Linux Australia committee meeting notes Sydney, 2005/02/13 Present Jonathan Oxer, President (Chair) Pia Smith, Vice-President Anthony Towns, Secretary Mark Tearle, Treasurer Geoffrey Bennett Andrew Cowie Stewart Smith The newly elected Linux Australia committee met in Sydney on Sunday to discuss and plan the organisation's activities over the next twelve months. The meeting came to order at 10am, and after adjournments for morning tea (11:15am-12:00 midday) and lunch (2:00pm-3:30pm), having completed the set agenda, concluded at 5pm. The secretary would like to offer all assurances that the delayed lunch had nothing to do with his laptop being on Brisbane time. The following is a summary of issues discussed. Organisation ~~~~~~~~~~~~ We established three key priorities for 2005/6 as an organisation: to limit the number of issues we focus on to ensure we can actually follow them through, to be transparent and ensure the community can continue to have confidence in our actions, and they be visible to ensure that the community is aware of the actions we're taking. On the issue of followthrough, on Jon Oxer's recommendation, the committee will be trialling the Flyspray task tracker over the next few weeks. The committee has further authorised the office-holders to take action on their own behalf on non-contentious issues, to help speed up the committee's activities. Such actions will be reviewed at the next committee meeting. On the issue of transparency, we will be aiming to ensure that minutes will be published as soon as possible following meetings, and on the secretary's recommendation, will limit its formal decision making to brief meetings conducted over IRC, that are strictly limited to a set agenda. Further, we will aim to promptly publish summaries of discussions held in person, online or over the phone to ensure the community can follow and participate in the committee's deliberations and activities. On the issue of visibility, we will be moving much of the discussion that previously has taken place on the closed committee mailing list to the linux-aus list. We will aim to reserve the committee list for committee coordination, such as the scheduling of meetings, and issues that have a definite need for confidentiality. As a consequence of this, most communication with the committee should take place over the linux-aus mailing list. The committee hopes this will also encourage broader participation in Linux Australia's activities. In order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our meetings, we will be trialling the following arrangement: weekly teleconference hook-ups on Tuesday evening to informally review current issues and touch base as needed formal meetings over IRC to make decisions and review/ratify the actions of the office holders; usually this will be held before our Tuesday teleconference, with the agenda being finalised and posted on the Friday beforehand up to four in-person meetings over the course of the year to discuss and plan any strategic issues, such as significant new projects that we should consider supporting The committee's review of the effectiveness of the AGM concluded that while the online AGM was effective at conducting the business for which it was called, and appeared to be reasonably accessible to members, it unfortunately took far too long. The committee's belief was that this was mostly attributable to a lack of prior planning as to how the meeting should be conducted, and it was decided that the committee would continue IRC meetings, but would establish and promulgate the rules of order for the meeting further in advance. Linux.Conf.Au ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Linux.Conf.Au remains Linux Australia's first priority. Discussion of the forthcoming conference in April established that the committee was pleased and satisfied with the progress the Canberra team continues to make. A number of issues need to be dealt with in regard to the 2006 conference in Dunedin, New Zealand, however. The majority of these were technical issues in regards to trans-Tasman banking, which are dealt with in the committee-only financial section of this summary. The remaining pertinent issues before the committee in regards to LCA2006 are organising the "Ghosts of Conferences Past" weekend, facilitating any publicity to be distributed at LCA2005, and providing media training to the LCA2006 organisers. Two general concerns were also discussed. The first, raised by Jeff Waugh initially at the Annual General Meeting, and again on the mailing lists, was the timing of the conference and whether it was appropriate for it to vary the tradition of holding it in late January that has been built up. The consensus of the committee was that that tradition is valuable, but retaining flexibility and a spirit of experimentation is also a highly valued tradition. The timing of the conference will thus continue to be left up to the organising team, however the committee will consider the conference dates as part of future bids. The second concern was one of oversight of the organising team. Continuing members of the committee raised some concern that Linux Australia and the Linux.Conf.Au team had not been seeing eye to eye, or communicating clearly on a number of issues. While from the committee's perspective, there have not been any consequent problems arising from the organising teams' action; the committee believes some more effective oversight is needed in order to ensure the ongoing success of the conference. It was proposed that the previous organisers that form the "Ghosts" be tasked as an "oversight subcommittee", with the hope that having a common foundation as conference organisers they would be able to communicate effectively with the current organisers. Open Source Forums ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Pia Smith spoke briefly on the Open Source Forums she has been organising, noting that the first forum, on Software Patents, had been a great success with a higher than expected attendance. She noted that there were three forthcoming forums, on Anti-Circumvention, Linux on the Desktop, and Business Methods for Open Source. It is hoped that tapes of these forums will be able to be made available online in future. These forums are generally sponsored, and thus cost Linux Australia nothing to run; however the Linux on the Desktop forum is expected to cost up to $300 for basic catering. Linux Professional Institute Certification ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The relationship between LPI and Linux Australia was reviewed. In sum, Linux Australia is an LPI affiliate, and one of few organisations in Australia that can hold paper exams. Our obligations are to remit an annual fee to LPI, to provide the appropriate security for exams and to promote LPI in Australia. The committee viewed its success at the latter to be less than wholly satisfactory to this point. In return, LA receives some income both from holding exams in its own name as is done at Linux.Conf.Au, and an affiliate fee from organisations who hold exams in Australia. Grants ~~~~~~ The grants process was discussed. The essence of the idea was that we would split up to $2000 each month amongst worthy open source projects. However only two grant applications have been successful; one a small request made by Jeff Waugh to purchase some computer equipment, and a request by Sara Kaan for support to setup a Linux booth at an education conference. A loan request for ComputerBank was also approved, but subsequently fell through. Other requests such as payment for flights to attend or present at overseas open source conferences failed to be approved. Approximately eight requests have been made in total. It was the committee's opinion that the grant process was worth continuing. The committee decided that it was worthwhile to encourage more applications, that applications need to be tracked better, and that responses to applications need to be made more promptly. As such, the committee determined that grant applications should ordinarily go direct to the public linux-aus list for comments rather than to the private committee list. It is further hoped the task tracker will help requests be dealt with effectively, once set up. Free Trade Agreement / IP Lobbying ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At the Annual General Meeting, it was moved by the membership that the committee should continue its involvement in this area, though concern was noted that political lobbying can have implications on non-profit organisations. The secretary and treasurer noted their satisfaction that these concerns did not apply to Linux Australia, due to its registration as a non-profit, rather than a charity. The committee were thus satisfied that the organisation should continue its involvement in this area. Unfortunately Paul "Rusty" Russell was unable to attend the committee meeting, so further analysis of what form that involvement would take was deferred. Media Training ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The committee felt that the media training provided to the Linux Australia and Linux.Conf.Au folks in 2004 was helpful, and that it should be repeated this year. It was expected that it would be most cost effective to pay for ten people as a group, to be made up of four people from LA and LCA2006, and six others from the community who could benefit from a better understanding of how to talk to journalists. LUG Interaction ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The committee's view was that the state LUG contacts had not been wholly successful over the past year. However no particular plans were raised at improving the situation, mostly due to lack of time and resources to commit to such plans. As such, states were assigned to committee members, with a view to at least maintaining the standard of representation/communiction, if not raising it. OSDC ~~~~ The committee briefly discussed the Open Source Developers Conference held by the Melbourne Perl Mongers / Perl Training Australia. Jonathan Oxer will follow up with the OSDC organising committee on Linux Australia's behalf to determine their plans for the next conference, and whether any cooperation or assistance from Linux Australia was desired or appropriate. Donations ~~~~~~~~~ The prospect of accepting donations and managing funds on behalf of other open source projects was raised, in particular for the Debian and Samba projects. Linux Australia is currently holding a small amount of funds on behalf of Debian (from t-shirt sales, and a refund that was donated to Debian instead of accepted). The general concept was that funds would be spent based on the wishes of, eg, the Debian Project Leader or other authorised delegate on that project's activities in Australia -- paying for hardware, or sponsoring people to attend Debian events in Australia, or sponsoring Australians to attend Debian events overseas. The concern was raised that projects might not be aware of funds held by Linux Australia. The issue of how expenditures would be authorised was also raised, in particular how LA would know who was authorised to make requests on behalf of a project. It was also noted that if the project wound up, Linux Australia would need to handle the money appropriately, and that this should probably be dealt with up front. Also questioned was whether our bank might have any conditions on accepting credit card payments on behalf of others. It was noted that some small projects use donations received over paypal to offset living expenses, and that use of funds of this nature might conflict with LA's non-profit nature if not handled appropriately. It was also noted that there might not be any point going through LA in this case anyway -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it. In spite of the concerns, the committee felt this was a worthwhile project, and Mark Tearle and Anthony Towns will further investigate its feasibility and report back to the committee. Other Conferences ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The issue of whether there was space for a national "Linux User Conference" in Australia, complementing the success of Linux.Conf.Au and its focus on developers. A range of concepts were touched upon; such as whether a road show, a tradeshow, or a collection of talks and tutorials were more appropriate, and what compromise between the community feel of a volunteer run conference, and the resources of a vendor run conference was appropriate. Concerns noted included that a user event would likely to be much larger than Linux.Conf.Au, with a concomitant increase in expense, difficulty, and risk; and that having an event that was too vendor-focussed might become too much of a trade show and not be as valuable to Linux users or the community as we would hope, or perhaps not even generate enough interest to be worthwhile for vendors in any case. It was clear that the committee itself does not have the time to run such a conference itself, leaving three main prospects for running such a conference: getting a wide group of vendors together to run it to benefit themselves with some oversight by Linux Australia, getting some people who'd really like to see a user conference happen to run it with Linux Australia's organisational support, or paying a professional conference organiser, presumably with little to know Linux knowledge, to run it. The general feeling of the committee was that there was a space for a user conference of some sort, and that there were a number of plausible ways of running it, but that we did not have a clear enough idea of the target audience or aim of such an event. Cashflow ~~~~~~~~ The issue of cashflow was discussed. Linux Australia's primary source of funds is the surplus revenue of Linux.Conf.Au each year. At present the vast majority of these funds are being maintained in an interest bearing cash management account. Secondary sources of funds are interest and LPI affiliate and exam fees. Our expenses are only slightly more diverse. Cashflow issues from Linux.Conf.Au (that is, money that needs to be spent before sponsorship or registrations are finalised) are the primary use of funds, though in the past year legal expenses relating to the Free Trade Agreement and trademark issues have been noteworthy. Grants, "cost of doing business" expenses, and one-off expenditures make up the remaining expenses. The previously discussed projects indicated three potential sources of additional funds: better promotion of LPI, a successful user conference, and donations. The committee's view was that Linux Australia's cashflow situation was comfortable enough that no action beyond the previously mentioned projects was needed. Summary prepared by: Anthony Towns This draft released on the 19th February, 2005.