Re: Expert service, was: OpenVas plugin development

Dear colleagues,

Some of us recently asked the Liason for the PostgreSQL project for
an up to date accounting of the PostgreSQL fund at SPI. To my shock
but not, alas, surprise, we were informed that (once again) the
information simply isn't available.

I would like to know the following:

1. When can we anticipate that the current account statements will be
up to date?

2. When can we anticipate that procedures (or paid staff, or both)
will be in place to ensure that the accounts will be kept up to date?
This is important so that projects can make plans on the basis of the
funds actually available to them.

In my opinion, keeping the accounts up to date is the _sine qua non_
of SPI. Without this function, SPI is (bluntly) nothing but a
parasite on the associated projects, skimming donated money and
providing nothing of value in return. Since joining SPI, I have never
once seen this issue completely rectified. I see a lot of fire and
motion around all manner of other issues in the free software world,
but on this essential issue SPI does not seem actually to be doing its
job.

I believe it is the Board's job to do something about this: the Board
members are responsible for the operation of the corporation. So I
would like the Board to commit to a date, and provide a plan by which
it will be achieved.

Best regards,

Andrew

--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs(at)commandprompt(dot)com
+1 503 667 4564 x104
http://www.commandprompt.com/

Andrew Sullivan <ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca> wrote: [...]
> 1. When can we anticipate that the current account statements will be
> up to date?

A proper treasurer report should be posted to -private by next
Wednesday, according to the last meeting.

> 2. When can we anticipate that procedures (or paid staff, or both)
> will be in place to ensure that the accounts will be kept up to date?

I'm not aware of the board having promised to do this at all yet.
AFAICT, Bdale Garbee is the only current board member who made
anything like a promise to do that: "Financial transaction processing
and other basic processes aren't glamorous, but if we can't get them
right, there's little point in trying to do anything else."

Remember that SPI contributors did not elect candidates like Ian
Jackson and myself who made promises about SPI's basic business
performance, so it's fairly understandable if the board have put a low
priority on this. If it matters to PostgreSQL project members,
encourage them to join and vote!

Anyway, perhaps the PostgreSQL rep (xzilla) could ask at a board meeting?

> In my opinion, keeping the accounts up to date is the _sine qua non_
> of SPI.

English for _sine qua non_ is "without which not" which doesn't make
sense there but I guess this means it's a vital activity. If so, I
agree. The Treasurer has been promising reports since June, but not
fulfilling that promise: please will the board ask for member help?

Some SPI members have experience as treasurers in other organisations
(and whatever the flaws in those, none of mine went overdrawn yet) and
while we don't know the specifics of US NPO law, I'd be amazed if
there isn't some way to harness us.

[...]
> I believe it is the Board's job to do something about this: the Board
> members are responsible for the operation of the corporation. So I
> would like the Board to commit to a date, and provide a plan by which
> it will be achieved.

I hope the board will react, but I suspect we'll be told we need 21
members or a board member or rep to make the request. So far we are
two... who else wants to ask for a date and plan? Sign here...

Regards,
--
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237

Previously MJ Ray wrote:
> Andrew Sullivan <ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca> wrote: [...]
> > 1. When can we anticipate that the current account statements will be
> > up to date?
>
> A proper treasurer report should be posted to -private by next
> Wednesday, according to the last meeting.
>
> > 2. When can we anticipate that procedures (or paid staff, or both)
> > will be in place to ensure that the accounts will be kept up to date?
>
> I'm not aware of the board having promised to do this at all yet.
> AFAICT, Bdale Garbee is the only current board member who made
> anything like a promise to do that: "Financial transaction processing
> and other basic processes aren't glamorous, but if we can't get them
> right, there's little point in trying to do anything else."
>
> Remember that SPI contributors did not elect candidates like Ian
> Jackson and myself who made promises about SPI's basic business
> performance, so it's fairly understandable if the board have put a low
> priority on this. If it matters to PostgreSQL project members,
> encourage them to join and vote!
>
> Anyway, perhaps the PostgreSQL rep (xzilla) could ask at a board meeting?
>
> > In my opinion, keeping the accounts up to date is the _sine qua non_
> > of SPI.
>
> English for _sine qua non_ is "without which not" which doesn't make
> sense there but I guess this means it's a vital activity. If so, I
> agree. The Treasurer has been promising reports since June, but not
> fulfilling that promise: please will the board ask for member help?
>
> Some SPI members have experience as treasurers in other organisations
> (and whatever the flaws in those, none of mine went overdrawn yet) and
> while we don't know the specifics of US NPO law, I'd be amazed if
> there isn't some way to harness us.
>
> [...]
> > I believe it is the Board's job to do something about this: the Board
> > members are responsible for the operation of the corporation. So I
> > would like the Board to commit to a date, and provide a plan by which
> > it will be achieved.
>
> I hope the board will react, but I suspect we'll be told we need 21
> members or a board member or rep to make the request. So far we are
> two... who else wants to ask for a date and plan? Sign here...

I'll sign up for that demand.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:47:32 -0400
Andrew Sullivan <ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca> wrote:

> I believe it is the Board's job to do something about this: the Board
> members are responsible for the operation of the corporation. So I
> would like the Board to commit to a date, and provide a plan by which
> it will be achieved.

I have forward your request directly to board.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>
> Best regards,
>
> Andrew
>

--
The PostgreSQL Company since 1997: http://www.commandprompt.com/
PostgreSQL Community Conference: http://www.postgresqlconference.org/
United States PostgreSQL Association: http://www.postgresql.us/

----- "Wichert Akkerman" <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> wrote:

> > I hope the board will react, but I suspect we'll be told we need 21
> > members or a board member or rep to make the request. So far we are
> > two... who else wants to ask for a date and plan? Sign here...
>
> I'll sign up for that demand.

I'll be 1 of 21 as well.

--
Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com
ean(at)brainfood(dot)com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315

Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Dear colleagues,
>
> Some of us recently asked the Liason for the PostgreSQL project for
> an up to date accounting of the PostgreSQL fund at SPI. To my shock
> but not, alas, surprise, we were informed that (once again) the
> information simply isn't available.
>
> I would like to know the following:
>
> 1. When can we anticipate that the current account statements will be
> up to date?

Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at the latest.

> 2. When can we anticipate that procedures (or paid staff, or both)
> will be in place to ensure that the accounts will be kept up to date?
> This is important so that projects can make plans on the basis of the
> funds actually available to them.

As soon as I finish the current reports I'll be contacting our CPA to
obtain their firm's rates for bookkeeping. The greatest delay in my
ability to generate timely reports is due to delays in data entry of
donations. By offloading the data entry, the ability to generate
Treasurer's reports ad hoc should greatly improve.

> In my opinion, keeping the accounts up to date is the _sine qua non_
> of SPI. Without this function, SPI is (bluntly) nothing but a
> parasite on the associated projects, skimming donated money and
> providing nothing of value in return. Since joining SPI, I have never
> once seen this issue completely rectified. I see a lot of fire and
> motion around all manner of other issues in the free software world,
> but on this essential issue SPI does not seem actually to be doing its
> job.
>
> I believe it is the Board's job to do something about this: the Board
> members are responsible for the operation of the corporation. So I
> would like the Board to commit to a date, and provide a plan by which
> it will be achieved.

SPI's books have been in a less than desirable state for quite some
time. Numerous improvements have been made to our account procedures
over the past few years and I'm confident that the current plan of
outsourcing data entry will tie up the last few impediments to timely
report generation.

Michael Schultheiss
Treasurer, Software in the Public Interest, Inc.

--
----------------------------
Michael Schultheiss
E-mail: schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Michael Schultheiss <schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org> writes:
> The greatest delay in my ability to generate timely reports is due
> to delays in data entry of donations. By offloading the data entry,
> the ability to generate Treasurer's reports ad hoc should greatly
> improve.

This is my experience as well. If there is no way to automate the data
entry (and my limited understanding of the US banking system is that
it more or less isn't possible - do correct me if I'm wrong), entering
large amounts of incoming transactions is often a pain (btdt).
Spending some of the SPI's moneys on this would be a good thing.

--
* Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology (T.P) *
* PGP public key available @ http://www.iki.fi/killer *

> I hope the board will react, but I suspect we'll be told we need 21
> members or a board member or rep to make the request. So far we are
> two... who else wants to ask for a date and plan? Sign here...

Lets wait for the deadline of Wednesday, 1. October first. From what I
know and can read Michael is *very* actively working for that and I
trust him to get this issue done in a way that will also help future
reports. (Read his mail :) ).

In case it doesn't work out without a *very* good reason (which
would be pretty bad for Michael, so we don't want that at all), I'm
willing to support $something_sensible to "fix this".

--
bye, Joerg
You're in good shape for being a Debian, with a SAP background
... anything has to look good from there...

On Thursday 25 September 2008 21:16:11 Ean Schuessler wrote:
> ----- "Wichert Akkerman" <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> wrote:
> > > I hope the board will react, but I suspect we'll be told we need 21
> > > members or a board member or rep to make the request. So far we are
> > > two... who else wants to ask for a date and plan? Sign here...
> >
> > I'll sign up for that demand.
>
> I'll be 1 of 21 as well.

Although SPI do not currently hold any funds for OpenVAS. I would like to add
my name to the list. (As an aside we're still waiting to find out if SPI can
act as holders for prize money for a plugin development competition we're
running.)

Tim
--
Tim Brown
<mailto:spi(at)machine(dot)org(dot)uk>
<http://www.machine.org.uk/>

Tim Brown wrote:

> Although SPI do not currently hold any funds for OpenVAS. I would like to add
> my name to the list. (As an aside we're still waiting to find out if SPI can
> act as holders for prize money for a plugin development competition we're
> running.)

Unless there is something I don't know about, OpenVAS is an active SPI
project. There is nothing stopping you from using SPI to deal with your
development competition.

Joshua D. Drake

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Tim Brown wrote:
>
> > Although SPI do not currently hold any funds for OpenVAS. I would like to add
> > my name to the list. (As an aside we're still waiting to find out if SPI can
> > act as holders for prize money for a plugin development competition we're
> > running.)
>
> Unless there is something I don't know about, OpenVAS is an active SPI
> project. There is nothing stopping you from using SPI to deal with your
> development competition.

I'm waiting to get a legal and accounting opinion on whether SPI can
host this development competition. There are specific rules that a
501(c)(3) must follow and we don't want to jeopardize our status by
breaking those rules.

--
----------------------------
Michael Schultheiss
E-mail: schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Previously Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > Tim Brown wrote:
> >
> > > Although SPI do not currently hold any funds for OpenVAS. I would like to add
> > > my name to the list. (As an aside we're still waiting to find out if SPI can
> > > act as holders for prize money for a plugin development competition we're
> > > running.)
> >
> > Unless there is something I don't know about, OpenVAS is an active SPI
> > project. There is nothing stopping you from using SPI to deal with your
> > development competition.
>
> I'm waiting to get a legal and accounting opinion on whether SPI can
> host this development competition. There are specific rules that a
> 501(c)(3) must follow and we don't want to jeopardize our status by
> breaking those rules.

When were those requests submitted to SPI's legal and financal advisors?
Surely they must be able to answer such a question quickly?

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 04:39:26PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:

> Surely they must be able to answer such a question quickly?

There are many questions one might have expected to be easily
answerable, that turn out to take years to answer. Don't plan on
quick answers from SPI, is my experience.

A

--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs(at)commandprompt(dot)com
+1 503 667 4564 x104
http://www.commandprompt.com/

Previously Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 04:39:26PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>
> > Surely they must be able to answer such a question quickly?
>
> There are many questions one might have expected to be easily
> answerable, that turn out to take years to answer. Don't plan on
> quick answers from SPI, is my experience.

The experience from my SPI board days a long time ago is that advisors
are normally very fast, but that it can take a very long time for the
board to actually decide to ask them a question instead of trying to
figure it out themselves. Hence my question when this question was
passed on to them.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 05:20:09PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> The experience from my SPI board days a long time ago is that advisors
> are normally very fast, but that it can take a very long time for the
> board to actually decide to ask them a question instead of trying to
> figure it out themselves. Hence my question when this question was
> passed on to them.

I've seen SPI's counsel be very slow in past times to give legal advice even
after we ask them questions. We've added the SFLC as an additional legal
counsel to fix this problem, but at the moment our lawyer there is recovering
from major surgery and so is temporarily not available.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Previously Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 05:20:09PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > The experience from my SPI board days a long time ago is that advisors
> > are normally very fast, but that it can take a very long time for the
> > board to actually decide to ask them a question instead of trying to
> > figure it out themselves. Hence my question when this question was
> > passed on to them.
>
> I've seen SPI's counsel be very slow in past times to give legal advice even
> after we ask them questions. We've added the SFLC as an additional legal
> counsel to fix this problem, but at the moment our lawyer there is recovering
> from major surgery and so is temporarily not available.

Can we ask counsel for an ETA on an answer?

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

On Friday 26 September 2008 16:41:12 Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 05:20:09PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > > The experience from my SPI board days a long time ago is that advisors
> > > are normally very fast, but that it can take a very long time for the
> > > board to actually decide to ask them a question instead of trying to
> > > figure it out themselves. Hence my question when this question was
> > > passed on to them.
> >
> > I've seen SPI's counsel be very slow in past times to give legal advice
> > even after we ask them questions. We've added the SFLC as an additional
> > legal counsel to fix this problem, but at the moment our lawyer there is
> > recovering from major surgery and so is temporarily not available.
>
> Can we ask counsel for an ETA on an answer?

Firstly, apologies for dropping a grenade but I thought it was relevant in the
context of treasurer interactions with member projects. It isn't a problem
in this case if the answer is that SPI are waiting on legal advice but I
wanted to guage whether a response would be forthcoming. To be fair Michael
said as much in an IRC conversation some weeks back, but there was no
official communication to this effect.

My email to treasurer(at)spi-inc(dot)org identified by message ID
200807241929(dot)39739(dot)timb(at)nth-dimension(dot)org(dot)uk was sent on Thursday, 24th July
2008 at 19:29:35 +0100.

With respect to getting an ETA, that would be very useful as it will allow
myself and the others making donations towards to prize money to guage
whether we need to make alternate arrangements. As I have already said to
Michael there are at least 2 legal entities this side of the pond that could
handle it, but as they are "for profit" it makes things interesting from a
tax perspective.

There an additional question of how to handle any money that is not allocated
as prize money. If we handle this through SPI, could it potentially be
earmarked for further use by OpenVAS at some later stage (for example we have
occasional developer conferences)?

If the legal folk need further information about the competition, they can be
pointed at
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:oUAaOGPQKDsJ:www.openvas.org/openvas-contest.html+openvas+competition&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1.
The original is currently down as our hosts Intevation (who are also involved
in the OpenVAS project) are moving office today.

Cheers,
Tim
--
Tim Brown
<mailto:spi(at)machine(dot)org(dot)uk>
<http://www.machine.org.uk/>

All,

> Lets wait for the deadline of Wednesday, 1. October first. From what I
> know and can read Michael is *very* actively working for that and I
> trust him to get this issue done in a way that will also help future
> reports. (Read his mail :) ).

Current status is that we're up to date on checks, Click & Pledge CC,
and expenses. We're currently doing manual entry of Network4Good and
Paysimple*, as neither vendor seems capable of producing a report which
is automatically importable. Then we need to sanity-check everything.

--Josh

(*=look for a future suggestion that we abandon Paysimple as a bad job)

Tim Brown wrote:
> Firstly, apologies for dropping a grenade but I thought it was
> relevant in the context of treasurer interactions with member
> projects. It isn't a problem in this case if the answer is that SPI
> are waiting on legal advice but I wanted to guage whether a response
> would be forthcoming. To be fair Michael said as much in an IRC
> conversation some weeks back, but there was no official communication
> to this effect.

I apologize for the lack of official communication. I was unable to
find my initial request to the legal and financial advisors in my sent
mail so I redrafted the request and added a request for an ETA of a
response if they must do further research. I'll get back to you as soon
as I hear back from the advisors.

> There an additional question of how to handle any money that is not
> allocated as prize money. If we handle this through SPI, could it
> potentially be earmarked for further use by OpenVAS at some later
> stage (for example we have occasional developer conferences)?

Money that is not allocated as prize money should be able to be
earmarked for future OpenVAS with little difficulty.

--
----------------------------
Michael Schultheiss
E-mail: schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Tim,

> There an additional question of how to handle any money that is not allocated
> as prize money. If we handle this through SPI, could it potentially be
> earmarked for further use by OpenVAS at some later stage (for example we have
> occasional developer conferences)?

One issue with this: you *must* tell your prize donors that you intend
to use surplus funds for general OpenVAS expenses. Donor intent is
protected by law in the US.

I'd comment on the contest rules, but I've been completely unable to
access them online.

--Josh

Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> I apologize for the lack of official communication. I was unable to
> find my initial request to the legal and financial advisors in my sent
> mail so I redrafted the request and added a request for an ETA of a
> response if they must do further research. I'll get back to you as soon
> as I hear back from the advisors.

The CPA said he would look into this and get back to me on Monday,
September 29, 2008.

--
----------------------------
Michael Schultheiss
E-mail: schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org

On Friday 26 September 2008 18:48:10 Josh Berkus wrote:

> One issue with this: you *must* tell your prize donors that you intend
> to use surplus funds for general OpenVAS expenses. Donor intent is
> protected by law in the US.

*nod*. Well, since one of the prize donors is me, I can say categorically
that if my donation isn't allocated as part of a prize that I will place it
with SPI for use at some undetermined point in the future.

I suspect this is a conversation I will be having with the various donors
after the competition has closed and that each will ultimately take their own
view on what they wish to do.

> I'd comment on the contest rules, but I've been completely unable to
> access them online.

Back now.. http://www.openvas.org/openvas-contest.html.

Cheers,
Tim
--
Tim Brown
<mailto:spi(at)machine(dot)org(dot)uk>
<http://www.machine.org.uk/>

On Friday 26 September 2008 19:39:46 Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> > I apologize for the lack of official communication. I was unable to
> > find my initial request to the legal and financial advisors in my sent
> > mail so I redrafted the request and added a request for an ETA of a
> > response if they must do further research. I'll get back to you as soon
> > as I hear back from the advisors.
>
> The CPA said he would look into this and get back to me on Monday,
> September 29, 2008.

Michael,

Any update on this?

Cheers,
Tim
--
Tim Brown
<mailto:spi(at)machine(dot)org(dot)uk>
<http://www.machine.org.uk/>

Tim Brown wrote:
> On Friday 26 September 2008 19:39:46 Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> > Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> > > I apologize for the lack of official communication. I was unable to
> > > find my initial request to the legal and financial advisors in my sent
> > > mail so I redrafted the request and added a request for an ETA of a
> > > response if they must do further research. I'll get back to you as soon
> > > as I hear back from the advisors.
> >
> > The CPA said he would look into this and get back to me on Monday,
> > September 29, 2008.
>
> Michael,
>
> Any update on this?

I haven't yet heard back from the CPA. Our attorney also said he would
research the issues and get back to me this week. I'll ask them for a
status update.

--
----------------------------
Michael Schultheiss
E-mail: schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Michael Schultheiss <schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org> wrote:
> I haven't yet heard back from the CPA. Our attorney also said he would
> research the issues and get back to me this week. I'll ask them for a
> status update.

It looks like quite a few of the board's requests get delayed waiting
for the experts to reply. Maybe it just looks like that, though: are
the board monitoring how often it happens, so SPI knows when to praise
them for excellent service in the annual report, or when to try
finding more||different experts?

Thanks,
--
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237

Previously Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> Tim Brown wrote:
> > On Friday 26 September 2008 19:39:46 Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> > > Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> > > > I apologize for the lack of official communication. I was unable to
> > > > find my initial request to the legal and financial advisors in my sent
> > > > mail so I redrafted the request and added a request for an ETA of a
> > > > response if they must do further research. I'll get back to you as soon
> > > > as I hear back from the advisors.
> > >
> > > The CPA said he would look into this and get back to me on Monday,
> > > September 29, 2008.
> >
> > Michael,
> >
> > Any update on this?
>
> I haven't yet heard back from the CPA. Our attorney also said he would
> research the issues and get back to me this week. I'll ask them for a
> status update.

That was last Thursday. Did we get or set a new deadline?

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 09:59 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> Michael Schultheiss <schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org> wrote:
> > I haven't yet heard back from the CPA. Our attorney also said he would
> > research the issues and get back to me this week. I'll ask them for a
> > status update.
>
> It looks like quite a few of the board's requests get delayed waiting
> for the experts to reply. Maybe it just looks like that, though: are
> the board monitoring how often it happens, so SPI knows when to praise
> them for excellent service in the annual report, or when to try
> finding more||different experts?

No, I don't believe we've ever done anything like trying to keep stats
on the performance of our pro-bono legal advisors. However, we have
reacted when we realized things weren't going well at various times in
the past, including changing our accounting firm, adding the SFLC folks
to our pool of resources, etc.

It certainly makes sense that as we continue to grow and provide
assistance for more projects, that we need to continue to evolve our
practices and review our "vendor" relationships periodically. The step
Michael has already described of moving to pay for more bookkeeping
services is likely to be our next such change.

Bdale

Tim Brown wrote:
> On Friday 26 September 2008 19:39:46 Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> > Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> > > I apologize for the lack of official communication. I was unable to
> > > find my initial request to the legal and financial advisors in my sent
> > > mail so I redrafted the request and added a request for an ETA of a
> > > response if they must do further research. I'll get back to you as soon
> > > as I hear back from the advisors.
> >
> > The CPA said he would look into this and get back to me on Monday,
> > September 29, 2008.
>
> Michael,
>
> Any update on this?

I finally heard back from the CPA. He said there should be no problem
for SPI to hold the funds for this competition.

--
----------------------------
Michael Schultheiss
E-mail: schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org

On Monday 13 October 2008 18:41:13 Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> Tim Brown wrote:
> > On Friday 26 September 2008 19:39:46 Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> > > Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> > > > I apologize for the lack of official communication. I was unable to
> > > > find my initial request to the legal and financial advisors in my
> > > > sent mail so I redrafted the request and added a request for an ETA
> > > > of a response if they must do further research. I'll get back to you
> > > > as soon as I hear back from the advisors.
> > >
> > > The CPA said he would look into this and get back to me on Monday,
> > > September 29, 2008.
> >
> > Michael,
> >
> > Any update on this?
>
> I finally heard back from the CPA. He said there should be no problem
> for SPI to hold the funds for this competition.

Thanks Michael!
--
Tim Brown
<mailto:timb(at)nth-dimension(dot)org(dot)uk>
<http://www.nth-dimension.org.uk/>