- Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING
- --- 12/04/2011 19:00h CEST ---
- Mumble: mumble.piratenpartei-nrw.de Room: "/international/pirate parties international/board meeting"
Record of the meeting Part 1 [1] Part 2 [2]
1 - ATTENDEES
1.1 - Members of the PPI board
- participating: Marcel, Lola, Pat
- excused: Paul, Thomas, Samir
- unexcused: Finlay
1.2 - Others
2 - PROCEEDINGS
- Meeting opened at 19:18 CEST by
- Meeting chaired by Marcel
- Secretary for this meeting is Pat
- Quorum not established with 3 of 7 board members present.
- Streaming started: [No]
- Recording started: [Yes]
- Postal votes: [No]
- Meeting closed at 21:50 CEST by Marcel Kolaja
3 - APPROVAL ON THE MINUTES
Marcel: The new minute recordings on mypirate require a login. We should fix that. The present board members agree to that remark.
Postponed from the previous board meeting.
Agreed: YES: NO: ABSTENTIONS:
Agreed: YES: NO: ABSTENTIONS:
4 - MAIN TOPICS
4.1 - PPI Conference - 2nd aftermath (proposed by Thomas)
A postoned point from the previous board meeting.
Proposal (Samir): A Full preliminary report send out after transfer with old board. ( Mostly transition data, bundled, handing it over "in person", not via mass push, preferably during contact data checkups ) B intermediary report send out after ratifcation at the next or following board meeting. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rFKrofuHs6oRZG-IfJ5GH5YcNQ5DKXtKSSsVo2uXc_I/edit?hl=en&authkey=CIG3-b0M# C Management Plan ( Including proper organizational ( type and ) structure - One Month or 6 weeks. D Roadmap One Month or 6 weeks. E Financial Plan: 6 to 8 weeks. F: Privacy versus Transparency policy : 6 weeks. G: Scientific Institute Options : 2 Months. H: PPI Board Transition Protocol : Done one month before the next conference.
Marcel: I suggest to skip this issue, as it's hard to discuss it without Samir. No board member objects. > issue postponed
4.2 - Action plan and work distribution (proposed by Thomas)
Postponed from the previous board meeting.
- Tasks will be distributed among the board members according to the business plan: http://ppi.piratenpad.de/26 (previous board) - current board: http://ppi.piratenpad.de/board-2011-business-distribution-plan
Marcel: I think that's a similar issue to the one above, as it has been proposed by a board member that's not present. I think we should postpone that as well for now. No board member objects. > issue postponed
4.3 Pirate License (proposed by Marcel)
Jakub Michálek (PP-CZ) would like to join the group that prepares the license. Currently, the PP-CZ uses this one:
(C) Copyleft Pirátská strana, 2010. Všechna práva vyhlazena. Sdílejte a nechte odvozená díla sdílet za stejných podmínek. (C) Copyleft Pirate Party, 2010. All rights reversed. Share and let the derived works to be shared under the same conditions.
Marcel: I think it's hard to discuss that one as this one was assigned to Samir and he wanted to start on the workgroup concerning the license. What he's trying to do is to get people working on the issue. We will have that in the minutes and I will contact Samir again. Pat: Just a remark - this is different from the pirate license we used on the signet, as this is a copyleft one and the one we used on the logo was more a public domain license. Marcel: Yes I'm aware of that. The reason is that this still grants the freedoms to all derivative works to the users. I personally support therefor copyleft licenses.
4.4 - Status quo of taskforces (proposed by Thomas)
Postponed from the previous board meeting.
- Talk about status postponed for joint meeting with the previous board
Marcel: I personally have nothing to say about this point at the moment. Does anyone of you want to say something? Pat: I would suggest going through all task forces again in order to discuss what actions we are considering to take (e.g. proposals for the next meeting).
- - PPI ACTA task force
no info yet
- - PPI Censor task force
no info yet
- - PPI Conference and event planning task force
According to Gregory the conference task was working hard for the past conference and could be ready to work on the next one. Pat: The question to me is: When is the next conference? Do we intend an extraordinary? If not how do we keep the people in the TF "alive"? Marcel: I don't know actually and don't have a solution to that. Pat: Maybe we should start by investigating who is actually part of the task force and who has which abilities; i.e. would those people be suited as well for an extraordinary online GA or not? Marcel: I think that we have to find out who are the people in the task forces in general. That's what I basically intend to get from the previous board, but we haven't recieved that information yet, do we? Pat: According to the minutes from the transfer meeting Gregory intended to write down all he know till Sunday, which might give us some insight. But on the other hand he was not involved in all TFs so we won't get all info from him. Marcel: The point is that the board doesn't have to be involved in all TFs. The TF leaders don't have to be board members. I think someone has to lead the TFs that reports in to the board, but the board members don't have to be involved in the TFs at all. That's what I hope to build up, also in order to avoid the problems we've seen till now. So a proper structure. Regarding the information Gregory sending an email, I will send him a reminder, asking him whether he could send that info to us. Pat: So shall we continue with the next issue or the next TF. Marcel: I think it's a good summary for the board, so we should go through what we recieved up to now.
- - PPI Legal task force
Pat: We don't know anything about the members yet, except that Jakub and Jerry were part of it. Jakub was responsible for the statute amendments and suggested during the transfer meeting for the board to be prepared concerning opinions of the COA about the statutes. Jerry was responsible for the PPI HQ statutes that should be finished now. We may need the people involved for questions concerning the final adoption. Then there were also discussions concerning the rules of procedure and licenses for publications. We should also try to get into contact with the legal task force members in order to have them as ressources for the current license discussions.
- - PPI New Parties task force
Pat: According to Gregory there was a lot of work in a pad, but there were as well problems with unstructured approaches and trolls. So I suggest that someone of us starts looking into that issue, tries to get all useful parts out of the pad and start to transfer them to the wiki, as this is in some sort more of an official publication platform. Marcel: I think that this is basically work of the TF to clean and summarize the work that has been done. Again we are at the point where we have to know who was involved in there in order to start discussing with them. Pat: Yes, I guess you're right :-/
- - PPI PP-EU task force
Pat: According to Gregory there was some criterias published in the wiki and there was of course the discussion at the open space conference. So we should also have a leader for that TF. What I personally see as a problem is that work is stalling till we get the contacts of those TFs; especially if the next board meeting is within 2 weeks. So I would call for an extraordinary board meeting with postal votes as soon as we got all contacts available. Marcel: Yes, I would agree to that. I think we can setup that date on Doodle. Pat: Okay, let's do that. Marcel: I will do that once I get the information from Gregory. Of course I will send that information to the board as well immediately.
- - PPI Tech task force
Pat: As far as we know Gregory and Aleksander were involved together with Johan from Pirate Party Sweden. Currently there is no leader so I'd suggest we may should think about defining a "job description" for that. Marcel: We should define the description to all of these task forces to be clear what we really expect from them and what is their purpose. Pat: So shall we start defining those descriptions at the moment? I mean just drafts, because they would have to be adopted again by the board... Marcel: I understand what you mean and I agree. It depends if Gregory sends me the infos in a short time. If not then we need to start building without that. Pat: What is "short time" then? :-) Marcel: I will contact Gregory tomorrow. Let's wait till Sunday this week, which means April 17th.
- - PPI Translation and text production task force
Pat: According to the Gregory the TF is very well active (apart from discussions on a newsletter that was never realized) and is currently lead by Boris Turovsky. If that is the case we may should get in contact with Boris to keep the TF "alive" and can use their ressources. Lola: Okay, I will contact Boris concerning that manner till Sunday April 17th.
- - PPI Statutes task force
Pat: We already discussed that one at the "legal task force" item.
Marcel: I'd like to have a remark on the TF in general. I think we should have a different structure concerning those TFs, as we have the ACTA and the CENSOR TF and I think it's a little bit to detailed. I would rather have a TF for "copying monopoly and free internet" that would also address these issues going on in the EU etc. for which we don't have coverage currently. Pat: Yes, I agree we need a broader coverage, but I assume this means that you will propose a concrete proposal in the future. Marcel: What I'd like to fix would be e.g. the fact that we could only inform the pirate parties on the IPRED EU consultation, but there was nothing in place which we could actually help them with. That's what I'd like to fix. If there's nothing else to remark let's go on.
4.5 Date for Brussels meet-up (proposed by Pat)
I'd like to arrange a date for the meet-up in Brussels for 1) transfer of the bank account, including discussions concerning the transparent accounting 2) official registration of PPI headquarters 3) further activities within Brussels (e.g. meeting with NGOs in Brussels or similar) as is feasible
For these tasks at least the co-presidents and I (as a treasurer) should be present in Brussels.
Even though there is still a lot to be discussed concerning the future of PPI, I think it's necessary to start arranging a date now, as I'd like to see items #1 and #2 cleared by the midst of June. This is due to 2 facts a) The GA voted on March 13th in favour of transparent accounting within PPI to be realised within 3 months b) Due to its legal construction the organisation that owns the bank account must be given statutes within 2 years since its creation. As the bank account was opened on 9th October 2009 we are coming close to that deadline.
- Proposal: Pat sets up a Doodle to find a date for the meet-up in Brussels inbetween now and the 30th of June. The co-presidents and the treasurer will decide together on the final date (as they need to be present) and announce it to the board and the pp-leaders list. For the given date, the co-presidents and the treasurer are obliged to arrange their personal travel to Brussels and to accomplish all preparations needed for the registration of the PPI HQ and the bank account transfer ASAP. All PPI and national board members are invited to join the meet-up on the given date, if they are willing.
- Time frame: 1 day for the setup, 1 week for decision taking
Discussion Pat explains the issue. Marcel: Yes I agree, also concerning the fact that the flight tickets would be really expensive one week before the date. Something I would like to clear is whether we can have the transparent account with the bank we currently have. Do you have any information on that? Pat: I haven't asked the bank yet as Samir was confident that they should. But I suggest I will contact them till the end of the week (15th April) and ask them explicetly whether they're able to provide that. Marcel: Yes, that would be great. Pat: As we don't have a quorum it's difficult currently. So shall we postpone that as well? Marcel: Well we already agreed with Samir to have that meeting and I don't think we need a board decision for the Doodle itself. So let's just set that one up. Pat: Okay then I will setup the Doodle and we'll see if we agree on a meeting date later on. So let's go to the next item.
5 - REPORTS
5.1 - confirmation of the Slovenian Pirate Party (proposed by Marcel)
Report by Samir regarding creating a letter.
Marcel: I wanted to have some report of Samir concerning the letter that was decided at the last meeting, but as Samir is not here we need to postpone that. No board member objects.
5.2 - Mailinglist for a PP that need it. (proposed by Marcel)
From the previous board meeting minutes:
As requested by a PP in the MENA region
> accepted
Responsible: Samir will ask Rick next week
Report by Samir.
Marcel: This again should be a report by Samir on what we agreed on the last week (asking Rick Falkvinge to setup the list). So let's postpone that as well as Samir is not here. No board member objects.
5.3 - Setup of a task management system (proposed by Marcel)
From the previous board meeting minutes:
- Proposal: Redmine will be setup and used for managing tasks in the PPI; this adheres especially to tasks assigned at PPI board meetings.
- Responsibilty: Pat
- Time frame: 2 weeks
> accepted
Report by Pat. I set up the task management system at http://tasks.pp-international.net All board members are requested to register themself there ASAP. I will then add your user to the PPI Board group, so you can add and change tasks. The PPI board tasks will be listed at http://tasks.pp-international.net/projects/ppi-board-tasks/issues
Discussion: Pat: As reported above this has been setup and I will gladly put in all tasks that have been assigned up to now, as I think that will give a way better overview over the current tasks then to have them all as discussion issues in the board meeting agenda and meetings. Marcel: I think this is great. Now the action to be taken is that each board member creates his/her account.
5.4 - Message board updated (proposed by Pat)
Today I got access from Gregory Engels to the Swedish server that was provided by Johan (PPSE). As the phpBB version was completely outdated and led to a mass of spam bot posts each day, I decided that it was urgent to update the board to the newest version. However the old forum style could not be migrated; currently it's the phpBB3 default forum style (prosilver) with the PPI signet.
Discussion: Pat: That's just the report of what I did after the migration as the phpBB version was way to outdated. This was no explicit task assigned to me. I and Thomas have put into place some moderators as an intermediate solution to keep the spam bots off the board, but it's way better than it was with the old software. Marcel: Who are these moderators? Pat: Well I and Thomas certainly, but there was another person which I don't find them on the current team list actually; I'll have to ask Thomas.
5.5 - Update of the meeting minutes from 2011/03/19 (proposed by Marcel)
Meeting minutes from 2011/03/28 say:
Marcel:
Postal votes "YES/NO" should be "NO" The proceedings were not discussed at all, so that should be mentioned in the minutes The break was at 18:47 not 18:42 ... The order of 3.4 (PPI aftermath) was not in the order of the actual discussion
Pat: The minutes will be updated accordingly by me and Lola Agreed: YES: Samir, Paul, Pat, Thomas, Lola, Marcel NO: - ABSTENTIONS: - Motivation Samir: Voted yes due to mutations in this pad. ( Courtesy of Marcel )
Report by Pat and Lola.
Discussion Marcel: There were some changes to be performed in the meeting minutes. Did you do that? Pat: I can't recall doing that :-/ Lola: No me neither. Marcel: Will you do that? Lola will you take care of that? Lola: Yes I will do that till Sunday April 17th Marcel: Thank you!
5.6 - Statutes change (proposed by Marcel)
From the previous meeting minutes:
Report by Samir: Jakub (CZ) has updated the statutes and put them into the wiki I didn't have the proper material yet to check whether this is correct The current form is just plain text, we should format this again I will check that till next board meeting
Report by Samir.
Marcel: That was again something that Samir should report; as he's not here we will just skip that as well. No board member objects.
6 - Communication guidelines & Interviews
Postponed from the previous board meeting.
Marcel: According to the last minutes this was a proposal by Samir as it was related to point B from that plan postponed above. So we'll have to postpone that as well. No board member objects.
7 - PPI rights definition
Postponed from the previous board meeting.
Revoke & Grant.
Marcel: Again postponed from the previous board meeting, where he proposed to remove access from everyone that should have not access to that. I have nothing to suggest here, as Samir is not here. I jump in to the next point if there are no objection. No board member objects.
8 - Appointing a person responsible for IT infrastructure
Postponed from the previous board meeting.
a Setting up a CMS system. b Setting up a ERP system. c Report by Pat regarding the website backdoor. d How to approach with the forum.
Marcel: Again this is from the previous meeting, especially the first two subitems. Actually I'm not sure what to discuss what to discuss in points a and b. Do you have a clue about that? Pat: About (a): I would suggest that for now I would update the Drupal software on the server till next board meeting and that we'll stay with the Drupal as long as there's no one objecting? Marcel: The reason for the update is security? Pat: yes Marcel: What are the risks with the update of Drupal? Pat: I think the main risk is that we can't keep the current design as it was the case with the phpBB message board. Marcel: So is there a possibility to a rollback? Pat: Yes, I always do a backup before migrating software. However after the migration there should be fast decision whether we're happy with the new state as new data (such as comments) might get introduced and to migrate those back in the backuped version will complicate things... Marcel: Could you maybe just do a clone and see how it works? Pat: Yes, it's double the work, but I hope it won't be such a hassle. I will do that till 19th of April.
Pat: I haven't worked with any ERP system yet. Neither has anyone of the present board members knowledge in that issue. Therefore the discussion is skipped.
Pat: I closed the backdoor that was present in the website.
Marcel: Concerning the forum, I understood that there are already moderators. It's agreed that the issue of software updating will assigned to tech task force; in the mean time Pat will take responsibility as long as no other decision is made by the PPI board.
9 - Forum moderation (proposed by Pat)
Justus offered to become a forum moderator. Any objections to that?
Marcel: I think we certainly need a team of forum moderators, so if he's willing to help that's fine. Lola: I'm registered now as well, so you can appoint me as moderator. Pat: I'll do that, yes.
10 - PPI members list update (proposed by Marcel)
Update the list of PPI members at:
http://pp-international.net/members
Already listed here:
http://pp-international.net/about
Any need for two lists on such a small website? How to change the code? Who is going to take care of this?
Marcel: One of this was already updated, the other one is still outdated. I don't think that we need 2 lists of members on such a small website. Is there someone that knows how to do that? Pat: As Samir wrote in a mail: The thing is that the one list that is updated in Drupal and the other was a script that is on a different server and was written years ago by a pirate. The good thing about that script is, is that anyone can embed it as a feed on their website (as is done e.g. by PP-DE AFAIR); the bad thing is, that it's not really user frienly; everything is coded in PHP and it would be better to have a frontend for that, as not everyone knows how to code in PHP. Marcel: At least we need some quick solution at the moment; even removing the tab would be a solution for now, as there's incorrect information in it. Pat: Well we could remove it and someone will be assigned to create an updated list. Marcel: Yes I would be in favour of that as all information is already in the tab "about PPI". As it turned out. There was a misunderstanding concerning the issue. Marcel was refering to 2 different tabs, while Pat meant one of the tabs + sidebar. Pat: So which one of both shall we remove? The "Members" tab or the "About PPI" tab? Marcel: I'm in favour of disabling the "Members" tab (not deleting it) as it brings no value over the "About PPI" tab. Pat: Okay, I will do that till Sunday, 17th April then.
Marcel: Is there something wrong with the sidebar? Pat: Yes it's not user friendly and probably a lot out of that list is outdated. Marcel: So these are basically two different tasks. For both we should find someone responsible. For the PHP we certainly should find someone who is capable of coding it. Pat: In theory I could, but I'm really not eager to. Marcel: Then that's again for a task force, possible the Tech TF. I'm afraid we don't have a solution then till that TF is working... Pat: I would be willing to update the current list if someone investigates which party initiatives are there or which are not anymore. Marcel: I know a guy who could do that. So I could assign that to him. I will be responsible for the results. Pat: So just mail it the whole board as soon as it's available. Marcel: Yes. He's also someone who might be willing to help with the TFs but for now (as they're not working yet) we will keep it like that.
11 - Gmail Administrator Privileges (proposed by Marcel)
I found out some discrepancies regarding privileges. Samir and Lola weren't administrators. I fixed that. In addition to the board members, the following people had the admin privileges:
- Grégory Engels
- Joachim Mönch
- Steffen Ortmann
I revoked their admin privileges, as I can see no reason for that. The current primary administrator account is thomas.gaul@pp-international.net. As far as I understand this is a contact e-mail address for service communications, including payment notifications, and any opt-in subscriptions.
Marcel: I don't have anything against Thomas being the contact point, but I might propose to assign that to Lola to be consistent. What is your opinion on that? Pat: I don't think it's of so much importance actually. I don't care. Lola: I personally don't mind. Marcel: Then we'll decide that on the next board meeting.
12 - Mumble, VPS, mailinglist for PP-SI (proposed by Samir)
The PP-SI asked for this. According to Slovenian laws they can't export personal information out of the EU.
Marcel: I think it's hard to discuss this point at the moment, because the main person in there is Samir. Pat: So they don't use any infrastructure of us yet and want to use ours? Marcel: Yes, exactly, as they have almost no budget. So they want some help either from PPI or from other pirate parties according to my understanding. Pat: Currently the only infrastructure we have control could provide mailing lists. We are provided Mumble without a contract and we can't provide a VPS yet. But they certainly ask for a contract if they have to meet those information laws. Marcel: Well, the mailing list could be provided by Pirateweb from Rick Falkvinge, for the Mumble we might direct their request to the German pirates perhaps and about the VPS there was already a discussion between them and Samir. Pat: Probably we should think about providing templates for contracts inbetween pirates, so as to avoid misunderstandings about the needs of either side. But that's a little bit off-topic...
13 - Jabber (proposed by Marcel)
Marcel: I'd like to have all board members on Jabber in case anyone from the board needs to discuss something quickly and/or interactively. Does anyone object this? Lola: I personally don't have any objection. Pat: I will gladly provide anyone of you the account data. The problem is more related to the fact that I hardly use Jabber anywhere. Marcel: But why? Pat: Mainly because it doesn't fit into my workflows. Marcel: But don't you think it would be benefical for urgent requests? Pat: Well if it's urgent send me an SMS, because that's way more effective. Marcel: Yes, but that's not interactive. Pat: If I promise that I'd try to start Jabber as soon as I get an SMS where you're asking me to use Jabber, would that be a solution. Marcel: Well, that might be a compromise.
Marcel: Unfortunately Finlay and Paul are not here, of whom I have no contacts; so I might bringt that issue up again next meeting.
Meeting closed at 21:50 CEST
