[previous private MINUTES] 2022-03-28

As one of its tasks, the current board is looking into decisions and meeting minutes taken in the past that were not yet published according to our statutes. What follows are previously private minutes from the 2022-03-28 meeting of the previous board, which are now made public. Some elements in the minutes might be redacted as there is a need for confidentiality, or as individuals are mentioned in specific contexts.

Disclaimer: The following private minutes from the previous board are published as is. They have not necessarily been confirmed by the respective session’s chairperson or keeper of the minutes, nor approved by the respective board.

  1. Discuss & vote: budget for 2022 (Thorsten, all 50 mins)

    Links

    • ranking sheet under discussion: [REDACTED: board-only link with confidential numbers]
    • budget draft: [REDACTED: board-only link with confidential numbers]

    Proposal for workflow

    • goal for today: discuss missing bits and pieces from last time (see below) and come up with final ranking
    • decide whether to use impact, ranking, a mix of these, various areas, mixing big and large items etc.
    • no new items to be added
    • after today’s call, Florian to finalize spreadsheet with accountant, this could possibly slightly change the “cutoff” sum
    • gives everyone a few days to spot mistakes and glitches
    • official vote then on the accountant-verified spreadsheet, starting ~next week
  • missing bits and pieces from last time
    • “Legal advice” (sheet “Overview”, line 20) misses potential costs for [REDACTED: sensitive legal topic] - propose to leave as is and get more budget when needed, as timeline and costs are rather unclear as of now → ACK
    • Proposal to increase “Running costs and discretionary spending” by 10k (sheet “Overview”, line 21), budget was nearly fully used in 2021 → ACK
    • Proposal to increase infra budget (sheet “Overview”, line 23) by 15.000 € - unexpected last-minute costs for hardware replacement in Switzerland → ACK
    • “LibOCon and FOSDEM” has 30.000 € (sheet “Overview”, line 25) - propose to leave as is and see if we have full in-person conference and how sponsorships are going, ask for more budget if/when needed → ACK
    • Cost for [REDACTED: confidential HR topic] is not factored in, as previously discussed - propose to leave as is and get more budget when needed → ACK
    • “Accessibility: Implement scrollto, scrolltopoint, scrollsubstringto, scrollsubstringtopoint” (sheet “Projects”, line 16, 60.000 €) seems not relevant anymore, proposal to dissolve the budget → dissolve, ACK → needs revisiting by ESC
    • “2-4% budget to FLOSS software as devprojects or support” (sheet “Projects”, line 19) has about 9.000 € left - could merge with proposal (sheet “Ranking”, line 69/item 66) and make that 15k € → ok, reduce sum by 5k, so we’ve got roughly the initially-budgetted number

Minimum to plan spending for: 473.402,30 €

Working copy of the budget ranking under discussion: [REDACTED: board-only link with confidential numbers]

  • Overcomittment? (Kendy)
    • need budget for authorities, budget what’s in the bank (Thorsten)
    • also internal budget, internal agreement on what to spend tentatively, can have list of extras
    • happy to (internally) overcommit (Kendy, Cor)
    • glad for impact ranking, fine for (internally) overcommitting, Weblate and internal developers to be discussed outside of formal budget (Emiliano)
    • happy to have some more small projects, but can we do it? (Gabor)
    • problem is to have people to evaluate and declare acceptance, team can handle some, but one tender every two weeks is not doable with staff-only; paid volunteer proposal was rejected last year, need to discuss how to handle it therefore (Florian)
    • can help with smaller projects ecosystem would no bid on (Cor)
    • would like to see some bigger projects, but hard to decide - ok for me (Laszlo)
    • happy for Decidim and web developer specialist, for projects favors smaller ones, especially promoting ODF and LibreOffice, discussion about hiring developers ongoing (Paolo)
    • fine with proposals (Gabriel)

Proposal (Thorsten):

  • overcommit a bit
  • tweak impact threshold down below 30%, so all impact projects mentioned (until line 16 Decidim startup) are included, also average ranking down to line 19 (web developer and QA analyst)
  • can remove some duplicates

The meeting ends at 17:15 UTC / 19:15 Berlin time.