Re: Board Meeting Reminder for Tue Jan 7th, 20:00 UTC

On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 12:25:37AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 08:09:35PM -0500, Branden Robinson / SPI Treasurer wrote:
>
> My apologies for interfering in the board's operations.

I don't understand the motivation behind your statement. You made some
assumptions about Board inactivity that were grounded in ignorance --
which wasn't completely your fault as the Board belated provided public
notification of some of them, as I acknowledged. In any event, I
corrected them, and thanked you for keeping track of some things that
might otherwise go neglected.

You also appeared to be indulging in bellyaching about a past thing
which is in no one's power to fix. I have already accepted my
responsibilty for missing one of the five or so meetings we attempted to
convene in that quarter, and I'll do so again in this message:

I accept responsibility for contributing to the failure of the SPI Board
to meet quorum during its meetings last quarter by being absent for one
meeting (December 3rd).

What more do you ask? Please be specific.

I welcome your continued contributions; I just wish you could make them
without an accompanying prognostication of disaster. Yes, we may(?)
have technically failed to hold some meeting or other in accordance with
the bylaws. My impression is that if true, it was far from the first
irregularity in SPI's history, and we unless can get active personnel
where they are needed, it likely won't be the last.

Your griping about unrecoverable past screwups is reminiscent of Russell
Nelson's public disparagement of SPI, or a certain advisor's recent mail
to the Board. Gripes are best accompanied by concrete recommendations
for reform. I think you're perfectly capable of providing such
recommendations. My only question is whether you're willing.

We need objectivity, not knee-jerk optimism nor knee-jerk pessimism.

At any rate, if Anthony Towns is unwilling to help keep the Board on its
toes in the way I've described, I invite another SPI contributing member
to do so.

--
G. Branden Robinson, Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
treasurer(at)spi-inc(dot)org
http://www.spi-inc.org/