Board meeting, November 19th, 2008
Board members present
- Bdale Garbee (bdale) (President)
- Joerg Jaspert (Ganneff) (Vice President)
- Jimmy Kaplowitz (Hydroxide) (Secretary)
- Michael Schultheiss (Treasurer)
- Luk Claes (luk_)
- Martin Zobel-Helas (zobel)
- Joshua D. Drake (linuxpoet)
Board members partially present
- None
Board members absent with regrets
- Neil McGovern (Maulkin)
Board members absent
- David Graham (cdlu)
Board advisors present
- None
Registered guests present
- Bill Allombert (yp17)
- MJ Ray (slef)
- Joe Nahmias (jello)
These are the draft minutes for the November 19th, 2008 SPI Board meeting, held at 19:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG
President's Report
Bdale Garbee presented the following report:
Privoxy is interested in becoming an associated project, and I am working with them on a resolution. Hope to have it for next month's meeting.
Noting the long-standing $20 GNOME balance in our financial statement, I emailed the GNOME Foundation executive director earlier today suggesting we transfer the funds to them.
An author working on a document relating to Debian installation has approached SPI for advice on licensing his article and about the possibility of transferring copyright in the article to us. I plan to follow up with him later today.
Treasurer's Report
Michael Schultheiss provided the following report.
Treasurer's Note:
An Income Statement for the period 2008-10-15 through 2008-11-18 is in
the process of being drafted but it's unlikely that the income statement
will be complete before the SPI board meeting at 20:00 UTC today. I'll
complete the Income Statement ASAP and send it out by 2008-11-22. I
apologize for the delay.
======================
This report uses a cash-based method of accounting, recording donations
when deposited (not when the check was written or received by us) and
recording expenses when sent or scheduled for payment (not when
incurred).
Balance Sheet as of November 18, 2008
ASSETS
Current Assets
Key Business Reward Checking 32,741.73
Key Business Signature Money Market Savings 97,779.62
Ameriprise Cash Mgmt Acct 13,336.39
Total Current Assets 143,857.74
TOTAL ASSETS 143,857.74
LIABILITIES & EQUITY
General and current liabilities 0.00
Equity
Reserves held in trust
Debian Earmark 80,565.77
Drupal Earmark 2,650.00
Freedesktop.org Earmark 1,666.83
Gallery Earmark 5,974.69
GNOME Earmark 20.00
GNU TeXmacs Earmark 9.70
Madwifi.org Earmark 1,004.11
OpenOffice.org Earmark 1,185.32
Open Voting Foundation Earmark 392.67
Plan 9 Earmark 6,500.00
PostgreSQL Earmark 11,272.42
Tux4Kids Earmark 3,325.05
Total held in trust 114,566.56
General reserves 29,291.18
Total Equity 143,857.74
TOTAL LIABILITIES & EQUITY 143,857.74
Michael also announced that SPI's 2007 IRS Form 990, a report given to US federal tax authorities, was filed the week before the meeting. In response to a question, he stated that the deadline for the filing was November 15, 2008.
Secretary's Report
Jimmy Kaplowitz presented the following report.
(This was my secretary's report from a month ago; in the near future I will email this to an SPI mailing list to get volunteers. I will aim to use the spi-www mailing list to coordinate discussion between me and the volunteers. It would also be helpful if the webmaster email alias could forward to the spi-www list and be subject to the same spam filtering that keeps spi-www and most SPI lists spam-free.)
I would like volunteers to help move the website away from Plone and generally keep it more accurate and up-to-date, given that it's too cumbersome and buggy to use effectively. I would like to retain the ability to do web-based editing as well as restore the ability to do VCS-based editing. Therefore, something like ikiwiki might make sense.
If you want to volunteer, email secretary@spi-inc.org and admin@spi-inc.org, express your interest, and say what time, effort, and skills you can offer. Also, as requested by the SPI admin team, please explicitly acknowledge that while your opinion as the person doing the work will be seriously considered and will definitely count, the SPI admin team, officers, and board (each as appropriate) have the final say on all aspects of the website.
Jimmy also mentioned MJ Ray's offer to help in response to the call for volunteers, which he appreciated.
Outstanding Minutes
Jimmy moved to approve the October 15th, 2008 minutes.
Vote on October 15th, 2008 minutes
| Joerg Jaspert | Abstain |
| Bdale Garbee | Yes |
| Michael Schultheiss | Yes |
| Martin Zobel-Helas | Yes |
| Luk Claes | Yes |
| Jimmy Kaplowitz | Yes |
| Joshua D. Drake | Yes |
Motion passed with a vote of Yes: 6, No: 0, Abstain: 1.
Other Business
Joshua D. Drake solicited contacts in the education community to help SPI get speakers out to engage in strong educating efforts. It was agreed that he would ask about this on the spi-general mailing list.
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned until Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.oftc.net.
Appendix A: Current Board Membership
| Date elected | Name | Role |
|---|---|---|
| [2004-07-29] | Bdale Garbee | President |
| [2007-08-06] | Joerg Jaspert | Vice President |
| [2006-07-29] | Jimmy Kaplowitz | Secretary |
| [2006-07-31] | Michael Schultheiss | Treasurer |
| [2007-08-06] | Martin Zobel-Helas | |
| [2003-11-29] | David Graham | |
| [2007-08-06] | Luk Claes | |
| [2007-08-06] | Joshua D. Drake | |
| [2006-07-31] | Neil McGovern |
Appendix B: Approved Resolutions
None