Working Group minutes

Haskell Foundation Working Group
#1

Working Group Minutes
2021-01-15

Present: Ryan Trinkle, Simon Peyton Jones, Moritz Angermann, Stephanie Weirich, Emily Pillmore, Ian Connolly, Rebecca Skinner, Jasper Van der Jeugt, Gabriele Keller, Richard Eisenberg

Minutes
Policy decision:

  • Minutes taken in a Google doc, accessible only to members of the WG
  • Post to Discourse to remind members who did not attend to check the minutes if they want.
  • Minutes automatically ratified 24 hours after a meeting, unless there are objections.
  • Then copied to some public place, and to Discourse

Haskell Adoption Track (Wendy/Chris):
Wendy/Chris not here, but we are keen to hear how this is going.

Website Track (Emily):

  • Static changes are up (e.g. vision)
  • Design agreed.
  • Expecting to have at least a prototype live within 2-3 weeks from now.

Fundraising Track (Emily):

  • Ryan posted an update, now part of the minutes of the last meeting
  • In the bank: $232k - see: fundraising update
  • New sponsor in China, at Applicative level.
  • Total now approaching $500k.
  • Question: is the expectation that this is a one-off or annual? Generally, sponsors are expecting to contribute annually.
  • If you have a Haskell Foundation account, we’re tracking “leads” to sponsors on HubSpot. Foundation members interested should message Emily/Tim/Ryan for the details.
  • Lead generation is always appreciated. If you know someone who has not donated, please feel free to reach out to us and do some intros!
  • Would be good to have some buffer year on year, perhaps $100k. So let’s not spend it all.
  • Would be good to contribute to an endowment.

Board Track (Simon Peyton Jones):

Status

  • Nominations have ended
  • There were 28 board nominations and 8 ED applications!
  • Process for selection outlined in Interim Board minutes

Discussion

  • Board nominees want to contribute. Is there a way to capture their enthusiasm even if they’re not selected? Join the working group? Join a track. Start a track
  • If there are skills missing, don’t hesitate to leave spaces to be filled, and/or reach out to people to fill those gaps.
  • About “how to contribute” could we have a “volunteer group”, of people who would in principle be willing to do specific tasks for the Foundation, and would like to be asked? Should we even have a volunteer-coordination track? Or is the ED in charge of keeping volunteers busy and happy?

Governance

  • See this document for a proposal about “Trustees”, a new group that would have power to appoint or remove board members, in the case the board starts misbehaving.
  • Concern: being a Member could be a way for someone to freeload on the Foundation.
  • Opportunity: get Members who are NOT part of the Haskell community, but are leaders in other communities (Erlang, Rust etc; Odersky, Steele…)
  • Idea: Members = heads of task forces/tracks.
  • Idea: Elect the Members?
  • Community representation among the Members? Some way for the community to nudge the direction of the foundation
  • Terminology going forward:
    • Trustees are what the doc calls “Members”
    • Board Members are what the doc calls “Trustees”

Generally the meeting supported the proposal, as did the Interim Board, and would like to invite wider comment from the community. Actually agreeing the details will be a job for the newly-appointed Foundation Board, but it will help them to have a well-articulated and broadly-supported plan to execute on.

Other
Still awaiting incorporation from NY. The government is understandably slow right now.

Haskell Foundation Interim Board meeting
#2

Haskell Foundation Working Group
Minutes (8 Jan 2021)

Present (12): Simon Peyton Jones, Richard Eisenberg, Emily Pillmore, Mathieu Boespflug, Tim Sears, Ian Connolly, Dan Burton, John Ericson, Rebecca Skinner, Stephanie Weirich, Ryan Trinkle, Kevin Hammond, Chris Dornan

Minutes
We agreed the minutes of the last meeting, after deleting sponsor names.

New members
We said a warm hello to John Ericson

Governance

  • Closing date for nominations for Board and ED is Monday.
  • Simon sent email earlier this week; Emily will do one last push over the w/e
  • Need a list of nominations for interim Board, and ED applications. Emily will do this on Tuesday.
  • > 12 nominations for Board positions
  • Interim board meeting on Jan 13, and will review nominations and perhaps develop a timeframe for when to expect decisions.

Fundraising
When we started putting together the Haskell Foundation, one of the biggest questions was whether we’d be able to raise enough money to allow the organization to pursue really ambitious goals for the community. I’m very glad to report that, so far, fundraising has gone fantastically. Here’s the current status:

  • $232,000 has been fully collected and is in our bank account
  • $95,000 has been invoiced, and we are waiting for payment
  • $125,000 has been committed, but requires additional paperwork prior to invoicing

There are also additional potential sponsors that are in discussions, but without dollar figures settled. Given the success in fundraising so far, I am very optimistic about HF’s ability to get things done for the community!

Other points

  • Still have no capacity for individual donations – but we are working on that. Main sticking point: we need to edit our web site to add a “donate” button and we don’t know how to do that – pending new web site. (Kevin offered to help if we want to modify our current IOHK-supported site.)
  • What about
    • Issuing tax letters?
    • Regular individual donations? (E.g. monthly, quarterly, annual)

Web site

  • Interim modifications (e.g. vision doc) are in flight; awaiting review. Rebecca will review today.
  • Redesigned web site (with Obsidian).
    • Full design completed – looking fantastic
    • Email Emily if you want to see/review.
    • Implementation: should be a week or three

Incorporation
Waiting on the US government

Transparency track
Emily will resume next week.

  • Currently Emily, Michael S, Hecate, Jasper
  • Want to open up to more folk – will send invitation to the HF Discourse.
  • Emily will add the mission statement, membership etc to the HF Working Group document.
#3

Working Group Minutes
2021-01-29

Present: Moritz Angermann, Rebecca Skinner, Ryan Trinkle, Wendy Devolder, Mathieu Boespflug, Duncan Coutts, Richard Eisenberg

NB: Minutes are automatically ratified after 24 hours. Richard will post on Discourse

Housekeeping

  • Interim board are conducting interviews and will be late
  • Tim Sears will be 30 minutes late or perhaps will miss entirely

Incorporation (Ryan)

NY State is clearing backlog. All sounds good here. Just be patient.

Fundraising (Ryan)

  • Received $25K from a new sponsor.
  • Another sponsor is coming through; just waiting for paperwork.
  • Other new sponsors are coming out of the woodwork. Not yet ready to pin down numbers.
  • Is there enough capacity to service leads? Ryan: Yes. But there may not be enough labor to produce new leads. Very happy to get introductions, etc., to generate new leads.

Haskell Adoption Track (Wendy)

Review: Goal of HF is to grow Haskell adoption. Chris and Wendy want to focus on the group of adopters and consider their needs, independent from the needs of veteran Haskellers. What do new adopters need for onboarding? Are there geographical concerns? Industry-sector concerns? How can we transition adopters from hobbyists to productive users?

Key principles: Singular focus on users – not on the developers of Haskell infrastructure.

Want to bring a diverse group of users together soon. Should look like the community we want to build. Also diverse in terms of where they are on their adoption journey: never-evers all the way to veterans.

Short break in progress over holidays and in waiting for the ED, etc., to be sorted out.

Chris and Wendy met this morning. Want a brainstorm team to get together on Feb 18.

Q (Rebecca): How will users be surfaced? Hand-picking? Advertise on Discourse? Want everyone who is interested to have an opportunity to contribute. Are there transparency issues?

A: Hand-picking can still be transparent, as long as we are transparent about the process and it is well documented and shared, including its selection criteria. Very hard (impossible?) to get a diverse group without design, without hand-picking. There will be a process for self-nomination, as well, so that anyone can have a chance of joining. Want to be able to define criteria and then form the group based on the criteria (e.g. geography, gender, race, learning stage).

Q (Richard): Is this a set of users reporting their experience? Or a committee?

A: A committee. It won’t make decisions, but instead surface recommendations. Individual members will have broad connections. The group can generate insights based on their experiences and then eventually get these ideas to the Board/ED.

Richard: Sounds like it could be really powerful. But I’m worried about losing focus among such diversity. Will need strong leaders – such as Wendy and Chris!

A: Yes. There will be agendas and concrete goals for the group, which should avoid that trap. This also provides a great channel for a broad user base to communicate with the HF.

Rebecca: This reminds me of a bridge group.

A: Yes. An initiative like a Bridge group is a good example of something we hope this track will give birth too. There are lots of good opportunities here.

Duncan: How should we divide responsibilities between what Well-Typed currently does for GHC and the new HF? Example: Ben does a lot of release management, but he could be doing other things that would suit his talents more.

Ryan: Broadening the team supporting GHC releases would be great.

Richard: Clarifying: do you mean to possibly do release management outside the current Well-Typed contract?

Duncan: Yes. Maybe through Well-Typed, maybe not. A general consultant is the wrong person. But of course someone filling this role would not be a generalist.

Richard: Right. Well-Typed probably doesn’t want to hire a release manager, because that person couldn’t then switch projects.

Duncan: Yes. That person is quite specialized. We would want a long-term commitment. Most of Well-Typed consultants are generalists.

Ryan: This could be on our early agenda.
Richard: Yes.
Duncan: Yes.

Moritz: Can we free up Ben’s time from handling e.g. CI infrastructure?

Duncan: Yes. This dovetails well with what I’m suggesting.

Rebecca: An ecosystem maintainer role

Richard: I will put this idea in the doc at https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Y_lME6YfMWTKEStT5BIfPn9twVjlG48-796IRlGvQ0/edit#

Richard shares an update from Simon about governance: interviews are happening, and expect a Board announcement within days.

#4

Haskell Foundation Board Meeting

3 February 2021

Agenda

Haskell Foundation Board: initial meeting

Introductions

Everyone from the interim and current board was present.

Electing a Chair

  • Richard elected chair by unanimous consent
  • Eventually determine term of chairmanship

Meeting schedule

  • Ryan: start with a quicker cadence, then slow down

Agreed on weekly meetings

  • Time: 1600 or 1700 London time
  • Day: first meeting Weds 10th Feb
  • Poll the board to figure out which day would be best in future; or consider rotating through different days, to avoid being always-bad for any individuals.

Haskell Foundation Working Group

  • Question to the board: Should Working Group continue?
  • Richard provided context of how working group came to be
  • Alexander asked: what threads are in progress that should continue?
  • Richard: adoption track work is valuable to sustain
  • Wendy proposed specializing the focus into smaller working groups
  • Chris proposed keeping the momentum of the working group, let’s table the question now to allow progress on today’s agenda
  • Simon PJ observed that “task forces” and subgroups on today’s agenda are essentially adopting the current working group subgroups
  • Wendy agrees that meeting Friday as planned has value for transition
  • Richard “seconds” this idea
  • Niki asked how to get involved with the working group/subgroups
    • Simon PJ refers to some formal invitations in public docs

Legal status, duties

Pedro asked about the formal legal status of the Foundation, wants to understand our individual and collective obligations under law.

Ryan explained that we are currently a US 501©3 not-for-profit organization, under the Haskell.org status. The Haskell Foundation itself will probably become its own organization in the future.

  • Disclose board compensation (we have none)
  • Stewardship of Foundation’s funds
  • Bylaws

Ryan will find a link to not-too-intimidating background info. (EDIT: Ryan supplied this article.)

Executive Director

Simon PJ updated the board on the ED search:

  • 10 applications
  • 4 invited to interviews with the entire interim board(!)
  • 2 leading candidates
  • Expecting to resolve in (days) not (weeks)
  • Niki asked about expected length of position
    • Simon PJ observes constraints of funding!
    • Ryan reminds it’s a “permanent” job, but easy to terminate
    • Proposes some control mechanisms, e.g. quarterly reports
  • Richard proposes a subset of Directors to regularly interface with ED

Task forces

  • Richard motions to adopt the Task Force constructions described in the agenda as our “way of working”
    • Further solicits for particular task forces that we should immediately(?) form.
  • Documentation. Theophile suggested a Documentation task force. Tom would be happy to contribute.
  • Ways of working:
    • Alex B (lead), Ryan, Scott, Richard.
    • Everyone would like an opportunity to review and help refine drafts.
  • Technical agenda. Richard advocated getting started on this: this is part of how we are going to Make Things Better
    • Michael willing to serve
  • Community outreach and involvement
    • Chris, Wendy
  • Fundraising
    • Scott willing to serve
  • Ryan is willing to continue to act as Treasurer
#5

Haskell Foundation Board Meeting

11 February 2021

Present: Emily Pillmore, Théophile Choutri, Andrew Boardman, Niki Vazou, Alexander Bernauer, José Pedro Magalhães, Ryan Trinkle, Chris Dornan, Simon Peyton Jones, Andrew Lelechenko, Scott Conley, Tom Ellis, Michael Snoyman

Introductions of Andrew and Emily.

Ways of working

Committee: permanent remit discharging part of board’s oversight remit (eg budget committee). Limited to board members.

Executive team: HF staff (currently ED and CTO)

Task force: get something done, limited timespan. Can definitely co-opt people who are not on the board at all. Should include at least one member of the board, or executive team, to provide a link.

Each committee and task force should be signposted from the HF web site, somewhat like the Rust governance page.

Ways of working. Alex summarised. It’s under way. Membership: Alex, Ryan, Richard, Scott (satellite). Others welcome.

  • Decision making. Different quora for different kinds of decisions?
  • Voting? Synchronous or asynchronous? Ensure that people who happen not to be at the meeting
  • Simon: let’s make sure the document reflects our collegial approach. (We may need a “technical-bylaw” document to file as part of our non-profit status, but that can sit alongside, or as an appendix.)
  • Transparency. What are our transparency mechanisms. Richard offered this doc.

Incorporation, legal status, and compliance

Incorporation has succeeded. We have a Tax ID.

Tax exemption: next.

Bank account: needs formal resolutions

  • To apply for tax exemption
  • To open a bank account
  • To appoint a Treasurer (Ryan)

Need a document, signed by Simon PJ, Simon Marlow, Ed Kmett (current signatories to the HF) to empower a Secretary to do things. The Secretary should not be Treasurer.

Ryan will send round these three formal resolutions and seek explicit consent from Board members.

We formally resolved to appoint Ryan as Treasurer.

Richard offered to be Secretary pro tem, until we have written bylaws etc. We resolved to appoint him to this role, with the understanding that it is for a limited period. (He has enough to do being chair.)

Documentation (Théophile)

  • Meeting on 6 Feb: Théophile and Tom
  • Minutes online
  • Three action items resulted, as detailed in the minutes.
  • Will clean out the Haskell wiki
  • Collecting volunteers on social media
  • Alexander: Is there a concrete goal of the Task Force?
  • Théophile: as listed at the bottom of the minutes linked above
  • Alexander: Is there anything the Board can do to help?
  • Théophile: Want to list this Task Force on haskell.org somewhere, in the model of Rust’s governance page.
  • Emily: This is part of upcoming website redesign.
    • All board members + project managers will have a method for contact, projects in which they are participating, title, and name available.
  • Ryan: I’m on haskell.org committee and can expedite a merge.

Community task force

  • Chris, Wendy,
  • On going but nothing new to report this time.
  • Niki asked about education. Both (a) Haskell and educators and (b) gathering, curating, signposting educational material about Haskell. We left this important area with the Community Task Force for now, though it may spin out separately later.

Technical Task Force

  • Chris, Michael, Andrew L, Emily, Ed, Niki, co-opt Ben Gamari, Moritz Angerman
  • Emily, Andrew will be the driving force here.
  • Emily proposes Tuesday, noon US East coast time

External Communication Task Force

External communication, including website, social media accounts, mailing lists, Discourse. This Task Force would make sure we (and no one who is no longer associated with the HF) have access to all of these outlets and how we wish to sell ourselves to the world.

Emily to review access to accounts, website, etc, and restrict to board and executive members only. Emily to also investigate a way of sharing passwords for relevant accounts with the board.

Budget Committee

Tracks how much $$ the Foundation has, advise board about whether we can afford stuff.

ED proposes budget, in consultation with Budget Committee, proposes to Board.

Volunteers: Ryan (chair), Pedro

Pedro asks: What is our target? Emily: Hoping to hit $1M by end of year.

Andrew to propose rough budget for the short term, subject to board approval

Fundraising Committee

Will be led by Andrew and Emily. Scott volunteered to help.

What support do you need from (or beyond) the board in the short term? Biggest thing: lead generation.

  • Digital Asset
  • Microsoft (eg Windows licenses, Azure credits)

Synchronous vs asynchronous

Michael wanted to propose that we find ways of having asynchronous discussions.

  • Slack? Cost, transparency?
  • Gitter?
  • Discourse?
  • Element.io (did I get that right?)
    • Michael: Yes, it’s the standard UI for matrix.org, which is decentralized, encrypted, and has bridges to things like IRC. I’ve tested it in the past for various things. I’m not convinced it’s the best, but the combo of federation and bridges is something no other tool has.
  • Zulip?
#6

Haskell Foundation Board Meeting

17 February 2021

Agenda

Present:

  1. Emily Pillmore
  2. Andrew Boardman
  3. Niki Vazou
  4. José Pedro Magalhães
  5. Ryan Trinkle
  6. Chris Dornan
  7. Simon Peyton Jones
  8. Tom Ellis
  9. Alexander Bernauer
  10. Michael Snoyman
  11. Théophile Choutri
  12. Richard Eisenberg

Absent:

  1. Andrew Lelechenko
  2. Scott Conley
  3. Wendy Devolder
  4. Edward Kmett

The Haskell Foundation folder.

Ways of Working (Alex)

  • Lots of topics!
  • Taking a sequential approach.
  • Plan in this document, including an order of delivery to the Board (see document)
  • No objections to this general plan

Then focus on the communication document.

  • Proposal: using mailing list primarily for Board communication
    • Operational, discussion e.g. arrange meetings.
    • Can be used for between-meeting votes
    • All official acts are recorded either in minutes or email list. (In the latter case it would be good practice to record those decisions in minutes of the next meeting.)
    • Known immutable copies (can edit retrospectively in Discourse)
    • Public archives (but cannot subscribe)
    • Anyone can email to it (but moderated, to avoid spam, but with a liberal policy)
    • Includes both board members and ex-officio Board meeting attendees (currently Emily and Andrew
  • Question: does that exclude chat tools e.g. Slack, Discord, IRC, Zulip (Emily recommends). Answer not excluded, good for informal, ad-hoc communication, but don’t use for substantive conversation esp related to decisions.
  • Alternative: only board members can email to it and save the moderators; others address the Board via Discourse.
  • Question: why mailing list and Discourse?
    • operational topics such as organising meetings is of no use for the general public
    • Better not to have both Discourse _and _email list for the Board. One or the other!
    • Use Discourse for external communication, announcements.
    • For a community member:
      • To address the Board specifically, email the Board email list.
      • To address the community, including board members, use Discourse
  • Action items
    • add chat option to async communication
    • be explicit about what kind of communication goes where
    • clean up HF discourse group to reflect the above (abolish the Working Group category)
    • Specify that the calendar is a Google calendar
  • Synchronous board meetings
    • Closed: board members plus ex-officio staff, plus any we invite or co-opt.
    • Board meeting attendees may edit agenda
    • Task forces: should decide their own mechanisms, but directed to the same general principles of open-ness, transparency, inclusiveness. (Which is the goal of all these mechanisms.)

State of the Foundation

  • Overview in State of the Haskell Foundation document (NB: multiple tabs).
  • Public-facing
  • Once fully populated will be world-readable, but suggest-only for editing
  • No requirement to offer an email address.
  • In Google for now, because tables in GitLab are a pain. But really belongs in GitLab… perhaps review.

Text communication platform

  • As above, we settled with Zulip (Emily recommends)

Budget committee

  • Nothing to report

Community engagement task force

  • Will meet on Friday

Documentation task force

  • Wiki volunteers have produced a first batch of articles to take care of. Waiting for upstream approval on the suggested actions.
  • Haddock volunteers are still tidying-up the repo. A blocker has been the latency of some packages to be compatible with ghc 9.0 for the CI
  • No support from the Foundation Board needed at present time. We welcome the choice of the Board to go with Zulip as a messaging platform for day-to-day work.

Technical agenda

New website

  • Emily has been reviewing the design.
  • Comment on the prototype by Friday (email Emily)

Funding

  • Contact list. Managed by the Funding task force; no need to share more widely.
  • Before long: invite community to suggest contacts – and make it clear to them how to do so.

Future meetings

  • Weds 1600 UTC; maybe 1630 or 1700.
  • Richard will write to non-attenders to check that they are OK with that time.