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PSF Meeting Minutes for June 18, 2004

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The Python Software Foundation
Minutes of Regular Meeting of the Board of Directors

June 15, 2004

A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation (the "PSF") Board of Directors was held over Internet Relay Chat at 17:00 GMT. Stephan Deibel presided at the meeting.

1. Attendance

The following members of the Board of Directors were present at the meeting: Jeremy Hylton, Guido van Rossum, Martin v. Löwis, Stephan Deibel, Tim Peters. Neal Norwitz also attended the meeting. Martin was taking minutes.

2. Meeting minutes of past IRC meetings

The April minutes where approved with 5/0/0. The May minutes were approved with 4/0/1.

3. Reports

The treasurer report was emailed. Martin reported no progress on contributor agreements, and will summarize the status of affairs to the board list. Tim reported no progress on bylaw changes for electronic voting.

4. Committee reports to the members

Marc-Andre Lemburg requested that committees give regular reports. The board agreed that committees report atleast quarterly, and the PSF chairman will remind committee chairs of their reporting duties.

The board also agreed to create a PSF wiki; this has been created at http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/PythonSoftwareFoundation. These wiki pages shall be used for communication within the committees.

David Ascher joined the meeting for the remaining agenda items.

5. Preferred License

Aahz requested that the board suggests an official PSF policy on a license Python applications and packages should use, so that they better integrate with Python, and can be potentially included with Python in the future. The board has discussed this question. Martin summarized earlier discussion concluding that packages should *not* use the Python license. Tim suggested that the board recommends a "no-hassle" license, such as BSD or MIT.

Guido suggested to recommend one of Larry Rosen's licenses, e.g. the Academic Free License, instead.

David commented that this license is loaded. It is an interesting license, and he likes it, but he doesn't think it is right for Python.

Jeremy asked whether the board needs to make a specific recommendation. Martin said that if we cannot agree, we cannot make a recommendation. David argued that we were doing so well: the board should show leadership, and we know more about licenses than 99% of the contributors. Stephan asked whether it would be sufficient just to recommend not using the GPL. Guido said that general proliferation of licenses is a problem, as many are mutually incompatible. Jeremy pointed out that Python "stood" for something in the licensing world, for specifically not being GPL.

After further discussion, there was a general consensus that the board would recommend MIT/BSD as a license for Pythonic software. David will draft a motion in this direction after the meeting.

6. Budget for the treasurer

Neal Norwitz requested funds for a computer and a scanner, for processing PSF paperwork. The board agreed that it would be better to grant a budget to the treasurer from which such expenses could be paid. Stephan moved that it is
RESOLVED, that we give Neal a budget for $2k for expenses as a treasurer.
The motion passed 6/0/0.

7. Adjournment

Their being no further business, Stephan adjourned the meeting at 18:00GMT.