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Board Meeting, October 15th, 2008
Board members present
Board partially present
Board members absent with regrets
Board members absent
Board advisors present
Registered guests present
These are the draft minutes for the October 15th, 2008 SPI Board meeting, held at 19:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG.
report generation should be fixed and future reports should be timely. Future reports will, he said, also include
an income statement in addition to a balance sheet, and he liked the idea of making the balance sheet represent the accounts on the last day of the calendar month to which the income statement corresponds.
Outstanding Minutes
Jimmy moved to approve the September 17th, 2008 minutes.
Vote on September 17th, 2008 minutes
Motion passed with a vote of Yes: 5, No: 0, Abstain: 2.
Discussion of the President's report
Joshua D. Drake thought the OVF proposal mentioned in the president's report was a great idea, and mentioned that over 800 votes were cast with their software at LinuxWorld. Luk Claes thought it was a nice thing that was different from what we were used to. Contributing member MJ Ray wondered if the board still wanted to be involved with voting machines. Overall the board thought promoting open source voting software in this specific locality was better than allowing the default alternative of closed source voting machines which would otherwise be used there, and does not consider this to be spreading the adoption of voting machines. Martin Zobel-Helas wondered how the additional administrative costs of the OVF proposal would be paid for; Jimmy clarified that the costs would be paid from the grant funds themselves, and not from project-specific funds or (except for the cost of any general SPI tasks) from SPI's general fund.
Other Business
David Graham apologized for not being around much during the 2008 Canadian federal election, but said he was off the campaign trail and ready to refocus his energy on SPI.
- Bdale Garbee (bdale) (President)
- Jimmy Kaplowitz (Hydroxide) (Secretary)
- Michael Schultheiss (Treasurer)
- Luk Claes (luk__)
- Martin Zobel-Helas (zobel)
- Joshua D. Drake (linuxpoet)
- David Graham (cdlu)
Board partially present
- None
Board members absent with regrets
- Neil McGovern (Maulkin)
- Joerg Jaspert (Ganneff) (Vice President)
Board members absent
- None
Board advisors present
- None
Registered guests present
- Jonathan McDowell (Noodles)
- Bill Allombert (yp17)
- Rico Glöckner (mc)
- Kåre Thor Olsen (Kaare)
- MJ Ray (slef)
- Moray Allan (moray)
- Greg Sabino Mullane (GSabinoMullane)
These are the draft minutes for the October 15th, 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, with discussion to happen later in the meeting.
SPI was approached in late September by Alan Dechert of the Open Voting
Foundation for assistance in preparing a proposal for a new voting system
for Los Angeles County. If OVF should be awarded a contract to pursue this
work, SPI would have a role to play in handling the funds.
After a flurry of emails between OVF and the SPI board, a conference call was
held on the 30th of September, attended by Bdale Garbee, Jimmy Kaplowitz, Josh
Berkus, Greg Pomerantz, and Michael Schultheiss represting SPI and Alan
Dechert, Brian Fox, and Ed Gambel representing OVF. The OVF folks now have the
information they need to complete their proposal.
While not all of the details are worked out, the participation needed from SPI
would be different from anything we've done before, and would clearly require
that we hire at least a part-time contractor to handle the anticipated
additional administrative work load.
No further action should be required from SPI until and unless a contract is
actually awarded.
Treasurer's Report
Michael Schultheiss provided the following report.Bdale expressed his pleasure that all the earmarks are resolved in this report. Michael said that delays inThis 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 October 14, 2008
ASSETS
Current Assets
Key Business Reward Checking 17,117.74
Key Business Signature Money Market Savings 97,617.96
Ameriprise Cash Mgmt Acct 13,098.74
Total Current Assets 127,834.44
TOTAL ASSETS 127,834.44
LIABILITIES & EQUITY
General and current liabilities 0.00
Equity
Reserves held in trust
Debian Earmark 67,762.98
Drupal Earmark 2,650.00
Freedesktop.org Earmark 2,027.68
Gallery Earmark 4,803.34
GNOME Earmark 20.00
GNU TeXmacs Earmark 9.70
Madwifi.org Earmark 922.03
OpenOffice.org Earmark 1,180.52
Open Voting Foundation Earmark 392.67
Plan 9 Earmark 6,500.00
PostgreSQL Earmark 13,778.44
Total held in trust 100,047.36
General reserves 27,787.08
Total Equity 127,834.44
TOTAL LIABILITIES & EQUITY 127,834.44
report generation should be fixed and future reports should be timely. Future reports will, he said, also include
an income statement in addition to a balance sheet, and he liked the idea of making the balance sheet represent the accounts on the last day of the calendar month to which the income statement corresponds.
Secretary's Report
Jimmy Kaplowitz presented the following report.
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.
Also, I have now updated the list of officers on the board and
by-laws pages on the website.
Outstanding Minutes
Jimmy moved to approve the September 17th, 2008 minutes.Vote on September 17th, 2008 minutes
| David Graham | Abstain |
| Bdale Garbee | Abstain |
| Michael Schultheiss | Yes |
| Martin Zobel-Helas | Yes |
| Luk Claes | Yes |
| Jimmy Kaplowitz | Yes |
| Joshua D. Drake | Yes |
Motion passed with a vote of Yes: 5, No: 0, Abstain: 2.
Discussion of the President's report
Joshua D. Drake thought the OVF proposal mentioned in the president's report was a great idea, and mentioned that over 800 votes were cast with their software at LinuxWorld. Luk Claes thought it was a nice thing that was different from what we were used to. Contributing member MJ Ray wondered if the board still wanted to be involved with voting machines. Overall the board thought promoting open source voting software in this specific locality was better than allowing the default alternative of closed source voting machines which would otherwise be used there, and does not consider this to be spreading the adoption of voting machines. Martin Zobel-Helas wondered how the additional administrative costs of the OVF proposal would be paid for; Jimmy clarified that the costs would be paid from the grant funds themselves, and not from project-specific funds or (except for the cost of any general SPI tasks) from SPI's general fund.Other Business
David Graham apologized for not being around much during the 2008 Canadian federal election, but said he was off the campaign trail and ready to refocus his energy on SPI.Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned until Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.oftc.net. Note the adjustment in UTC time to compensate for the end of Northern Hemisphere daylight saving time and summer time. Local times in most parts of the US, Canada, and Europe have not changed from the October meeting.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