IM Freedom

IM Freedom Board Meeting 2024-09-07 00:00 UTC using Google Meet. All times listed below are in UTC.

Preamble and call to order at 00:11 UTC.
Directors present:
- John Bailey, President/Treasurer
- Matthew Needham, Vice President
- Gary Kramlich, Secretary
- Richard Laager, Director
- Patrick Cloke, Director
Board Member Election
- Gary moves to re-elect the six directors: John Bailey, Gary Kramlich, Richard Laager, Kneedham Matthew, Ethan Blanton, Peter Lawler, and Patrick Cloke.
- Matthew and Patrike seconds
- Passes unanimously
Officer Election
- Gary proposes that we vote as a slate to retain our current officers.
- Matthew seconds
- Passes unanimously
Old Business
- John mentions that Gary closed the savings account as decided during the 2024 meeting.
- John was not able to look at the registered agent stuff, but say he’ll look into it after the January 1st as there’s a timing issue when it comes to switching registered agents.
- John asks if anything happened with the CVE Numbering Authority discussion from the last meeting and if we want to continue looking at it.
  - Gary states that it’s not a huge concern right now as we haven’t had many releases and that the current code is mostly stable. But that we should do this going forward as it’s falls under our mission.
  - Patrick mentions that becoming a CNA makes it so other CNAs can not issue CVEs for your projects.
  - The discussion continues but comes down to, we should still do this, but we need to find the time to do it.
New Business
- Treasurer’s Report
  - Opening balance 2024-01-01:
    - Checking account: $985.38
    - Savings account: $60.09
    - PayPal: $118.39
    - Fidelity Investment account: $18,886.08
    - Total: $20,049.94
  - Expenses of $1,026.53 consisting of reimbursements to Gary and John.
  - Income of $1,179.08 consisting of
    - $916.44 in dividends from the investment account
    - $199.94 from donations
    - $25.00 from the PayPal Giving Fund
    - $37.70 from Spreadshirt
  - Net income of $152.55.
  - Closing balance on 2024-12-31:
    - Checking account: $1,262.66
    - Savings account closed: $0.00
    - PayPal: $137.31
    - Fidelity Investment account: $18,802.52
    - Total: $20,202.49
  - Opening balance 2025-01-10:
    - Checking account: $1,262.66
    - PayPal: $137.31
    - Fidelity Investment account: $18,802.52
    - Total: $20,202.49
  - Year to date we have had expenses of $2,608.32.
    - $2,450 of this is to the lawyer for the trademark question and search
    - The remainder for domain renewals
  - Year to date income of $829.16
    - $438.55 in dividends from the investment account
    - $309.79 from the PayPal Giving Fund
    - $80.82 from donations via PayPal.
  - Our net loss thus far this year is $1,779.16
  - Current balances:
    - Checking account: $1,082.26
    - Paypal: $100.00
    - Fidelity Investment account: $17,241.07
    - Total: $18,423.33
  - We have not had any income from Spreadshirt for over a year
    - Our form W-9 on file with them expired or something
      - Gary has been working on getting that resolved.
  - Gary makes a motion to accept the treasurer’s report
  - Matthew seconds
  - Passes unanimously
- Gary had a request to raise the minimum without vote from $50 USD to $100 USD as domains have gotten more expensive, but according to our voting procedures it was already at $100 and we misremembered.
- Matthew noticed that Mark Doliner was still listed as the Vice President in PayPal. He updated it and is confident that it was removed a few days later.
- Spreadshirt needed a new W9. Gary updated it, but it was complaining that our names don’t match somewhere. Gary asks Matthew to look at it, and Mathew asks Gary to send him an email about it.
- Gary metions that we can’t ship to the EU because we need to have an EU shop on Spread Shirt to do that.
  - Gary makes a motion to to have Matthew open a European Spread Shirt Shop if it is easy and will cost us nothing.
  - Richard seconds
  - Passes unanimously
- Gary mentions that we have reserved the Codeberg organizations for Pidgin, Adium, Gaim, and Instant Messaging Freedom and if someone wants to be added to the groups to help us reserve those names.
- Matthew mentions a discussion he had with Gary about registering Adium as a trademark due to past drama.
  - Gary describes his current understanding of in use versus registered trademarks.
  - Gary gives a history about the drama.
  - John mentions that we should reach out to Pamela Chestek for her thoughts.
  - Patrick mentions that if we’re going to register one, we should ask if we should register everything at once and if there’s any bennefit to doing that.
  - Gary makes a motion to contact Chestek legal regarding registering Adium and Pidgin trademarks involing the cost and what exactly our responsibilities would be to defend them.
    - Patrick Seconds
    - Richard asks about the status of the Adium take over.
    - Matthew explains that his concern is that if someone we know can try to take over the project then there’s nothing stopping someone we don’t know from doing the same thing.
    - John clarifies that this is just investigation and we’re not committing to spending money yet.
    - Gary clarifies that this primary concern here is Adium and not Pidgin and that if it’s going to be very expensive, then we’ll just worry about Adium or discuss it later.
    - Richard mentions we should mention the state of Adium to Pamela as part of that communication.
    - Passes unanimously
- Gary mentions the findings from an email vote about getting cleared to use the name Gaim again. She gave us full clearance with one caveat. We should not expect any issues from AOL/Oath/Yahoo/etc because their trademarks have expired. However, we could have issues with Gajim which is an XMPP client. Since we abandoned the Gaim mark, they could reasonable accuse of of infringing on their mark and her suggestion was to just change the name if that were to happen.
Adjournment
- Matthew motions
- Gary seconds
- Passes unanimously
Meeting adjourned at 00:56 UTC

Instant Messaging Freedom, Inc.