAX machine is online, signed CLAs are, once again, being received and filed.
Jim reported that a steady stream of CLAs, via FAX and postal mail were being received. As such, his FAX machine has officially given up the ghost, prompting item 8-B under New Business.
Jim reported that his projects and committers pages (http://www.apache.org/~jim/) have been updated to include information on the status of signed Contributor License Agreements for all ASF committers and members. This data is available under the foundation CVS tree as clas.txt. Jim noted that even those members present when the ASF was "bootstrapped" should send in a new CLA, since what we signed back then was different enough to warrant the need for a CLA to be on file.
No report.
Jim reported that the ASF office had received some signed CLAs and License Assignments, mostly for the Jakarta subprojects. These were noted to the subprojects as a matter of course. Jim also reported that the POP3 Protocol module, which was developed by Ryan Bloom and a version of which is currently under CVS, is, in fact, covered under the Apache License. There was some discussion of whether this was the case.
Jim reported that various invoices (sent to the ASF offices) had been sent to Chuck who reported receiving them. Jim also noted that CSC was informed of the board changes to the ASF but that, as of this date, the changes had not been implemented yet. There was some discussion on the 'apache.org' domain name and how the DNS records should be changed to reflect current reality.
Jim noted that CSC has been notified of the change of Treasurer from Randy to Chuck. This was in additional to the President and Chairman changes of 2 months ago. The signed JSPA from Sun was received and is now on-file.
Jim had no news to report other than continued work in getting the ASF files in electronic format. Greg suggested that the online committers list be updated to reflect if the ASF has a signed CLA on file for that committer.
Jim reported that he had contacted CSC regarding the required paperwork
involved in changing the Officers On Record of the ASF. CSC was to send
such paperwork to Jim. Jim also reported that he was in the process
of scanning such public documents as agreements so that they could be
posted in CVS and on site.
Jim reported 2 software contributions received by the ASF: A HTML
Parser ("El-Kabong") by Covalent Technologies and mod_python by
Gregory (Grisha) Trubetskoy.
Jim reported that he has received via postal mail a personal donation check, which will be forwarded to Randy. Jim also reported that as of the meeting, he had not received the signed JSP agreement from Jason Hunter. Jim and Roy will follow-up with Jason.
Jim reported that he had received the annual invoice from CSC for the ASF corporate standing, which he was forwarding to Randy for payment. Jim also reported that the voting procedure in use during the Annual Members Meeting worked very well and eased the record and voting keeping efforts.
Jim had no items to report.
Jim had no news to report
Jim reported that he was collecting the 2nd round of data from ASF committers and members, with the intent of populating a MySQL database with the info for our internal and public use. The data is required so that the ASF can have a complete and comprehensive list of all those working on the various projects.
Jim reported that after his email request for signed CLAs from all committers, he has been receiving a steady stream of them. Because of the volume, it is taking some time to coordinate and document the status. An additional email will be sent "shortly" with the current status of received CLAs. There was some discussion on using this opportunity to also create a comprehensive list of PGP keys for all committers.
Jim reported that, due to the amount of "strange" mail that the ASF receives, especially from non-US locations, he is taking normal precautions with mail. Jim reported that when a signed Contributor License Agreement is received, it is mentioned on the members mailing list, unless Jim was given a "head's up" to expect it from a PMC. It was also noted that up to now, the ASF has not been active in requiring signed CLAs from all committers. Jim will be sending email to all those with commit access reminding them that it is required.
Jim had nothing new to report.
Jim reported that work has been continuing on matching all ASF members with signed CLAs.
Jim reported that he has been matching the current list of ASF members with their signed ASF forms. In particular, the first priority is to ensure that all ASF members have a signed ASF Membership Application on file. The online 'members.txt' file will contain the list of forms onfile for each member. Jim reported that he has sent out to all ASF members (and will send an additional reminder) regarding the annual members meeting, and the 2 elections/votes being held at the meeting. He is reminding members that if they cannot attend, that they can, and should, select a proxy.
Jim had nothing to report.
Jim reported [via e-mail] that all was well with the office. He has accepted a new position as CTO of ZEND, which should not adversely impact his role in the ASF.
Jim had nothing to report.