Minutes of the ordinary General Assembly of 2020-06-21 Present during the online meeting on bigbluebutton: Andreas Enge, Christopher Baines, Efraim Flashner, Julien Lepiller, Jonathan Brielmaier, Ludovic Courtès, Manolis Ragkousis, Oliver Propst (only in the beginning), Pjotr Prins, Ricardo Wurmus, Simon Tournier; 11 out of 19 registered members, the quorum of 2/3 is not reached 1) Activity report by the Presidency Manolis presents the following activities of Guix since the last General Assembly in December 2017. 2018 * In November-December of 2017 we started organising the Guix days, in response to not getting a Guile devroom at FOSDEM. * In February 2018 we successfully held a one day GNU Guix/Guile day event, where we had presentations, discussions and lots of hacking. We had 32+ participants. * In September we decided to do a Minimalistic Languages Devroom at FOSDEM 2019, including any language that fits the term "minimalistic". Our application was successful, and we got a whole day devroom. * From September to November we reached out to people from different projects and invited them to give a talk in the devroom. * In December we started organising Guix Days for 2019-01-31 to 02-01. This time we booked the whole ICAB as there was a lot of interest last year. * In December we finalised the FOSDEM talk programme. 2019 * We held Guix Days in ICAB, Brussels. Participants 35+, great success. * We held the Minimalistic Languages Devroom at FOSDEM with great success. * In September we were again accepted as a full day room, but were merged with Experimental and Emerging languages. The Minimalistic, Experimental and Emerging Languages devroom was born. This is how we intend to continue next year as well. * Again, from September to November we reached out to people from different projects and invited them to give a talk in the devroom. * In December we started organizing Guix Days from 2020-01-30 to 31. * In December we finalised the FOSDEM talk program 2020 * We held Guix Days in ICAB, Brussels. Participants 36+, even greater success than the previous year. * We held the Minimalistic, Experimental and Emerging Languages devroom with even greater success. 2) Financial report by the Treasury Andreas has sent out the following report by e-mail before the assembly; there are no further questions. As a general remark, our finances cannot be considered separately from those held for the Guix project at the FSF, following our fundraiser quite some time ago. In many cases, we just advance money that in the end will be reimbursed by the FSF. Our own funds come from a big initial donation of 5000€ by Igalia, specific donations for holding the Guix Days (see below) and membership fees. Our accounts are publicly available in the "maintenance" git repo at https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/maintenance.git/tree/guix-europe/accounting ; in particular the ledger file is https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/maintenance.git/tree/guix-europe/accounting/accounting.ledger Let us jump in, with the output of $ guix environment --ad-hoc ledger -- ledger -f accounting.ledger balance €708.84 Assets €702.84 Bank €6.00 Stock €1.00 Bayfront €2.00 Overdrive 1000 €3.00 Redhill €-6.00 Equity €12771.85 Expenses €15.00 Banking €190.88 Domains €4987.70 Guix Day €3275.00 Hosting €44.00 Legal €80.00 Membership €60.00 Promotional material €4119.27 Purchases €-13474.69 Income €-5690.00 Donations €-2726.00 Guix Day €-2675.00 Hosting €-0.87 Interests €-590.00 Membership €-80.00 2016 €-110.00 2017 €-120.00 2018 €-170.00 2019 €-110.00 2020 €-1792.82 Purchases ---------- 0 In the last few lines, you see a breakdown of our membership fees, that have been growing with a slow, but steady increase of members. On the other hand, membership at Aquilenet, where the bayfront machine is hosted, costs us 20€ per year. Hosting bayfront is 75€ a month, corresponding to the cost incurred by the non-profit Aquilenet association; it is entirely reimbursed by the FSF (currently up to and including October 2019). Expenses for "domains" correspond to the domains guixsd.org (that will run out next year) and guix.info (just renewed for five years). "Banking" are fees due to a shared-cost wire transfer by the FSF, whereas our bank account at Banque Populaire Centre Atlantique is free of charge. "Promotional material" are Guix stickers. "Purchases" correspond to expenses for bayfront and redhill from 2016 to 2018 (taken from our funds), as well as three Overdrive buld servers (reimbursed by the FSF, which is why they also appear as "income"). Maybe the most interesting entries correspond to the Guix Days, that we have held since 2018 prior to FOSDEM in Brussels. Expenses are the rent at ICAB, including the provided lunch and coffee breaks. Income are lunch collection (we ask for a voluntary cost-covering participation) and donations: In 2018, the meetings were jump-started by 200€ by Pjotr's company GeneNetwork; in 2019, GeneNetwork and Janneke's company Joy of Source both helped us with 200€ for expanding the meeting to two days. Many thanks again! Here is a more detailed breakdown: Expenses 2018 Rent 749.70 Lunch -210 Donations -200 The remaining 339.70 were borne by Guix Europe. Expenses 2019 Rent 1796 (for two days instead of one, and two rooms) Lunch -693.50 Donations -400.00 Of the remaining 702.50, 502.50 were taken out of our funds at the FSF and 200 were paid by Guix Europe. Expenses 2020 Rent 2442 (we were more people, so catering was more expensive, and we also took more generous coffee breaks) Lunch -720 For the remaining 1722€, again 200€ will be paid by Guix Europe, and 1522€ will be taken out of the funds at the FSF. In 2019, we had an exceptional donation of 680€ by Fund the Code, following a presentation of Guix by Mathieu and Clément. Our current (at the end of June) balance is of 702.84€ in our bank account. As explained above, we will ask for a reimbursement of 1522€ for the Guix Days 2020, and of 600€ (8*75€) for bayfront hosting from November 2019 to June 2020. So altogether, the association owns 2824.84€, which can be used as a buffer or liquidity reserve for expenses that will be reimbursed by the Guix funds at the FSF, or for additional projects. 3) Election of the new Presidency and Treasury Manolis represents himself for Presidency. Andreas represents himself for Treasury, but points out that he would like to pass on this responsability in the long run. During the discussion it is suggested to create the role of Treasury aide, who could become Treasury in the future; Chris volunteers for this role. All three are elected unanimously. 4) Election of the Solidary Administrative Council (SAC) All current members of the SAC are present, and all present are interested in joining the SAC. They are elected unanimously. So the current SAC is formed by: Andreas Enge, Christopher Baines, Efraim Flashner, Julien Lepiller, Jonathan Brielmaier, Ludovic Courtès, Manolis Ragkousis, Oliver Propst, Pjotr Prins, Ricardo Wurmus, Simon Tournier. 5) Vote on the changes to the Statutes and Interior Reglementary as suggested by Simon Tournier The changes concern only typos, but we must still follow our statutes, which require the presence of 2/3 of the members, which is not reached. So this topic cannot be voted on; we decide instead to call an Extraordinary General Assembly and to allow a vote by email at this occasion. 6) Future activities We discuss whether to add a third day to the Guix Days, given their huge success. But counting FOSDEM, altogether it is alrady a four-day event. Some participants already come for only one of the two days. So the consensus is to keep the Guix Days duration in 2021. The question is whether ICAB will be big enough given our gradual increase in the number of participants. For 2021, there is consensus that we should book ICAB again, and reevaluate the situation if and when the need arises. In addition to the Guix Days, we consider holding a purely virtual event towards the end of the year; during the discussion, September or the time around Christmas are mentioned, without clear consensus. Manolis, Pjotr and Jonathan volunteer to work on the organisation. In case FOSDEM is cancelled due to ongoing Covid problems, we would also like to hold the Guix Days as an online event. When booking ICAB, we need to watch out for a suitable cancellation policy. 7) Travel grants It is suggested to provide travelling support for one or two students who work on Guix to attend the Guix Days; it would not need to cover all of the costs. While it appears that GSoC and Outreachy Students have a travel grant as part of their internship, this might be interesting to support otherwise non-funded persons and in particular members of underrepresented groups. There appears to be consensus about the usefulness of such an effort, but given the Guix Europe funds, this would have to be paid out of the funds held at the FSF, and thus requires discussion with the Guix spending committee. 8) Fundraising The previous topic leads to the question whether we should start another fundraiser. Given our funds at the FSF, this will probably not be needed before another year. Then we should determine a concrete goal that should be reached to motivate donations, and start a joint fundraiser with the FSF and Guix Europe.