Re: Proposed resolution 1998-12-13.mgs.1: Donations to SPI

I see that new discussion came up covering what I tried to start
back in december. In order to put some oil in the chains here
is what I proposed last year.

Regards,

Joey

Martin Schulze wrote on Sun, Dec 13, 1998:
> This is a proposed resolution. I'd like to receive comments on it
> first.
>
> Resolution 1998-12-13.mgs.1: Donations to SPI
>
> Resolution wrt. donations and dedications
>
> One goal of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (abbrev: SPI) is to
> support free projects and to provide services to them at no cost.
> These services basically include IP-based services such as webspace,
> FTP space, mailing lists, nameserver maintenance, access to
> development machines of various architectures, network accessable cvs
> repositories etc.
>
> In order to provide these services projects SPI needs to receive
> donations from organizations that want to help the free software
> community but don't wish to go into details with affiliated projects.
>
> SPI highly appreciates such donations, dedicated machines and
> bandwidth and will be pleased to organize them, advertize them as well
> as the donator and make them useful for free projects.. Since network
> bandwidth is an expensive asset it is even more welcome.
>
> In contrary to a donation ownership of a dedicated item remains at the
> original owner. Nonetheless the owner may not retract the dedication
> at any time without negotiation with SPI. This resolution covers the
> proper framework.
>
> 1. Software in the Public Interest appreciates any donation
> (bandwidth, hardware, service, manpower, money etc.) and
> dedication (hardware, bandwidth, manpower etc.).
>
> 2. Any donation or dedication provided to SPI will be given
> appropriate credit. It will be recorded on a proper page within
> the webspace of SPI (http://www.spi-inc.org/). The record will
> contain a link to the donator. If requested it will also contain
> a detailed list of donations and dedications made by this
> organization or individual. If the donator wishes to remain
> unknown it will not be recorded publically.
>
> 3. SPI is allowed to use the donated or dedicated hardware, bandwidth
> or manpower for issues SPI considers valuable with regard to the
> bylaws of SPI. This covers free projects and services provided to
> them.
>
> 4. With regard to donated bandwidth, which is a valuable asset, SPI
> will carry some of its own machines to this location in order to
> provide services if not requested otherwise.
>
> If SPI was given an upper bound of bandwidth to use SPI will try
> its best to stay beneath this limit. It will move services away
> or restrict them if needed. At no time shall SPI hurt the
> donating organization by excessive use of the contribution which
> is also used by the donating organization (i.e. bandwidth,
> partially used machines, dedicated manpower etc.).
>
> In order to manage the donation SPI requires the donating
> organization to name a real person as administrational contact and
> a real person as official technical contact. SPI requires to
> receive the real name, email address and phone number (work phone
> is sufficient though).
>
> In case of donated bandwidth SPI also requires to be given a
> contact phone number at the donating organization in order to
> resolve urgent issues (e.g. somebody to press the reset button
> after a crash if no admin is around).
>
> A representative of the donor may be subscribed to the
> administration mailing list if requested by the donor or
> admin/tech contact. This will provide additional information
> about administrational tasks to the network of machines, projects,
> services and locations.
>
> 5. In case of dedicated hardware the administration team of SPI will
> take over maintenance as long as it can be done remotely. Some
> special tasks (such as recovering after a crash, applying new
> hardware etc.) still needs a local person though.
>
> If dedicated hardware is not bound to a certain location SPI will
> ship it to a place where it will be most helpful for the community
> on the expense of SPI if requested.
>
> If dedicated hardware is bound to a certain location SPI will
> thankfully use and maintain it in order to provide services
> through it.
>
> 6. Since SPI and affiliated projects will (at least partially) depend
> on donations and dedication it is not acceptable that this
> donation or dedication may be terminated at any time. This could
> cause major problems for associated projects.
>
> Thus terminating such a donation or dedication entirely needs a
> piece of notice of at least four weeks. SPI requests to be shown
> a reason for termination. SPI will move services to other
> machines and locations and ask ship their own machines to a
> different location.
>
> The same period of notice is required if the upper bound of
> donated bandwidth is subject to change to less than half of the
> current limit. SPI needs to be able to react and reorder projects
> and resources.
>
> This does not affect decreasing the upper limit of bandwidth if
> more than 50% are left over.
>
> Regards,
>
> Joey
>
> --
> Linux - the choice of a GNU generation
>
> Please always Cc to me when answering on the lists.

--
Unix is user friendly ... It's just picky about its friends.

Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.

Previously Martin Schulze wrote:
> 6. Since SPI and affiliated projects will (at least partially) depend
> on donations and dedication it is not acceptable that this
> donation or dedication may be terminated at any time. This could
> cause major problems for associated projects.

I think you need a loophole in here that in some situations a donator
can require immediate termination. For example if something weird
happens and the donator might get into legal problems or thinks that
SPI abuses the donations.

I also miss the ability to earmark donations for a specific goal. A
donator should be able to say for example `I have this listserver you
can use, but only for security-related projects', or any other possible
restriction. Without this it is also impossible to make a donation
specifically for a single SPI project, such as Debian.

Wichert.

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