A regular meeting of the Django Software Foundation Board of Directors was held on November 10, 2016. Frank Wiles led the meeting.

Attendance

Old Business

Tim's Contract

DSF renewed Tim’s contract until March 31 2017.

New Business

Administrative support for the DSF

Summary: The DSF allocates $6,000 per year for administrative support. This is based on an average of 4 hours a week at $30/hour. Tasks could include: general bookkeeping, preparation of donor acknowledgments and impact reports, corporate member promotion and follow-up, funding disbursement.

Proposal for a paid Django “internship” position

It is increasingly hard to become a core member through code contributions. Current processes prioritize people who are able to take time to contribute to open source. This is an effort to counteract that trend. DSF would set up a fund with the express purpose of paying a Django developer to put in some hours contributing to Django, either one specific task or several smaller tasks, with the result that their contribution makes them an obvious person to invite as a new core team member. The expectation is that the mentoring and feedback would come from the Django community, as it does for any other contributor. The person would be someone who will bring some diversity to the team, and whom we can identify as being the right kind of person (has known skills, has demonstrated some commitment to the Django community already, just needs the opportunity). We’d need to have enough funds to cover a reasonable number of hours. Say, 100 hours at US$30/hour = US$3000. There was support for the idea at the Django core team meeting at Django Under the Hood, and promises to contribute to the funding. Divio has agreed to contribute US$1200 per year such a program. I can also put some money in. Jacob has offered to contribute as well. DSF will cover the balance. DSF will begin as a trial with the Django Core Team nominating at least three people and the board making the final selection.* If successful, future nominations would be made by the membership. Afterwards we will evaluate and then decide how many of these internships to do and how often. The processes this requires need to be solidified. *The Board decided in an online vote to ask all Members for their nominations for the Internship.

Process for adding new DSF members

Although Anna Ossowski was nominated and approved as a member in August 2015, regretfully she wasn’t actually added until this week when the board was alerted to the omission. The members who were nominated and seconded in September haven’t yet been added to the list at https://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/individual-members/ or the email list. We need to improve this process. There is a proposal to automate this process using a web form. Board voted as yes except Daniele (no), Karen (absent).

Afro Django grant request

We will donate $500 and ask for follow-up, so that we can publicize their activities.

Use of Django in company names

There are a couple of existing cases of companies technically violating our trademark policy. A list will be established on Dropbox of commercial enterprises who have been given explicit permission to use the trademark. Those companies should all sign a trademark licensing agreement.

Next meeting

8 December, 2016

To add agenda items to the board's next meeting, please contact the board.

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