Board-Meeting-2026-10-08

Board Meeting
Date	Thursday, 2026-10-08
Time	16:00-16:30 UTC
Place	XSF chatroom
Transcript	chat log
Term	2025-2026 Term Summary
Navigation
Previous	Board-Meeting-2026-09-24
Next	Board-Meeting-2026-10-22

Agenda

The candidate-list format is retained: the Board selects under item 2, and anything not taken is minuted as deferred by name. Section C has moved to the front, since it has not been reached at any of the last three meetings.

1. Welcome

Opening of the meeting. Roll call and confirmation of quorum.

2. Formalize Agenda and assignments

Recommendation: A1 as the substantive item. Section C to be run through first: a status word on each, and a named owner for anything that has none.

Items not selected are deferred, not dropped, and are listed individually in the minutes.

Section C - assignments and action points

To be run through at the start, not the end. One line of status each; the minutes record what is reported.

C1. Acknowledgement to the Cisco contact.

Agreed 2026-09-24. Mickaël to forward the original message to Ralph as an attachment; Ralph to send a short acknowledgement stating the XSF's intention to formalise matters in due course. Owners: Mickaël, Ralph

C2. EU self-assessments.

Agreed 2026-09-24. Guus to ask the proposal authors to self-assess against the agreed criteria. Deadline for the assessments: Wednesday 21 October 2026. Owner: Guus

C3. Website annotation and trademark@.

Agreed 2026-09-10; not reached on 24 September. A pull request annotating the public sublicensing pages is needed, and the bouncing address fixed. Mickaël offered to look into this. Owner: Mickaël?

C4. Legal questions: complete the list.

Discussed 2026-09-10; a working page exists: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Legal_Questions:_Jabber_Trademark_and_XSF_Legal_Structure Mickaël agreed to review the questions already proposed; Arne offered to approach a lawyer he knows. The list is a precondition for B1. Owners: Mickaël, Arne, Guus

C5. Role address audit.

Check that each published XSF role address works and is monitored, and that every role the XSF asks people to contact has an address at all. Two known gaps: trademark@xmpp.org has been reported as bouncing since June (see C3), and the Code of Conduct asks people to contact the Conduct Team and the Board without giving an address for either. First listed 27 August; not yet reached. Owner: TBD

Section A - recommended for today

A1. IPR policy: warranty, copyright, and AI-assisted contributions (20 min - decision)

Deferred on 27 August, 10 September and 24 September. 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 Šuklje has offered to look at the narrow question below, but with no timeline attached (see B1). The Board should not treat that as a reason to defer again: the question of whether the existing policy is adequate is one the Board can take a position on now, and revisit if his view differs.

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. The Board should not duplicate that work.

Mailing list thread: https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/standards@xmpp.org/thread/TEATGPR45FKDE767ADOQMAPDVBOC2ZQW

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 B - candidate items, deferred unless promoted

B1. Legal questions and the route to counsel (10 min - decision)

Deferred on 10 September and 24 September; raised in a different form on 27 August. 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_Structure

Following the 10 September meeting, Guus wrote to Matija Šuklje, taking up the offer of assistance Matija made on standards@ in May. Matija replied that he will look at the IPR policy question, or at least identify what should be asked further; that on trademark he would defer to external counsel but can help identify what counsel should examine; and that he can point to FOSS-friendly trademark expertise in more than one jurisdiction. He noted his availability is limited.

Where this stands

Matija's help is a favour, offered freely and with no deadline attached. Guus has told him to come back in his own time, and has not asked him to approach any of his contacts. Separately, the list of questions itself is not finished (see C4). The decisions below are probably premature until it is.

Decisions sought

1. Whether the Board waits for Matija's input before deciding on counsel, or proceeds in parallel. If it waits, by when does that stop being the plan.
2. Whether to ask Matija to approach his trademark contacts. The trademark is US-registered and the XSF is a Delaware corporation, so US counsel is the relevant jurisdiction.
3. Whether any budget is committed before the scope is known.

B2. Volunteer capacity (15 min - discussion)

Deferred on 27 August, 10 September and 24 September. The question arose on standards@ in July, around roles other than iteam: Guus wrote there that the volunteering force is one of the XSF's most valuable assets, that the XSF has not historically done well at preventing burnout, and that it needs to do better.

Two signals from that discussion

• 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. Whether any XSF role or team depends on a single individual in a way the Board should act on.
2. Whether the Board should adopt a practice for noticing volunteer load before it becomes attrition.

Standing items

3. Any Other Business (AOB) (3 min)

• Board and Council elections: candidacies close 8 November 2026, 00:00 UTC; the election meeting is 26 November: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Board_and_Council_Elections_2026

4. Date of next meeting (2 min)

Proposed: Thursday, 22 October 2026, at the usual time. Note the self-assessment deadline of 21 October falls the day before.

5. Close

Minutes

1. Welcome

The meeting was opened and chaired by Ralph Meijer.

Attendees

• Ralph Meijer (Chair)
• Guus der Kinderen
• Arne-Brün Vogelsang
• Mickaël Rémond (joining while travelling)
• Florian Schmaus (until 18:16 CEST, having given notice of another commitment)

Quorum was confirmed.

2. Formalization of Agenda

The agenda as published on the wiki was approved. No additions were proposed.

3. Action points

C1. Acknowledgement to the Cisco contact. The Chair reported that he had missed Mickaël's forwarded message and would send the acknowledgement immediately after the meeting. Owner: Ralph

C2. EU self-assessments. Guus reported that he had contacted all proposal authors, including himself, and that all had agreed to provide a self-assessment. None has been submitted to date, including his own. The deadline of Wednesday 21 October 2026 has not yet passed. Owner: Guus

C3. Website annotation and trademark@. Guus noted that the agenda may have stated Mickaël's ownership of this item more firmly than was actually agreed on 10 September. Mickaël confirmed that he had taken it on, reported no progress so far, and said he would begin work early next week. Owner: Mickaël

C4. Legal questions: complete the list. Also owned by Mickaël, and covered by the same undertaking to begin work early next week. Owners: Mickaël, Arne, Guus

C5. Role address audit. The Chair asked whether trademark@xmpp.org had been fixed. Guus reported that nothing had changed to his knowledge, but noted that substantial changes were made to the mail infrastructure in the past week, so the address may now function. He undertook to follow up with iteam. Owner: Guus

4. IPR Policy

The Chair observed that the pull request already before the Council should be sufficient to conclude the matter. Guus noted that a great deal had been said on IPR during the first half of the year without any conclusion being reached.

The following motion was put by the Chair:

That the Board adopt PR #1552 as its conclusion to the topics raised.

Ralph, Mickaël, Florian, Guus and Arne each voted in favour. The motion carried.

Discussion

Guus stated that the IPR policy as it stands is sufficient. He accepted there is merit in Marvin's observation that the policy does not require an author to assert that they actually own what they assign, but considered the policy adequate nonetheless — for a reason somewhat different from the one Dave had given, which Guus did not think was entirely correct. He added that cheap improvements are available but that he saw no strong need for them, and that he would not favour Peter's suggestion of dropping the copyright claim altogether.

The Chair set out the reasoning on the record, citing section 3.1 of the IPR policy:

"By submitting an XMPP Extension for consideration by the XSF, the author of the Extension shall assign any ownership rights or other Claims asserted over the Extension to the XSF."

Any ownership that is claimed is to be assigned. Rights in parts of a work that cannot be copyrighted therefore fall outside the assignment altogether, and for everything else the pull request makes the author responsible.

Guus agreed that the words "asserted over" are what address both Marvin's and Dave's points: the clause does more than Marvin argued was present, and it resolves Dave's concern by a different route, since Dave had understood the XSF to obtain an explicit assertion of ownership at the point of initial contribution or CLA sign-off, which it does not.

Arne suggested that Goffi's question about what exactly is meant by "responsibility" may warrant clarification. The Chair replied that he did not know how to explain the words beyond their ordinary meaning in English, and noted that this was not intended facetiously.

Conclusion

The Board's position on the topics raised on the standards mailing list is as follows.

• The XSF's IPR policy is adequate as it stands, and the Board is making no amendment to it.
• Section 3.1 requires an author to assign the ownership rights and Claims they assert over an Extension. It does not require the author to hold, or to warrant that they hold, copyright in every part of it. Where material cannot be copyrighted, no rights are held or asserted, nothing falls to be assigned, and the contribution remains in conformance with the policy. There is accordingly no gap between what an author assigns and what an author holds.
• For everything that is capable of being owned, responsibility rests with the author. That is what PR #1552 makes explicit in the submission process of XEP-0143, and the Board regards that change as the appropriate and sufficient response.
• No provision specific to AI-assisted contributions is required. The policy is neutral as to how a contribution was produced, and the author's responsibility is the same in every case.
• The suggestion that the XSF disclaim copyright in XEPs altogether was noted. Guus stated that he would not favour it; no support for it was expressed.
• Guus noted that improvements to the policy's wording are available at low cost, but saw no pressing need for them at present.
• Note added after the meeting: Arne asked during the meeting what "responsibility" requires of an author in concrete terms. The Chair answered this on the pull request itself: in the context of the rest of the IPR document, taking responsibility means that the contributor, regardless of which tools were used in the process, is accountable for ensuring that everything they submit complies with the XSF's policies, and the addition is a clarification rather than a material change to the process. Goffi responded positively.

Action point: Guus to prepare these minutes, circulate them to the Board for confirmation, and then send them to Goffi as the Board's documented response. Guus noted that Goffi has pursued this question for a long time and that the Board took too long to answer it, and that a personal response is therefore owed. Arne agreed with this approach.

5. Any Other Business (AOB)

Guus raised the following:

• Board and Council elections are approaching and candidates are needed.
• FOSDEM devroom: SCAM has applied for a devroom together with Matrix and Delta Chat, along the lines of the previous edition. Board members and others are encouraged to consider giving a presentation, assuming the room is granted.
• FOSDEM stand: SCAM has not yet applied for a stand, and hoped Ralph would be willing to repeat his customary approach or assist with the application. Ralph agreed. Coordination to continue in the SCAM chatroom.

No other business was raised.

6. Date of Next Meeting

The next Board meeting is scheduled for: Thursday, 22 October 2026, at the usual time.

7. Close

The meeting was closed by the Chair.

All attendees were thanked for their participation.