Issues the board wishes us to consider: * Election of board members by SPI membership * Recall of board members (presumably by the membership) * Specific authorization for the Board to regulate their conduct, including explicit power to determine other methods of passing resolutions. * Review and clarification of guidelines for granting contributing membership. * Determine a protocol or rules of conduct that would facilitate "Getting to where we can conduct business without getting embroiled in continous counter productive flaming is critical to the future of our organization. Issues by Manoj Srivastava: * The board has been stymied often due to an inability to make quorum, and not being empowered to make decisions in an offline manner, failing quorum. Issues by John Goerzen: * Change article 3, first paragraph. "should act" -> "must act". Gives it more teeth. * Article 3 is vague on the concept of membership. Board members are held accountable to "members", but non-contributing members cannot vote. * Article 3, cont. members section, second paragraph. "will make" seems no longer applicable. * Holding a meeting "electronically" is not limited to real-time. Email counts. * The practice of meetings by email seems to be out of order. * Monthly meetings are permitted by the current bylaws. * Article 4 lacks a provision stating how public meetings are, and the degree of access the public and membership have to the details of the board's inner workings. * The difference between annual and quarterly meetings is not clear. * Quorum. 'nuff said. * Minutes of email meetings should be public. * The bylaws do not appear to permit Condorcet voting. * The issue of members who join while a vote is in progress is not addressed. Perhaps eligible voters should consist only of those who are members at the time the vote is called for. * "Votes and tallies" paragraph is confusing. * There is no provision for dealing with votes in the secretary's absence. Nor is there a provision to handle a conflict of interest. * Resolutions should be public. * The powers of the board (or limitations thereof) to interfere in an election are not enumerated. * Article 6, item 2. Should read "reading and approval" of minutes. * Article 6. Clarify "good and welfare". * Article 6. "Adjournment" is missplet. * What types of meeting does the order of business in Article 6 apply to? * Article 7, paragraph 3 seems to prohibit email business. (Contradiction?) * No procedure is given for choosing officers. The membership should do this. * Quorum reference and July requirement in article 7 may be redundant. * Article 7: "balance of the year" is unclear. * Contradiction: The secretary is elected by the board, but board members are chosen in the same way as officers. * The membership is not given a say in the removal of board members. * The notion of a vacancy is not well-defined. * Article 8: "physically affixed"? * Perhaps more committees will alleviate the need to email voting, if the board is not supposed to concern itself with day-to-day business. * Article 10: Who is responsible for deeming private discussions necessary? * Article 10: What form does the charter review take? * There should be a requirement to maintain an up-to-date public website with all committees' membership and charter. * The board should not have the power to impose dues without a vote of the membership. * Older versions of the bylaws should be made available. Issues by David Graham (cdlu): * The membership should be able to recall board members or the entire board. The membership committee's powers should be enumerated. * Article 3: Replace "the status of contributing members" with "contributing membership". * Article 4 needs a complete rewrite. * Quorum should be "ditched outright", or its restrictions loosened. * If quorum has to be maintained, then proxy votes should be permitted. * The membership should be able to force a board meeting. * Quorum in membership voting should be replaced with a minimum time. * Votes should have a "no opinion" option. * Contributing members who fail to turn in any ballot at all should be subject to membership committee review. * Voting rules and procedure applicable to a particular vote should be immutable once the voting period begins. * A committe should be created to oversee, tally and announce votes by the membership. * Annual re-election of board members. * Order of business doesn't belong in the bylaws. * All references to numbers should be cleaned up to be consistent. * Duplicate references to a number of issues should be removed. * President's powers should be clarified/toned-down. * Amendment section must specify contributing membership, and must refer to immutability of sections 1 and 2. Issues by Jimmy Kaplowitz: * Article 1, point 3 contradict immutability of Articles 1 and 2. * The precise specification of the annual board meeting date in Article 4 could result in some scheduling inconveniences. * It should be made clear that board meetings may occur more than quarterly if the Board so chooses. * Quorum is not problematic, but only if board members can be recalled. A "leave" system where board members on vacation are not counted would help. * Special meetings should not need 30 days advance notice, since the board is not meeting monthly. * The applicability of Article 5 quorum rules is unclear. Do they apply to the election of board members? It may conflict with Condorcet. * Should election/recall ballots be secret? What about board member votes about such topics? What about general membership votes? * Crypto-signed ballots are only useful in the presence of a web of trust. What about users outside the Debian keyring? * Secrecy of ballots for election is stated twice. * Article 6 is needlessly limiting. * The method by which directors and officers are chosen needs to be specified. * A method is needed for transitioning from the current board to a full board whose members are re-elected annually. * Article 7, para. 3 prevents email voting. * Quorum rules and annual meeting rules in Article 7 are redundant. * How does the ability to recall interact with the rule allowing the presence of counsel? * The president should not be able to appoint committees unilaterally. * The check signing duty should be limited to the Treasurer. * Committee appointment needs to be specified. * Charters are not being made and dealt with in accordance with Article 10. Do we need to? * Should non-contributing members be allowed to serve on committees? * Article 11's stance w.r.t. dues is unclear. Needs rewriting. * Which members may vote on the bylaws? It is unclear whether or not non-contributing members have voting rights.