The Apache Software Foundation Board of Directors Meeting Agenda June 15, 2017 1. Call to order The meeting was scheduled for 1:30pm (Eastern) and began at 1:38 when a sufficient attendance to constitute a quorum was recognized by the Chairman. The meeting was held in person at Capital One's offices in Mclean, VA. 2. Roll Call Directors Present: Rich Bowen Shane Curcuru Bertrand Delacretaz Ted Dunning Jim Jagielski Chris Mattmann Brett Porter Phil Steitz Mark Thomas Executive Officers Present: Sam Ruby Ross Gardler Craig L Russell Kevin A. McGrail Guests: Sally Khudairi (dial in) Tom Pappas Greg Stein Tim Ellison Chris Schultz 3. Schedule: 13:30 - 15:15 Apache in 5 years - what will be different, what must be the same? - Apache's culture: building & maintaining the connection with our projects Making it happen - Managing growth: what will this mean for operation needs & project acceptance? - Fundraising: now, next, future 4. Executive Session Notes were sent via email to members of the board. 5. Discussion Items A. Apache in 5 years Ross: Expect to see growth greater than now. e.g. Microsoft sees the importance of open source. The Linux Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, and Apache all face challenges. Phil: Demand for Apache products will continue. We need to maintain what we are doing. The bigger problem is managing what we are doing. We still need to absorb the growth we have already seen. Rich: The challenge is to find the next generation of people to keep the organization running as it has been. Ross: We see today the github generation. Young people think Apache is old-fashioned. Jim: The Linux Foundation is driving what people think of as open source. We need to teach our members and outsiders who we are. We need to take our leadership position seriously. Phil: We need to start thinking about the context of what we accept into Apache. The industry cannot survive on instant gratification. Apache strength is in collaboration. We should not try to attract people based on immediate gratification. Rather, we should try to attract engineers who "get it". Ross: We should change expectations of new members. For example, don't just vote +1 if you're not willing to help. And members should vote or leave. Kevin: Should we consider charging a membership fee to discourage non-participants? Ted: The incubator is where we should instill values. It takes three or so releases before most projects "get it". Incubation should be six months to a year. Shane: How do we get projects to understand what Apache is? We need both members and podlings to understand. Phil: Should we consider dividing the membership? Roy's advice is to include everyone in membership who "has a stake" in the foundation by contributing. But not all members contribute to the ongoing foundation operations, just to their own projects. So we now have a big growth in membership. Chris: The symptom is a lot of inactive members. Ross: One problem is that members are not expected to do anything. They show up at the incubator and mentor projects without understanding themselves what Apache is. At this point we probably don't even know most of the proposed members. Tom: How do we get new members to successfully onboard? Should we make new members attend a webinar? Shane: We do need to set expectations for new members. It's obviously not enough just to send them email with links. Jim: We are failing to instill our values into people during the incubation process. Bertrand: We could ask members to actively mentor existing projects, not just wait until there is some crisis. Brett: We cannot make expectations equal requirements. Ted: Perhaps we should charge the IPMC with after-graduation mentoring. Rich: We tried to have Community Development take that task and got pushback. Jim: The incubator is an experiment that has failed to produce projects that really get "The Apache Way". Possible Action Items: Develop a new member onboarding process with expectations Provide active mentoring for new projects B. Managing growth Greg: We will need to forecast resource requirements for projects. Maven tried at one point to keep a copy of every project, but infra did not have resources for that. Maven needs to request resources from the board. Ross, Kevin: This might be an opportunity for directed sponsorship. A PMC needs to ask for this; the board has already approved the concept. Greg: A large number of INFRA tickets are for new podlings. Graduating projects also creates work. Infra is working on reducing technical debt, primarily reducing owned hardware. There is some work migrating projects to the Attic. The plan is to reduce owned hardware and migrating to the cloud. We expect automation of tasks related to new podlings and TLPs to be in place within three years. The current spend is $5K per project per year, but expect this to drop a bit in the future. Sam: Operations prefers bottom-up forecasting but the board wants to do top-down forecasts. Possible Action Items: Communicate the option for directed sponsorships to PMCs C. Fundraising plans Including review re: Proposal to License Assets of the Foundation Kevin: You have all seen the proposal to license assets of the foundation to a for-profit corporation which would give us income for continued operations. We are prepared to update it based on feedback from the board and outside counsel. The proposal is a compromise between charity and business. Brett: One issue is that vendor neutrality is key to how Apache operates, and we don't want to compete with businesses. Rather, we create opportunities for businesses to exist. Kevin: Competitors can all work on the same Apache projects. Apache is vendor-neutral but we think the new corporation could compete with others. Ted: If there is money to be made, this implies that a third party cannot compete with Apache. We are concerned about Apache competing with our supporters. Phil: Apache's core principle is non-compete. We provide an open platform for developing projects. Ross: This proposal will negatively affect our current sponsors. Jim: We have tried to avoid blessing any third party with the Apache brand. Phil: Transparency is a showstopper. Using the Apache brand while Apache did not produce the product violates transparency. Ted: If the proposed corporation really only takes marginal business (that others don't want) then is there really a business opportunity for the proposed corporation? Kevin: Is there anything in the proposal that can be changed in order to make it more acceptable? Ross/Phil/Jim/Brett: Probably not. Ross: A PMC could develop training materials using "directed sponsorship" funding, and the resulting materials would be available to anyone. D. Follow up plans Kevin: Sponsorship of Apache is a bargain. We have not changed sponsorship fees in 15 years. Time to increase them. Brett: We should try to improve the sponsorship renewal process. Bertrand: One thing to look at is to take Travel Assistance out of the budget and have it be strictly sponsored. Kevin: Fundraising is looking at having a "sponsorship drive". Sally: The "Apache Ambassador" program has started. This program gives sponsors an "executive" contact within Apache. It looks like this program is adequately staffed at the moment. The ambassadors should make regular contact with our sponsors. Possible Action Items: Increase sponsorship fees after giving current sponsors the opportunity to renew at current levels Take TAC out of budget and make it a sponsored project Improve sponsor renewal process 6. New Business 7. Announcements 8. Adjournment Adjourned at 5:00pm (Eastern) ------------------------------------------------------ End of agenda for the June 15, 2017 board meeting.