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PSF Meeting Minutes for Dec. 20, 2010

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

December 20, 2010


A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation ("PSF") Board of Directors was held over Internet Relay Chat beginning at 16:00 UTC, 20 December 2010. Steve Holden presided at the meeting. Pat Campbell prepared the minutes.

All votes are reported in the form "Y-N-A" (in favor — opposed — abstentions; e.g. "5-1-2" means "5 in favor, 1 opposed, and 2 abstentions").

1   Attendance

The following members of the Board of Directors were present at the meeting: Raymond Hettinger, Steve Holden, Marc-Andre Lemburg, Martin v. Löwis, David Mertz, Jesse Noller, Tim Peters, Allison Randal, Jeff Rush, James Tauber, and Gloria Willadsen. Also in attendance were Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer), and Pat Campbell (Secretary & Administrator).

2   Minutes of Past Meetings

The 15 November 2010 Board meeting minutes were voted on and approved.

Approved, 8-0-3.

3   Votes Taken Between Meetings

There were no votes taken since the last Board meeting held on 15 November 2010.

4   Treasurer Report

The monthly Treasurer's Report was provided to Board members by K. Kaiser prior to the Board meeting and produced from Quickbooks Online where the year 2009 has come to a close.

The treasurer's focus for the beginning of the year 2011 starts out with PSF Sponsor Member invoices:

"My focus is currently on PSF Sponsor Member invoices, AR and AP reduction, and implementation of the financial aspects of the Associate Member program. With respect to the latter, I've begun setting up a new PayFlow Pro account using our new processor, since MatrixMaxx can't interface to our existing PayFlow account."

5   Progress Report

The following board reports were submitted to the board mailing list one week prior to this month's meeting. Please see a summary of each board report listed below and a possible board discussion to follow:

5.1   Communication Status

D. Hellmann, Communication Officer, reported continued activities from last month, by saying:

  1. Paulo Nuin is working on a post about the PyPI mirroring project.
  2. Engelbert Gruber is working on interview questions for a post about the new PyCon web site.

As far as new activities for the month are concerned, he reported:

  1. Jobs Board Maintainer change post by Mike Driscoll

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2010/12/python-jobs-board-maintainer-changing.html

  2. SciPy India grant post by Paulo Nuin

    http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2010/12/psf-supports-2010-scipy-india.html

For items planned for next month and ongoing projects, D. Hellmann reported respectively:

  1. Post linking to the news article about Vern Ceder's Python programming class for high school students.

Facebook stats, as of 13 Dec.

10,782 monthly active users, up 7,567 since last week
20,826 people like this, up 442 since last week
130 wall posts and comments this week, up 78 since last week
2,030 visits this week, up 430 since last week

5.2   Core Development Tasks

B. Cannon, Core Development Tasks Project, will begin working on this 2-month project in January 2011. B. Cannon said, "My goal is to have the dev docs finished by the end of January with hopes of having a very solid (with hopes of substantial) start on the Python 2 to 3 porting HOWTO."

5.4   Infrastructure Committee

S. Reifschneider, Infrastructure Committee Chair, reported the following work initiated for the month:

  1. Martin set up DNS for the Polish Python Coders group.They were losing access to their previous domain at www.python.org.pl because the domain owner wanted to commercialize it. COMPLETED.

5.5   Marketing Material

M.A.Lemburg, Marketing Material Project Manager, presented a marketing material proposal to the board that was discussed and voted on (see topic below for vote results -- Pre-Finance & Underwrite Python Brochure).

5.6   Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront

The project leader, M.A. Lemburg, Moving PyPI to Amazon CloudFront, provided a purpose for his project by saying, "The project is intended to improve the availability, uptime and performance of PyPI for use by automatic package installation tools.

The main idea is to make all PyPI static content available via Amazon Cloudfront, a content delivery network maintained by Amazon."

MAL hopes to get his project started by early 2011. He would also like to start recruiting for volunteers to help implement the startup facets of the project.

5.7   PyCon US Website

D. Napoleone, PyCon US Website Project, reported continued activities from last month, by saying:

  1. Registration Launched

    Registration is now live, and after a minor problem with donation notifications, has worked with no problems. We have record registrations for this period.

  2. Talk, Tutorial, and Poster reviews are progressing

    There were some minor complications with the software for reviewing submitted materials, but they have all been resolved.

For items planned for next month and ongoing projects, D. Napoleone reported respectively:

  1. New schedule system from Eldarion
  2. Bug fixes and feature requests.
  3. Archival of old PyCon websites.

Board Discussion:

S. Holden: "I'd like to be sure the PyCon website is supporting financial assistance properly - jnoller, any idea on that?"

  1. Noller: "FA (Financial Aid) is accepting applications."
  1. Holden: "Fine, thanks."

5.8   Sprint Committee

J. Noller, Sprint Committee Chair, reported continued activities from last month, by saying he was "shifting gears to accept applications for funding from all python projects."

Board Discussion:

S. Holden: "Glad sprints have widened their scope and look forward to seeing the new documentation."

5.9   Trademarks Committee

D. Mertz, Trademarks Committee Chair, reported continued activities from last month by saying the committee "received several requests for use of logo and/or wordmark. In all cases during the last two months, the requested use was purely nominative and no additional discussion by the committee was required.The chair or a member provided clarification to requester in each case."

6   Pre-Finance & Underwrite Python Brochure

RESOLVED,that the PSF pre-finances and underwrites the costs of producing a printed Python brochure as outlined in the proposal http://mail.python.org/mailman/private/psf-board/2010-December/013532.html.

Approved, 6-5-0.

7   Fund 2010 Summer pyGames Competition

RESOLVED, that the PSF provide a grant of $1,000 US to sponsor the Summer pyGames python based programming competition.

Aproved, 10-0-1.

8   2010-Q4 Community Service Award Nominations

RESOLVED, that the 2010-Q4 PSF Community Service Award be awarded to Doug Hellmann and Andrew Kuchling.

Approved, 10-0-0.

9   Other Business

9.1   Indebtedness to D. Goodger

The board discussed the need to move forward on several time-sensitive payments to be made to PSF member D. Goodger for services rendered to the organization.

9.2   Message of Seasonal Cheer!

Towards the end of the meeting the chairman (S. Holden) thanked everyone for their hard work and wished everyone "the best for the holidays."

  1. Peters: "Cheers!"
  1. Holden: "Have a great time, relax, come back refreshed next month!"
  1. Campbell:"Happy Holidays"

M.A. Lemburg: Cheers, Happy Holidays!"

  1. Willadsen: "Have a great holiday!
  1. Rush: "Happy Holidays to all!
  2. Kaiser: "Merry Xmas!"

10   Adjournment

  1. Holden adjourned the meeting at 16:52 UTC.