Committee Meeting 2023-09-07 18:00 UTC POSTPONED TO THE FOLLOWING DATE

Committee Meeting 2023-09-14 18:00 UTC

Postponed due to technical issues at our conference platform

The meeting will take place at 18:00 UTC at https://meet.jit.si/cacert If you do not have audio channel, you may try in the IRC channel #board-meeting on the CAcert IRC network.

Feel free to add a business item within the acceptance period of 48 hours or your question to the board below. Non-committee members: the committee may choose to convert any business proposed as a question in the questions section.

Agenda

Signs that appear in the agenda
<!> Formulated motion on your topic. It will be put to the vote. Adjustments may be made before the vote. A motion must be submitted for resolutions!
{i} Information for your attention. Does not need to be explained or discussed at the meeting. Purpose: Everyone is up to date. (max. 10 seconds) (!) Discussion topic with or with no decision.

  1. Preliminaries
    1. Chair opens the Committee Meeting
      1. Chair has a question for the attending members
    2. Who is making minutes?

    3. Chair asks whether cacert-board-private or cacert-board maillist includes any items that need to be disclosed to Members.

    4. <!> Accept minutes from 3. August 2023 <!> "I move to accept the minutes of the committee meeting of 3rd of August 2023."

  2. Business

    Acceptance of new business items no later than 48 hours before the start of the committee meeting!

    1. Class-1-issue

      1. {i} Support (Aleš) is overcrouded with pending class-1-renewing. The issue will not go away till the interface is fixed, which is a work that has been started, but not finished. But: Renewing old incorrectly signed certificates will never work again, as we have said we will not fix the broken code for that, as no certificates should ever have been signed that way. We can't continue signing them incorrectly. Aleš made the following propositions (to discuss):

      2. Propositions for better education of community members (users) by Aleš: discussion, decision. Brain/CAcertInc/Committee/MeetingAgendasAndMinutes/2023-09-07/Aleš

    2. Infrastructure
      1. Critical/Hardware (Dirk): visit at BIT on ??? and other news.

      2. {i} The next visit will not be before september

    3. Events

      1. (!) Dornbirner Linuxtage, Sat 30 September 2023, https://www.linuxday.at (call of papers 12 Aug 2023, in german)

    4. Finance team (Michael)

      1. New ERP: Info: State of affairs (Frédéric D)

        1. If progress is not as expected: What is needed for the project to be completed successfully? Who from the board can support?

      2. {i} Money transfer AU-EU: first transferts done

      3. (!) (which of them: PayPal USD/EUR/AUD); to be continued ??; access Westpac started, to be continued in August ??;

      4. {i} Cause CAcert Inc. vs. PayPal Pte. Ltd. (Frédéric G./Etienne) (ClawbackAction)

      5. {i} Finance year 2022/23 ended on 30-06-2023.

    5. Mission & Future

      1. {i} Information about Wednesday conferences https://nextcloud.cacert.org/s/fnPyjC4X2MHbYBK

    6. AGM 2023 (Etienne)

    7. OpenID Connect (Brian/Frédéric D)

      1. State of affairs openID project

      2. (!) Documentation (who?)

      3. {i} Payment (on hold; secretary has asked for IBAN)

      4. PR (on hold: only if documentation is done)

        1. If progress is not as expected: What is needed for the project to be completed successfully? Who from the board can support?

    8. Remote Assurance (Brian)

      1. {i} Creation of remote assurance sub committee (RASC) on the hold until Eva is available for the policy.

      2. (!) If progress is not as expected: Should someone get in touch with Eva after FrOScon? Who?

    9. OrgAssurance

      1. {i} Secretary got in touch with 10 Org Assurers. Goal 1: Reactivate training and supervision of candidates. Goal 2: maybe find a OrgA Of. To be continued in September.

    10. Background Check
      1. done

        1. {i} BGC for Gero: Interview happened (by Ted&Etienne), committee is waiting for the report (has to be sent by Gero).

      2. pipeline

        1. BGC for Brian: who (no board member in BGC team! (Egal/JanDD) /!\ Brian has to re-contact the two checkers at 01 sept 2023.

        2. {i} BGC for Peter is initiated. (date searching; Interview by Ted&Egal)

        3. {i} BGC for Matthias are initiated. (date searching started in August 2022)

        4. {i} BGC for Sascha are initiated. (language: en or de)

    11. Any other business (board members forgot to ask the secretary to put it on the agenda)
    12. Kim emailed all Board members and asked them to join the very active Telegram channel, for faster communication between both Board members themselves, but mainly between active Team members and Board. Email communication is extremely slow, and we've had several occasions where some emails aren't received by all for unknown and unfixed reasons. Also, our very competent and active Team members are working much faster than the sluggish experience that comes with waiting for discussions and decisions made on the monthly Board meetings. Kim would appreciate a more active commitment to the Telegram channel.
    13. What coming next? ???
  3. Question Time

    Questions from CAcert.org community members can be added until beginning of committee meeting! As well questions can be asked at "Question Time", without added question here.

    1. "Question One." added by Your Name Comment: Replace "Question One" by your Question and add your name

      • ..

1. Closing

  1. Propose a date of the next Committee Meeting: 6. July 2023 18:00 UTC
  2. Agree on the following meeting dates: 3. Aug., 7. Sept., 5. Oct. 2023 18:00 UTC (keep date free, can be changed if necessary)

  1. To remember: Goals 2021/2022 (propositions by board 2020/2021) - Each goal needs a responsible person on the board who keeps an eye on it and reports regularly, keeps in touch with the responsible people. {X} obsolete / (./) started / {OK} waiting for available time

    • push OrgA (Guy)
    • expand PR (Alex cannot do this, wants to hand over)

    • (./) delivering the OpenID Connect integration, for which CAcert is funded by the RIPE NCC.

    • (./) expand background check

    • {OK} remote assurance, if accepted by the community;

    • simplify the certificate creation (this enables the start of various projects from the pipeline)
    • software development and testing
    • New CSR software

    • {X} support SecureU (find an active board member for them in Germany)

  2. Not to forget: Staffing the teams
    1. Applicants to the Infrastructure team
    2. Applicants to the Development team
    3. Applicant to the Critical team

  1. Access to local systems for board members

Person

Board-Private

Committee Archive

Wiki

Nextcloud

Brian

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

Etienne

(./)

(./)

Admin

(./)

Frédéric

(./)

(./)

(./)

Admin

Kim

(./)

(./)

(./)

(./)

Michael

(./)

(./)

<!>

(./)

Sascha

(./)

(./)

(./)

Admin

Wacław

<!>

(./)

<!>

?

1. Tasks assigned to Board Members and others

Person

Task

Deadline

Other People Involved

Notes

Brian

Contact QA/QC Volunteers

10 January 2022

Gero Treuner, Peter Nunn, others?

To begin work, they do not need ABC.

Brian

bla

2022

xxx

xx.

Brian

bla

2022

xxx

xx.

  1. Software Team

    1. Issue 1502: Adapt the UI at CAcert.org to deal with the "keygen" feature having been removed in browsers

    2. Issue 1482: Limit validity period of new HTTPS certificates to one year

    3. Issue 1444: PHP - Brian

    4. Issue 1417: Keygen / new CSR software - Bernhard

  2. Organisation Assurance
    1. How to relance OrgA? (Guy)
  3. Grant applications

    1. Protopype Fund https://prototypefund.de/en/ (mail to SW Board only)

      1. The Prototype Fund is a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). This is for residents of Germany only. We could create a group of people that work on a project for CAcert (with all support of the others in the background). It runs for two more years, every 6 month.
      2. Infra does not see any acute need at the moment, and does not have the capacity to provide qualified support.
      3. There are some ideas for software, but in infra's view there is still a lot of conceptual and preparatory work missing. What Infra could imagine is financing people to carry out a requirements analysis and write a requirements and test specification. This could then be used as a basis for a new implementation of the CAcert software (WebDB, Signer and perhaps other things like CATS). But these are just a few ideas of JanDD and he cannot currently recommend any people who would be suitable for this. Potential candidates would have to deal intensively with the existing software on the one hand and with the underlying policies on the other, and would have to identify a lot of missing information, ask for it and make assumptions for discussion. This requires very good analytical and communication skills and a high level of stamina.
  1. Blockchain

    1. see here: https://wiki.cacert.org/Brain/CAcertInc/Committee/MeetingAgendasAndMinutes/2018-03-01/ideas#Blockchain (waiting for answer from IanG)

Minutes Committee meeting - 2023-09-14

Participants

Members of the Committee:

Present, by alphabetical order

Brian McCullough

Étienne Ruedin

Frédéric Dumas

Frédéric Grither

Absent or silent, by alphabetical order

Kim Nilsson

Michael Richardson

Members of the CAcert community and other guests

Having been active during the meeting, by alphabetical order

none

1 Opening

From April to October 2023 inclusive, committee meetings will be held at 18:00 UTC.

Chair Brian opens the meeting at 18:01 UTC.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting.

The minutes of the meeting held on 3 August are not written with the level of precision required to reflect the discussions. At Frédéric D's request, it was agreed not to accept them officially.

Result of the vote:

Aye: 0 Naye: 4 Abstain: 0

The minutes of the last meeting were not accepted.

2 Business

Class 1 Root (Brian)

In response to the inability of users to renew some personal certificates (situation described under bugs #1550 #1551), Brian has patched the CAcert web application. The new code now needs to be reviewed and put into production.

Etienne points out that the problem has implications for the application of CAcert rules. The subject has been discussed here: https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-board-private/2023-09/msg00011.html

Ales made proposals to better inform CAcert members of the implications: https://wiki.cacert.org/Brain/CAcertInc/Committee/MeetingAgendasAndMinutes/2023-09-07/Aleš

Brian submits a motion to implement the Ales proposals:

I move that Ales' proposals be implemented as soon as possible.

Frédéric Dumas seconds.

Result of the vote:

Aye: 4 Naye: 0 Abstain: 0

The motion was adopted.

Proposal (1) shall be implemented immediately. For proposals (2) and (3), the Secretary shall submit proposals before the next meeting. Even if they are different in content, they are related in technical implementation and will therefore be implemented together.

Finance team (Frédéric G)

Frédéric Grither is handling the dispute with Paypal Switzerland who seized our account. Paypal Switzerland is located and regulated through the Singapore regulatory authorities. See: https://wiki.cacert.org/Brain/CAcertInc/Committee/MeetingAgendasAndMinutes/2023-09-07/ClawbackAction

Frédéric made the inquiry and knows by his previous experience with Paypal Australia what the next steps are. However, he is waiting for Michael to provide him the Paypal login credentials that will enable him to connect to the Paypal account, catch the proofs of Paypal misconduct and files the complain into the Singapore dispute resolution process. https://wiki.cacert.org/Brain/CAcertInc/Committee/MeetingAgendasAndMinutes/2023-09-07/ClawbackAction

OpenID (Brian)

Brian is slowly making progress and plans to be able to dedicate some time to this project while he is away from home this month.

Brians' background check

Brian has not yet received confirmation of the date on which he will be invited to pass his background check.

3 Question Time

Frédéric D. emphasises the need for leadership to make decisions when committee members or team leaders cannot reach anything other than a soft consensus, which is more concerned with avoiding confrontation than with making clear decisions. He sees this as an obstacle to motivation for the association's active members.

Brian links this issue to that of redefining CAcert's mission. He reminds us that the work proposed by Susan Sons will not succeed in strengthening the leadership of the CAcert if the definition of CAcert's renewed mission is not agreed beforehand or at the same time.

Closing

Chair Brian closes the meeting at 19:30 UTC.

Date of the next meeting

The next meeting will be held on Thursday October 5, 2023 at 18:00 UTC.

Motions

Actions

Who

Status

Action

Minutemaker

wip

prepare Agenda and Minutes for the next meeting

Brian

Software meeting

every 2 month

Secretary

bank

accounts, contact with treasurer

Brain/CAcertInc/Committee/MeetingAgendasAndMinutes/2023-09-07 (last edited 2023-10-05 18:39:02 by EtienneRuedin)