[Fsfe-ie] Minutes 20040817

Glenn Strong Glenn.Strong at cs.tcd.ie
Mon Aug 23 15:58:27 CEST 2004



Minutes from 20040817
 Present: Glenn Strong
          Malcolm Tyrrell
          Teresa Hackett
          Rory Browne
          Conor Nash

 Discussed:
   * We should begin making arrangements for the AGM, etc. in
 January. Working backwards from the dates, what is the latest people
 can join and still vote? [update: AGM in January, 4 month lead time
 on voting. Therefore, anyone wishing to vote must join by or at the
 next meeting]
   * Publicise a list of ways to donate or pay membership fees (cash,
 cheque, EFT and Malcolm has offered to take PayPal)
   * Related to the ongoing letterhead discussion, the idea of using a
     PO box was raised again. Glenn agreed to price it and report back
     to the committee.
   * Malcolm agreed to find out what the ststus of the T-Shirts is and
     report back.
   * Discussion of the "free software day" event. It seems that there
    will not be enough people available to commit to doing this
    properly. There was agreement that the idea is worth pursuing, and
    it was suggested that we move the event to Halloween and begin
    publicising it properly now. As well as a possible showing of
    the Revolution OS film some creative commons videos were
    suggested. Exploring FSFE affiliation for the same event (and
    tying the events together) was suggested. Inviting a speaker (such
    as Georg Greve) was also discussed, and considered a good idea.
   * The remainder of the time was taken up with a discussion of the
     ongoing software patentability directive.
     * Charlie McCreevy will be the commissioner responsible for this,
       but will he be in place when the next decisions are made?
       [update: no, which renders quite a bit of the subsequent
        discussion irrelevant I fear]
     * If so, we should figure out the best way to deal with
       him. Since he is an Irish politician there was a feeling that
       we may be in a good position to talk to him. We should
       coordinate with organisations like FFII to ensure best
       performance.
     * Would Redhat Ireland be willing to get involved? [update: see
       for rthe Redhat patent policy]. As a spin off question it was
       asked if we could assemble a (even partial) list of Irish or
       Irish based software companies that have a stated position on
       software patentability.

http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html


-- 
Glenn Strong



More information about the FSFE-IE mailing list