Board meeting, November 21st, 2006
Board members present
- Bdale Garbee (bdale) (President)
- Michael Schultheiss (schultmc) (Vice President)
- Neil McGovern (Maulkin) (Secretary)
- Josh Berkus (jberkus) (Treasurer)
- Ian Jackson (Diziet)
- David Graham (cdlu)
- Branden Robinson (Overfiend)
Board members partially present
- Martin Schulze (Joey)
Board members absent with regrets
- Jimmy Kaplowitz (Hydroxide)
Board members absent
- None
Board advisors present
- Robert Treat - PostgreSQL (xzilla)
Registered guests present
- Joshua Drake (linuxpoet)
- John Goerzen (CosmicRay)
- Joerg Jaspert (Ganneff)
- Christoph Berg (Myon)
- Haris Sehic (hajvan)
- Christel Dahlskjaer (christel)
- Benjamin Seidenberg (astronut)
- Bruce Byfield (nanday)
These are the draft minutes for the November 21st, 2006 SPI Board meeting, held at 19:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG
President's Report
I've had several interesting discussions with representatives of current and potential associated projects in person (particularly at LW-UK) or by email and IRC in the last month, but nothing from those conversations is ready for board action at this time. Greg Pomerantz and I have exchanged several emails since our last board meeting. I missed a chance to talk to him last night by phone due to not seeing his email invitation until this morning, but he's engaged and reviewing our list of open questions. I regret not having his inputs but hopefully I'll have an update for the board by email this week.
Josh Berkus comments:
I would like us to have the completed Associated Projects HOWTO online before we accept anyone else, and for the record, LedgerSMB and OpenOffice.org are both pending us getting stuff together.
Treasurer's Report
I did a fairly extensive writeup online: https://www.spi-inc.org/treasurer/treasurer-s-report-11-2006.html The one thing that didn't make my report is that based on feedback we may want to revisit the 5% rule as our way of allocating SPI funds for some kind of modified rule, which will be discussed via email. LedgerSMB should be ready to data entry next week, volunteers appreciated.
Outstanding Minutes
Current status: October 17th 2006 minutes have been raised for approval of the board.
Motion to accept the August 16th minutes, moved by Neil McGovern, seconded by David Graham.
| Bdale Garbee | Yes |
| Michael Schultheiss | Yes |
| Neil McGovern | Yes |
| Josh Berkus | Yes |
| Ian Jackson | Yes |
| David Graham | Yes |
| Branden Robinson | Abstain |
| Martin Schulze | Yes |
Motion passes with a vote of Yes: 7, No: 0, Abstain: 1.
Resolution 2006-04-03.jfsp.1: Debian trademark in Spain
Bdale apologises for being last-minute-ish catching up with Greg before the meeting, but he is not yet sure why Greg hasn't responded to the initial query back in April, since he should have had it and several pings since.
Greg has no advice on the issue as yet.
Bdale was enthusiastic when Greg engaged on one of our lists recently, then he went quiet again which is why Bdale sent him the ping this weekend hoping for some answers before today. Greg replied with an invite for a phone call to catch up last night which Bdale didn't see until today (20061121)
Josh raised the possibility of looking at getting a paid attorney, or paying Greg. He writes:
It seems that Greg does not have enough pro-bono time to take care of all of our advice issues.
Bdale thinks we need to figure out how much of this is that Greg is not plugged in to our communication streams and/or pending request list vs how much he does or doesn't have time.
Anthony Towns stated he would appreciate advice from SPI board and/or US folks on having Debian pay an attorney and/or how much are appropriate fees.
Bdale is to follow up, as per the president's report. If Ian Jackson doesn't hear from Bdale, he will follow up instead.
Resolution 2006-11-21.jmb.3: Removal of OpenVAS as an associated project
Motion to accept Resolution 2006-11-21.jmb.3, moved by Bdale Garbee, seconded by Branden Robinson.
| Bdale Garbee | Yes |
| Michael Schultheiss | Yes |
| Neil McGovern | Yes |
| Josh Berkus | Yes |
| Ian Jackson | Abstain |
| David Graham | Yes |
| Branden Robinson | Yes |
| Martin Schulze | Missing |
Motion passes with a vote of Yes: 6, No: 0, Abstain: 1.
Resolution 2006-11-18.dbg.mjs.1: Open Source Initiative domain
David Graham reports:
Rationale: Former SPI project, the Open Source Initiative has requested that its domains (opensource.org and opensource.net) be turned over to their own 501c3. In the past there has been some discussion of this being an unfavourable thing to do due to OSI's governance structure. I put it to the board that the governance structures of other 501(c)3 non-profits is none of our business and that we have a responsibility to turn these domains over to OSI at the earliest opportunity. I am not willing to postpone this vote as I believe it is an issue that should be settled for once and for all.
Ian Jackson and Josh Berkus move to postpone the resolution until next meeting for further discussion via email.
| Bdale Garbee | Yes |
| Michael Schultheiss | No |
| Neil McGovern | No |
| Josh Berkus | Yes |
| Ian Jackson | Yes |
| David Graham | No |
| Branden Robinson | Yes |
| Martin Schulze | Yes |
Motion to postpone passes with a vote of Yes: 5, No: 3, Abstain: 0.
Bdale noted that he would like to close this issue one way or another, once and for all and will not tolerate another postponement, so please, everyone on the board continue to discuss and be ready to vote on the resolution a month hence.
Items from the DPL
Items 1-3 on this are pending Bdale's discussion with Greg. Items 4 and 5 are awaiting data entry on the accounting system, and are being worked on.
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned until Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 19:00 UTC.
Appendix A: Current Board Membership
| Date elected | Name | Role |
|---|---|---|
| [2004-07-29] | Bdale Garbee | President |
| [2006-07-31] | Michael Schultheiss | Vice President |
| [2006-07-31] | Neil McGovern | Secretary |
| [2006-07-31] | Josh Berkus | Treasurer |
| [2004-07-29] | Branden Robinson | |
| [2004-02-20] | Jimmy Kaplowitz | |
| [2003-11-29] | David Graham | |
| [2003-11-29] | Ian Jackson | |
| [2003-11-29] | Martin "Joey" Schulze |
Appendix B: Approved Resolutions
Resolution 2006-11-21.jmb.3: Removal of OpenVAS as an associated project
Appendix C: Outstanding Items from the DPL
1) Response to concerns related to the acceptance of Sun Java into
non-free, see:
From: John Goerzen
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 18:28:22 -0500
Subject: Questions about Java license and related questions
Message-ID: <20060607232822.GA31686@katherina.lan.complete.org>
2) Response to concerns related to interaction between Debian developers
and citizens of embargoed countries, see:
From: Anthony Towns
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 17:47:49 +1000
Subject: Debian in embargoed countries
Message-ID: <20060609074749.GB1408@azure.humbug.org.au>
3) Response to concerns related to online harassment, see:
From: Steve Langasek
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 17:04:51 -0700
Subject: request for assistance with ongoing harassment
[debianwomenpassaway@yahoo.com: Debian women: please pass away.]
Message-ID: <20060610000450.GN13192@mauritius.dodds.net>
4) Precise accounting of funds held for the benefit of the Debian
project (my imprecise estimate is $0, split between -$50,000 for
debconf, and +$50,000 for misc debian use, which will obviously
only be useful when the HP money makes its way in)
5) Is there any sort of online/electronic report of donations from
Click & Pledge that can be made available?