Josh Berkus's platform on political activity, was: money handling

[MJ Ray]

I ask questions of Josh Berkus about political activity and
voting reform.  Please, other candidates reply too, if your
views are not clear from your manifestoes, or you want to.

Josh Berkus <josh at postgresql.org>
> The problem with engaging in any political activity is that it amounts to a 
> change of direction for SPI.  [...]

So it is right and proper that Bruce Perens should include swpat
in his campaign, to allow the membership to back him or not.
If elected, he will have a mandate which clearly includes this.

These strident statements against political activity puzzle me.
Are you promising to oppose all political activity if elected?
How does that tie up with your manifesto promise to "represent
the views of the community"?

> One needs only look at the recently slashdotted argument over the JVM in 
> Debian licensing to see that a large portion of the Debian community would 
> react strongly against any political initiatives originating from SPI.  The 

A significant portion of the Debian community seems willing
to ignore its constitutional agreements when they want (such
as directing donations to a private retailer instead of SPI),
so it seems rather hard to predict what they'd do.

> newer projects which joined probably also joined (I know PostgreSQL did) 
> under the understanding that SPI was there to support but not direct.

How is SPI doing something directing associated projects?  I thought
Bruce was promising he would work on software patents and seek SPI
support for it, not try to force PostgreSQL to work on swpat itself.
Should SPI work be blockable by any and every associated project?

> So, overall, I think that if you want SPI to become more political, you're 
> going to need to use a considerable amount of diplomacy and persuasion to get 
> a consensus of opinion behind you.

As far as I can tell, at the moment, Bruce could get SPI backing
with support from over half of at least 35% of the board and
keep it as long as he also has support of more than a third of
the membership who vote.

Are you pledging to work to change that if elected?
If so, why is your voting reform plan not in your manifesto?

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/  irc.oftc.net/slef  Jabber/SIP ask