Dear Board members, This email announces the agenda for our next Board meeting, scheduled for Thursday, 23 September 2026, from 16:00 to 16:30 UTC. The meeting will take place in the XSF chatroom at xmpp:xsf@muc.xmpp.org?join. 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-2026-09-24#Agenda Please review the relevant materials ahead of the meeting so that we can use our time efficiently. Kind regards, Guus *The candidate-list format introduced in the previous agendas is retained: the Board selects under item 2, and anything not taken is minuted as deferred by name.* 1. *Welcome*Opening of the meeting. Roll call and confirmation of quorum. 2. *Formalize Agenda**Recommendation*: A1 and A3 as the substantive items, A2 as a brief note. Section C: the Chair names an owner for each assignment before the meeting closes. Items not selected are deferred, not dropped, and are listed individually in the minutes. Section A - recommended for today *A1. Contact with Cisco* *(10 min - information, one decision)*A contact at Cisco, reached via Joe Hildebrand, replied on 15 September to the enquiry Mickaël sent following the 27 August meeting. Mickaël has forwarded the reply to the Board. In substance: Cisco is willing to work with the XSF, and to involve Cisco legal, if something more formal is needed; the correspondent was supportive of a move to an EU foundation; and indicated there would be no problem keeping the same arrangement for a new organisation that was the home of the XSF. *What it changes* The Board resolved on 10 September not to carry sublicensing authority to a successor entity. That resolution can stand: it followed Peter's recommendation and rested on the administrative effort of a programme with very little demand, which Cisco's willingness does not necessarily change. The value of the contact is that the XSF now has a willing counterparty and a route to Cisco legal, should it need to put anything on a formal footing once a successor entity exists. *Caveats* - This is an informal reply from an individual. The correspondent themselves distinguishes it from anything formal. - Nothing can be formalised until a successor entity has been chosen. See A3. *Status* It is not known whether there has been further correspondence between Cisco and Board members since 15 September. *Decision sought* 1. Who owns the correspondence from here, and whether a short acknowledgement is sent now to keep the channel open. *A2. Board and Council elections 2026* *(2 min - information)*Announced by the Secretary. Candidacy pages may be added until 8 November 2026, 00:00 UTC. The meeting is on 26 November 2026 at 19:00 UTC in the XSF chatroom. https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Board_and_Council_Elections_2026 Noted for awareness; no Board action required. Members considering standing for either body are encouraged to do so. At the time of writing one Board candidacy has been posted and no Council candidacies. *A3. EU Legal Structure: self-assessments* *(10 min - decision)*Deferred from 10 September and from 27 August. The Board agreed on 4 June that authors would self-assess "before a date to be communicated". The call went out the same day; no date was ever communicated, and no self-assessment has been posted to members@. This is no longer only a process question. Nothing arising from the Cisco contact can be formalised until there is a successor entity to name, and the jurisdiction of any counsel the XSF instructs depends in part on which proposal is chosen. *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 Section B - candidate items, deferred unless promoted *B1. Legal questions and the route to counsel* *(10 min - decision)*A working page has been opened and seeded with the questions raised so far: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Legal_Questions:_Jabber_Trademark_and_XSF_Legal_St... Following the 10 September meeting, Guus wrote to Matija Šuklje, taking up the offer of assistance Matija made on standards@ in May. He has replied and is willing to help, with limited availability. In summary: on the IPR policy question he will look at it, or at least identify what should be asked further; on trademark he would defer to external counsel, but can help identify what counsel should examine, and can point to FOSS-friendly trademark expertise in more than one jurisdiction. *Decisions sought* 1. Whether to ask Matija to approach his contacts, and in which jurisdiction. The trademark is US-registered and the XSF is a Delaware corporation, so US counsel is the relevant jurisdiction for the trademark questions regardless of A3. 2. Whether any budget is committed before the scope is known. 3. Who owns the correspondence, given that Matija has limited time and should not be left to chase the XSF. *B2. Volunteer capacity* *(15 min - discussion)*Deferred from 10 September and from 27 August. 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: - When work arising from that discussion needed an owner, the person best placed to take it on had no capacity. - Concern was raised, at second hand and not contested on the list, that the Editor role may not be sustainable if the volume of low-quality submissions rises. *For discussion* 1. What concrete support is needed, and whether the Board can supply or fund it. 2. Whether critical functions have 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)*Deferred from 10 September and from 27 August. 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. Matija has now agreed to look at the narrow question, which may change what the Board needs to decide. See B1. *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. The Board should not duplicate that work. Mailing list thread: https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/standards@xmpp.org/thread/TEATGPR45F... 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 *Confirm owners and status without discussion unless someone objects.* *C1. Website annotation and trademark@.*Agreed 2026-09-10. Mickaël to prepare a pull request annotating the public sublicensing pages, and to work with iteam on the bouncing address. Status? *Owner: Mickaël* *C2. Counsel enquiry.*Peter offered in July to raise the question of counsel on the open-source foundations list. Status? Largely superseded by Matija's offer of contacts - see B1. *Owner: TBD* *C3. Role address audit.*Listed on 27 August and 10 September, not yet confirmed. Beyond trademark@, the CoC publishes no contact address for the Board or conduct team. Confirm every XSF role address is monitored and published. *Owner: TBD* Standing items 3. *Any Other Business (AOB)* *(3 min)* 4. *Date of next meeting* *(2 min)*Proposed: Thursday, 8 October 2026, at the usual time. 5. *Close*