20:00 < schultmc> *GAVEL*
20:00 < schultmc> [item 1, Opening]
20:00 < schultmc> Welcome to today's Software in the Public Interest Board Meeting, which 
20:00 < schultmc> is now called to order. Today's agenda can be found on the web at: 
20:00 < schultmc> https://www.spi-inc.org/meetings/agendas/2025/2025-06-09/
20:00 < schultmc> [item 2, Roll Call]
20:00 < milan> Milan Kupcevic
20:00 < schultmc> Directors, please state your name
20:00 < schultmc> Guests, please /msg your names to zv if you wish your attendance to be
20:00 < zumbi> Héctor Orón Martínez
20:00 < schultmc> recorded in the minutes of this meeting.
20:00 < jconway> Joe Conway
20:00 < schultmc> .
20:00 < schultmc> We have regrets from fsf and zv
20:00 < fungi> Jeremy Stanley
20:00 < schultmc> .
20:00 < mappx> Katie McMillan
20:00 < schultmc> Michael Schultheiss
20:01 < Jesusalva[m]> Jonatas L. Nogueira 
20:01 < schultmc> [item 3, President's Report]
20:01 < schultmc> We are moving forward with the audit of our 2024 books.
20:01 < schultmc> I've worked to help with Treasury team processing of requests.
20:01 < schultmc> .
20:01 < schultmc> </done>
20:01 < schultmc> .
20:01 < schultmc> jesusalva[m], do you have anything you would like to add?
20:01 < schultmc> </done>.
20:01 < Jesusalva[m]> Contractors keep working tirelessly on the Annual Report, which should be available to the public before our AGM.... (full message at <https://matrix.org/oftc/media/v1/media/download/Ab5f3n4UU4EnugLxDfrZ0F-uD-8P00uK3RmgSj20upmV5GCQXGjL-GFsdKHXNBrA_RH2r9-eiqTHoyqLAdpJFCZCeXnmIKWAAG1hdHJpeC5vcmcvSFh1Q2pMUXZVRk1VVGZIeWFVVWZLc2t4>)
20:02 < Jesusalva[m]> </done>
20:02 < schultmc> [item 4, Treasurer's Report]
20:02 < schultmc> zumbi?
20:02 < zumbi> Payments are a bit delayed, due to personal issues that have been now resolved. Thi
20:02 < zumbi> s week we expect to process remaining payments.
20:02 < zumbi> If you have any urgency, please reach out.
20:02 < zumbi> Thanks very much for the continuous work of the treasurer team, including president, vice-president and contractors.
20:02 < zumbi> .
20:03 < schultmc> [item 5, Secretary's report]
20:03 < schultmc> zv is not available. 
20:03 < schultmc> [item 6, Outstanding minutes]
20:03 < schultmc> The outstanding minutes are not yet available for review and will be voted on
20:03 < schultmc> at an upcoming meeting.
20:03 < schultmc> [item 7, Items up for discussion]
20:03 < schultmc> None listed on agenda
20:03 < schultmc> [item 8, Any other business]
20:03 < schultmc> Anything to discuss?
20:03 < Jesusalva[m]> Yes
20:03 < Jesusalva[m]> Let's start with crypto discussion
20:03 < schultmc> Jesusalva[m]: please proceed
20:04 < Jesusalva[m]> A project received an offer of donation in cryptocurrency. SPI has no such wallet and no policy regarding the fact 
20:05 < Jesusalva[m]> Treasury staff, in regards to the Board request, inform they need Board's direction regarding it. Information is available by email, I believe, but I can resend if needed
20:05 < zumbi> This is still pending review from my side.
20:05 < schultmc> I'm not opposed to SPI holding crypto funds temporarily if our accountants and legal counsel do not object but I'd recommend we convert to fiat currency (USD) as soon as practical.
20:06 < mappx> +1
20:06 < Jesusalva[m]> Yes. In particular, Martin said the complexity warrants Board discussion regarding if SPI considers crypto a possibility or not 
20:06 < fungi> yes, unless we have a system in place to handle that, seems like the amount of the donation would have to be sizeable in order to warrent setting up a process for it
20:06 < Jesusalva[m]> And mentioned the possible concerns board members should have
20:06 < fungi> warrant
20:07 < zumbi> Last time we looked at this, it was not clear how to follow the assets in the books, for IRS reporting, maybe it has now changed and it might be easier, we need to check on that.
20:07 < schultmc> AIUI, this particular donation is in a stablecoin so should be less volatile but accepting arbitrary crypto currencies could be quite complicated accounting wise
20:07 < zumbi> All in all, we have no crypto account, nor secure wallet
20:08 < fungi> i suppose if we did have a policy about accepting such donations, we'd need a set of criteria or a list of allowed currencies
20:08 < Jesusalva[m]> crypto is often associated with scams and environmental damage (e.g. high electricity), while the specific donation seems to mitigate these points it does need some board policy according to Martin 
20:08 < zumbi> Therefore all those points, where assets are held and how to account for them should be checked with counsel.
20:09 < Jesusalva[m]> Operational details can be decided by treasury with counsel, yes
20:09 < Jesusalva[m]> But policy decision should be up to the Board
20:11 < mappx> I am in full agreement with schultmc, and am not against it, but believe that we should convert to USD as soon as practical.
20:11 < zumbi> I am not against holding crypto, but I'd prefer to have some better clue on how we are going to operate them.
20:11 < fungi> as a complete cryptocurrency skeptic, i'd be in favor of just saying it's not worth the risk, but since we're expected to represent the interests of our associated projects it might make sense to also get some input from liaisons about whether they'd want support for it
20:11 < Jesusalva[m]> Should SPI consider accepting crypto, subject to treasury and legal counsel? If so, should SPI hold them, or convert to money immediately or ASAP? These are the main policies which the Board should decide, imo
20:12 < jconway> I suspect this will start coming up more often, so it would be good to get ahead of it with a formal policy
20:12 < fungi> if there's little interest from projects in receiving donations of that sort, then i don't see a lot of point in pursuing it (and spending fiat currency to answer questions that almost nobody is asking)
20:13 < fungi> in which case a simple policy of not accepting them would be easy enough to pass
20:13 < zumbi> I think it is worth checking and investigating regulatory and legal considerations.
20:13 < zumbi> As well as tax compliance
20:14 < schultmc> A quick search brought up an article that referenced a 501(c)(3) that accepts crypto on other non-profit's behalf for a 1% fee and sends a USD donation for the balance 99%
20:14 < schultmc> something like that might work for us
20:14 < schultmc> https://www.every.org/crypto
20:14 < Jesusalva[m]> That would be interesting, yes
20:15 < fungi> i'd be fine with a solution like that since we wouldn't in theory need to care about any of the cryptomess
20:15 < milan> In the US different agencies treat Crypto differently. Thus legal navigation is challenging.
20:15 < fungi> (details depending of course)
20:15 < zumbi> they convert crypto to USD
20:16 < zumbi> .. not really holding crypto for non-profits
20:16 < fungi> yeah, my main question would be around whether they have some solution for donors still being able to anotate where within spi the resulting usd should be directed
20:17 < fungi> but that's an implementation detail
20:18 < zumbi> https://www.dfs.ny.gov/virtual_currency_businesses
20:19 < zumbi> https://lawyersalliance.org/userFiles/uploads/legal_alerts/Cryptocurrency_Legal_Alert.pdf
20:21 < schultmc> We can discuss on the board list and bring this to a vote at the next meeting - I don't think we have enough information to decide this right now
20:21 < Jesusalva[m]> LGTM
20:21 < schultmc> Any other business to discuss?
20:21 < Jesusalva[m]> MPI did a question. I quote: I’m a little surprised to see a suggestion of getting insurance for the conferences.
20:21 < Jesusalva[m]> Has SPI seen that before? Do you have any opinions on it? This seems very contractual to me so I would definitely have SPI handle this one.
20:21 < Jesusalva[m]> The cost is minimal
20:22 < Jesusalva[m]> Err sent a question*
20:22 < Jesusalva[m]> I can resend if necessary.
20:22 < fungi> i asked some of my colleagues who organize open source conferences and they have seen it as a requirement from some venues
20:22 < schultmc> we've had general liability insurance for the openzfs conference in the past
20:22 < schultmc> we could expand it to cover other events
20:22 < zumbi> If I recall correctly, that shouldn't be an issue
20:23 < fungi> in this case it was a university's student union center that was requiring it, if i recall correctly? it seems like a reasonable request
20:24 < zumbi> Jesusalva[m]: can you forward it to RT if not there yet?
20:25 < Jesusalva[m]> Which rt?
20:26 < Jesusalva[m]> Board or treasurer?
20:26 -!- sima_ [~Simona@2a02:168:57f4:0:5485:d4b2:c087:b497] has quit [Ping timeout: 480 seconds]
20:27 < zumbi> if you want tbm or me to deal with it, treasurer.
20:27 < Jesusalva[m]> Okay. Seems to be standard given comments here, too
20:28 < zumbi> not sure if Kassia may be interested to follow in cc
20:29 < Jesusalva[m]> I'm on phone, you can add her
20:30 < schultmc> Anything further to discuss?
20:30 < Jesusalva[m]> Benevity Cross Border UK Declaration
20:31 < fungi> i don't recall seeing any e-mail to board about this one
20:31 < Jesusalva[m]> Forwarded 
20:31 < zumbi> If nothing else in this topic, I want to share something about I am still work in progress with the development works I wanted to carry on, a proposal is to be made soon.
20:31 < Jesusalva[m]> https://causeshelp.benevity.org/hc/en-us/articles/30836766390036-What-is-the-UK-Use-of-Funds-Declaration
20:32 < Jesusalva[m]> Go ahead zumbi. My remaining questions are fungi backlog, ns-3 trademark question I'm supposed to tackle, and OpenZFS contracts same thing 
20:33 < zumbi> Nothing else form my side. We'll send email to board, I hope before next meeting.
20:33 < Jesusalva[m]> The three are essentially question if anyone wants to help though.
20:33 < Jesusalva[m]> Specially zumbi, a bit too many association requests
20:34 < fungi> yeah, as for "my" backlog, there are two outstanding informal discussions to start about possible associated projects, and also i'm probably behind by a month-ish on checking contributing member applications
20:35 < fungi> help is welcome from other board members wanting to pick up some of those (contributing member applications would need joining the member committee but that's basically just a simple checkbox once you volunteer)
20:37 < zumbi> Jesusalva[m]: what do you need from my side on those requests?
20:37 < zumbi> is that something contractors can take?
20:39 < fungi> for both kinds of tasks, some of the acceptance criteria are subjective, i don't know how precisely specified contractors would need them to be or if we'd need to come up with a list of the sorts of things we research
20:40 < zumbi> that'd be really helpful to have
20:40 < Jesusalva[m]> Sec
20:40 < Jesusalva[m]> Also in a RL meeting 
20:41 < fungi> like determining whether contributions to non-spi-associated projects are substantial in the contributing member application case, or how we decide what makes an open source project "significant" when applying to be associated with spi
20:41 < Jesusalva[m]> zumbi, I know Celestin needed your help with reimbursement app
20:41 < Jesusalva[m]> But good question. However, most do need a board member to sponsor 
20:42 < Perdu> Yes, I need zumbi and tbm to agree on the workflow
20:42 < fungi> those are the sorts of things where a long-time participant in many open source communities would "know it when you see it" but it's hard to articulate and convey to someone without that background
20:42 < Jesusalva[m]> Maybe would be better if whoever picks a request to sponsor demanded the contractor to provide information?
20:42 < zumbi> Perdu: ok, let's schedule a meeting someday this week or next
20:42 < Jesusalva[m]> A standard procedure would be ideal though and I agree 
20:43 < Jesusalva[m]> Anyway, that's all from me
20:43 < mappx> zumbi: could I possibly sit in on that meeting? It might be a good development opportunity for me
20:44 < zumbi> mappx: sure
20:44 < schultmc> [item 9, Next board meeting]
20:44 < schultmc> The next board meeting is scheduled for: July 14, 2025 at 2000 UTC.
20:44 < schultmc> Any objections?
20:44 < schultmc> wfm
20:44 < fungi> i should be around, thanks!
20:44 < jconway> wfm
20:44 < fungi> that's also our agm, right?
20:44 < fungi> and we'
20:44 < schultmc> yes
20:44 < fungi> ll need to start elections?
20:45 < milan> wfm
20:45 < zumbi> I'll be in a conference, but I can probably be in the call and do some work
20:45 < schultmc> per the appendix at https://www.spi-inc.org/meetings/minutes/2025/2025-03-10/ we have 5 members up for election
20:46 < schultmc> *GAVEL*