You may have read from our November 3, 2011 meeting minutes that Peter Tanner, the OpenNTF IP Manager was unexpectedly laid off from IBM in November. Peter was working for IBM as a contractor, where his primary role was to clear OpenNTF projects for inclusion in our Apache and GPL catalogs. This personnel change put some constraints on our ability to get the backlog of projects cleared and, at a time when we were well into the 2nd development contest.

What OpenNTF has done as a temporary measure has been to hire Peter as a contractor using funds that we have collected from advertising on the site (A few thousand dollars). With this, Peter has been able to clear the contest entries and the backlog of projects that we had. I want to emphasize that this is a "temporary" measure and are hopeful that IBM will reinstate Peter as a contractor in 2012. Nothing is for certain, but we have been talking with IBM executives and they are doing their best to justify to their management the need for a dedicated IP Manager for OpenNTF.

The OpenNTF Board are actively discussing an IP Manager "backup plan". Funding the IP Manager position using ad revenue is not a sustainable long term solution for OpenNTF. If you have any input please let us know. Our IBM contacts are doing their best in helping to find funding for the critical role of the OpenNTF IP Manager.

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