Board meeting, December 11th, 2017

Board members present

  • Martin Michlmayr (tbm) (President)
  • Michael Schultheiss (schultmc) (Treasurer)
  • Valerie Young (spectranaut) (Secretary)
  • Jimmy Kaplowitz (Hydroxide)
  • Tim Potter (tpot)
  • Andrew Tridgell (tridge)

Board members partially present

  • None

Board members absent with regrets

  • Martin Zobel-Helas (zobel)

Board members absent

  • Luca Filipozzi (luca) (Vice President)
  • Joerg Jaspert (Ganneff)

Board advisors present

  • None

Registered guests present

  • None

These are the minutes for the December 11th, 2017 SPI Board Meeting, held at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG.

President's Report

I'd like to thank Michael for his continued work as treasurer.  I'm happy to
see the number of outstanding requests go down.

Treasurer's report

I am continuing to work with zobel on streamlining our reporting and hope to
have the remaining outstanding reports released soon. Our Form 990 (federal
tax return) and New York State returns were filed and accepted on time.

The agenda mentions FDIC insurance limits: the current FDIC limits are $250,000
of coverage per covered entity per bank SPI currently has over $1,000,000 in
assets and thus some of our banks are over the FDIC coverage limit. We are
researching additional financial institutions to open accounts with to brings
us below the covered limit. SPI's accounts are all with large regional or
national banks who are unlikely to fail but it is prudent to be under the FDIC
limits.

Secretary's report

Nothing to report.

Outstanding minutes

Vote on Meeting Minutes for 11th September 2017:

Jimmy KaplowitzYes
Martin MichlmayrYes
Tim PotterYes
Michael SchultheissYes
Andrew TridgellYes
Valerie YoungYes

Motion passed with a vote of 6 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain, 0 missing.

Vote on Meeting Minutes for NYC Face-to-face Meeting, 9th-11th October 2017:

Jimmy KaplowitzYes
Martin MichlmayrYes
Tim PotterYes
Michael SchultheissYes
Andrew TridgellAbstain
Valerie YoungYes

Motion passed with a vote of 5 yes, 0 no, 1 abstain, 0 missing.

Items up for discussion

Resolution 2017-10-12.mzh.1: Supporting FSFE's "Public Money, Public Code" campaign

Martin Zobel-Helas proposed the resolution and Luca Filipozzi revised the resolution after a discussion on the spi-general email list. Michael Schultheiss asks if SPI's lawyer Mishi confirmed that the resolution did not break the prohibition to lobbying rule for non-profits with 501c3 status. Martin Michlmayr responded that Mishi had approved the resolution at the face-to-face meeting in October.

Jimmy Kaplowitz states for the record why he is abstaining: Kaplowitz supports the goal of the "Public Money, Public Code" campaign and believes it is good for SPI to associate with the campaign. However, Kaplowitz is concerned with the open letter's assertion that all public code should be released without an exception for matters of national security, therefore he is abstaining from voting.

Vote on Resolution 2017-10-12.mzh.1: Supporting FSFE's "Public Money, Public Code" campaign

Jimmy KaplowitzAbstain
Martin MichlmayrYes
Tim PotterYes
Michael SchultheissYes
Andrew TridgellYes
Valerie YoungYes

Motion passed with a vote of 5 yes, 0 no, 1 abstain, 0 missing.

Review of Action Items

Michael Schultheiss is presently researching additional banks for use to utilize to help keep SPI below the FDIC limit. Valerie Young wrote a Code of Conduct draft and emailed the SPI board but has received no feedback. Young will start advertising SPI meetings on our Twitter account starting this month, and work with Luca Filipozzi on documenting a membership committee. Tim Potter will fix the address in the reimbursement form before the next board meeting. Martin Michlmayr was not able to work on any action items.

Jimmy Kaplowitz states he checked with Ian Jackson regarding the wording of membership details in the new by-laws and Jackson had approved of them. Additionally, Kaplowitz updated several SPI web pages to better document SPI's relationship with member projects and spent time successfully completing an additional action item that came in casual conversation after the face-to-face meeting: SPI now has G Suite for Nonprofits and Google Voice for PayPal purposes. Filipozzi and Schultheiss and Kaplowitz currently have G Suite super admin access there; and this service is gratis.

Any other business

Jimmy Kaplowitz states the board should consult Joerg Jaspert to see if he will be able to attend SPI board meetings more reliably in 2018.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned until Monday, January 8th, 2018 at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org.

Appendix A: Current Board Membership

Last electedNameRole
July 2017Martin MichlmayrPresident
July 2016Luca FilipozziVice President
July 2015Michael SchultheissTreasurer
July 2016Valerie YoungSecretary
July 2016Joerg Jaspert
July 2016Jimmy Kaplowitz
July 2017Tim Potter
July 2017Andrew Tridgell
July 2016Martin Zobel-Helas

Appendix B: Resolution 2017-10-12.mzh.1: Supporting FSFE's "Public Money, Public Code" campaign

WHEREAS

1. The FSFE has established a "Public Money, Public Code" campaign that
advocates that all software developed for the public sector using public
funds be made available under a Free and Open Source Software licence.

2. By adopting a "public code" policy, public bodies contribute
materially to the free and open software commons.

THE BOARD RESOLVES THAT

1. SPI agrees to be listed as a Supporting Organization of the "Public
Money, Public Code" campaign.

2. SPI encourages members to support this campaign by signing the Open
Letter on https://publiccode.eu/