Notes from the May 2025 Governing Board meeting

The Governing Board (GB) monthly call for May happened on May 30th. In attendance were all members of the board —Bodhish Thomas, Bowrna Prabhakaran, Nemo, Swastik Banarwal, and Shree Kumar. They were joined by Ashlesh Biradar from the FOSS United staff. Here’s a quick summary of the meeting notes.

Invited Talks at FOSS United events

Shree kicked off the call, picking up the discussion around invited talks. Having discussed this with people in his network, he mentioned that there aren’t many clear/consistent guidelines for invited talks in the ecosystem. A lot of the time, it depends on how strong the program committee’s network is. Nemo pitched in Kubecon’s model for invited talks as one reference point. Swastik suggested we bring in a Kubecon co-chair for a quick chat on how they handle invited talks. Nemo offered to help with the follow-up. Shree floated a criteria-based approach, suggesting we don’t need an invited talks policy for all of the events, maybe only high-signal events, like those marked “ must attend” on the FOSS United platform.

Everyone was in agreement that we need an invited talks policy. Shree offered to circulate a draft policy soon.

Forming Working Groups in the FOSS United community

Nemo proposed setting up working groups, the idea being that these groups, made up of active members of the community, would help bring more focused and shared ownership to different parts of the community ecosystem. Bodhish agreed, adding that the WGs model has worked well within communities he is a part of, also adding that WGs don’t need to last forever; they can be short-term with an expiration date. The next thing would be to think about creation and oversight guidelines for the WGs. Nemo proposed that we could start with a simple WG around the moderation of the community channels. Bowrna added if we have a list of all channels that would need moderation.

Maintainers Summit @IndiaFOSS

Nemo proposed hosting a Maintainer Summit alongside IndiaFOSS, inspired by similar events at KubeCon and Github Universe. A focused, sub-100-person gathering for maintainers in the Indian open source ecosystem. The proposed day for the event being Day 0 of IndiaFOSS. Everyone agreed it is worth doing. Nemo offered to take the lead on logistics and asked whether the summit be officially under IndiaFOSS banner. This was followed by a brief discussion on how to fund the summit and ticketing. As for hosting the event information, Shree noted that the updates on the FOSS United platform are slow, so adding fringe events like this might be a task. Shree also added that we’d need a broader conversation with the IndiaFOSS team on budgeting. Bowrna asked what the criteria would be for invites. Nemo proposed forming a volunteer team to decide on the criteria for invites and the following process. Swastik offered help to circulate it among the OSI maintainers' community. [ link as set up on June 20th]

Exploring fiscal sponsorships and the challenges

Nemo added a new item to the agenda, that of fiscal sponsorships on the lines of Github Sponsors, or the Open Collective, but focusing on Indian challenges. Nemo highlighted the need to nourish and support Maintainers financially, and right now, the only way to do this at scale is via GitHub Sponsors. Shree and Bodhish both flagged the technical and regulatory challenges that come with this, but there was agreement on this being worth exploring and figuring out what role FOSS United stand to play here.

We’ll return to this topic in the coming meetings

IP adoption

We then moved on to discuss IP adoption and if FOSS United could serve as an umbrella organisation for donated project IPs from the community. Bodhish added that centralisation of this sort is looked as a red flag, and that FOSS United needs to build trust within the community and prove it can work. Maybe we could start with finding a flagship case.

Governing Board charter

Picking up on the conversation about the draft Governing Board charter, Nemo suggested holding a call to kick off work. Swastik offered to set up a draft document and circulate it.

A quick 30-minute sync was planned for Sunday, June 8

Miscellaneous

Before wrapping up, Nemo and Swastik discussed how we can add more value to monthly meetups and other FOSS United events. Bodhish brought up the Kochi Chapter, noting that he feels local chapters need more than branding to stay active; they need real support. Bowrna asked for examples of what value we could offer chapters. Something all of us’ll think about.