1   Attendance

The following members of the Board of Directors were present at the meeting: Stephan Deibel, Steve Holden, Tim Peters, Martin von Löwis, David Goodger, Andrew Kuchling, and Brett Cannon. Also in attendance were Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer) and Neal Norwitz (Assistant Treasurer).

2   Minutes of Past Meetings

The 10 July 2006 minutes were approved by a 6-0-1 vote.

3   Status of Past Action Items

(Pending action items appear like this)

4   New Sponsor Member: Microsoft

The representative would be Jim Hugunin.

RESOLVED, that the Directors accept Microsoft as a Pending Sponsor.

Approved 7-0-0.

5   Python Advocacy Coordinator Proposal

The PSF has received a proposal from Jeff Rush for a 6-month full-time Python Advocacy Coordinator position, to coordinate the production of materials and infrastructure. Some details are yet to be resolved. Jeff quoted a favorable rate. Officers or a committee could oversee the work.

There was some reservation. T. Peters and M. von Löwis expressed some concern about the cost, being high relative to the other things the PSF has done. M. von Löwis: "I think we can get some of it cheaper from volunteers." S. Holden expressed doubts about this though, and D. Goodger agreed: "the problem with volunteers is someone needs to coordinate them," and certain parts get left undone. K. Kaiser asked if this position would result in offsetting revenue somehow.

S. Deibel suggested that we commit to 6 months but allow either party to terminate with 1 month notice. Opening up the discussion to the PSF membership for feedback was recommended. S. Deibel will take the Advocacy Coordinator proposal to the members for a week and call an email vote on Monday, August 21.

6   Mission Statement Change

RESOLVED, that the PSF mission statement approved by unanimous written consent on March 2, 2002, and published on the web at http://python.org/psf/mission, be revised as follows, to take effect on August 20, 2006.

1. Revise the first paragraph, replacing:

   It intends to qualify under the US Internal Revenue Code as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) scientific and educational public charity, and will conduct its business according to the rules for such organizations.

   with:

   It qualifies under the US Internal Revenue Code as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) scientific and educational public charity, and conducts its business according to the rules for such organizations.

2. Remove the paragraph that reads:

   By "open source" we mean freely available technology licensed under terms compatible with Version 1.9 (or later) of the Open Source Definition, as established by the Open Source Initiative (see http://www.opensource.org/).

3. Add the following paragraph to the end of the mission statement (after "Encourages and facilitates Python-related research in the public interest."):

   "Open source" is defined as: freely available technology licensed under terms compatible with Version 1.9 (or later) of the Open Source Definition, as established by the Open Source Initiative (see http://www.opensource.org/).

Approved 7-0-0. An amended resolution (effective date corrected to August 31, 2006) was subsequently approved by unanimous email vote (8-0-0).

D. Goodger also suggested adding a brief overview of the mission statement to the web page, which met with general approval:

The mission of the Python Software Foundation is to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of the international community of Python programmers.

D. Goodger will notify the members and implement the changes to the Mission Statement web page.

7   Funding for PSF Representative at Python Argentina

RESOLVED that the PSF will pay expenses of up to $1000 for Anna Ravenscroft to represent the Python Software Foundation at Python Argentina.

Approved 5-1-1.

8   http://www.cafepress.com/pydotorg

A. Kuchling reported that Tim Parkin set up a web store at CafePress. The board agreed to publicise it. Regarding the Python CafePress web store: A. Kuchling will fix up the text; get the keys; make it public and announce it.

9   Brett's Discussion with Mark Shuttleworth

Background: D. Goodger introduced B. Cannon to Steve Alexander of Canonical at PyCon. They set up a call between B. Cannon and Mark Shuttleworth to discuss Python. There was no agenda other than to discuss what Shuttleworth would like to see the PSF do for him and other businesses. Topics of discussion:

• He wants to move towards making Python the de-facto programming language on the Linux desktop.
• He is having trouble finding Python programmers who can develop "in the large" (large-scale, industrial applications).
• He feels there is a lack of a centralized place that acts as a rallying point for the community. For example, there is no one place people can go to find out what the community-supported web frameworks are. Shuttleworth suggested having a place that lists the best of breed in hopes of getting developers to work on them instead of constantly reinventing the wheel.
• He feels that Python's core development community is great, but we need to open it up a little bit more to get more involvement and try to rally the community regarding large-scale development.

S. Deibel noted that some people strongly want python.org to showcase "best of breed" projects, and others want python.org to avoid favoring specific projects.

M. von Löwis suggested that we get the web framework authors interested in python.org (offer hosting, edit content, etc.).

S. Deibel suggested we set up a conference call with Shuttleworth to hear details of his ideas (ideas for solving the problems would be much more valuable than criticisms).

B. Cannon will post a detailed summary of the conversation via email for further discussion.

B. Cannon will contact Mark Shuttleworth to tell him we're interested in further discussion.

10   Other Business

T. Peters will ask the advice of Larry Rosen regarding concerns with the contributor agreement.

11   Adjournment

S. Deibel adjourned the meeting at 18:05 UTC.