Foundation:2013 Presidents Report
Presidents Report for 2012 to 2013
Summary
The Gentoo Foundation Inc. filed its annual reports in good time and remains in good standing in New Mexico.
One of the trustees (rich0) was elected to council in the July council election and has ceased to have a vote and count towards a quorum of the trustees. To ensure continuity and an orderly withdrawal for his trustees duties rich0 has been appointed to the office of assistant secretary with a review in September 2013, when the new board is in place. rich0 will stay on the trustees@ alias meanwhile.
Our 503(c)(3) Tax Status
The trustees have been working on our 503(c)(3) application, along with our Certified Public Accountant (CPA). We will need help from a CPA to prepare or annual returns when we are successful with our 503(c) application.
The IRS has been dragging their feet over applications from FOSS groups like ourselves. However, one was approved a week or so ago, so maybe thats the start of the IRS agreeing some standardisation for organisations like the Gentoo Foundation Inc.
Alternate Forms of Meeting
The July board meeting ended in a number of net splits which destroyed the end of the meeting. The log was assembled from a number of fragments. The board has discussed trying other media to hold at least some meetings, for example, VoIP, but none have the openness and built in record keeping of IRC, so there was only lukewarm support and no positive steps were decided.
Weakening of Gentoo Foundation Inc
So far, all of the officers of the Gentoo Foundation Inc. have become trustees, which leaves the Foundation somewhat weakened. Where we used to have five trustees and two officers managing and performing the work of the Foundation, the five trustees now serve as officers too.
August 2013 Trustee Election Results
- quantumsummers
- swift
- betelgeuse
- antarus
- calchan
Congratulations to quantumsummers being returned for a further term, swift on being reelected after some absence from the board
and betelgeuse on being elected for his first term.
A hearty thank you to antarus and calchan for their interest in the wellbeing of the foundation too. The foundation can always use some more hands, so not being elected as a trustee is no bar to their continued participation in the day to day operation of the foundation.
Its been fairly rare to have sufficient interest in trustee elections to actually need to run an election - many years candidates are elected unopposed. Its encouraging for the long term future of the foundation to see more interest.
Foundation members who have failed to vote in the last two trustee elections will be dropped from the membership list in accordance with the bylaws.
Foundation Activity Tracker
During the course of the year, rich0 has completed the Foundation Activity Tracker and it is now in the care and maintenance of the Assistant Secretary. This tool reminds both Officers and Trustees of what needs to be done and when which reduces the reliance of the proper operation of the Foundation on individuals memory. This in turn is good for the Boards 'Bus Factor'.
Board Meetings
Board Meetings are generally held 3rd Sunday in the month at 19:00 UTC with the exception of the June meeting which would otherwise fall on Fathers day.
Copyright Policies
The Gentoo Foundation Inc copyright policy has been both lax and controversial. Nothing was changed since Gentoo Technologies Inc. assigned all the rights to the Foundation when the foundation was established. There is some indication that GTI collected copyright assignments but none of these records were available to the new board that took office in 2008, after our fall into bad standing. These records are now considered lost. The move to git offers an opportunity to update our Copyright Policy.
Some ideas based on custom and practice followed by other FOSS projects have been discussed on the -nfp mailing list but no policy has been formulated to date.
Ganeti Nodes
The Foundation has funded hardware to form a Ganeti Cluster. This hardware is installed at the OSL and should, by the time of writing, be providing Virtual Machines for developers.
Hardware Retirements
Infra has been decommissioning some of the oldest boxes used by Gentoo, in one case, a box that was a few days short of eight years of active Gentoo service.
Foundation Git Repository
quantumsummers has established a git repro for Foundation records. It must stay private to the Foundation as it holds everything including all financial data for the foundations history.
Purchased Advertising
We have have had several cases of non Gentoo users trying to buy advertising on gentoo.org during the year. In line with the trustees mandate from members, these have been considered on their merits but have all been refused.
Donation to OSUOSL
The Foundation has, or is in the process of making a donation to our main sponsor, OSUOSL to offset some of their operating costs for hosting Gentoo for the past year.
Closing Remarks Compared to other businesses, the Gentoo Foundation Inc. has had a reasonably good year. With five active years behind us, the Foundation has shown that its a reliable active body. Both Gentoo and the Gentoo Foundation Inc. need to attract more members who are interested in the various facets of business administration to ensure the long term continuity of the Gentoo Foundation Inc. as an independent entity. We need to recruit both antarus and calchan as officers as they have demonstrated an active interest in the Foundation