Board meeting, September 17th, 2001

Attending:

  • Branden Robinson
  • Ean Schuessler
  • Martin Schulze
  • Nils Lohner
  • Wichert Akkerman

Invitees present:

  • Ben Collins
  • Rob Levin

Agenda:

  1. Opening
  2. Roll call
  3. Treasurer Report
  4. Attendance resolution
  5. Membership Report
  6. LinuxPPC update
  7. OS Committee report
  8. SPI lawyer situation
  9. Date set for next meeting

Recorder:

The following minutes were adopted (as written at the time) by the Board of Directors on September 7th, 2004:

Meeting called to order Mon Sep 17 13:07:24 CDT 2001

Treasurer Report (Nils, Branden, Scott, Darren)

Nils started by citing Scott McNeil's announcement of willingness to resign if anyone were interested in taking over the position of Treasurer.

Branden reconfirmed that he is still willing to perform as SPI's Treasurer until a more suitable replacement is found, although he expressed the difficulties of officially stepping up to the position without essential paperwork from Darren.

Resolution 2001-08-30.mgs 'Appointment of Branden Robinson as Treasurer' was approved 3-0 votes with one abstention.

Attendance resolution (Branden, Nils)

The necessity for an attendance requirement resolution had been discussed in past meetings. The resolution was discussed on the SPI board mailing list.

Resolution 2001-09-17.br can briefly be summarized as:

An attendance status array of:

  1. Present
  2. Absent, with regrets
  3. Absent
  • 'Absent, with regrets' counts as half an absence.
  • Two consecutive absences can be grounds for removal.
  • Four or more absences over the course of a year and someone can make a motion for your removal.

Resolution 2001-09-17.br - Board Meeting Attendance Policy was then voted on and passed with 5-0 votes.

Membership Update (Nils)

The membership pages are online as secure pages. They should have been activated before now, but Nils did not have time to work on the finishing touches and check them so they're still not active but will be soon. Membership guidelines have been posted to the board and spi-general lists for discussion, but no one has commented so they are probably OK as they are for now. They can be changed by the membership committee later. Martin Michlmayr is helping with the pages and will help with the approvals as well.

LinuxPPC update (Wichert)

Wichert has been too busy with other things and will have more information on the issue at the next meeting.

OS Committee report (Ean)

Ean expressed regret at not having made any public statement, explaining his unease with the political and wordiness of the in-draft paper. Also felt by Ean was the unneeded duplications already stated in the O.S. public message, and that the idea DFSG can stay unchanged as licenses continue to evolve is probably flawed. Branden suggested that the DFSG should probably remain totally within Debian's power to define. Nils agreed adding that SPI should be an umbrella organization that suggests but does not dictate. Nils went on to say keeping the domains and pushing the DFSG should rally added support. Rob stressed diplomacy as key to the integration of the terms, as well as the groups.

Ean proposed a definitive process for determining what is and what is not Free Software (aka. Opensource) be created, insuring that Free Software and Open source always remain synonyms rather than some insidiously different thing. Also inclusion of Developers with a non-uploading status that concentrate on policy and other (non-hacking) issues, but are still active and thus know what's going on in debian and the community.

SPI lawyer situation (Ben, Chris)

Ben summarized:

Right now we are still getting all documents inline, accumulating, and organizing the replies and answers of Chris and the HP lawyer. Also creating the proposal documentation for the actual implementation of the move. However in light of the recent events and resulting governmental scrutiny of cryptography laws, the prudence of the move at this time is questionable. Setting the timeline for finishing the FAQ, policy, and implementation documents of the move at approximately 2 months, Ben said he would be taking a very active role in following government actions and proposed bills including driving to D.C. personally to determine if the move is necessary.

Date set for next meeting

The next meeting is set for Sept. 22, 18:00 UTC.