Board meeting, November 13th, 2014

Board members present

  • Bdale Garbee (bdale) (President)
  • Joerg Jaspert (Ganneff) (Vice President)
  • Michael Schultheiss (schultmc) (Treasurer)
  • Martin Michlmayr (tbm) (Secretary)
  • Joshua D. Drake (linuxhiker)
  • Jonathan McDowell (Noodles)
  • Gregers Petersen (glp)
  • Martin Zobel-Helas (zobel)

Board members partially present

  • None

Board members absent with regrets

  • Robert Brockway (Solver)

Board members absent

  • None

Board advisors present

  • None

Registered guests present

  • Bill Allombert (yp17)
  • Luca Filipozzi (luca)
  • H W Tovetjärn (totte)

These are the minutes for the November 13th, 2014 SPI Board Meeting, held at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG.

President's Report

Bdale Garbee congratulated SFLC for passing their 10th anniversary. Bdale attended SFLC's tenth anniversary conference at Columbia Law School on 31 October and it was good to see several SPI contributing members there.

Bdale has also been working with Keith Packard on an association resolution for X.Org that he hopes will be on next month's agenda.

Treasurer's report

Michael Schultheiss corrected the September report and added the October report to the agenda. He also opened new bank accounts for PayPal. Michael will work with Brian Gupta on enabling PayPal for Debian.

Secretary's report

Martin Michlmayr stated he had not received any new resolutions for consideration.

Outstanding minutes

Vote on Meeting Minutes for 9th October 2014:

Joshua D. DrakeYes
Bdale GarbeeYes
Joerg JaspertAbstain
Jonathan McDowellYes
Martin MichlmayrYes
Gregers PetersenYes
Michael SchultheissYes
Martin Zobel-HelasYes

Motion passed with a vote of 7 yes, 1 abstain, 0 missing.

Any other business

Joshua D. Drake spoke at BLUG (Bellingham Linux User Group) recently, the user group that puts on Linux Fest NW, which is a reasonably large regional conference. He was surprised that they were not aware of SPI, which prompted him to wonder whether SPI should make a concerted advocacy effort. Bdale observed that we hold a BOF session at DebConf every year and that he had represented SPI on a panel at SFLC's tenth anniversary conference recently. Michael Schultheiss mentioned SPI at Ohio LinuxFest last month. Jonathan McDowell thought that there's no need for a special membership drive, but that it's a good idea for people to be aware of our existence. The board agreed to continue this conversation via email.

The conversation promoted questions about the design of the SPI web site and whether a professional designer should be hired to work on a refresh. Jonathan McDowell mentioned that there's a standing offer from Valessio Brito regarding web design and promised to follow up with him.

Martin Zobel-Helas reported that he had been in contact with Richard Hartmann from Debian about the registration of "DebConf" as a trademark and that Richard was already in contact with the SFLC.

Martin Michlmayr asked about the status of contacting inactive SPI members. Jonathan McDowell explained that the capability to express their activity has to be created on the SPI member site.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned until Thursday, December 11th, 2014 at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org.

Appendix A: Current Board Membership

Last electedNameRole
July 2013Bdale GarbeePresident
July 2013Joerg JaspertVice President
July 2014Martin MichlmayrSecretary
July 2012Michael SchultheissTreasurer
July 2012Jonathan McDowell
July 2013Joshua D. Drake
July 2013Martin Zobel-Helas
July 2014Robert Brockway
July 2014Gregers Petersen