The Board of Directors of Open Source Matters announced today that it had approved revision of several sections of its by-laws.

Two major changes were made. First, a new article concerning public oversight was added.  

ARTICLE VIII - PUBLIC OVERSIGHT

To the extent the corporation creates any of the following documents, it will, within a reasonable period of time, publish such documents for public review: annual reports on the state of the organization and
plans for the coming year, minutes from all board meetings, financial reports pertaining to periods of 3 months or more, tax filings, reports of audit results.  Nothing in this provision will be construed to require the corporation to create any of the mentioned documents.

This will institutionalize the practice OSM began last year of posting major documents (such as tax forms) on the OSM website.

The second major change is to  Article III Item 10. Formerly board committees could only include members of the OSM board or the Community Oversight Committee. Now committees can include members of the public, including Joomla  Project Working Group members, Joomla users, or outside experts on specific topics. This will allow OSM to take advantage of the skills, energy and enthusiasm of the Joomla community. Board committees include Board Membership, Audit, Budget, Capital and Operations.

Minor changes clarifying language elsewhere in Article III were also made.