Logs for informal meeting

Tue May 6 23:34:22 UTC 2003

Due to a slight lack of quorum and an agenda that was pretty much
empty todays meeting was an informal one.

Wichert.

21:01 <wiggy> Tue,  6 May 2003 21:01:09 +0200
21:01 <wiggy> since we don't have quorum and don't have anything to decide I suggest we make this an informal meeting
21:01 <mako> i believe i am
21:01 <mako> in fact i am
21:02 <wiggy> and since nobody is objecting, lets just do that
21:02 <wiggy> so lets start with a rollcall
21:02 <wiggy> if you already stated your name, please do so again so it's logged
21:02 <wiggy> <- Wichert Akkerman
21:03 <BrucePerens> Bruce Perens
21:03 <aes> Andrew Sobala
21:03 <dieman> <- Scott Dier
21:03 <CosmicRay> John Goerzen
21:03 <ElectricElf> <- David B. Harris
21:03 <cpufreak> Andrew Mulholland
21:03 <mako> <- Benjamin Mako Hill
21:03 <cts> Christian Steigies
21:03 <ibid> Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho
21:04 <wiggy> ok, lets move on to the first thing
21:04 <wiggy> the OFTC intro from cpufreak
21:04 <BrucePerens> Please.
21:04 <wiggy> cpufreak, the floor is all yours
21:04 <cpufreak> heh, ok
21:04 <cpufreak> well I was voted at the Recent OFTc elections to take control of the baton which is the charing of the Network operations commitee of OFTC,
21:04 <cpufreak> which is of course the network upon which this meeting is taking place :)
21:05 <cpufreak> I'm not sure if I need to run through a background of OFTC, so I'll summarise briefly.
21:05 <cpufreak> my aims for this session of OFTC is to try and continue the excellent job of my predessor - David Graham (cdlu) - and work toward fufilling at least some of our non-irc related goals.
21:06 <cpufreak> In regards the IRC network, itw growing fairly steadily, and through the sponsorship of some excellent servers,
21:06 <cpufreak> is proving to be pretty stable, especially with the EU core.
21:06 <cpufreak> as for a quick introduction of myself: I'm a 21 year old Sys/Net Admin, working in London, who grew up on Belfast, Northern Ireland :)
21:06 <cpufreak> any questions? 
21:07 <wiggy> <subliminal message>and more ipv6 of course!</note>
21:07 <mako>  cpufreak: sure.. want to elaborate on non-irc related goals?
21:07 <cpufreak> wiggy: sure, one of the servers, I'm sponsoring (infrared.oftc.net) is ipv6ified :)
21:08 -:- cdlu_gprs [cdlu at spoon.pkl.net] has joined #spi
21:08 <cpufreak> mako: we wish to offer a worthwhile alternative to some of the established projects - like sourceforge -with our own twist on things, we're currently working alongside tuxfamily.org to see if a merger in that way would prove beneficial to both parties..
21:09 <cdlu_gprs> David Graham SPI Contrib. member, kinda present. :) </cdlu>
21:09 <cpufreak> any other questions about oftc? :)
21:09 -:- Joey [~joey at 195.124.48.78] has joined #spi
21:10 -:- mode/#spi [+o Joey] by ChanServ
21:10 <wiggy> if not, lets move on to ean's topic
21:10 <Joey> Do we have a meeting already?
21:10 <wiggy> informal meeting only due to lack of quorum and tiny agenda
21:10 <mako> Joey: it's informal.. so sorta
21:11 <Joey> Ok.
21:11 <BrucePerens> I'd like to say welcome, and thanks, to the OFTC folks before moving on. Thanks! That's all.
21:11 <Joey> I was just about cursing that nobody ack'ed the 19UTC time.
21:11 <cpufreak> http://bash.sh/~ahmulh/spi.txt 
21:11 <cpufreak> Joey: ^^^ thats what happened so far.
21:12 <wiggy> schuessi: your turn
21:13 <BrucePerens> Uh-oh. Did Ean get another of those urgent coffee breaks :-)
21:14 <wiggy>  ok, lets swap
21:14 <wiggy> cosmicray wanted to say something about the bylaws process
21:14 <wiggy> john?
21:14 <CosmicRay> Yes.
21:14 <CosmicRay> we are having a problem with apathy
21:15 <CosmicRay> david graham and I are participating regularly, but some people aren't
21:15 <CosmicRay> manoj has been silent for about 1.5 months now
21:15 <BrucePerens> That's not like him :-)
21:15 <RoUS> 
21:15 <CosmicRay> which kinda hurts us since he's the one that had a lot of opinions on some important issues
21:16 <CosmicRay> I'm not sure if there's a question in here anywhere, but any suggestions for how to move things forward more rapidly would be welcome.
21:16 <wiggy> perhaps a status update on spi-announce would help?
21:16 <BrucePerens> How about a short and sweet proposal, to be presented to the board. That usually rouses people, they want to get in before it's too late.
21:16 <wiggy> which also asks for people to review what has been done so far
21:17 <Joey> cpufreak: thanks
21:17 <cpufreak> Joey: np
21:17 <CosmicRay> wiggy: I'd be happy to do that.
21:17 <wiggy> have you made good progress so far?
21:17 <CosmicRay> BrucePerens: I've tried mailing Manoj privately in case he got unsubscribed somehow, but got no reply
21:17 <CosmicRay> I'd say we have, but we're definately behind schedule
21:18 <CosmicRay> we've got a status page up...
21:18 <CosmicRay> let me rustle up that URL
21:18 <CosmicRay> http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/bylaws/status.html
21:18 <BrucePerens> CosmicRay: Manoj has just been after us asking if we'd enforce the Debian copyright on Trusted Debian. Which is of course premature and not nice for us to do. But it shows he's awake.
21:19 <BrucePerens> Trademark, not copyright.
21:19 <CosmicRay> In brief, we have come up with a master list of items to be discussed already, as well as procedures for handling them.
21:19 <CosmicRay> We've drawn up proposals for election of board members by membership and recall of board members
21:19 <CosmicRay> we're sifting through the qourum issue right now, and electronic meetings ar enext
21:20 <CosmicRay> those were some of Manoj's pet issues, and while I have some opinions on them, I lack the historical insight that he has
21:20 <CosmicRay> so if anyone else that's on the board wants to participate in the discussion, you're welcome to do so
21:20 <wiggy> I'm hoping a status update on spi-announce will accomplish that
21:21 <CosmicRay> ok, I'll post something today.
21:21 <BrucePerens> Would that I had time, sorry. But I think if you get what you have done in condition that it can be read widely, that will stir up debate.
21:21 <CosmicRay> david graham has suggested carrying some discussion on -general
21:22 <CosmicRay> so more people see it and respond
21:22 <BrucePerens> That would work.
21:22 <CosmicRay> what do you think?
21:22 <mako> want to mention, if only for te logs, how to join that discussion?
21:22 <CosmicRay> It's being carried out on the spi-bylaws list; for info, see http://lists.spi-inc.org/
21:22 <CosmicRay> archives are available from that page as well.
21:23 <mako> CosmicRay: great
21:24 <wiggy> has ean returned yet?
21:24 <CosmicRay> [continuing since nobody else is] One particular question I have for the board is this: the existing bylaws expect quarterly meetings with more committees than we have.
21:24 <CosmicRay> Is this an arrangement the board is happy with?
21:24 <BrucePerens> I'll ring Ean's phone.
21:25 <wiggy> we have 4 or 5 committees at the moment
21:25 <CosmicRay> I should have said, more work done by committee
21:25 <wiggy> I think we're lacking a list of committees on the webpages though
21:26 <CosmicRay> one of my thoughts is that if we return to quarterly meetings, having pushed more work onto committees, the quorum issue may become a lot less important.
21:26 <CosmicRay> but I have no feel if that's a direction people would like to go
21:26 <wiggy> I'm not sure I agree
21:26 <wiggy> it always seems like a lot happens just before and after meetings
21:26 <wiggy> and much less at other times
21:26 <wiggy> I fear fewer meetings will not change that
21:26 <mako> CosmicRay: of course, it might just make missing quorum a much bigger deal. :-/
21:26 <schuessi> nuts!
21:27 <schuessi> back.
21:27 <CosmicRay> ok, I'll take it offline, thanks wiggy.
21:27 <BrucePerens> -Every month I spend another dime to wake you up.
21:27 <schuessi> BrucePerens: heh... sorry.
21:27 <BrucePerens> NP
21:27 * schuessi/#spi gets rid of his call.
21:28 <dieman> BrucePerens: i thought you had a vonage phone :)
21:28 <schuessi> ok...
21:28 <mako> CosmicRay: i like the idea of committees. but personally  as a board member w/o a lot of extra stuff on my plate, i don't feel like taking up too much time is a problem
21:28 <BrucePerens> I got rid of it. It doesn't work very well because my internet provider provides no priority for voice packets.
21:28 <dieman> BrucePerens: ahh, 'k.
21:29 <schuessi> oh yes...
21:29 <schuessi> Ean Schuessler
21:29 <wiggy> schuessi: your turn as well for some accounting goodies
21:29 <schuessi> Right.
21:30 <schuessi> At Brainfood we have a bookkeeper who does the day to day entry of checks, invoices, etc.
21:30 <schuessi> Then we have an accounting firm that takes everything from the bookkeeper and does our taxes and so-forth.
21:31 <schuessi> I talked to our accountant about how to handle the books of a non-profit and laid out how much activity we tend to have.
21:31 <schuessi> She said she knew of a woman who did mostly this kind of work and said she would put a call in to her.
21:31 <schuessi> Also, I talked to our bookkeeper about handling the SPI stuff.
21:32 <schuessi> I could just have her do it, but I think it would be better if we paid her something to do it in her spare time.
21:32 <schuessi> That is pretty much all the progress I have made.
21:32 <wiggy> I think anything that would get our bookkeeping in better shape is very welcome
21:33 <wiggy> also, it would be good if we got better coordination with ffis
21:33 <schuessi> Hopefully I will get a call from the person my accountant knows in the next day or so.
21:33 <schuessi> ffis?
21:33 <wiggy> the german thing, which also has funds for debian
21:33 <schuessi> Oh, I did have one other thing...
21:33 <wiggy> not sure if they have any spi donations
21:33 <schuessi> Regarding donations...
21:34 <schuessi> I've been using Wells Fargo's transaction processing service and its a pretty good deal.
21:34 <schuessi> It costs about $40 a month and like $150 to set up.
21:34 <wiggy> $40 flatfee, or do you have transaction costs as well?
21:34 <schuessi> I wrote integration for it with OFBiz.
21:35 <schuessi> I believe it is flat up to some number of transactions and then its a small fee.
21:35 <BrucePerens> I have Internet Week on the phone and will be gone for a while.
21:35 <schuessi> BP: ok.
21:35 <wiggy> I doubt SPI will get enough donations to warrant the monthly $40 p/m
21:35 <schuessi> I would be willing to set up an OFBiz install for SPI if we decide we want to do that.
21:36 <schuessi> wiggy: well, that's hard to say... we don't know what the demand is since we've never provided the service.
21:36 <mako> what about: https://www.groundspring.org/index_gs.cfm
21:36 <mako> iirc, they (used to be egrants i think) do stuff for small nonprofits
21:36 <wiggy> we discussed other options last year
21:37 <wiggy> which take a 3% transaction fee, which might be cheaper for us
21:37 <schuessi> that looks pretty good.
21:37 <wiggy> mako/schuessi: can you prepare a concrete proposal for this?
21:37 <schuessi> $15.00 a month.
21:38 <wiggy> with some numbers and what would be involved to set it up
21:38 <schuessi> yep.
21:38 <mako> small nonprofits i've worked with in the past used it
21:38 <wiggy> keeping in mind that purcel is already out of diskspace so we can't put large stuff on it
21:38 <wiggy> perhaps I should propose buying a new disk for purcel
21:38 <schuessi> wiggy: i've offered to put a new drive in there but I always got "no, no, we need an additional machine from someone else".
21:39 <wiggy> well
21:39 <wiggy> I would like to see another machine as well, since it's a single point of failure at the moment
21:39 <wiggy> but even if we do that I would love to see more diskspace in purcel
21:39 <wiggy> and honestly, I don't see us getting another machine soon 
21:39 <schuessi> well, do you want to buy a drive or should i buy one.
21:40 <wiggy> you're asking me if spi wants to buy a disk or is willing to accept a donated disk?
21:40 <mako> schuessi: we can get in touch after the meeting
21:40 <schuessi> ok.
21:40 <mako> wiggy: what sort of disk?
21:41 <wiggy> I would put it an IDE disk I think
21:41 <wiggy> s/an/in/
21:41 <wiggy> much cheaper, and scsi doesn't give us anything extra useful
21:41 <wiggy> and fasts disks don't make sense in a pII-350 anyway
21:42 <cpufreak> if its going to be anything important
21:42 <schuessi> What is left on the agenda? Anything?
21:42 <cpufreak> get two dissk and md them
21:42 <wiggy> cpufreak: good suggestion
21:42 <wiggy> schuessi: maybe we should both buy a disk and raid1 them :)
21:42 <schuessi> sure.
21:42 <wiggy> I'll drop a note on board since it'll have to be approved
21:42 <mako> BrucePerens: (away right)? want to say anything about trademark or is that handled?
21:43 <wiggy> bruce is away
21:43 <cpufreak> I'll ask my boss at my current job (xinitsystems.com  who sponsor debianplanet.org) if they can donate a disk.
21:43 <schuessi> can we just vote here?
21:43 <wiggy> schuessi: no quorum
21:43 <schuessi> ah... well, shite.
21:43 <wiggy> cpufreak: that would be appreciated
21:43 <schuessi> here I thought i was missing an official meeting.
21:43 <mako> schuessi: it's official (also officially informal)
21:44 <wiggy> mako: that's more a debian decision to make than a spi one
21:44 <wiggy> but I think debian should ask chris rourk for advice
21:44 <Joey> cpufreak, you're in the US or in the UK?
21:44 <cpufreak> I'm in the UK.
21:44 <cpufreak> at least I was last time I checked.
21:44 <mako> wiggy: ultimately, spi holds the trademark to debian no?
21:45 <Joey> mako could ask somebody who would like to donate to Debian if he would like to donate to SPI instead, I'd call that fair.
21:45 <wiggy> mako: spi holds it
21:45 <Joey> cpufreak: it may be more useful to mandate for a 2nd SPI machine in the UK than to purchase a disk in the UK and send it to the US
21:45 <wiggy> but debian manages it
21:45 <wiggy> we have hosting in the UK, but no machine for it
21:45 <schuessi> wiggy: one side note, Chris has been complaining about the time it takes him to "help SPI".
21:45 <cpufreak> hmmm
21:46 <schuessi> wiggy: I don't know what that means since we never have him do anything.
21:46 <wiggy> schuessi: recently?
21:46 <schuessi> wiggy: Yeah.
21:46 <cpufreak> wiggy: I'll see if I can do anything to help on that front, I have some bits and pieces lying around hardware wise.
21:46 <wiggy> strange, he hasn't been on spi-board for a while now
21:46 <schuessi> wiggy: Well, within the last few months.
21:46 <schuessi> wiggy: I think he's pissed that we haven't been sending over as much legal work.
21:46 <wiggy> Joey: I wonder.. could we perhaps get the I2000 that elmo was talking about?
21:47 <wiggy> schuessi: you mean real cases?
21:47 <schuessi> wiggy: contract work, etc.
21:47 <Joey> I don't think so, but you'd have to negotiate with elmo and taggert
21:47 <wiggy> schuessi: I'm not sure we can fix that
21:47 <schuessi> wiggy: we're feeling the economic downturn just like everyone else so we've been less religious about having the firm look at everything we sign.
21:47 <wiggy> it would be a shame to loose him
21:47 <schuessi> wiggy: nope.
21:48 <schuessi> wiggy: yep.
21:48 <BrucePerens> I'm back. Another question about SCO. Business week called earlier.
21:48 <wiggy> nice publicity
21:48 <schuessi> wiggy: unfortunately, I haven't seen the value in spending $500 to have them look at a Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement and say "yeah, that looks like a standard NDA".
21:49 <schuessi> wiggy: so i've just been signing things that don't look unusual.
21:49 * wiggy nods
21:50 <wiggy> do we have anything more to discuss?
21:50 <schuessi> not from me.
21:50 <wiggy> anyone else?
21:51 <wiggy> ok
21:51 <wiggy> lets adjourn!
21:51 <wiggy> next meeting will be at..
21:51 <wiggy> june 2
21:51 <schuessi> 3rd
21:51 <schuessi> right?
21:51 <wiggy> right, 3rd
21:51 * wiggy off to get some dessert
21:51 <wiggy> thanks everyone for attending
21:51 <schuessi> I'll get something together on the accounting and the donations...
21:52 * schuessi/#spi waves
21:52 <BrucePerens> Bye!
21:52 <mako> bye

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