SPI's wounded state of affairs

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Jan 08, 2002 at 09:20:43PM -0500, Branden Robinson / SPI Treasurer wrote:
[lots of very sad story deleted]
> I also wrote a mission statement for myself, and posted it to the SPI
> board mailing list.  You folks should see it as well.

Glad to see after far to long that someone has decided to take this
position seriously, thanks Branden!

> Debian specifically will need to re-establish contact with businesses
> that have, in the past, made cash donations to SPI on a regular basis.
> To my knowledge, there have been no deposits made to SPI's account in
> months and I don't know that any CD vendors, etc. are still actually
> attempting to send SPI donation checks.  However, my information is
> still pretty incomplete and I expect to learn more over the next month
> or so.
I have a database that holds all Debian CD vendors on our list.  There
are 78 of them that have said they can contribute funds to Debian.  9 of
those are hidden, which means they're probably not even selling Debian
CDs anymore.

I can give you or someone this list, or if you like I can email them.
What worries me is that we (Debian webmasters) often get emails from
vendors saying how do we contribute and I point them to spi or tell
them to email the treasurer :/  I wonder how many replies everyone got
:(

In you spare few seconds, you might like to think about wether or not
you might take Euros.  Any other currency you probably wouldn't bother,
but there wil be a fair few people with Euros.  Even if that means 
keeping them in a box and converting them once a year or so.

BTW, this is what a vendor gets if they ask about donations on the
webmaster at debian.org alias:

How do I contribute funds to Debian?
------------------------------------

Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is our non-profit legal umbrella for
the Debian Project.  You can find out information about donations at
http://www.spi-inc.org/donations  Please make sure your mark your donations
as for Debian (if that's where they're supposed to go) as SPI looks after
more than just Debian.

That looks ok to me, if you have suggestions for something different let 
me know.

  - Craig

-- 
Craig Small VK2XLZ  GnuPG:1C1B D893 1418 2AF4 45EE  95CB C76C E5AC 12CA DFA5
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