Position statement for Bdale Garbee

Who I Am

My name is Bdale Garbee, and I ask you to re-elect me to the board of directors of Software in the Public Interest for another term.

My first personal contribution to what we now call Free Software was in 1979. I joined the Debian project in late 1994, and have contributed in many ways over the years: maintaining packages, architecting and implementing some of the early debian.org infrastructure, instigating or aiding ports of Debian to 5 processor architectures, serving as Debian Project Leader, to my continuing role as chairman of the Debian Technical Committee.

I have observed SPI nearly since its founding, became an official advisor to the board on behalf of Debian during my term as DPL, and have remained active as an advisor to or member of the SPI board ever since. I was elected by the board to serve as SPI President four years ago, have been re-elected to that position each year since, and if re-elected to the board this year, I have expressed my willingness to continue serving as President if the board so chooses.

I think of myself as both a technologist and a community builder. I take some pleasure in the fact that others have told me that the many public presentations I've made about Debian and SPI, the community development process, and various technical aspects of software development over the years have helped influenced them to contribute in their own diverse ways.

I serve as a member of the board of directors of the Linux Foundation representing individual members, am Secretary of the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) board of directors, am on the board of directors of Open Media Now, and provide advice to and have an extensive network of contacts in various other open source communities.

I am employed as Open Source & Linux Chief Technologist at HP.

Thoughts on Where We've Been

Since my last re-election to the board, SPI has operated well, consistently meeting or exceeding the service expectations of our associated projects even as the number of associated projects continued to grow.

These accomplishments are of course not my own, but I hope and believe that my focus on the fundamentals and effort to maintain a productive environment for action by everyone involved in SPI as a board member and as President helped these things happen.

One thing I will take personal credit for was arranging earlier this year for SPI associated projects to be able to purchase server hardware from HP at a deep discount.

What Comes Next

The board needs to always remain focused on our ability to deliver basic services to our associated projects. Financial transaction processing and other basic processes aren't glamorous, but we must get them right!

Issues remain with our bylaws that I find annoying, which I continue to think deserve to be addressed at some point.

I would like to have the opportunity to continue working on your behalf as we continue to improve SPI's processes in service of our growing list of associated projects.

Thank you for your time, your attention, and your vote!