SPI (Software in the Public Interest, Inc). Introduction To SPI ---------------------------------------------------------------- SPI is a non-profit organization which was founded to help organizations develop and distribute open hardware and software. SPI was incorporated as a non-profit organization on June 16, 1997 in the state of New York. Since then, it has become an umbrella organization for projects from the community. The projects which SPI has chosen to support are all consistent with this set of goals. SPI will continue to pursue these goals in any way possible. Old Business ------------------- == - by-laws committee Nobody here from the bylaws ctte. - john goerzon, and jimmy kapowitz, david harris, and manoj (early on) have been working on rewriting our bylaws to resolve a number of problems, including problems with quorum - A vote was halted when we realized that certain sections of the new bylaws might be legally problematic. We've gotten advice and people are reintergrateing things back in. == - trademark committee The mark "Debian" is a registered trademark of SPI. That means that if people call something Debian that is not actually Debian in an attempt to confuse people, etc, SPI has the responsibility to stop this. Trademark committee includes Benj. Mako Hill, Matin Michlmayr, Bruce Perens, Greg Pomerantz and Michelle Ribeiro plus a handful of others. - We're trying to make an open use trademark policy. As Martin Michlmayr says: We don't want Trusted Debian but we do want people to print CDs and t-shirts. - We're registring and licening the mark to SLX Debian Labs in Norway. - We're having a trademark in Spain for Debian transfered to SPI - We're having registering a trademark in Brazil to stop people from unfairly capitalizing. == - board seats New board members will be elected. There will be a SPI general meeting during the first week of July. == - electronic donations SPI finally allows electronic donations but the company only supports these from the US. == New Business == ------------------- == regional SPI's and "partner" organizations There are no reasons why other organizations can't *also* support Debian and, in fact, several people do. - Steven McIntyre - UK - AsSoLi - Christian Surchi - Italy - Linux Australia - Australia My old info was a bit stale so I've recently mailed to followup with each of these. Perhaps formalizing these relationships would be a productive thing SPI could do? == - Debian Foundation Ean Schuesseler, the president of SPI,have expressed the desire to have SPI become closer, more responsible and responsive to Debian in the model of The GNOME Foundation and the Apache Foundation. They argue that there is no brand name recognition with SPI. == - New Member Projets SPI has a small number of projects but doesn't do much to actively pursue new projects. One way that SPI might make itself unique and fill a need that orgs aren't doing is by handling multiple new projects and by advertising SPI as a resource for projects -- kind of like a legal sourceforge. == - criteria for new projects democratic leadership, acountability? somewhat large size. perhaps these can be done on on the fly - update the copyright assignment on the debian website - have the books published on the spi website for the different member projects with lists of expenditures and such (email pere for the scripts)