NZOSS 2022 AGM Minutes

The 2022 AGM of the NZOSS was held on Wednesday 23rd March 2022 at 8.30 pm.

The meeting was held online using the NZOSS instance of Big Blue Button.

There were seven full members of the NZOSS in attendance. Unfortunately this does not constitute a quorum under the Society's rules so as defined by the Society's rules, within 30 minutes of the designated start the Chair proposed that the meeting be adjourned at 9:02 and a new meeting to be convened at 9:03 on the 23rd of March with such members as still wished to attend. Proposal was accepted and the meeting was adjourned at 9:02pm

The Special General Meeting of the NZOSS was duly convened at 9:03pm on Wednesday March 23rd.

The only official order of business that could be carried over from the AGM was the presentation of the Treasurers report and and acceptance of the 2020/2021 financial statement of accounts. As we were so close to the end of the 2022 financial year an interim report of the 2021/2022 financial statement was also presented. Some questions from the floor were answered and then the Treasurer moved that the 2020/2021 NZOSS Financial Statement be accepted. Seconded by Steve Ellis. Carried unanimously.

The Presidents report was not able to be delivered due to the President being unable to attend the AGM.

The NZOSS Council confirmation could also not be completed other than to confirm that the current council excepting Eliot Blennerhassett and Tim McNamara who have stepped down, were able to continue. This reduces the current NZOSS council to 4 with open positions for President with a further 2 to 4 committee members. 

These issues and others were discussed under Other Business. The first issue to be dealt with was a point noted by the Treasurer that given the low membership and the way the world had changed since the Society had been incorporated should we in fact just wind the Society up and distribute our funds in line with the constitution. At the time the Society was set up there was a definite need for front line Open Source advocacy however now there are entire business models that are built and operate around Open Source so are we still relevant? The proposal to wind up the Society did not survive that discussion.

Following on from that the discussion turned to what role should the NZOSS be playing in the current IT landscape. There were some very good views and examples of where the Society was making a difference with most of those centering around Open Source based services that it did not make sense for individuals to run themselves. For example some people enjoyed the flexibility and control that running their own email server but running their own social media service such as Mastodon or video conference service like BBB did not make sense.

There is also the aspect where people are just unaware that there are alternatives to commercial or proprietary services and so having a central point of information and advocacy was needed to provide a starting point for people who wanted to explore alternatives. This included being able to point to meetups, user groups or chat/discourse groups where questions could be asked and ideas circulated.

The meeting closed at 9:40 pm.

The full recording of the meeting is available on the NZOSS BBB service here.