Minutes 2012-08-21
Minutes of the board meeting held from 7.30-8.30pm on 21 August 2012 online via Teleconference.
Present:
- Chris Keating (Chair, CK)
- Mike Peel (Minutes, MP)
- Roger Bamkin (RB)
- Joscelyn Bamkin (JB)
- Doug Taylor (DT)
- Ashley van Haeften (Fæ)
- John Byrne (JB)
The meeting started at 19:39.
QRpedia
This topic was discussed in camera. By decision of the Board on 7 December 2013 the in camera minutes were released on 24 January 2014.
CK and JB outlined the current status of the agreement. An annotated draft agreement exists from a meeting on 31 July. However, JU has raised important points that this draft agreement doesn't cover, and also that the bigger picture needs to be taken into account. JU also does not feel able to write a new version of the agreement due to the conflict of interest of being a WMUK trustee and WMUK being a party to this agreement.
JB highlighted that the old draft must have had problems at the original briefing stage with the lawyers, and proposed that we ask some trustees to put together a memo describing what WMUK wants to get out of this agreement prior to us asking a solicitor to draw up a new agreement.
RB is keeping organisations like Derby Museum in mind, and what they want in terms of ensuring QR codes will continue to work indefinitely. RB also has concerns about how long this agreement has taken to get into place, and how many significant activities are making use of QRpedia and hence the risk needs to be assessed, and recommends putting together a workable agreement in the near future.
JB points out that the issues present with this agreement will be different from issues that may be present with the agreements surrounding Monmouthpedia etc.
There was a discussion about what parts of QRpedia do what. The issues surround both the software side, and also other issues such as the redirects being changed, or visits being tracked, or the QRpedia domain being rebranded appropriately. With the branding agreement, it needs to be clear who actually owns the brand - WMUK would need to control the brand and license it back in order for the agreement to be binding. It's also currently unclear whether Roger or Terence currently own the brand. QRpedia.org domain name ownership is tricky, since on one hand Wikimedia has put a lot of charitable effort into the brand, but it was thought up by volunteers and it did pre-exist before WMUK's involvement.
Roger left the meeting at this point (20:10).
Terence owns QRpedia.org, while Roger owns qrwp.org.
We need to get hold of qrwp.org - it might be worth separating out the agreement surrounding that from that surrounding the brand.
A risk is that QRPedia.org starts doing something undesirable, so we have to take action to disassociate ourselves from that brand.
Definitely want control over qrwp.org. We are concerned that if we don't hold QRpedia.org then we need an undertaking that the current service (generating qr codes for qrwp.org) would continue unhindered by any commercial exploitation of the service that they develop.
MP would recommend that a third website is set up that could be used for other services or commercial activity, with qrpedia.org being kept dedicated for its current use.
Question of what we do with qrwp.org when we get it. First thing is to transfer ownership, then move the hosting over to our server once we have developer capacity in place. Some funds will be involved in the domain transfer (~£80?). Can then offer contract work to improve and/or maintain the software and hosting service if need be. There was consensus on getting hold of qrwp.org, and that we will ask nicely for ownership of QRpedia.org and make it clear that should they no longer wish to have it, we will take it over and should be given first refusal.
ACTION 5.1: CK and Jon Davies will work towards setting out an agreement that takes this into account, working with lawyers as necessary but at a minimum. Will keep the WMF informed. The aim is to sign an agreement at the September board meeting.
The meeting closed at 21:10.