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2006-06-20

This is the proposed agenda for the Board meeting of June 20th, 2006, to be held at 19:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org.

    1. Opening
    2. Roll call
      • Branden Robinson has sent regrets
    3. President's report (John Goerzen)
    4. Treasurer's report (Jimmy Kaplowitz)
    5. Outstanding minutes
      1. Annual meeting: July 1st, 2005
      2. July 26th, 2005
      3. August 16th, 2005 (log only)
      4. October 18th, 2005 (log only)
      5. December 13th, 2005 (log only)
      6. February 21st, 2006
      7. March 21st, 2006 (log only)
      8. April 18th, 2006
      9. May 16th, 2006
    6. Items up for discussion:
      1. Election
        • Voting software
        • Call for nominations
        • Officer roles - add 'admin' to board? (VP role?)
        • 3 candidates this year, 6 next year, 0 in 2008. Think about solutions.
      2. OVF membership. See Resolution 2006-06-06.dbg.1: Open Voting Foundation membership
        and Amendment 2006-06-20.iwj.1
      3. Further on Debian trademark in Spain?
      4. Resolution 2006-06-16.dbg.1: Vice President responsibilities
      5. Tax filing and book keeping status? (Jimmy)
      6. Postgresql charter (Josh Berkus) (see discussion appendix)
      7. Website rebuild?
    7. Next board meeting - ANNUAL MEETING: Saturday, July 1st, 2006 (John Goerzen)

    Discussion appendix

          Well, it took about 4 months longer than  anticipated ... partly due to a
    mail server failure ... but here it is.

    Some additional notes:
    1) You'll notice that we've split "Liason" and "Observer" into separate
    functions. This is because we have a large distributed community and need
    to involved as many people as possible. So, the Liason works with the
    Treasurer to manage our funds, and the Observer attends SPI board
    meetings.

    2) I will be "Acting Board Observer and Liason" until the SPI elections in
    July. At that time, the PostgreSQL folks will elect a new Liason and a
    new Observer.

    3) The list of contributing members is just for information; I'll send it
    to the Membership committee to give them a checklist for PG people. Of
    course, not all of these people will sign up.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Governance Charter of the Relationship
    between the PostgreSQL project
    and Software in the Public Interest, Inc.

    The Core Team of the PostgreSQL project currently consists of the following
    people: Josh Berkus, Peter Eisentraut, Marc Fournier, Tom Lane, Bruce
    Momjian, Dave Page, Jan Wieck. The Core Team appoints its own members.

    The Fundraising Group of the PostgreSQL project initially consists of the
    members of The PostgreSQL Foundation Inc. at the time of its termination.
    Thereafter, the Fundraising Group appoints its own members.

    The Fundraising Group elects the SPI Project Liason and the SPI Board
    Observer. These may be the same person. The appointments are subject to
    the veto of the Core Team. The appointments may be replaced by voting on
    new representatives at any time.

    The SPI Board Observer will submit to SPI on an ongoing basis a list of
    persons eligible for automatic SPI contributing membership in recognition
    of their contributions to the PostgreSQL project.

    Unless specified otherwise, decisions require a majority of votes.

    -----------

    Initially, the members of the Core Committee, contributing developers of
    PostgreSQL as listed on the PostgreSQL web site, and the members of the
    Fundraising Group are eligible for contributing membership of SPI.
    Josh Berkus, Acting Board Observer, June 7th 2006

    ------------

    (list of names redacted)
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Resolutions

    Resolution 2006-04-03.jfsp.1: Debian trademark in Spain

    WHEREAS

    1. The Debian trademark in Spain is currently held by Jesus Martinez which
    has no assocation with either the Debian project or SPI Inc.

    2. The SPI trademark commitee wants to register the Debian trademark EU-wide
    and any registration in an EU country will stall the process

    3. Mr. Martinez has been contacted by the "Debian Spain" association and
    by Javier de la Cueva and has rejected to transfer the trademark over to
    SPI unless the following terms are met:
    * Deletion of all Internet web pages with prior references to
    Mr. Martínez trademark appropriation.
    * Payment of 3,000 Euros as a fee for having made the defense of
    the trademark and the costs.
    * SPI letter granting him the rights to use perennialy the trademark
    "Debian".

    4. The SPI Board considers the transfer term unacceptable.

    THE SPI BOARD RESOLVES THAT

    5. SPI will initiate legal actions against Mr. Martinez.

    6. SPI will provide a notarized and apostilled Power of Attorney to
    the Spanish lawyer Javier de la Cueva, who will act in a Pro Bono basis,
    and will litigate on behalf of SPI.

    7. SPI will provide certificates of the trademark registry and any other
    relevant documents to Javier de la Cueva needed to provide
    documentary evidences necessary to defend the case.


    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Resolution 2006-06-06.dbg.1: Open Voting Foundation membership

    1. WHEREAS the Open Voting Foundation has approached Software in the
    Public Interest for membership through one of its officers;

    2. and WHEREAS the Open Voting Foundation's goals and purposes fit within
    those of Software in the Public Interest;

    3. and WHEREAS there exists potential to misconstrue the Open Voting
    Foundations' goals as partisan;

    The Board of Directors of Software in the Public Interest hereby resolves
    that:

    4. The Open Voting Foundation is formally invited to become an SPI
    Associated Project, according to the SPI Framework for Associated
    Projects, SPI Resolution 1998-11-16.iwj.1-amended-2004-08-10.iwj.1, a copy
    of which can be found at
    lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2004/000091.html;

    5. This offer and Open Voting Foundation's membership is subject to all
    laws pertaining to non-profit involvement in political activity;

    6. This invitation will lapse, if not accepted, 60 days after it is
    approved by the SPI Board.

    Amendment 2006-06-20.iwj.1 to 2006-06-06.dbg.1:

    REPLACE entire text of the OVF resolution with the following text:

    1. Computer security and auditability are currently wholly
    insufficient to rely on for voting in high-stakes elections such as
    civil elections for national and local governments.

    2. The dependability, particularly for high-stakes decisionmaking, of
    computer systems is getting worse and this trend is likely to
    continue. Pre- and post-election review and auditing of the
    computing systems is not and will not be sufficiently robust
    against malicious interference.

    3. Therefore, voting processes must rely on non-computerised means
    to ensure that the votes and the result are not interfered with
    (these means possibly including voter-verified human-readable paper
    trails generated by any automatic voting machinery, although wholly
    manual processes are to be preferred).

    4. While in some circumstances or jurisdictions there may be a place for
    computer assistance in the voting arrangements, the election
    processes must be arranged so that the computers are not able to
    compromise the election result even if the computers themselves
    are wholly compromised and malicious.

    5. Furthermore, the election processes must have robust responses
    available for those case where evidence of malfunction (whether
    malicious or accidental) of automatic equipment is detected,
    including (if necessary) recourse to fully-manual and hence
    fully-human-auditable recount.

    6. In jurisdictions where computers are heavily used, the biggest
    current computer-related problem with the election processes is
    the use of computers in critical roles without any means for
    detecting and dealing with malfunction.

    7. It would be good if such voting software as is used were Free
    Software, but the provision of, and drive towards adoption of, Free
    voting software is at best a dangerous distraction from the task of
    removing reliance on the integrity of computers, and preventing
    the introduction of manipulable computer-dependent processes in
    jurisdictions which don't currently use them.

    8. Therefore, at the current time, the Board of Software in the Public
    Interest are of the view that efforts to improve voting software
    by making it Free are misguided and harmful - that is, the
    development of Free voting software is not in the public interest.

    9. Software in the Public Interest will therefore decline any request
    by a voting software project to become an Associated Project.

    10. The Board wishes to make it clear that it regards the proponents
    of Free voting software as misguided allies, even though we
    disagree with them. SPI will not use any underhand tactics to
    undermine such projects; SPI restricts its opposition to these
    projects to this resolution and position statement.

    11. Should the situation regarding computer assistance with elections
    improve significantly - in particular, if at some point in the
    future the problem of reliance on automatic systems is overcome,
    and the processes for dealing with computer failure are
    well-developed, well-exercised, and entrenched - the Board will
    reverse this decision.


    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Resolution 2006-06-16.dbg.1: Vice President responsibilities

    1. WHEREAS the Vice President is the Board Officer with the fewest
    responsibilites;

    2. and WHEREAS it is necessary to provide some measure of coordination
    between the Board, the Membership, and SPI's various system and website
    administrations;

    The Board hereby resolves that

    3. The Vice President of the Board of Directors will be the Admin Leader
    for SPI and will be responsible for coordinate the Board, the Membership,
    and various system and website administrators.

    4. The Vice President will be responsible for coordinating the content of
    SPI's Website.

    5. This resolution takes effect at the first Board meeting following the
    2006 annual Board member elections.



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