[Members] Agenda for the XSF Board Meeting on August 27 2026

Dear Board members, This email announces the agenda for our next Board meeting, scheduled for Thursday, 27 August 2026, from 16:00 to 16:30 UTC. The meeting will take place in the XSF chatroom at xmpp:xsf@muc.xmpp.org?join. Three consecutive meetings did not proceed (2026-07-02 opened but deferred its only substantive item; 2026-07-16 and 2026-08-13 were cancelled). This agenda therefore presents a candidate list of outstanding items rather than a fixed agenda. The Board selects from it under item 2. Items not selected are recorded as deferred in the minutes and carry forward to the next meeting. I'm aware that the agenda below uses plenty of markup, which may affect rendering. The same agenda is available on the XSF wiki, which may be helpful in case your mail client does not render this email as intended: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Board-Meeting-2026-08-271. *Welcome*Opening of the meeting. Roll call and confirmation of quorum. 2. *Formalize Agenda*The Board selects which of the candidate items below will be taken today. Given the 30-minute slot, realistically two. *Recommendation*: items A1 and A2, on the basis that A1 is now decidable and A2 costs almost nothing. Items under section C are assignments requiring no meeting time and can be confirmed without discussion. Any Board member may promote an item from B or C into today's agenda, or add an item not listed. Absent objection, the recommendation stands. Items not selected are deferred, not dropped. The minutes will record the deferred set. Section A - recommended for today *A1. Jabber Trademark Sublicensing Program* *(20 min - decision)*Deferred from 2026-07-02 pending community feedback. That feedback arrived: the discussion ran on members@ through July and has since concluded. *What changed* - The full Enforcement Agreement, including Exhibit A (the Jabber Trademark Position Statement), is now published on the XSF website. Exhibit A previously went unnoticed - Read as a set, the documents show the administration arrangement the XSF operates was structured as a twelve-month trial, ending either in transfer of the Mark to the JSF or in reversion of administration to JINC. The Mark was never transferred. - Peter Saint-Andre confirms the arrangement was extended in practice, that he holds no documentation of the extension, and that he found nothing further in his own files. - The License Agreement §5 expressly prohibits sublicensing by the JSF. *Positions raised* - *Peter*: do not carry sublicensing authority to a successor EU entity; future applicants license directly with Cisco. Notes that requests have been very rare since the initial flood in 2004-2006. - *Ralph*: existing licenses are perpetual subject to good conduct; cleanest route to certainty is a letter from Cisco recognising the new entity as successor. - *Georg*: in order of preference: (1) retain a stub XSF-US to issue sublicenses; (2) wind down with a final registration window; (3) plain wind-down. Notes Cisco recently renewed the mark and still ships Jabber-branded products. - *Jonas*, as a license holder: clarify the status of existing uses before XSF-US winds down; if it cannot be clarified, holders must be told to seek Cisco's blessing. - *Travis*: stop advertising the program immediately. *Decisions sought* 1. Whether sublicensing authority will be carried over to a successor entity. 2. Whether to commit to a notification process for existing holders, and on what timeline. 3. Whether to suspend or annotate the public sublicensing pages pending (1). *Dependency*: no application can be filed while trademark(a)xmpp.org is bouncing. See C1. Background: https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/jabber-trademark/background/ Approved applications: https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/jabber-trademark/approved-applications/ Mailing list thread: https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/members@xmpp.org/message/AXQGRXYXSK… *A2. EU Legal Structure: self-assessments have stalled* *(5 min - decision)*The Board agreed on 18 June that authors would self-assess "before a date to be communicated". The call went out on 4 June; no date was ever communicated. Nearly three months on, no self-assessment has been posted to members@. *Decisions sought* 1. A firm deadline. 2. Whether to contact the proposal authors directly rather than via the list. 3. What happens to proposals whose authors do not respond - Board-prepared assessment, or drop from consideration. Wiki page: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/XSF_EU_Legal_Transition_Proposal Mailing list thread: https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/members@xmpp.org/message/O4RR4XQ53S… Section B - candidate items, deferred unless promoted *B1. Access to legal expertise* *(15 min - decision)*The Board recorded on 18 June that several points on the trademark programme require legal confirmation: the status of existing licensees if the programme lapses, reversibility, and any transfer to a successor entity. No advice has been obtained since. In May, on standards@, Matija Šuklje offered assistance. He specialises in IPR, specifically copyright and FOSS licensing, and co-authored the FLA. He was explicit that he is not an attorney and cannot provide Legal Advice as such, but offered his thoughts once the XSF has a rough idea what it wants to achieve. The offer was acknowledged on-list but never taken up. He remains active in the community. *Decisions sought* 1. Whether to take up the offer, and who owns the interaction. 2. The set of questions to put - spanning the trademark position, transferability of XSF obligations to a successor entity, and the IPR questions in B3. 3. Whether an informal read precedes or replaces a decision on paid counsel, and what would trigger the latter. Mailing list post: https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/standards@xmpp.org/message/W6UUNLIP… *B2. Volunteer capacity* *(15 min - discussion)*Guus wrote on standards@ in July that the volunteering force is one of the XSF's most valuable assets, that the XSF has not historically done well at preventing burnout among those volunteers, and that it needs to do better. Two signals from that discussion bear on this directly: - Goffi described himself as "already at the edge of burn-out" and declined additional work on that basis. - Goffi reported, and Kev independently described, that the Editor has indicated he could not continue in the role if the volume of low-quality submissions rises. Neither account is a first-hand statement, and neither was contested on the list. The XSF's volunteer force is not within the Council's remit. This item exists because no other body owns it. *For discussion* 1. What concrete support the Editor and Council need, and whether the Board can supply or fund it. 2. Whether the Editor function has sufficient redundancy. 3. Whether the Board should adopt any ongoing practice for noticing volunteer load before it becomes attrition. *B3. IPR policy: warranty, copyright, and AI-assisted contributions* *(20 min - decision)*Goffi has asked three times whether this belongs with the Board - twice in May, and again in July, when he asked whether the discussion should continue on standards@ or whether the Board should take it up and ask a team to work on an XSF statement on AI use. That question remains unanswered. Guus, as a Board member, twice replied that the matter was not yet ready, and set out what would change that: a concrete proposal with prior art behind it. The prior-art survey is now complete. Whether a concrete proposal exists is for the Board to judge. *The narrow question* Marvin argued on standards@ that AI-generated content cannot comply with the IPR policy as written: §3.1 requires the author to assign ownership they may not hold, and §4 requires a copyright notice that may be invalid. Dave argued the warranty model already indemnifies the XSF, since the author asserts they can assign and the XSF accepts in good faith. *Alternatives raised* - Retain the current policy unchanged. - Adopt submitter wording along the lines Dave proposed: an assertion and warranty that, to the extent copyright exists in the contribution, the submitter has permission from all rights holders to assign it, and does so. - Adopt a matching qualification in Appendix C. Dave himself was unsure this is necessary, on the basis that publishing a submission likely suffices. - Disclaim copyright in XEPs entirely and require submissions to do the same. Reported by Dave as a position Peter has argued previously; not stated by Peter in this thread. *Decisions sought* 1. Whether the current IPR policy is adequate as written, or is to be opened. 2. If opened, which direction, and who drafts. 3. Whether any XSF-wide statement is commissioned beyond Council's XEP-0143 work, and a reply to Goffi either way. *Scope note*: author-facing guidance belongs in XEP-0143 and is Council's. PR #1552 is with Council, where revised wording was proposed at the most recent Council meeting. The Board should not duplicate that work. Mailing list thread: https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/standards@xmpp.org/thread/TEATGPR45… Prior art: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/AI_contribution_policies_in_other_projects XEP-0143 PR #1552: https://github.com/xsf/xeps/pull/1552 Section C - assignments, no meeting time required *Confirm owners without discussion unless someone objects.* *C1. Role address audit.*trademark(a)xmpp.org has been reported bouncing since June; no sublicense application can be filed while it is broken. The Board agreed on 18 June that this should be addressed; it appears not to have been. The CoC also publishes no contact address for the Board or conduct team. Confirm every XSF role address is monitored and published. *Owner: TBD* *C2. Counsel enquiry.*Peter offered in July to raise the question of counsel on the open-source foundations list. Status unknown; confirm. *Owner: TBD* *C3. Summit 29 topic suggestion.*Topic suggestions close today. Anyone may suggest a topic; this requires no Board decision. If any Board member wants intake reform or the role of Council discussed on 4-5 September, they should post to the list directly. Daniel has already proposed a related topic. *No Board action required - noted for awareness* Standing items 3. *Any Other Business (AOB)* *(5 min)* - *XMPP Summit 29 *: 4-5 September 2026, online - the first online-only Summit: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Conferences/Summit_29 4. *Date of next meeting*Proposed: Thursday, 10 September 2026, at the usual time. Note the membership meeting on 3 September and Summit 29 on 4-5 September fall before it. The Board may also wish to confirm the timeline for the annual meeting and Board and Council elections, given the current term is designated 2025-2026. 5. *Close* Please review the relevant materials ahead of the meeting so that we can use our time efficiently. Kind regards, Guus