Re: SPI's wounded state of affairs

On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 01:19:18PM +1100, Craig Small wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 08, 2002 at 09:20:43PM -0500, Branden Robinson / SPI Treasurer wrote:
> [lots of very sad story deleted]
> > I also wrote a mission statement for myself, and posted it to the SPI
> > board mailing list. You folks should see it as well.
>
> Glad to see after far to long that someone has decided to take this
> position seriously, thanks Branden!

Thank you, and thanks for eliding most of that message to private forums
when quoting it in a public one. :)

> > Debian specifically will need to re-establish contact with businesses
> > that have, in the past, made cash donations to SPI on a regular basis.
[...]
> I have a database that holds all Debian CD vendors on our list. There
> are 78 of them that have said they can contribute funds to Debian. 9 of
> those are hidden, which means they're probably not even selling Debian
> CDs anymore.
>
> I can give you or someone this list, or if you like I can email them.

Please send them along to me, or to board(at)spi-inc(dot)org(dot)

> What worries me is that we (Debian webmasters) often get emails from
> vendors saying how do we contribute and I point them to spi or tell
> them to email the treasurer :/ I wonder how many replies everyone got
> :(

Probably not many! :(

> In you spare few seconds, you might like to think about wether or not
> you might take Euros. Any other currency you probably wouldn't bother,
> but there wil be a fair few people with Euros. Even if that means
> keeping them in a box and converting them once a year or so.

Actually, Martin Schulze, SPI Vice-President, has an arrangement with a
German organization that handles SPI's European money. This is
documented on the SPI Donations page.

> BTW, this is what a vendor gets if they ask about donations on the
> webmaster(at)debian(dot)org alias:
>
> How do I contribute funds to Debian?
> ------------------------------------
>
> Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is our non-profit legal umbrella for
> the Debian Project. You can find out information about donations at
> http://www.spi-inc.org/donations Please make sure your mark your donations
> as for Debian (if that's where they're supposed to go) as SPI looks after
> more than just Debian.
>
> That looks ok to me, if you have suggestions for something different let
> me know.

Looks fine. Since last month that information has been completely
accurate to the best of my knowledge.

--
G. Branden Robinson | Software engineering: that part of
Debian GNU/Linux | computer science which is too
branden(at)deadbeast(dot)net | difficult for the computer
http://www.deadbeast.net/~branden/ | scientist.