Oversight Board/2010/Meeting Log-2010-02-05

tomeu hi all!

walterbender hi

it is about that time :)

is bernie here?

anyone besides tomeu actually listening?

SeanDaly helooo?

walterbender do we have quorum? We only have 3 so far

tomeu cjb, mchua, CanoeBerry: ping

walterbender we can chat in the meantime.

I had a long talk with the GeoGebra team this morning...

cjb morning

walterbender They are excited about getting their activity running on Sugar... but it will finally force the issue of getting decent Java support running...

ah. quorum...

#startmeeting

meeting Meeting started at 11:05 UTC. The chair is walterbender.

Commands Available: #TOPIC, #IDEA, #ACTION, #AGREED, #LINK

walterbender A quick roll call:

• walterbender:here
• SeanDaly:here
• cjb:here
• tomeu:as well

walterbender I hope mchua pops in for the GSoC discussion

meanwhile, shall we start with the usual: Trademarks?

#topic update on TM discussion

SeanDaly I had a message from Joe Raftery, but he edited my wiki page instead of sending a mail, he asked a question but I can't reach him

walterbender SeanDaly, cjb: anything worth summarizing from the discussions on the lists?

SeanDaly I think there's a concern that the procedure will be complex

I think it should be policy for approval to be fast-track for FOSS projects,

cjb walterbender: I think everyone who commented was against the idea that we need more strict trademark rules than the other free software projects we've been comparing ourselves to

SeanDaly and deeper review for commercial partners

walterbender SeanDaly, cjb: do we have any specific language to propose?

SeanDaly well, there were two comments... and no reply to my reply

Not today I'm afraid since I was wiped out from l'Atelier OLPC France day (which went very well)

But, it's clearer and clearer to me how I think it should work

walterbender SeanDaly: it is great that the atelier went well...

SeanDaly yes I will brief SLOBs on great contacts in separate mail

walterbender SeanDaly, cjb: maybe the next step is for the two of you to work together on some new langauge to post to the lists...

SeanDaly my pres. appreciated and will be published by OLPC France

back on topic: two things

walterbender SeanDaly: (we need to follow up re Rotary one of these days too.)

SeanDaly re other FOSS projects: the only one I'm interested in comparing with is a successful one

walterbender: true

Mozilla has been very successful with branding

However, that doesn't mean we need to carbon copy their policy

I'd like to emulate Dolby and Intel, but without the fees

walterbender SeanDaly cjb: it seems the two of you are representative of the diversity of opinions, so if you can reach consensus, it will prob. be a good position.

SeanDaly walterbender: sounds good

cjb walterbender: ok

not sure what a concrete next step should be, though

walterbender would you have time over the next week?

SeanDaly second point: in light of my first point, are we sure we never want to charge commercial partners?

cjb I'm interested in whether it's possible to use automatic revocation upon non-compliance in trademark licenses

but I don't know how to find an answer to that

SeanDaly cjb: it sure is, but the question is enforcement

walterbender cjb: the goal is something simple and inviting for FOSS projects while maintaining some degree of oversight (as required by TM law and by our community standards)

cjb SeanDaly: surely if we don't have any enforcement available, it doesn't matter what the policy says?

SeanDaly cjb: we do have enforcement

cjb ah. what exactly is the question, then?

SeanDaly but just because the law says somebody can't steal a car, I won't leave a car running unattended with the keys in the ignition

cjb I don't have any strong opinions on whether we should charge commercial partners, by the way :)

SeanDaly re commercial partners: my instinct is to leave it open... it could be a very useful revenue stream even if peanuts per station

cjb except that we are very small, and the groups we occasionally try and compare ourselves to (whether Mozilla or Dolby) are very big, and if you become as onerous to work with as a very big organization while you're still a small organization, you don't find as many people to work with.

SeanDaly cjb: the question is, how do you make the policy strong enough that anyone tempted to flout it will likely lose in court

cjb so I'd be concerned about charging for marks as a strategic question -- will this create the largest ecosystem or not -- but nothing more than that.

tomeu about charging partners, I think I have heard from martin langhoff about how moodle does it

walterbender can we put aside the question of whether or not we charge people... that is seemingly orthogonal and yet another can of worms.

tomeu not sure how well fares the moodle brand, though ;)

SeanDaly tomeu: moodle brand not known by public, but well-known among educators by word-of-mouth

I believe they have a rather restrictive partner policy: 2 per country

cjb wow, that is a surprising policy

walterbender well, keeping in mind that we need more mindshare from educators...

tomeu SeanDaly: not sure if they consider general public awareness as so important

walterbender SeanDaly: yes. 2 per region.

SeanDaly dfarning had briefed me on them a while back

walterbender SeanDaly: (I had briefed dfarning based on a briefing from martin :) )

SeanDaly :D

cjb SeanDaly: would it make sense to put a question in to Karen asking whether they've ever seen a GPL-like trademark license, and if they feel comfortable defending it?

mchua GAH. I'm actually here, irssi didn't highlight the window. caught up on backlog though.

walterbender SeanDaly: I am sure Martin would be willing to share his experiences with you.

SeanDaly walterbender: which martin again?

walterbender SeanDaly: Langhoff

SeanDaly ok

tomeu he has been thinking about sustainability and partners for a while, I think SeanDaly might find interesting his opinions

SeanDaly cjb: well, their role is to defend our copyright, trademarks etc.

walterbender for the sake of keeping on schedule, can we take it as an #action that cjb and SeanDaly will congress and come up with some new language?

SeanDaly tomeu: yes, I discussed that with him last I was in Brussels

walterbender and run it past the lists?

cjb SeanDaly: right, but they clearly have preferences on how they like to do that

SeanDaly walterbender: sounds good

tomeu ah, ok

cjb maybe they will say "we think automatic trademark licenses don't work and we don't want to use them"

and that would be useful to hear

SeanDaly cjb: Karen said: "decide what you want & we will write the language"

• tomeu:thanks cjb and SeanDaly for taking this unsexy task

cjb ok, we'll work on it :)

walterbender #action cjb and SeanDaly will draft some new TM and run it past the community for review.

SeanDaly it's like sowing seeds in the rough: odds against us to get it right, but worth the effort

cjb (I don't think we will have new policy ready for next week, though, given that we're still a bit far away philosophically.)

walterbender SeanDaly: actually, I think that the two of you are the right ones...

SeanDaly cjb: well, a fair policy for FOSS projects with fast-track approval - what's not to like? :D

walterbender we are never going to all agree on ever detail, but if we can find something we can all work with productively...

let's run through a few other agenda items in the meantime.

SeanDaly walterbender: after plain English policy will be legal doc by Karen, so still a ways to go...

walterbender SeanDaly: as long as we are moving towards the goal.

On a related topic, we have a few new TM requests that have come in this week.

SeanDaly walterbender: top-of-mind! :D

I'm especially interested in openSUSE case

walterbender Paraguay would like to use our mark and become some flavor of Sugar Lab...

they'd like an agreement from us.

SeanDaly we don't have a way of recognizing "official" local labs do we?

a procedure even?

walterbender Well, we are somewhat mired at the moment.

we had a process in place before the TM debate

but the TM debate seems to superceed it.

SeanDaly yes, related...

tomeu may be interesting to move forward with SLs argentina, in sight of recent news

walterbender They are an ideal partner--strong in both pedagogy and technology and very strongly aligned with FOSS

cjb tomeu: what's the recent news?

walterbender if we cannot come up with a policy that expedites such requests, we are doing the wrong thing.

tomeu cjb: 60k xo-1.5 in la rioja

cjb cool, hadn't seen that number

dogi :)

tomeu arboleda was nice enough to mention sugar to the press

cjb nice, got a url?

tomeu there's a thread in iaep, and I have just blogged about it

SeanDaly http://tecnologia.iprofesional.com/notas/93943-La-PC-barata-de-Negroponte-desembarca-en-la-Argentina-para-pelear-contra-Intel.html

walterbender it was in email today...

cjb thanks

tomeu the article is better than its title

SeanDaly this is precisely why I wish to coordinate PR & marketing with OLPC-F and especially OLPC-A

I have pinged Rodrigo again

more Sugar, less tech spex

walterbender Anyway, I'll let Cecilia know that we are working on something for Paraguay...

• lfaraone:waves.

walterbender OK. Can we talk about GSoC?

tomeu I count on paraguay educa to help other countries work together in sugar

SeanDaly walterbender:re expedite requests: I fully agree

hey just heard back from Rodrigo - looks like we will start coordinating!!

walterbender SeanDaly: great...

tomeu about gsoc, I'm personally going to focus my time on other contributors such as from downstreams

walterbender #topic gsoc

tomeu gsoc students have taken lots of my time in past editions

and I'm not sure it was really worth it, compared to other contributors

mchua Do we know what sorts of things we'd want gsoc students to take on this summer? Is this the best use of our time?

cjb tomeu: yeah, I see where you're coming from

walterbender tomeu: I agree that that may be the best use of your time, but gsoc is useful in many ways, IMHO

tomeu walterbender: sure, not saying otherwise

walterbender Some people really enjoy mentoring students

mchua my question is "who's going to step up to run this?"

cjb well, one nice thing about gsoc is that it forces us to write down stuff we'd like other people to help with

walterbender and some students, even if their project is not viable, go on to be community members

cjb: yes... it enforces a certain discipline

and it is a right of passage for a FOSS project

it keeps us in the broader community eye

tomeu maybe activities would be more appropriate for gsoc?

CanoeBerry Apologies for the very late arrival.

walterbender for example, just this morning, GeoGebra was talk about getting involved with us on GSoC...

hi Adam

CanoeBerry Ciao Todos

walterbender Adam: need a backlog?

CanoeBerry I'm OK, reading..

walterbender But we should be careful about burning up key resources...

dogi http://me.etin.gs/sugar-meeting/sugar-meeting.log.20100205_1105.html

walterbender I think we tied to tackle projects with too large of a scope last year...

tomeu walterbender: +1

also, there's a very wide range of experience and capabilities in students

walterbender but the first step is to decide (1) do we apply this year and (2) is yes, who is the team?

tomeu we should match better projects with individuals

mchua walterbender: I think the questions need to be the other way around.

cjb :)

walterbender Well, I asked the questions together for a purpose...

tomeu yeah, I guess nobody is opposed to gsoc in principle?

cjb I'd like to see us apply but have frankly no intention of helping. sorry. :)

mchua (1) who, if anyone, is interested in leading the sl gsoc charge this year? (2) do we feel comfortable selecting a team/lead from those who volunteered and handing this responsibility to them, pretty much completely?

• mchua:has no objections to applying, but has no further hands to lend for it this summer.

walterbender I so far have heard from one person... Tim McNamara

cjb perhaps we should post to iaep asking for volunteers to lead?

there was Jameson (and mchua) last year

walterbender cjb: I've asked twice, both times buried on the Sugar Digest

cjb ah, sorry.

• mchua:cleaning up a stub page for that right now, will be ready in ~5m

cjb I do read them :-)

mchua Yeah, I saw the mentions but they may have been lost inline for most readers.

walterbender cjb: well, it is obvious that I haven't done a good job getting the word out...

I'll work with Tim and try to pull in some more help.

mchua: the materials we prepared last year should mostly be relevant for this year.

• mchua:nods.

walterbender #action Walter to be more aggressive about assembling a team for GSoC

Any other suggestions re this topic?

OK. well, I have my action item.

The final topic on today's agenda is to review our goals for 2010.

#topic Goals for 2010

I wrote a first draft for comment...

• walterbender:looks for the URL

CanoeBerry Side Comment about Tim McNamara..

He's 100% awesome and helping me lead QA back on track.

Where we can help.

The Sri Lankan team is very serious.

tomeu CanoeBerry: hmm, maybe next development team meeting could be about QA?

walterbender http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/2010/Meeting_Minutes-2010-01-22#Goals_for_2010_2

tomeu CanoeBerry: we have so much to improve there...

CanoeBerry tomeu: might take us 2+ weeks to get organized, but yes.

walterbender CanoeBerry: thanks... that is great feedback.

mchua walterbender: re gsoc, how does shouting-out http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code sound?

tomeu CanoeBerry: ok, I'm very interested, please ping me when you have more news

mchua CanoeBerry: in fact, please ping iaep

CanoeBerry Will do.

• tomeu:reads proposed goals

mchua walterbender: (note that I set an arbitrary date of feb 17 for announcing interest deadline, so we can pick a coordinator 2 meetings from now)

walterbender re goals, they are all pretty generic and not easy to measure...

tomeu is it REL or RHEL?

cjb it's RHEL

pronounced our-hell :)

tomeu :D

walterbender regardless of the spelling, that will be an up-hill battle...

not technically, but in terms of the RHEL goals...

mchua What can be done to make it easier?

cjb yes, similar to the three-year-old battles at OLPC about what the software base would be

we rejected RHEL then because we knew we needed newer software than it provides

so I don't really understand why we think we might be a good idea now :)

• mchua:was curious about that one too.

tomeu walterbender: not sure how well it is covered by your proposal, but I planned to keep focusing on bringing more downstream people into sugar development: olpc deployments, igalia, davidfarning's initiative, etc

I think we care specially because of LTSP deployments in schools?

walterbender tomeu: please add some new langauge

tomeu walterbender: will do

• mchua:wrote up her homework here:

mchua #link http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mchua/Goals_2010

tomeu walterbender: do we need to do anything special regarding RHEL?

it is similar to how olpc decides that their next release will be f11 with 0.84

mchua tomeu: "package things for EPEL," aiui.

walterbender cjb: re RHEL... It seems to me that offering a distro-based solution with an expected lifetime measured in multiple years would be desirable for our deployments.

tomeu mchua: won't they sync packages from the corresponding fedora version?

walterbender cjb: 3-years ago, Sugar wasn't ready... but I can anticipate being there soon... but maybe we are still 1 year too soon.

SeanDaly actually, our six-month schedule means we will always be ahead of deployments; yet, it's a good rhythm for improving quickly

a very stable Sugar would guarantee our success

mchua tomeu: (again, aiui) what we'd want to do is have Sugar stuff packaged in the EPEL (extra packages for enterprise linux) repositories, http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

tomeu walterbender: maybe we shouldn't worry too much about this RHEL and rather worry about the next one

cjb walterbender: oh, you're talking about a *future* RHEL release?

SeanDaly while an unstable Sugar will need even better marketing :D :D

mchua tomeu: and that usually means "take the Fedora package, rebuild it against RHEL"

tomeu cjb: yup

cjb ahh

when is that scheduled for?

tomeu mchua: right, so no big deal, right?

mchua tomeu: right, no big deal at all.

cjb it's normally only once every 3-4 years, right?

walterbender tomeu: I agree. But I think it is important to set as a goal Sugar on a stable platform... maybe for 2011?

mchua tomeu: I mean, we might want to do some testing, don't know if we have the resources for that sort of QA to be done right

tomeu walterbender: sounds good to discuss how would sugar 1.0 would look like

CanoeBerry INVITE: Will anybody here be joining Gerald Ardito & I our OLPC/Sugar/Haiti Creole Dinner Saturday NYC 5:30? Co-hosted with NYC's Haiti Crisis Camp. Please let me know!

http://kombitrestaurant.com

tomeu I can see RHEL being a big deal for us if whatever version we had in the corresponding fedora release wasn't what we wanted in a stable distro

SeanDaly might make more sense to imagine a major deployment as being the v1.0

mchua cjb: There's no "when will the next RHEL" release date out yet but it's starting to get close to that time in the (multi-year) cycle

CanoeBerry "Kombit" is the Creole word for volunteerism/collaboration..

walterbender tomeu: maybe if we have a clean picture of Sugar 1.0, then we can be more attractive to the RHELs of the world.

SeanDaly with QA resources to match

tomeu but maybe we don't need to worry so much right now

walterbender: makes sense

SeanDaly: yeah, very important

cjb mchua: ok. but we don't have to do anything special for it other than getting our packages working well in Fedora, I'm guessing

walterbender so I will take it off the list of goals for 2010

cjb because a RHEL release is based on a Fedora release

SeanDaly another way to look at it is working back from OEM viewpoint

mchua cjb: Yeah, I see "have packages working well in Fedora" as "and now it's easy to get them working in RHEL!" prerequisites when we're ready for that next step.

SeanDaly what distro(s) referenced?

cjb walterbender: I think it's okay for it to be a goal; working with the *next* RHEL is going to be very easy (zero effort), and working with the current RHEL would be almost impossibly hard.

SeanDaly How does Sugar run on that distro?

mchua cjb: and the step after that is "now that they're packaged (in EPEL) for RHEL, let's QA the living daylights out of it" which is an open question re: resources imo.

...but comes along much later. perhaps even next year.

walterbender new wording: Define Sugar 1.0 so that we can begin partnering with long-term stable distros, such as RHEL

tomeu cjb: not impossible for alsroot ;)

SeanDaly to me it's more an event-triggered thing that a planned schedule thing... I mean, if Intel wanted to reference Sugar for the CMPC in 2010 on Mandriva, that would seem to me to become a priority, no?

tomeu (he retro-fitted sugar in quite old mandriva and ubuntu derivatives)

walterbender tomeu: maybe a goal should be to clone alsroot :)

mchua walterbender: what's involved in "defining sugar 1.0"? (for those curious readers looking in for the first time with little context on the day-to-day of SL)

tomeu heh

cjb looks like we have 2 mins, folks

anything else?

lfaraone, walterbender: did the WMF servers arrive?

walterbender mchua: well, we need to talk about where we think we'll be at 1.0 in more concrete terms...

tomeu mchua: stating what we want sugar 1.0 look like?

walterbender lfaraone: not yet

lfaraone cjb: not afaict. school is closed today, so I can't follow up with Jeff at the career center.

tomeu features, stability, API, etc

walterbender I have nothing else on the agenda...

cjb lfaraone: righto, thanks

lfaraone cjb: they were supposed to ship wed, so we're looking at mon/tues

SeanDaly I see 2 key goals for SL in 2010:

1) fundraising

2) a website with the Sugar interface so anyone can try online

walterbender could we take it as an action for everyone to review the goals list and make changes?

tomeu walterbender: +1

walterbender SeanDaly: have you seen the Paraguay site?

SeanDaly yes, I did... an excellent idea

CanoeBerry 3) less lawyers (but we all still love Andriani Ferti & the many lawyers helping us bravely)

walterbender SeanDaly: it is done in Flash, but I bet I could do it in straight CSS

SeanDaly we have an install barrier and an unfamiliarity barrier... website solves both, generates enough interest for download

walterbender #action Everyone will review the Goals for 2010 for next time.

mchua walterbender: more concrete terms for what, though? design, technical specs, deployability, features, activities, mechanisms-of-participation... ? what's the scope?

walterbender OK... time is about up.

I am traveling next week and may or may not be able to get on line. Shall we plan to meet again in two weeks?

mchua worksforme.

SeanDaly walterbender: in CSS and running on the iPad :D

CanoeBerry +1

walterbender that would give cjb and SeanDaly more time.

SeanDaly true

cjb ok

walterbender OK. Next meeting on the 19th.

cjb SeanDaly, walterbender: do you mind if I mail Karen about automatic trademarks?

mchua I wrote up my goals stuff at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mchua/Goals_2010, so I'll assume I've done my homework in advance already unless otherwise notified. ;)

walterbender cjb: by all means, please contact her

cjb just to see whether she has any preference on how enforceable they are

thanks

walterbender OK.

CanoeBerry ANNC: deployment presentation this Sunday 12 Noon @ OLPC by Vietnam Volunteer Nancie Severs.

SeanDaly cjb: you mean if they can possibly work ;-) sure

• mchua:has a SoaS pilot to start up, will be mildly hosed next week.

walterbender thanks everyone.

cjb SeanDaly: yeah :)

CanoeBerry Join in person or by phone if you can!!!

walterbender #endmeeting

meeting Meeting finished at 12:06.

Logs available at http://me.etin.gs/sugar-meeting/

walterbender CanoeBerry: cannot join you in NYC :(

CanoeBerry RSVP Required: Write holt @ laptop . org

OK, Sunday's meeting is Boston, can you make it?

12 Noon @ OLPC

SeanDaly cjb: keep in mind enforceability not the only criteria - we need to be in contact with our deployments to grow ecosystem & get feedback

walterbender mchua: re your third goal, we have the offer of Miami. We need to decide when.

SeanDaly in touch with deployments=reduced possibility of failure

cjb SeanDaly: right; but it's the only criterion that we need Karen's input on

walterbender mchua: could you add your metagoal of individuals setting and announcing goals to the wiki page and perhaps start a link to individual goals?

SeanDaly failed deployments=very bad for image