Notes from the December 2025 Governing Board meeting

The December 2025 Governing Board (GB) call took place on Wednesday, 10 December 2025. In attendance were members of the board: Bowrna Prabhakaran, Nemo, Swastik Banarwal, Shree Kumar and Bodhish Thomas. They were joined by Poruri Sai Rahul from the FOSS United staff.

Instead of diving into the agenda, each of us took a few minutes to bring up points or topics that we would like to discuss, whether or not we were able to add them to the agenda ahead of time

1. Rahul brought up the 2026 strategy and the 2026 election cycle
2. Shree pondered over the fact that the GB has been slower than he originally anticipated
3. Nemo brought up the Grants Working Group Charter updates
4. Bowrna prompted us to try and answer the question, “we made this change that caused impact”
5. Bodhi sought reading material and guides on setting up a not-for-profit organisation in India, if possible, in the context of FOSS projects, and an impact framework that such organisations could adopt.

Working of the GB

Everyone agreed with Shree that the GB was slower than they had originally anticipated. Shree prompted again that establishing Working Groups could speed things up, but also noted that the timescales on which the GB was operating was months and quarters, and not weeks. Shree also prompted that the GB step up and run the monthly calls themselves. Shree will be taking the responsibility for coordinating, setting up, and leading the monthly call in January 2026. For context, a Foundation staff member has been involved in coordinating, organising, and note-taking for the GB calls since inception. Nemo also noted that there were topics that could be discussed without the need for the entire GB to be present, instances where no quorum was necessary, as decisions weren’t being taken. Echoing a similar idea from a few months back, more than one call per month with available members of the GB might be the path forward.

Regarding Bowrnas prompt, Shree pointed out that the GB arrived at the IndiaFOSS invited speaker policy after much deliberation and that the IndiaFOSS volunteer reimbursement policy was settled at a previous GB meeting. Rahul chose instead to reframe the question - as Individual Contributors (IC), we are accustomed to seeing the direct impact of our actions. But GB duties/impact are hard to judge from an IC perspective, as the GB duties are closer to people management. The GB is responsible for establishing and driving the culture of the FOSS United Community, so how do you measure a culture change? Culture change is experienced on the ground as ease of volunteering, ease of event organising, ease of grants decision-making, and so on, most of which aren’t directly experienced by the GB members themselves. This is “action at a distance”, and we’re dealing with timescales of months, if not years.

2026 GB Elections

Moving to the 2026 election cycle, Shree made an interesting proposal to shift the election cycle. In 2025, the election cycle started in January, the elections were held in March, and the results were announced on April 1. Shree proposed structuring the election cycle around the IndiaFOSS conference. For instance, in 2026, the election cycle would start 3 months before IndiaFOSS, say June/July, voting happens throughout September, and results are announced on Day 2 of IndiaFOSS 2026. The primary motivation behind this change was to increase voter turnout. In 2025, we had 400+ people vote in the elections, but in context, IndiaFOSS 2025 saw 2000+ people attend the event. We discussed how the increased spotlight on FOSS United/IndiaFOSS could help bring more eyeballs to the election, how we could engage with IndiaFOSS attendees about the election process and candidates running for GB on Day 1 of IndiaFOSS, how the outgoing GB could close Day 1 and the incoming GB could close Day 2, and so on. Nemo highlighted the risk of centring elections around the IndiaFOSS conference, for instance, what if IndiaFOSS doesn’t happen in a certain year, but he agreed that the benefits outweigh the risks. Bodhi recommended poking IndiaFOSS attendees about voting, and recommended that voting end on Day 1. The change passed with unanimous agreement.

2026 at FOSS United

Coming to the 2026 strategy, Rahul highlighted that there will be a renewed push for new Industry Partners in 2026. Swastik pointed out that the existing IP deck was outdated, and Rahul responded that updating the deck was on our to-do list. In fact, in addition to updating the deck, Rahul also pointed out the need to update the IP tiers and corresponding financial contributions, given the lack of new IPs over the past two years. Rahul also pointed out that at least one grant-giving organisation, similar to Samagata Foundation, had expressed interest in supporting FOSS United Foundation financially in the past, in addition to corporate Industry Partners. Nemo pointed out the need for a campaign to nudge companies to use an “entry-level employee” salary as a benchmark. Swastik pointed out that we could help potential/existing IPs establish OSPOs and/or help them contribute to the FOSS ecosystem. He also pointed out that a FOSS Award by FOSS United Foundation might be beneficial in our efforts overall. He will be looking into such an effort in the next quarter.

FOSSHack 2026

Rahul shared updates about the new FOSS Hack format for 2026 - a month-long hackathon instead of a 2-day hackathon. Bodhi highlighted that FOSS Hack winners could be better integrated into the FOSS United Community by giving them a 3-minute speaking slot at IndiaFOSS.