SPI Meeting Reminder: Thursday 14th June, 2012 @ 20:00 UTC

[Ian Jackson]

Jonathan McDowell writes ("SPI Meeting Reminder: Thursday 14th June, 2012 @ 20:00 UTC"):
>   2012-05-17.mcs.1 (Removal of OpenOffice.org as associated project)

Can I bring to the attention of the Board my objection to the wording
of clause 4 of this resolution ?

I propose this alternative (this is my earlier text amended along the
lines suggested by Stefano Sabatini):

 4. Stefano Sabatini is recognised by SPI as the current liason for
    FFmpeg.  SPI expects him to inform us of decisions relating to SPI
    made by the FFmpeg project, and we will honour his requests in
    accordance with the Framework for Associated Projects.

    However FFmpeg does not currently have a formal governance
    structure.  Therefore in case of dispute, SPI will follow what
    appears to the SPI Board to be the rough consensus view of the
    FFmpeg project's direct contributors.

Changes since my previous version are to remove `significant' in front
of `dispute' and to change `committers' to `direct contributors'.  I
respectfully submit that the Board should approve this text rather
than the proposal in 2012-05-17.mcs.1.

In the email discussion no-one seems to have suggested that
"authoritative decisionmaker" _doesn't_ mean what I say it does.

The counterarguments to my objection seem to have been "we have always
done it this way".  Well, I'm sorry I haven't always been paying 100%
attention to these things, but the fact that something has been done
wrong in the past is not a reason for doing it wrong now.

Robert wrote:
> If the board doesn't object, I'm happy to refer this to SPI counsel for 
> advice.  This will happen in parallel to the current proposal of course.

I don't think it is necessary to refer this to laywers.  It's really
perfectly straightforward.  If no-one has any objections to my text
above it should be used.  If there are minor objections they should be
fixed up in the board meeting.  We shouldn't delay FFmpeg's
association with SPI.

Thanks,
Ian.