Foundation:2014 Presidents Report
Presidents Report for 2013 to 2014
Summary
Looking back over this past year, there have been few major things to highlight in the presidents report. Maybe thats a sign that the Gentoo Foundation Inc. is a mature well operating machine.
The Gentoo Foundation Inc. filed its annual reports in good time and remains in good standing in New Mexico.
Gentoo Trademark License Agreement
SwifT has been leading efforts to align the Gentoo Trademark License Agreement with best practice in the FOSS world. A draft exists and has been discussed among the trustees. It will be published for discussion on the -nfp list before the trustees vote on its adoption.
The new Gentoo Trademark License Agreement will not be retrospective.
Our 503(c)(3) Tax Status
The trustees have been working on our 503(c)(3) application, along with our Certified Public Accountant (CPA). We will need help from a CPA to prepare or annual returns when we are successful with our 503(c)(3) application. This process has become prolonged as the IRS has a large backlog of applications and those from FOSS organisations that have been reviewed have mostly been rejected. This has not changed in the last year.
Strengthening of Gentoo Foundation Inc
When David Abbott retired from the board this year, he decided to keep his Secretary office. The Foundation now has three officers that are not trustees.
We have
- dabbott Secretary
- rich0 Assistant Secretary
- robbat2 Infra Liaison
That is eight people involved in running the Foundation rather than just the five Trustees.
August 2014 Trustee Election Results
- antarus
- NeddySeagoon
Congratulations to both antarus and NeddySeagoon being elected unopposed and thank you to David Abbott, for serving as a trustee.
As there was no vote in 2014, no Foundation members will be dropped from the membership list this year.
Foundation Activity Tracker
The Foundation Activity Tracker remains in the care and maintenance of the Assistant Secretary. It has proved its worth over the past year. This tool reminds both Officers and Trustees of what needs to be done and when which reduces the reliance of the proper operation of the Foundation on individuals memory. This in turn is good for the Boards 'Bus Factor'.
Board Meetings
Board Meetings are generally held 3rd Sunday in the month at 19:00 UTC with the exception of the June meeting which would otherwise fall on Fathers day.
Sponsor Changes
There have been a number of major sponsorship changes in the year, due to changes in business circumstances, Gentoo has lost several major sponsors. We wish to extend a huge thank-you to outgoing sponsors TMG (formerly Hyves.nl) and Magic.FR (formerly SD-France/Euro-Web) both for their support to Gentoo and allowing us time to migrate the services that they hosted
Other sponsors have come on board.
We are pleased to welcome, in no particular order, Numberly, Inerail, Stepping Stone GmbH and Rackspace as incoming sponsors.
These sponsorship changes have left a gap in Gentoos infrastructure requirements and for the first time in Gentoos history, the Foundation is renting dedicated servers to fill the gap.
A big thank you to the Gentoo infrastructure team. They carried out all the changes in a short space of time with no visible down time.
Purchased Advertising
We have have had several cases of non Gentoo users asking to buy advertising on gentoo.org during the year. In line with the trustees mandate from members, these have been considered on their merits but have all been refused.
Closing Remarks
Compared to other businesses, the Gentoo Foundation Inc. has had a reasonably good year. With six active years behind us, the Foundation has shown that its a reliable active body. Both Gentoo and the Gentoo Foundation Inc. need to attract more members who are interested in the various facets of business administration to ensure the long term continuity of the Gentoo Foundation Inc. as an independent entity.