Summary of the 28 April 2022 meeting of the X.Org Foundation Board of Directors Full IRC meeting logs are posted at IrcLogs

This was an eventful meeting, so there's a few more notes here then usual.

Attendees

Present: Daniel Vetter, Lyude Paul, Mark Filion, Emma Anholt, Alyssa Rosenzweig, Ricardo Garcia

Guests: Trevor Woerner Daniel Stone

Absent: Manasi Navare, Samuel Iglesias Gonsálvez,

Summary

Agenda: Elections, XDC2022/XDC2023, GSoC/Outreachy/EVoC, MIPI alliance and CSI, treasurer report for 2021, new parent organization, sysadmins, rebranding, meeting over IRC

Items discussed

ITEM: Elections
Elections happened, and we now have two new board members: welcome Alyssa and
Ricardo!
ACTIONS:
STATUS: Pending

ITEM: XDC2022/XDC2023
Lyude currently taking over XDC duties. Submitted the CFP for XDC2022 and the
RFP for XDC2023 this week. As well, currently working with the LPC to come up
with plans for shipping some throw mics so that we have them for this year's XDC.
ACTIONS:
STATUS: Pending

ITEM: GSoC/Outreachy/EVoC
Contributor proposal period ended April 19th. Currently have 4 project
proposals, and one spam proposal. Mentors have until May 12th to rank the 4
proposals and put in our slot request. There is some confusion around the new
rules regarding contributors being "new" though that we're still figuring out.
ACTIONS:
STATUS: Pending

ITEM: MIPI Alliance and CSI
No updates here
ACTIONS: Lyude to poke vendors at her work about this again soon
STATUS: Pending

ITEM: Treasurer report for 2021
Emma was finally able to get the info she needed to complete this, and the
report has been approved by the board.
ACTIONS: Emma to send out treasurer report
STATUS: Pending

ITEM: New parent organization
No updates on this yet
ACTIONS: Lyude to start looking into this now that elections are over
STATUS: Pending

ITEM: Sysadmins
We need new sysadmins!!!!!
ACTIONS: Person reading these minutes, you, to consider volunteering as a sysadmin
STATUS: Pending

ITEM: Rebranding
Following the turnouts from this election, some very good points were brought up
about ensuring the continued relevance of X.org. Some of these topics included
the value of being named X.org in regards to how that reflects our involvement
with non-X.org related projects like gstreamer, along with ensuring that
projects under the freedesktop.org umbrella - which keeps us relevant - are
receiving fair representation considering their involvement with the community
at large.

CONSENSUS/TAKEAWAYS: In regards to the drop in election turnout, it was brought
up that such fluctuations in membership aren't unheard of and aren't necessarily
a sign that the organization is doing better or worse. More often, they're a
sign that we just needed to send more voting reminders to people. But regardless
of the election outcome, it is still very much worth further discussing and
looking at the various issues that were brought up regarding outreach and
projects' representation. As well while the results of previous votes on whether
X.org should be represented as freedesktop.org or not had indicated there wasn't
that much interest, it was pointed out that isn't necessarily a reliable data
point as it's entirely possible such votes were only really paid attention to
within the immediate X.org member base - and thus quite possibly just a source
of how the main X.org community feels about this issue as opposed to the
freedesktop.org community at large.

The main reason this is important is that while the overall consensus is that
X.org in it's current state is healthy, we should be proactive to ensure this
remains the case as opposed to being solely reactive if things look like they
aren't going well. This includes things like updating our website, investigating
whether groups under the fdo.org umbrella feel they're represented properly and
whether they have any feelings regarding X.org's naming. Of course no major
changes like renames will happen without a proper X.org vote that members are
given a chance to particpate in beforehand beforehand, most of this is just to
gather data around how how the community feels about this.
ACTIONS: Following the discussion, Mark offered to start discussions with
various project leads (e.g. like Gstreamer) to get their thoughts on this.
STATUS: Pending

ITEM: Meeting over IRC
Whether or not we should still be having meetings on IRC or another platform
(such as Jitsi) was also brought up.
ACTIONS: Didn't reach much of a consensus with this, also was pointed out that
it would likely also be good to get member's input on this - since such a change
would mean there wouldn't be IRC logs from meetings for users to go through.
STATUS: Pending