October 28 F-BAC meeting minutes

Attendees:

• Announce Election timeline (Jon)

  • Blog: https://openssl-foundation.org/post/2025-10-15-fbac-election-2026/

  • Please nominate yourself, if you are interested running for next year.

  • Please let me know if the academic community does not have 2 or more candidates. (Nicola)

• Side meeting to revisit the General Discussion issue at the conference with Nicola, Tomas, Anton and anyone else who is interested. (Jon)

  • Tension between the desire to have siloed conversation and general conversations. The people who are more active or have a more prominent role might drown out the feedback of less active communities. (Nicola)

  • Maybe too many voting types. (Paul)

• Straw man AI policy for broader consideration on the Community forum (James)

New business

• Formally define how recommendations are made to the Foundation (James)

  • Would it be better to use Loomio to make a formal recommendation rather than email. (Nicola)

  • BAC representatives can report their own opinions since they are subject to re-election. Not every question needs to go back to the communities. (Dmitry)

  • On the recommendation side, some people aren’t allowed to use Loomio. (Randall)

  • On agendas, use the rules of procedure or at least put the link in the calendar invite. (Randall)

  • Some way or another we need to gather datapoints from the communities in order to have knowledgeable advice. If we try to ask for feedback and don’t get it, our own opinion is also valid. (Nicola)

  • Collecting the data seems like an administrative assistant task. (Paul)

  • So what’s the point of the committees? If we talked to communities directly, that would remove one level of indirection. (Richard)

  • What’s the value add to the Foundation beyond what could be provided by a shell script? (Paul) [Selenium (Dmitry)]

  • As representatives of communities, we can animate our communities. For instance proposing discussions our communities might be interested in. As an academic, I know what might get academics to engage. We know the buttons to press. (Nicola)

  • As staff, we have a lot on our plates, so it really helps to have representatives proactively reach out to the communities. (Richard)

• Open Hours (Dmitry)

  • Requires resources from the Foundation, but would resolve the situation when proposals are neglected. (Dmitry)

  • Potential path:

    • Start with GitHub issue

    • Have an agenda and anyone can propose adding an issue to the agenda

    • When there are enough issues on the agenda, have a meeting to discuss them with the committers, directors and other people who can make the decisions.

  • It is a pain point for academics that some issues get lost in the shuffle because other issues get attention in regular staff meetings. (Nicola)

  • It’s a pain point for all communities. It’s hard for external PRs to be pushed through even for committers. (Paul)

  • BAC unanimously agreed to ask the directors to consider such a proposal. 

Action items

• Read the AI policy strawman proposal (all)

• Consider open hours proposal (Foundation Directors)

• Consider nominating yourself and/or find other nominees for the 2026 BAC election (all)