[OpenID board] Minutes of the 31st Feb 2008 meeting of the board

Martin Atkins mart at degeneration.co.uk
Thu Feb 14 20:14:47 UTC 2008


The approved meeting minutes are below.

This document can also be reviewed on the wiki:
<http://wiki.openid.net/OpenID_Foundation/Board/Minutes/2008-01-31?oldid=3669>

------------------------------------

Present:
* Martin Atkins (scribe)
* Artur Bergman
* Johannes Ernst
* Dick Hardt
* Mike Jones
* Scott Kveton (chair)
* David Recordon
* Drummond Reed
* Bill Washburn

Apologies:
* Gary Krall

== Agenda ==

* General business (approve minutes, finance update, etc)
* Corporate board membership
* IPR Discussion at Higgins

== General Business ==

=== Minutes ===

The minutes of the previous meeting were approved unanimously.

Martin will post these on the wiki shortly.

=== Finance Update ===

It was reported that two of the $50k corporate board member fees are in. 
The others are pending, but expected imminently.

Scott also informed the board of the Foundation's current bank balance.

Dick will now get everything in order so that we can clear any backlog 
of things such as attorney's fees.

=== Agenda Additions ===

Mike asked if he could ask some questions at the end of the meeting. 
This was added to the agenda.

== Corporate Board Membership ==

The board was informed that each one of the five membership agreements 
for the corporate board member organisations are expected tomorrow. 
Currently only two of the five are in.

The board was also informed that payment of the membership dues is 
expected during next week.

Currently it is believed that the board representatives sent by each 
organisation will be DeWitt Clinton for Google, Tony Nadalin for IBM, 
Mike Jones for Microsoft and Gary Krall for Verisign. Yahoo! has yet to 
confirm who its representative will be.

All five organisations have agreed that they will not be included in the 
forthcoming press release until all membership agreements are in. They 
will also not be invited to board calls until membership dues have been 
recieved.

Bill took on the task of making sure that the IPR contribution 
agreements for each organisation are in order as well.

Scott took on the task of furnishing the new board members with access 
to the board meeting calendar, rules of engagement and other necessary 
information before the next meeting.

The draft press release will be sent out to the private mailing list 
later today for review.

== Marketing Update ==

The marketing committee reported that they held a meeting on Tuesday. At 
the meeting a set of key points was agreed apon for use in the marketing 
materials that will ultimately be produced.

The key points for the OpenID Foundation are:
  * The membership consists of both individuals and organisations.
  * The goal is to promote OpenID and development thereof and to protect 
intellectual property.

The key points for OpenID itself are:
  * It is a set of specifications and conventions.
  * It is evolving.
  * It is a community-based specification.
  * It is decentralized.
  * It is portable.
  * "Choice".

The marketing committee also developed an answer to the question "What 
does OpenID do?". This
answer is "OpenID reduces the friction for users to log into websites 
and share information about themselves online."

The marketing committee explained that the goal was to describe the 
problem area that OpenID is in rather than getting into specifics.

The board agreed that the above was acceptable and that the marketing 
committee should continue work around the points listed above.

=== The Forthcoming Press Release ===

A concern was raised that the current draft of the press release goes 
into too much detail about OpenID.

Scott said that he would send out the latest draft for the board to review.

== IPR Discussion at Higgins ==

Drummond reported that he had discussed IPR with representatives of the 
Eclipse Higgins Project.

It was explained that the OpenID4Java implementation was rejected by the 
Eclipse project due to legal concerns.

== IPR Declarations ==

Bill took on the task of persuing IPR declarations from the other 
corporate board members.

== Mike's Questions ==

Mike raised a series of points.

Firstly, it was noted that the board has approved an IPR policy which 
requires voting by members using OpenID as the voter authentication 
technology, yet the current membership forms do not feature an OpenID 
field. This needs to be fixed and the OpenID identifiers of all existing 
members needs to be obtained.

Scott noted that the development of a more automated payment system is 
currently in progress and that this will be incorporated into it.

Mike also raised the question of where updates to membership information 
should be sent. The current contact for this can be either Scott or Bill.

Mike expressed the desire to form a formal PAPE working group so that it 
can be finished off and published. There were no objections from the 
other board members, but no motion was passed to this effect as yet.

Mike also reminded everyone that he has not yet been added to the board 
mailing lists.

== Further Press Release Discussion ==

The concern was raised that there would not be a community board member 
on hand to represent the foundation when the press release goes out.

Scott and Bill agreed to be press contacts on the day of release, along 
with representatives from the corporate member organisations.

The press release will go out on the wire at 6am PST on Thursday 7th 
February, with no pre-briefs. There will be an announcement posted on 
openid.net at the same time.

Artur also noted that he is planning to write an article for O'Reilly 
Radar that will go out at ~6:05am.

Scott agreed that this will be posted to the general list and there'll 
be one consistent link to the annoucement that everyone can use in their 
weblog posts.

== Next Meeting ==

The next meeting will be on Thursday 14th February at 11am PST. Call-in 
arrangements will be provided in the meeting calendar.





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