Re: [Spi-private] Re: Inviting questions from SPI

David Graham wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

>> In essence, my platform is the charter. I just didn't want to cut and
>> paste ;)
>
> The purpose of the charter is to outline the list of anything and
> everything we are allowed to do as an incorporated non-profit, not a list

That does not change my assertion that my platform is the charter.

> of things we necessarily intend or plan to do.

As you just said, "intend" or "plan" to do. That is the exact point I am
making.

As with any corporation,
> the purpose must be set out at its founding and it is my understanding
> that this purpose cannot be changed.

Actually it can. Well at least it can from a for profit corp perspective.

> It is therefore imperative for the
> founders of a corporation, as the founders of SPI here tried to do, to
> forsee all activities SPI may ever consider carrying out at any time. I
> don't believe it was ever the intention of SPI to do all these things at
> once.

Was it ever the intention to do any of them? At present I see we do
"one" of the eleven.

>
> That said, it is a noble goal to try and carry out everything from
> government lobbying to conference organisation and to generally promote,
> foster and advance interest in computers and computer software by all
> available means and methods. Thanks to our charter, we can adopt member
> projects who do any of these things.

Well understand that I am not in any way looking through rose colored
glasses here. I would "like" to do these things. I "will" work toward
them. I do "not" expect that if I am elected the next week or even next
six months will bring about fundamental change in the SPI way of performing.

Incremental, steady, organized progression.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, Anthony Towns wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 11:32:16AM -0400, David Graham wrote:
>>> We have to decide as an organisation if our purpose is to influence the
>>> community or simply be the wall the community can lean against while it
>>> does its work.
>> As a community member, I don't want to feel like I've got my back up
>> against the wall ;)
>
> Ok, perhaps a bad analogy, how about providing a bar table to sit at? ;)
>
>> Personally, though, I'd put that differently, more as SPI being one
>> means by which the community influences others -- which from SPI's
>> perspective still means trying to publicise and advocate various ideas,
>> but with the focus being taking those ideas from the free software
>> community rather than trying to push them onto the free software
>> community.
>
> I can't disagree with that; influence by osmosis instead of by aggressive
> lobbying is quite constructive. I don't want SPI's focus to be on lobbying
> or advocacy primarily because SPI is alone in its much needed niche and we
> should concentrate on that niche as our primary focus.
>
>>> I believe that we should make every reasonable effort to assist our
>>> associated projects in doing any advocacy they wish, within the bounds
>>> of their budgets and our charter. I don't believe our role is to be an
>>> independent lobby group, but our projects are free to be with our
>>> backing.
>> The difference there is that having projects do advocacy rather than SPI
>> removes the opportunity for SPI to actively help projects cooperate.
>> SPI's in a position to have a broad overview of the goals of an already
>> somewhat wide range of projects and notice similarities and help them
>> speak with one voice; which is a bit harder to achieve from a single
>> project's standpoint.
>
> That's a point on the surface, but I don't necessarily see it that way: I
> am not suggesting that SPI not actively help its projects cooperate or
> even advocate, only that we do so by the request of our member projects,
> and not on our own whim. If projects want to work together or seek to work
> together, then that is a kind of request they can make to SPI if they so
> choose and SPI can then approach the other projects, for example. This
> would be fine with me. I simply have reservations about SPI overtly doing
> the advocacy or lobbying without the urging of its member projects whose
> interests we are meant to be primarily focused on.
>
> - -
> David "cdlu" Graham - cdlu(at)railfan(dot)ca
> Guelph, Ontario - http://www.cdlu.net/
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>

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