2006-06-20
This is the proposed agenda for the Board meeting of June 20th, 2006, to be held at 19:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org.
- Opening
- Roll call
- Branden Robinson has sent regrets
- President's report (John Goerzen)
- Treasurer's report (Jimmy Kaplowitz)
- Outstanding minutes
- Items up for discussion:
- Election
- Voting software
- Call for nominations
- Officer roles - add 'admin' to board? (VP role?)
- 3 candidates this year, 6 next year, 0 in 2008. Think about solutions.
- OVF membership. See Resolution 2006-06-06.dbg.1: Open Voting Foundation membership and Amendment 2006-06-20.iwj.1
- Further on Debian trademark in Spain?
- Resolution 2006-06-16.dbg.1: Vice President responsibilities
- Tax filing and book keeping status? (Jimmy)
- Postgresql charter (Josh Berkus) (see discussion appendix)
- Website rebuild?
- Next board meeting - ANNUAL MEETING: Saturday, July 1st, 2006 (John Goerzen)
Discussion appendix
Well, it took about 4 months longer than anticipated ... partly due to a
mail server failure ... but here it is.
Some additional notes:
1) You'll notice that we've split "Liaison" and "Observer" into separate
functions. This is because we have a large distributed community and need
to involved as many people as possible. So, the Liaison works with the
Treasurer to manage our funds, and the Observer attends SPI board
meetings.
2) I will be "Acting Board Observer and Liaison" until the SPI elections in
July. At that time, the PostgreSQL folks will elect a new Liaison and a
new Observer.
3) The list of contributing members is just for information; I'll send it
to the Membership committee to give them a checklist for PG people. Of
course, not all of these people will sign up.
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Governance Charter of the Relationship
between the PostgreSQL project
and Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
The Core Team of the PostgreSQL project currently consists of the following
people: Josh Berkus, Peter Eisentraut, Marc Fournier, Tom Lane, Bruce
Momjian, Dave Page, Jan Wieck. The Core Team appoints its own members.
The Fundraising Group of the PostgreSQL project initially consists of the
members of The PostgreSQL Foundation Inc. at the time of its termination.
Thereafter, the Fundraising Group appoints its own members.
The Fundraising Group elects the SPI Project Liaison and the SPI Board
Observer. These may be the same person. The appointments are subject to
the veto of the Core Team. The appointments may be replaced by voting on
new representatives at any time.
The SPI Board Observer will submit to SPI on an ongoing basis a list of
persons eligible for automatic SPI contributing membership in recognition
of their contributions to the PostgreSQL project.
Unless specified otherwise, decisions require a majority of votes.
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Initially, the members of the Core Committee, contributing developers of
PostgreSQL as listed on the PostgreSQL web site, and the members of the
Fundraising Group are eligible for contributing membership of SPI.
Josh Berkus, Acting Board Observer, June 7th 2006
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(list of names redacted)
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Resolutions
Resolution 2006-04-03.jfsp.1: Debian trademark in Spain
WHEREAS
1. The Debian trademark in Spain is currently held by Jesus Martinez which
has no association with either the Debian project or SPI Inc.
2. The SPI trademark committee wants to register the Debian trademark EU-wide
and any registration in an EU country will stall the process
3. Mr. Martinez has been contacted by the "Debian Spain" association and
by Javier de la Cueva and has rejected to transfer the trademark over to
SPI unless the following terms are met:
* Deletion of all Internet web pages with prior references to
Mr. Martínez trademark appropriation.
* Payment of 3,000 Euros as a fee for having made the defense of
the trademark and the costs.
* SPI letter granting him the rights to use perennially the trademark
"Debian".
4. The SPI Board considers the transfer term unacceptable.
THE SPI BOARD RESOLVES THAT
5. SPI will initiate legal actions against Mr. Martinez.
6. SPI will provide a notarized and apostilled Power of Attorney to
the Spanish lawyer Javier de la Cueva, who will act in a Pro Bono basis,
and will litigate on behalf of SPI.
7. SPI will provide certificates of the trademark registry and any other
relevant documents to Javier de la Cueva needed to provide
documentary evidences necessary to defend the case.
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Resolution 2006-06-06.dbg.1: Open Voting Foundation membership
1. WHEREAS the Open Voting Foundation has approached Software in the
Public Interest for membership through one of its officers;
2. and WHEREAS the Open Voting Foundation's goals and purposes fit within
those of Software in the Public Interest;
3. and WHEREAS there exists potential to misconstrue the Open Voting
Foundations' goals as partisan;
The Board of Directors of Software in the Public Interest hereby resolves
that:
4. The Open Voting Foundation is formally invited to become an SPI
Associated Project, according to the SPI Framework for Associated
Projects, SPI Resolution 1998-11-16.iwj.1-amended-2004-08-10.iwj.1, a copy
of which can be found at
lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2004/000091.html;
5. This offer and Open Voting Foundation's membership is subject to all
laws pertaining to non-profit involvement in political activity;
6. This invitation will lapse, if not accepted, 60 days after it is
approved by the SPI Board.
Amendment 2006-06-20.iwj.1 to 2006-06-06.dbg.1:
REPLACE entire text of the OVF resolution with the following text:
1. Computer security and auditability are currently wholly
insufficient to rely on for voting in high-stakes elections such as
civil elections for national and local governments.
2. The dependability, particularly for high-stakes decisionmaking, of
computer systems is getting worse and this trend is likely to
continue. Pre- and post-election review and auditing of the
computing systems is not and will not be sufficiently robust
against malicious interference.
3. Therefore, voting processes must rely on non-computerised means
to ensure that the votes and the result are not interfered with
(these means possibly including voter-verified human-readable paper
trails generated by any automatic voting machinery, although wholly
manual processes are to be preferred).
4. While in some circumstances or jurisdictions there may be a place for
computer assistance in the voting arrangements, the election
processes must be arranged so that the computers are not able to
compromise the election result even if the computers themselves
are wholly compromised and malicious.
5. Furthermore, the election processes must have robust responses
available for those case where evidence of malfunction (whether
malicious or accidental) of automatic equipment is detected,
including (if necessary) recourse to fully-manual and hence
fully-human-auditable recount.
6. In jurisdictions where computers are heavily used, the biggest
current computer-related problem with the election processes is
the use of computers in critical roles without any means for
detecting and dealing with malfunction.
7. It would be good if such voting software as is used were Free
Software, but the provision of, and drive towards adoption of, Free
voting software is at best a dangerous distraction from the task of
removing reliance on the integrity of computers, and preventing
the introduction of manipulable computer-dependent processes in
jurisdictions which don't currently use them.
8. Therefore, at the current time, the Board of Software in the Public
Interest are of the view that efforts to improve voting software
by making it Free are misguided and harmful - that is, the
development of Free voting software is not in the public interest.
9. Software in the Public Interest will therefore decline any request
by a voting software project to become an Associated Project.
10. The Board wishes to make it clear that it regards the proponents
of Free voting software as misguided allies, even though we
disagree with them. SPI will not use any underhand tactics to
undermine such projects; SPI restricts its opposition to these
projects to this resolution and position statement.
11. Should the situation regarding computer assistance with elections
improve significantly - in particular, if at some point in the
future the problem of reliance on automatic systems is overcome,
and the processes for dealing with computer failure are
well-developed, well-exercised, and entrenched - the Board will
reverse this decision.
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Resolution 2006-06-16.dbg.1: Vice President responsibilities
1. WHEREAS the Vice President is the Board Officer with the fewest
responsibilities;
2. and WHEREAS it is necessary to provide some measure of coordination
between the Board, the Membership, and SPI's various system and website
administrations;
The Board hereby resolves that
3. The Vice President of the Board of Directors will be the Admin Leader
for SPI and will be responsible for coordinate the Board, the Membership,
and various system and website administrators.
4. The Vice President will be responsible for coordinating the content of
SPI's Website.
5. This resolution takes effect at the first Board meeting following the
2006 annual Board member elections.