Election comments

This is a formal announcement that voting for the 2006 Board member
election has begun.

Voting is only open to contributing members.

To vote, please go to:

http://members.spi-inc.org/vote/

Select the 2006 board election, and cast your ballot.

You can change your ballot as many times as you want until the close of
voting at the end of July 28th, 2006.

For full information about this election, including the names and
platforms of the candidates and other related information, please see:

http://www.spi-inc.org/secretary/votes/vote5/

Results will be announced on July 29th (or July 30th - I will be out of
town the 29th). The officers will be selected at the next board meeting on
August 1st, 2006.

---
David Graham, SPI Secretary
cdlu(at)spi-inc(dot)org D5F45889

Hi,

I realise it's not really traditional, but I just wanted to offer a
couple of comments on the current board election for people to consider.

SPI has been in the difficult position for a while of having two fairly
opposing views of its purpose: whether to just be a minimal piece of
legal infrastructure for Debian, or to use its charity status to support a
broader range of free-software-related projects within the US and North
America generally.

My view is that SPI is more likely to be successful by being actively
involved with other organisations, and sharing the workload of running
a 501(c)3 organisation with other free software groups, and benefitting
from any clever ideas from those groups directly.

That leads me to think that having Josh Berkus move from being
PostgreSQL's liason with SPI to membership on the board itself will be a
good step in broadening SPI's perspective. If elected, Josh will be only
the second SPI board member who is not a Debian developer, following
the lead of David Graham (OFTC network operations committee chair, and
SPI secretary). Since April, I've had the opportunity to watch Josh's
interaction with the board on the spi-board list, and he's seemed to
establish an effective working relationship, and dealt with the challenges
in running the PostgreSQL conference with SPI. Given that experience, and
the motivation from being involved with two SPI projects (Open Voting and
PostgreSQL), and the support of his employer in making the commitment,
I think Josh will be an asset to the SPI board and, because of that,
an asset to Debian.

As far as the treasury is concerned, from what I have seen Jimmy
and Branden have managed to get SPI to the point where SPI has been
a useful and prompt resource in working around problems related to
DebConf's expenses and reimbursements, instead of a cause of them. The
amount of work involved in that shouldn't be underestimated, and I don't
think the opportunity to give both Jimmy and Branden a break from those
responsibilities by passing them on to someone as clearly motivated as
Josh should be missed.

One difficulty we have had recently as SPI grows beyond Debian is that
of differences in opinion between the leadership of Debian and SPI --
that's been most obvious in the Java debate [0], but has also come up in
other areas, such as in how DebConf was run and what legal liability might
result from that for the SPI board. If SPI is going to continue standing
for more than Debian, as I think it should, more of those differences of
opinion are going to arise, and I think it will be important that the
SPI board is willing to stand up for itself in those cases, and find
ways to resolve them.

This is the point that I'd been intending to endorse John Goerzen's
re-election to the board, but unfortunately he's decided to not run
this year. So instead I'd like to thank John for the years of service
he's given to SPI to date, as a board member, as SPI Vice-President and
as SPI President, and encourage the board to follow John's example of
willingness both to take on controversial issues, to do so in public
where SPI's membership can follow what's going on, and to keep working
to find resolutions for the problems they encounter. Thanks, John.

With three former DPLs remaining on the board no matter what, though,
I don't think there should be a lack of that sort of gumption available
over the next year, though. :)

Cheers,
aj (Debian Project Leader, but representing only himself here)

[0] http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/07/047204

Anthony,

> The
> amount of work involved in that shouldn't be underestimated, and I don't
> think the opportunity to give both Jimmy and Branden a break from those
> responsibilities by passing them on to someone as clearly motivated as
> Josh should be missed.

Thank you for the vote of support. One clairfication, though ... Branden will
be continuing as Assistant Treasurer. Since he is the only one physically
near our bank, his help is indispensable.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Project
Core Team Member
(any opinions expressed are my own)

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Thank you for the vote of support. One clairfication, though ...
> Branden will be continuing as Assistant Treasurer. Since he is the
> only one physically near our bank, his help is indispensable.

FWIW, I'm also in Indianapolis (where SPI's bank is) and could help out
should Branden ever want to divulge himself of Assistant Treasurer
status.

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

Michael Schultheiss wrote:
> Josh Berkus wrote:
> > Thank you for the vote of support. One clairfication, though ...
> > Branden will be continuing as Assistant Treasurer. Since he is the
> > only one physically near our bank, his help is indispensable.
>
> FWIW, I'm also in Indianapolis (where SPI's bank is) and could help out
> should Branden ever want to divulge himself of Assistant Treasurer
> status.

s/divulge/divest/

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

On Sat, Jul 15, 2006 at 05:54:57PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> Hi,

AJ, thank you for these eloquent remarks. You've made a lot of good
points, and I wish I had realized some of them back during the Java
debate.

I think SPI is one of the least understood gifts Debian has given to the
community, and I share your hope that it is useful not just to Debian
but to a widening set of Free Software projects. And I think Debian
also reaps benefits from this -- there's a technical relationship
between Debian and most (all?) of the SPI member projects as well.

> amount of work involved in that shouldn't be underestimated, and I don't
> think the opportunity to give both Jimmy and Branden a break from those
> responsibilities by passing them on to someone as clearly motivated as
> Josh should be missed.

Well said.

> This is the point that I'd been intending to endorse John Goerzen's
> re-election to the board, but unfortunately he's decided to not run
> this year. So instead I'd like to thank John for the years of service
> he's given to SPI to date, as a board member, as SPI Vice-President and
> as SPI President, and encourage the board to follow John's example of
> willingness both to take on controversial issues, to do so in public
> where SPI's membership can follow what's going on, and to keep working
> to find resolutions for the problems they encounter. Thanks, John.

Thank you very much for those kind words. It means a lot to hear that
from you, and it is truly appreciated.

I have enjoyed being involved with SPI, and I don't intend to stop that.
Mako summed up a lot of my thoughts on the matter quite well. My wife
and I are also expecting our first baby in three months, and we're
renovating an old farmhouse, so I was concerned about the amount of time
I'd have for SPI.

Plus, there's some fatigue after being president of SPI. I'm sure you
can identify with that already ;-)

And I said this very briefly at the last meeting, but I should say it
again more publically:

THANKS so much to all of you that have supported me as president these
past couple of years, with your comments, suggestions, criticisms, and
volunteering to help. There is no training for that job, and I am
especially grateful for everyone's patience.

There are a number of fine candidates for the board, and I have every
faith that the next board and officers of SPI will accomplish much.

And AJ, thanks also for being so involved in SPI and giving it a lot of
thought.

-- John