Board Meeting Minutes

By: MonoGame Foundation Jan 10, 2024
foundation

Attendee's

  • Dean Ellis - President
  • Dominique Louis - Treasurer
  • Simon Jackson - Corporate Secretary
  • Tom Spilman - Banking Matters
  • Marko Jeremic - Board Chairman
  • Thomas Altenburger - Board Member

Agenda

  • Continuing discussions and the plans to offer funding support to community investments and work, as well as yearly forecasts.
  • Further discussion and clarification on paid bounties for the Foundation.
  • Finalizing plans for Vulkan support.
  • Open discussion about external tooling for the Content Pipeline.
  • Review of Documentation migration and formalization of the MonoGame Roadmap.
  • WebSite migration and update.

Outcomes

The kick-off for 2024 has spurred new energy into the team, with a renewed focus on making the most use of the funds we have been donated by all parties involved, ensuring that spends are both sustainable and responsible. Acknowledging all the hard work thus far, the team are reassured by the community feedback on the progress so far and the demand to deliver more.

Here is a summary of the outcomes from new year consultations:

  • Allocation has been made to fund several bounties, which will be documented clearly.
  • There was a review of existing services and opening up the opportunity to hire some staff for web site and repository maintenance. Further details to be irons out with community feedback.
  • The first bounty has been drafted and will be published soon, with the aim for the MonoGame board to deliver an initial specification implementation and then open up for community feedback and contributions. Of note, the team feels it is best to deliver the framework that the community can build upon.
  • The Treasurer will draft the budget for the Foundation and submit it for publication, focusing on our immediate and long terms goals and spending.
  • The nominated repository maintainer is now documented in GitHub. adding further transparency for how the MonoGame Framework is being managed.
  • Work on Vulkan has started, this will initially create a new sustainable framework for extensions/implementations for MonoGame going forward. The foundation is making use of an existing implementation offered by the team to deliver this capability. There has been extensive consultation with the community on this matter and the team feels this is the best route forward as it will also inform the architecture for refreshing/adapting new platforms.
  • Alongside the existing MS XNA -> MonoGame content migration, a new full sized tutorial (with accompanying video content) is being produced. This will set the standard for Community tutorials submitted to the MonoGame Foundation, as well as bounties for specific Tutorial content.
  • The new and updated WebSite has been published, many thanks to ArisTurtle for all their hard work and efforts.
  • The new bounties board has been published, this will be the place to find requested work activities with MonoGame with funding where applicable. Although there are no bounties posted at this time, we want to ensure all work is fairly compensated and has clear requirements and deliverables set. Please bear with us while we structure this formally.

New year, new rules

The MonoGame community is truly awesome, so many people willing to offer support through time offered and code, as well as a huge shout out to our donors, although a quick reminder that if you can support MonoGame, please take the time to do so in these challenging times. While MonoGame is free, we do incur costs, so if you are making money through using MonoGame, please consider giving back (if you can) as it goes to maintain and enhance the framework for all.

Contributions are welcome through:

  • Code.
  • Help in the Community discord and beyond (we also love blog posts).
  • Patreon, several tiers are available.
  • Paypal.
  • The MonoGame store (coming soon) with MonoGame branded gear and merch.

P.S. Tom Spilman has been going out of his way to find the best merch for the MonoGame Foundation and looking to secure sustainable and beneficial gear for the MonoGame community. Stay tuned and we will share more when we can.