Minutes:2002 BOSC Meeting

August 2, 2002
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Call to order
   Board members present: Hilmar, Chris, Ewan, Steven, Andrew

Recognition of observers (about 21)
   This meeting was open to the the public.  I don't know all
   of the people who commented, hence the question marks.


Review of schedule by Ewan

Treas. report by Chris Dag.  See his email to the board list.

   Steven - asked about money owed us from Hidelberg meeting
     Chris - says it's about 20-30 commercial people
   Decided to follow up on that money - assigned to Chris  (AI)

   Steven - asked about audit
    Chris, financials Jan. to Jan. year; report out next year

   Action item: Chris to find an accountant to audit


BOSC 2003, lead by Ewan
   - do we want BOSC next year?  if yes:
       - part of ISMB?
       - affiliated with other projects

   straw vote showed enthusiastic support for BOSC 2003

   Lincoln suggested survey of attendees tomorrow
   ?? suggested too small for standalone conference
   Martin - price to Oz not bad
   Chris - but subjective impression of distance
   ??? - will be better Asia/Pacific input
   Janet - A/P can help grow the community

   Ewan - build a travel fund?
   ??? - give concrete examples of other conference sites
       when doing the survey

   ORA would be too expensive and submerged
   RECOMB in April in Berlin
   Thomas - reemphasized the international / worldwide aspect
        of the conference

   Lincoln - web meetings cut in half when moved to OZ

   Chris - worried about losing people for next year, re
       costs, esp. if using professional organization

Organizing BOSC 2003, lead by Ewan
   Request for volunteers - all declined
   Request for suggestions of volunteers
     Ewan volunteered Elia Stupka
     Elia tentatively agreed this morning
     Doreen said she would help, but not organize

   Motion: Ewan nominated Elia as organizer.
   Andrew seconded
   Motion passsed by unanimous consent

   Motion: Ewan  nominated Doreen as "BOSC 2004 organizer in
        waiting"
   Chris seconded
   Motion passsed by unanimous consent

2003 Hackathon, lead by Ewan
   Belief that hackathon helped in intergroup cohesiveness
     and should be repeated

   Andrew: What about funding?
   Chris: I3C, through Brian Gilman, may fund the hackathon
   Cost between 30 to 50 grand

   Jason: What influence will I3C have on the funding /
     what will they get out of it?

   Ewan: Sponser should not have influence on the scedule.
     May pick some attendees, write press.

   Hilmar: What about government funding?
   Ewan: Overhead is prohibitive compared to corporate sponsership.
   Steven: Could redirect gov't funding through a university
     (as was done for ISMB, using San Diego)

   Matthew: hackathon a great idea

   Lincoln: we should be able to get corporate sponsership
     pretty easily - great press

   ??? - didn't get much output / documentation / etc.
   Ewan: we should invite documenters

   Hilmar: What about a 'doc-athon'?
   Ewan: doc people may find the social interactions of a
     hackathon more useful


   Motion: Create a hackathon committee with Ewan as chair.
      Main goals are to identify funding sources and site for
      hackathon.
   Chris seconded.
   Motion passsed by unanimous consent

Misc., lead by Ewan
   Chris: Interest earned by idle cash

   Motion: Chris Investigate ways to make interest in no-risk
       way to make interest.
   Ewan seconded.
   Motion passsed by unanimous consent


   OBF Branding
     Should we work on a logo?

     Tentative yes.  Idea is to get community input for logo
     and get a professional organization to cleaned up.  Also
     work on unifying web pages, etc.

     Hilmar: Why?
     Chris: Help present a more professional image

     Ewan: Likes O|B|F
     Andrew agrees.

     Motion by Steven that Chris can spend up to $2,000 on
     the branding project, with further discussion to occur.
     Ewan seconded.
     Motion passsed by unanimous consent

   Digital certificates
     BioJava wants to sign jar files
     May want secure web connections
     May want multiple certificates, eg, one for the different
        projects.

     Lincoln: certificates for web different than for jar
     and has its own costs.
     Agreed that we can ignore secure web connections.
     Chris: jar signing costs a few $100 a year
     Matthew: who has signing authority?

     Virus scanning of inbound and outbound mail.

     Ewan: Authorize Chris to look into virus scanning and
     digital certificates, report costs and benefits, and
     allow a vote on expenses over email.  Andrew seconds.
     Motion passsed by unanimous consent

Steven:
   relevant NIH grants, like conference grants
     we are a "rounding error" compared to most conferences
     but grant administration has overhead
   Another grant: PAs, as for software development
     should we investigate that?
     Probably no, but proposing the idea

   Andrew: what is a PA?
   Program announcement, interested in area, expect to spend
     money, doesn't guarantee funding, but encourages.
   Lincoln: some can be recurring
   Doreen: funds for technical writer or other non-developer
   Chris: OBF lacks in administration; what's the overhead?
   Lincoln (and Steven): would need to admin through a
     site (like CSHL) with experience in admin'ing these sorts
     of grants.

   Ewan: We direct and support groups which get the PA funding,
     rather than go through us.  Is that feasible?

   Lincoln: Study sections are mostly concerned about the
     likelihood of success, so shouldn't be a problem

   Decided that Steven would encourage others to work with
    the OBF, but not really look for it outselves, unless
    it was really adventagous.  No need for a motion.

   More enthusiastic about the NIH grant
   Steven: we should provide more funding to speakers
   Ewan suggested that Doreen look into funding, esp. long
     term (5 year funding) from NIH
   Chris offered to help

Steven:
   Do we need a response to the ISCB open source statement
    found in .... ?  Some statements are quite wrong, in
    the view of many open source people.

   Ewan: OBF stay away from policy influence as an organization
   Andrew: why bother?
   Steven: what about a simple statement in the minutes?

   Johann: Win (and others) pointed out corrections before
     it was published, and it still went through.
   Janet: would it interfere with our associations with ICMB?
   Lincoln: we should be a more vocal source
   Ewan: but we are a support organization, not leading
     the direction.  Uncomfortable with setting the direction.
   Lincoln: this is a clarification of our policy

   Lincoln: should there be a response?  No, theirs is a
    reponse to ours.  First, check our statement to see if
    we agree with it.

   Ewan: reads statement aloud

   Ewan and Andrew are still comfortable.

   Some questions about wording.  Steven clarified.

   Chris: we should mention this to people tomorrow, esp.
     those who are members, to reponse individually

   Lincoln: document will be used as leverage to funding
     agencies to justify research proposal.  Eg, "this is
     the ISCB approved level 3 development model".  Used
     for policy decisions.

   Jason: as members we should be offended, but OBF? not
     sure.

   Andrew: I haven't read this document yet.

   Ewan: Stay away from "journalistic ping-pong"

   Steven: vote was close.  Be polite, but make our point
     (as ISCB members) known.

   ???: could argument from a technical level be used for
     leverage.

   Ewan and Lincoln: no

   Matthew: statement should say what open source means

   Motion by Ewan to modify statement to point to the
     opensource.org definition of "open source" and to
     confer later  to clarify our position.
   Steven seconded.
   Motion passsed by unanimous consent


Vote to accept minutes of last meeting.  Unanimous consent.

Make meeting minutes available.  Question about making
comments from people publically available.  No one objected
nor wanted to be anonymous.


Mark Wilkinson wanted to assign BioMOBY copyright to OBF
   Consensus is that we see no problems with that

??? what about moving services to collab.net / sourceforge-style 
installation
  Ewan: suggest talking with Chris about that; don't yet need
    board involvement
  Lincoln: keep our own hardware.
  Yep.

Steven: want to make publications at least as available as the software.
Ewan: declined to accept that topic -- getting late

Hilmar: How do we handle nominations for new board members?
   Expanding the board?
Chris: we have some templates already which we could use
Chris: call for suggestions (eg, from church groups and other
    non-profits organization
Action item: Hilmar will look into this

Chris proposed we adjurn.  Ewan seconded.  Motion passed by unanimous
consent.