What could a vibrant SPI could accomplish?

[Barak Pearlmutter]

I'd like to propose another thread of conversation for those who, like
me, don't find bylaws and quorums and minutes very interesting.

	      What could a vibrant SPI could accomplish?

Here are some concrete ideas.

 - There is increasing interest in Free Software within the scientific
   community, particularly in the field of bioinformatics.  See
   http://www.openinformatics.org/ for some details.  It is possible
   to get grants from govt agencies (NIH, NSF, DARPA, DOE) as well as
   private foundations (eg Welcome Trust, Sloan Foundation) for
   developing free scientific software.  However, this currently
   occurs almost solely within the structure of Universities, in large
   part because the proposal preparation and accounting services
   necessary to handle such grants is unavailable elsewhere.  If SPI
   could provide such services, it could encourage programmers outside
   the University structure to address this important issue of public
   policy, and effectively channel resources to the production of free
   scientific software.

 - The SPA (Software Publishers' Association) has an enormous PR
   effort, including posters in corporations and schools, quotes in
   newspapers, etc.  Reporters always try to put "balance" in their
   stories, and I would contend that they present one-sided stories
   spoon-fed to them by the SPA mainly because they do not know that
   there *is* another viewpoint, nor do they have a good
   point-of-contact.  It seems to me that if SPI had a press office,
   it would be able to ameliorate a good deal of the SPA's media
   efforts.

 - A set of positive SPI posters, designed to respond to SPA posters,
   might become "hits" in the sense of being posted on corporate
   bulletin boards, often in an underground fashion, in response to
   the posting of SPA posters and *especially* in reaction to SPA
   audits and threat letters.  SPI posters would naturally have
   positive messages about how free software isn't subject to piracy,
   how it engenders multiple support options, how important a source
   license is for enterprise-critical software, etc.

 - Imagine a non-threat SPI letter.  At first it looks like a nasty
   legal threat letter, but upon reading turns out to be quite the
   opposite!  At the end it mentions that corporations right now
   benefit enormously from free software, and suggests that donations
   to support free software are not only in their interest, but are
   also tax deductible.  So really the letter would be both
   educational and a donation solicitation, but with humor.

Anyway, these are off the top of my head and pretty rough.  But
they're the kind of things I think SPI could consider.

					--Barak.