[OpenID board] July 18, 2012 OpenID Board Meeting Minutes

Mike Jones Michael.Jones at microsoft.com
Thu Jul 26 17:34:43 UTC 2012


July 18, 2012 OpenID Board Meeting Minutes

Present in Person:
Don Thibeau, Executive Director
Peter Graham
Kick Willemse
John Bradley
Nat Sakimura
Pamela Dingle
Eric Sachs
Greg Keegstra
Farhang Kassaei

Present on the Phone:
Mike Jones
Axel Nennker
Tony Nadalin

Absent:
Nico Popp

Visitors Present in Person:
Scott Kern, Verizon

Visitors Present on the Phone:
John Ehrig, Global Inventures


1.      Executive Director's Report

Don let us know that Symantec will be changing their representative.  Someone other than Nico Popp will represent Symantec as of the next meeting.

Don shared aspirational targets for ratification votes for specifications for OpenID Connect, Account Chooser, and Backplane Exchange.  People believed that ratifying OpenID Connect before the end of the year is doable.  Several people commented that a January, 2013 target for Account Chooser ratification is probably not realistic, since actual specifications have not been written and reviewed yet.

We have changed our legal representation to a fee-for-service model, rather than a retainer model.  We are budgeting $5000/month for legal expenses.

Scott Blackmer, legal counsel, has reviewed Snorri Giorgetti's trademark registrations for the "OpenID" name trademark in Europe.   Nat and Don negotiated a price for purchasing those registrations and we agreed to proceed to purchase them.

We are at financial break even status and should be for the rest of the year.


2.      Marketing Committee Report

The accountchooser.net site is now live, but we are only quietly talking about it.  There will be an in-person marketing committee meeting on August 1st.


3.      National  and Local Chapters Discussion

Nat and Kick made some suggestions about enabling tighter coupling with National and Local OpenID Chapters, including possible joint financial incentives.  Kick suggested that we develop a marketing outreach plan and drive any changes from that.  The current local chapters policy is at http://openid.net/foundation/chapters/.  This might also help positively fund the foundation and reduce our reliance on sustaining members.

There may be bylaws changes as part of these changes as well.  If we change the bylaws and IPR policies, this should be done once in a holistic manner.  Don agreed to outline a proposal for the next board meeting.


4.      IETF "Note Well" Procedures and Potential Applicability to OIDF

Eric has been approached by a number of people who want to contribute to Account Chooser, but for whom signing our IPR agreement is too high a model.  We could consider moving to an IETF "Note Well" http://www.ietf.org/about/note-well.html) style process, at least in some cases.  John stated that, at least for Account Chooser, it's better to stay with the current IPR procedures for the time being, because it's hard to put the IPR genie back in the bottle.  It may also make sense to have non-IPR discussion groups for discussions that don't influence the specs, such as https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/openid-connect-interop.

There were questions about whether, under the current IPR process, the Account Chooser working group list needs to move to be hosted by the OpenID Foundation.  Mike and Eric will follow up on this.


5.      Board Election Discussion

Yahoo! and Verizon have paid for their sustaining memberships and Verizon has appointed a representative.  No community members have been elected or appointed to correspond to either of these sustaining member seats.  Don asserted that since Verizon has a sitting board member, unlike Yahoo!, we don't need to consider a community member corresponding to Yahoo! at this time.  However, a community member corresponding to Verizon is a topic before the board.

The executive committee has not authorized legal expenses to produce an interpretation of the bylaws language relative to when and how the board may or should appoint new community board members when a new sustaining member joins, and/or when it may or should schedule an election.

Tony pointed out that the bylaws don't specify interim elections and that that elections are expensive, and so we should just elect new community members at the next regularly scheduled election.

Axel believes that we have a responsibility to appoint interim community members under the current bylaws to meet the N+1 requirement.  He stated that we should elect two new community members as soon as possible.  Pamela pointed out that we only need to elect one, since Yahoo hasn't appointed a representative.

John moved that the runner-up in the previous election, George Fletcher, be appointed as a community board representative.  Pamela seconded the motion.  Tony believes that the motion is out of order because it is not authorized in the bylaws.  As a point of order, Tony requested legal clarification of the matter prior to any vote on the matter.  John stated that under Robert's rules, a point of order may be decided by a vote of the board.  Eric shares Tony's opinion that the bylaws may not support the board appointing community members.  Eric believes that we should wait until there is an election.  Tony stated that there is no timeframe listed in the Bylaws for additional community members to be appointed.

John called a vote on the point of order.  Tony and Mike voted to sustain the point of order.  Peter abstained.  As chair, Nat did not vote.  All others voted against the point of order.  The point of order was denied.

John then amended his motion to indicate that George be appointed as an interim community member until the next general membership meeting as specified in the bylaws or until the next vote for community members.  Axel seconded.

Eric, Tony, and Farhang voted no.
John, Pam, Axel, Greg, and Kick voted yes.
Mike and Peter abstained.
As chair, Nat did not vote.
The motion carried.  George Fletcher is now a community board member.

Pam suggested that we resolve the point of order.  John would rather that we try to look at the bylaws all-up.  Changing the bylaws could occur at any time based upon a concrete proposal and a motion.

John proposed that we might want to have the executive committee propose wording to simplify this process and eliminate the current ambiguities.


6.      OpenID Connect Working Group Report

One change remains to be checked in agreed to at the Yahoo! in-person working group meeting.  The OC4 interop is under way


7.      Account Chooser Working Group Report

There have been updates to the web site and code.  Additional members have signed the IPR agreement.


8.      Backplane Exchange Working Group Report

Work continues at http://backplanex.com/.  The working group mailing list has been established at http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-specs-backplane.  Greg is working with Nat to create the working group wiki page.  Within the next week, Greg expects to announce the formation of the Backplane Exchange working group.


9.      Other Business:  NSTIC

Don is proceeding on the assumption that the OIDF will not be directly involved in the NSTIC governance process.  The board affirmed this.

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