Meeting Notes: Aug 27 2006 -- Gallery Con 2006

Finances

• Summary of finances
  • AGREED: Gift for Bharat and Alan $1500
• Taxes
  • Gallery will send 1099's for everybody
• Dividends?
  • AGREED: Rather have a meetup than get $200
• Figure out the mean and pay people something comparable?
  • Payments are to reimburse expenses -- if you don't spend it, you don't need to get reimbursed so equality is not as much of an issue

Foundation

• Everybody Mike has talked to says "don't do the non profit" because you have to do things by the book
• Issues:
  • How much do we care about the appearance of the project?
  • If we have a larger convention and make it part of our charter then we can avoid the appearance of spending a lot of cash in Vegas.
• Non profit:
  • Downsides: You're open to scrutiny. More paperwork. You can pay people for stuff.
• Join SPI? (Software in the Public Interest).
  • Downsides: 501c3. If we do stuff outside of the 501c3 we'll have to pay taxes on it.
  • Upsides: Reduces paperwork.
  • Issues:
    • How do we maintain control of our business relationships?
    • How much control would we have over
• Choices:
  • Stay the same
  • Non-profit (SPI seems likely option)
  • Become a corporation
• We made $10K donations, $30K payments in 2005.
  • If we send the $10K to SPI we save $3K
  • If we send the $30K to a corporation we cap taxes at 35% (?) so we might pay $10.5 in taxes instead of $13.5 and save $3K
• AGREED:
  • we're going to have some kind of organization
  • profit and non-profit are both worthwhile
  • we should move forward with a non-profit
  • Wait on the for-profit corporation

1.x issues

• [jens] Last half year was a little frustrating.
  • The forum users make me mad. When I started the project I loved to helped the newbies, but now I get more mad and don't want to help them.
  • Totally behind schedule
  • When group support and mass editing is in, Jens wants to stop active 1.x development.
  • Release 1.6 as an alpha because things have changed considerably. Gallery 1 has templates, skins have changed. Front page is themable.
  • Release of 1.6 in 2 months.
  • After 1.6 thinking about leaving the project, based on frustration levels.
• Is it a good idea to totally change G1 right before abandoning the 1.x product line?
  • Keep a branch around for 1.5
  • CLEAR COMMUNICATION of 1.x roadmap is very important
• Do we have enough 1.x testing before released?
• Forum support: if Jens stops active development, how long do we continue to offer support?

Project

• Contractual Obligations
• Print Affiliates
  • Shutterfly, PhotoAccess, Fotokasten, Digibug
• ISPs
  • PowWeb, DreamHost, ThinkHost, OpenSourceHost, Delphian Internet, HostGo, Hostit365, DowntownHost
    • Making good revenue off of the first two. Not so much off of the rest
• Adsense
  • Making good revenue with tiny links
• Affiliate ideas:
  • An isp could pay a flat fee to let us qualify them.
  • We could set up a qualification program.
  • If we have this program we could have world-wide hosts, not just limited to a set of small set of hosts.

Team Organization

• Leadership
  • We expect people to be largely self managed
  • We need to be better about dispatching
  • Bharat needs to divest authority/responsibility
    • Make somebody else the primary
    • Chris Kelly volunteers to do it.
• Bharat's Responsibilities include (but not limited to):
  • Managing fringe team members (eg Mike)
  • Dealing with all of our affiliate relationships
  • Individual communication with all team members
  • Dealing with gallery@menalto.com mail
  • Being point of presence for project
  • Finances (which I'll keep)
  • Colo hosting (I'll keep)
  • Managing relationships with other projects
  • Setting the tone/attitude for the project
  • Minimizing conflict
• Transition
  • Bharat steps down
  • Chris steps up
  • Some concerns that Chris is a little crazy some times (XTREEEM!)
  • Chris has demonstrated that he is very competent
  • AGREED: Chris Kelly will be the project primary

Participation Levels

• Felix is underutilized
  • Felix is one of the few developers who will work on anything
  • Bharat is too busy and is unintentionally holding Felix back
• We didn't finish talking about this :-(

Individual plans and goals through the end of the year

Chad (thumb)

• Starting a new job this week, yay! I plan on continued participation (in spurts).
• Will work with Alan to expand theme doc technical details
• Will work with Felix, Chris, others on technical writer recruitment (Amy is first target)
• Would like to adjust a few minor things in Ajaxian before 2.2 release
• Interested in building Drupal web host submission module, but we'll see
• Would like to work on an admin interface that is not themeable but allow designated modules to be controlled by themes in 2.3

Schultmc

• Not a strong programmer, willing to help out more in other areas
• Documentation and support are two areas I'd be a good fit in
• I'm also interested in overall project infrastructure stuff (NPO/SPI, for-profit corp, etc.)

2.x issues

• Theme Contest
  • What should we wait for?
    • Theme documentation
    • Chad is working on it
    • Alan has been a technical consultant
  • Requirements of the theme
    • It must be a complete theme
  • Robert will propose theme contest cash
  • Robert will finalize all the categories, prize money
• Documentation
  • Christian, Zimzat, Valerie did card sorting exercise and came up with a general map.
  • Lack of documentation/organization-of-documentation negatively differentiates Gallery from other projects
  • We need good tech writers
• We need more people in every role.
  • Targetted job request for a small set of roles:
    • Tech writer
  • Get in touch with a college department.
• Core version vs. G2 version is confusing
• Infrastructure is daunting
• Ramp cost is eating developers, hurts SoC
• Jesse needs new home for nightly snapshots

Project

• Leaving sf.net
  • Issues:
    • svn is slow to update, fails regularly
    • we don't know how to use the tracking tools effectively
    • [alan] bugs work reasonably well
    • is there a better option out there
    • Targetted bug/rfe subscriptions
• Confusion between GMC and Codex
  • Codex is documentation, gmc is everything else
  • Technical issues cause us to use a separate Wiki
  • What's where, what's in progress?
  • Maybe create Drupal handbooks (says Chad)
• sf.net is still ground zero for open source, if we leave then we lose traffic. if we believe in sf.net we should stay until it causes us too much pain. Decision: STAY.

Deferred Topics

• Money Making / Profitability
• Dave approached about a project to make a G2 child porn classification module
• Should we make and sell T-shirts?
• Summer of Code
• Should Bharat remain trustee of the copyright?

Action items

• Estimated LV cost is $22,000 for vegas 2006 (possibly not including stuff Robert doesn't know about)
• Bharat will register Jozef/Tunde airfare on spreadsheet
• Mike will sponsor us to join SPI
• Bharat 1099s to everybody at the end of 2006
• Gifts to Bharat/Alan for $1500
• Jens will publish a detailed 1.x roadmap
• We need a full security audit for 1.6
• Jens/Christian/Dave will publish a test plan for 1.x
•  ??? will draft a proposal for an ISP qualification program
• Bharat/Chris will present a primary transition plan including a job title
• Robert will propose a date for theme contest by 9/8
• Bharat will arrange for a security audit for DP
• Chris will make sure that we set up a tech writer recruiting program
• Bharat will disambiguate core version vs. g2 version issues
• Report things that you don't like about sf.net on this page and Bharat will collate it for the sf.net folks
• Bharat will add anchors to download page so that the [version download] links on the main gmc page.
• Alan will fix forum post quoting bug (reported by Dave Moore)