Present:

• Martin Atkins (scribe)
• Artur Bergman
• DeWitt Clinton representing Google
• Johannes Ernst
• David Recordon
• Mike Jones representing Microsoft
• Drummond Reed
• Gary Krall representing VeriSign
• Raj Mata representing Yahoo!
• Tony Nadalin representing IBM
• Bill Washburn (chair)

Apologies:

• Scott Kveton
• Dick Hardt

General Business

Minutes

The minutes were approved unanimously be all present.

Finance Update

Bill gave an update on the foundation's finances, and noted that the foundation has made its first withdrawal from PayPal.

Johannes asked that a Quickbooks report be given the day before each meeting. There was no objection to this idea.

Membership Update

Bill reported that several large corporations have expressed interest, and that some applications are already in progress.

There will be some meetings of the Membership committee over the next few days to discuss a membership drive.

Mike asked if we have email addresses and OpenID identifiers for all members. Bill informed everyone that he is working on getting the last few OpenID Identifiers and that this should be complete within the next few days.

Website Update

Bill reported that a project proposal has been recieved from Refresh Media for the work on the website. They have quoted $17,500 and can't start until April.

This includes:

• entire membership recordkeeping and registration system plus billing etc
• elections system

Another alternative was to find someone who could be plugged in faster and do something sooner.

A third alternative is that Bill spoke to GlobalInventures about management of members and so on.

Raj explained that GlobalInventures is a consulting firm that supports standards organisations. They support membership infrastructure, provide financial statements and so forth. This somes in the form of several packages that provide an end-to-end solution, and the platform to run it on. However, their platform does not currently support OpenID. The fees for the platform are in the low thousands per month. The initial fee is close to that quoted by Refresh Media. They also support mailing lists that tie into the membership system.

Bill reported that he has requested a demo of the GlobalInventures system, and that GlobalInventures has expressed interest in adding OpenID support to their platform.

Elections Committee

Mike reported that along with the discussions on the mailing lists he has been working with the treasurer, president and vice-president as well as the chair of the marketing committee.

Mike reported that the elections committee recommends a membership drive before elections, but also that there will be an announcement of election soon.

This discussion was deferred until Dick could be part of the conversation.

Face-to-Face Meeting

It was agreed that the meeting would be on the morning of May 12th. DeWitt confirmed that a space would be available at Google to hold the meeting.

After some debate it was decided that a 9:30-10:00am start would work best around travel and other commitments, including the afternoon session at IIW.

It was also noted that some potential members would like to have a face-to-face with the board. It was agreed that it would be best to do this separately, perhaps at IIW itself.

Membership Value Proposition

Raj noted that there is not currently a clear value proposition for being a member of the foundation. This needs to be sorted out before we can hold a membership drive.

Bill noted that he has been making some notes about this. Raj agreed to work with Bill on this, and Bill agreed to circulate his notes on the board mailing list for general discussion.

Trademark Commitee

Raj reported that there was a meeting of the Trademark Committee last week, which included Raj, Johannes, Bill and a lawyer from Yahoo! called Jay Scott.

The trademark committee noted that there are currently six known registered trademarks of the term "OpenID":

• Sxip holds the trademark in Canada.
• Snorri holds the trademark in Europe
• The variant "Open ID" is registered by an unknown person in Finland.
• There may be a registration in France.
• NetMesh holds the trademark in the US
• Mark Cross holds the trademark in the UK

The trademark committee explained that their first goal is to consolidate these marks under the ownership of the foundation. Initially the committee is working with NetMesh and Six Apart to transfer the term and the logo trademarks respectively. The committee is entering into dialog with the other holders.

It was noted that the local chapter powers document is lax on the subject of trademark ownership, allowing marks to be either foundation-owned or simply licenced liberally to the foundation. The board agreed that this must be stronger and that the Foundation must have ownership of all marks.

The committee explained that we have a six month grace period for most countries to sort out our existing trademark registrations. After this we will need to figure out where else to register marks. In parallel the committee will work on a concrete trademark policy. Jay Scott is helping with this.

Raj will follow up with Mike on what has been said about the licencing thing above.

There was consensus that it would be better if the negotiations were handled by a community board member rather than a lawyer to avoid perception problems. It was suggested that Scott might be a good choice.

Marketing Committee

There was no Marketing Committee report this week because of Dick's absense.

Insurance Coverage

Bill reported that he has been in discussion with GlobalInventures about insurance coverage. In particular, this includes directors and officers liability and general liability.

The board agreed that the Foundation is at risk of lawsuits and other such unexpected events, which may be targetted at the Foundation as a whole or board members individually.

Bill reported that this should come it at around $15,000.

Raj and Mike will work with Bill to sort this out.

Bylaws

Bill reported that there are some minor changes to be made to the bylaws regarding membership categories and board make-up.

It was agreed that Bill would send it out to everyone via email for comments.

Privacy Policy

Bill suggested that the Foundation should have a "privacy policy".

DeWitt suggested that the Foundation make use of Google's Privacy Policy as a template, and promised that he would make the necessary arrangements to allow it to be used.

Meeting with Liberty Alliance

Bill reported that he has been in talks with Roger Sullivan from Liberty Alliance regarding co-operation between their board and ours, and that they have requested a conversation about future plans and possible convergence.

It was agreed that we would not persue a formal face-to-face until the Foundation board has had its own face-to-face in May. However, board members are free to enter into less formal conversations where it's convenient to do so.

Bill agreed to get a feel for what sort of discussions would be on the agenda for such a meeting.

The Formation of Working Groups

David reported discussion on the specs mailing list about how to start working groups.

The board agreed that an interim solution is needed until our voting software is in place.

Motion 1: The board authorises spec-related elections via email addresses until such time as we have OpenID-based voting software in place. This does not authorize board-level elections using email addresses.

Proposed by Mike. Seconded by Drummond. Motion passed unanimously.

It was agreed that some sort of announcement should be made on the specs mailing list about this as soon as possible.

Corporate Membership

The board entered into executive session on the topic of corporate membership.

Corporate Board Member Introductions

There was consensus that it would be useful for the corporate board members to introduce themselves on the general mailing list.