Association of Lisp Users, Inc. (ALU) 6 April 2006 Board Meeting 22:00 hours UTC Minutes Rev. 4 Meeting held telephonically with the following board members present: Officers present: (V) = Voting member of the Board (NV) = Non-Voting Ernst van Waning, Pres.(NV) Carl Shapiro, VP (NV) (22:20) Members present: Roger Corman (V) Kuroda Hisao (V) Nick Levine (V) Duane Rettig (V) Jon L. White (V) President Ernst van Waning called the meeting to order at 22:10 UTC with a quorum of voting members present. Next meeting to be held 11 May, 2006 at 22:00 UTC. Approved without dissent. Minutes of previous meeting: N. Levine moved to accept the minutes of the previous meeting as corrected by his subsequent email. Motion was seconded by D. Rettig and carried unanimously. Nick will contact the secretary to check on the status of the corrected minutes. Agenda items: Republication Policy: JonL White moves to adopt the policy sent out by email a few days ago. (See Appendix 1 below.) Much discussion from present members. D. Rettig seconds motion. Motion passes unanimously. N. Levine asks, "Should we have a policy book?" E. van Waning promises to build one. Membership: Only one membership during last month: Ernst van Waning. It became unclear as to whether the current membership chair is regularly sending out notifications of new member sign ups. Ernst did not get confirmation. Others on the membership mailing list also did not receive notification. ILC'07: N. Levine reports, concerning financial details between the treasurer and himself; ~8000 GBP in UK bank for ILC07. Nick has given a report in writing via email and is working with the University now to proceed. This is after the change of location from Corpus Christi college to Clare college. Deposit will be 500 GBP for the following dates: April 1-4, 2007. There was some discussion as to the reason why the ILC bank account has so much money in it when only 500 GBP is needed in the foreseeable future. Apparently the deposit required was much less than estimated. Also, the treasurer preferred to have fewer international transactions, as each one costs a noticeable transaction fee. In the meantime, the conference bank account is generating interest, albeit small. The Business Plan project: E. van Waning reports that a reasonable fee for consulting would be 100 Euros/hour. The consultant's name is Gerry Paster. He writes professionally for big Dutch companies like KLM, Philips, Heineken, among others. N. Levine has minor issues with the written report. "I think that a Lisp population of ~3000 is a low estimate. It should be in the 10's of thousands. Consider AutoCad." J.L. White objects, AutoCad users are rarely "Lisp users"; compare with Emacs Lisp where at least some noticeable fraction of emacs users are also doing some coding in Emacs Lisp. R. Corman notes that "10's of thousands" have downloaded the free evaluation version of his product. JonL asks if any have shown any sign of actually being a user; and asks the same question concerning all those who have ever taken a Lisp class in college. No answer is immediately available. E. van Waning mentions the reason for having an estimate of the number of Lisp users is to make a derivative estimate of how many might join ALU and pay dues. Nick also disagrees with the statement that "lisp will fail unless there is central organization for it" JonL agrees, citing the former central organization that kicked Common Lisp off (the X3J13 committee for fostering ANSI standardization). It endured for about 10 years from mid 1980's through mid-1990's, and then went dormant. However, there is much flurry of independent Common Lisp activity today, despite the inactivity of X3J13/ANS. Others also suggest a widespread evidence of Common Lisp activity and usage, but without any single organization being the touchstone. JonL would like not to vote on the proffered business plan proposal today. Ernst will organize further discussion via email. Wiki-based possibilities for keeping track of ideas: D. Rettig was to confab with P. Lindahl about the topic. Duane mentions that the first Wiki considered, 'moinmoin, is not built on lisp, possibly Java-based. C. Shapiro exclaims that the ALU website Wiki "CLiki" uses "Kiwi". Kiwi is a product that Carl and a friend wrote in Lisp and is more robust than Wiki. Duane prefers that over using a non-Lisp based package. Carl suggests board members view "wiki.alu.org". Off-line for Carl and Duane, Ernst will clarify his purpose of the call for an "ALU ideas/action-items" Wiki. JonL asks if Kiwi is private or public domain and if we can make a subsection private for the board's use. Carl replies, yes. Ernst asks discussion to continue off-line by email. Answer to the "private vs. public" question was not recorded. JonL White moves to adjourn at 22:46 UTC. D. Rettig seconds. The motion carries unanimously. The secretary expresses his appreciation to JonL White for the notes from which these minutes were transcribed. Peter Lindahl ALU Secretary Appendix 1 Moved: That the ALU adopt the following policy for re-distribution of significant contributions to our periodic conferences: 1. That such significant contributions be acknowledged to the authors or owners as their own, holding their own right of continued copying, re-publication, and distribution; 2. That the Program Chair of any such conference, or a delegated substitute therefor, request from the contributor the right to publish the contribution in a Record or Proceedings of the conference, to be distributed to all Conferencee attendees, and to all persons paying the price set by the ALU for post-conference distribution of the "Record." We strongly encourage acquiring such a republication permission, and may omit it only at the discretion of the Conference Steering Committee (or the Program Chair, in lieu of such committtee.) In all cases, we shall respect the intellectual property rights of the authors and contributors to ALU sponsered meetings and conferences. The intent of this clause is to allow the ALU to at least recuperate the cost of publishing such a work in full, and have some extra income to help defray sundry other Conference expenses 3. That the Program Chair shall try to acquire from the author or owner, non-exclusive, electronic redistribution rights for all such contributions, but that no proffered contribution shall be turned down solely for lacking such a right given to the ALU. 4. The permission grants as requested in paragraphs 2 and 3 above shall conform to generally accepted law on intellectual property distribution. The particular format of such requests shall be determined at a later time, or by a Conference Steering Committee. 5. That in accord with common practice by other technical organisations hosting large conferences, such as USENIX, no electronic form of such contributions shall be distributed by the ALU, freely, to the public at large, until at least one year after the close of the Conference in question. ALU members in good standing may be given earlier access; however, no distributions in accord with this paragraph shall be permitted which infringe upon the rights of the owners of the intellectual property contained therein.