2006-07-01

This is the proposed agenda for the Annual Board meeting of July 1st, 2006, to be held at 19:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org.

The meeting is adjourned until July 11th, 2006 due to lack of quorum

Opening
Roll call
President's report (John Goerzen)
Treasurer's report (Jimmy Kaplowitz)
Outstanding minutes
Items up for discussion:
1. Election
2. Voting software
3. Call for nominations
4. Further on Debian trademark in Spain?
5. Tax filing and book keeping status? (Jimmy)
6. Website rebuild?
Next board meeting - Tuesday, July 18th or August 15th (TBD), 2006 (John Goerzen)

President's Report

This is the Membership Committee report:

Membership Committee

In May 2005 Graham Wilson, Luk Claes and Michael Schultheiss became the
new Membership Committee. They are all still willing to continue this
for the next year.

2.1.1 Statistics

Here are some statistics from the membership committee:

                                       2005     2006
NC Applicants Pending Email Approval   31       50
NC Members                             282      318
Contrib Membership Applications        8        10
Contrib Members                        313      335
Application Managers                   6        3

3. The Future

As can be seen in the statistics, the NC Applicants Pending Email Approval is
raising. The reason is that there is no web interface for removing these
applications, so it might be a good idea to implement this next year :-)

The amount of NC Members and Contrib Members is of course increasing as
normally the rule is: once a member always a member. Most of the open Contrib
Membership Applications are because of applicants mentioning too few (or no)
information in the online application form. These applicants are pinged and
their application will be processed further in the near future.

Also among the planned improvements for the web interface is support for a
scriptable interface, and a corresponding tool that allows application managers
to process applicants without requiring them to manipulate them through the web
interface. This will hopefully make the task of managing applicants easier.

Treasurer's Report

I'm submitting these updates right before the meeting, but primarily to
get them down for the meeting, not necessarily to provide advance
notice.

Treasurer's report update: In addition to the carpal tunnel I've had,
I've also been experiencing hardware problems on the machine with my
gpg-encrypted online bank access password as well as my SPI email
archive. Needless to say, this has made me unable to properly submit
information for the annual report or to do treasurer's reports recently.
As I have said before, I still intend to catch up as much as possible on
my treasurer's reports in advance of the turnover in Treasurer's duties
on the 29th, and if not, I will provide the new Treasurer what
assistance necessary to finish them.

Outstanding minutes: I gave David a slight correction to the item in the
June 20 minutes about Treasurer's reports, to better reflect what I
actually said.

Debian trademark in Spain: I explained this situation to SPI lawyer Greg
Pomerantz in person last Wednesday, and he had been unaware of it
previously. He said then that he would take a look at it. I also
mentioned that it's been on hold for a while now and that dealing with
it quickly would be appreciated.

Tax filing/bookkeeping: Greg advised that we probably shouldn't try to
register with New York until we have financial information ready for the
last several years, because they'll probably want it once we're on their
radar. Therefore, I am holding off on registering with NY State. As for
actually getting the financial information ready for our 2005 federal filing, I
have to defer to Branden on that, since he's the one who's been dealing
with Mark's Bookkeeping. I will be filing a request for a second
extension on this filing (which shouldn't be too hard), since we're
right now in the process of conducting elections and we probably will
need until after the changeover to complete the filing.

Discussion appendix

(none)

Resolutions

Resolution 2006-04-03.jfsp.1: Debian trademark in Spain

WHEREAS

1. The Debian trademark in Spain is currently held by Jesus Martinez which
  has no association with either the Debian project or SPI Inc.

2. The SPI trademark committee wants to register the Debian trademark EU-wide
  and any registration in an EU country will stall the process

3. Mr. Martinez has been contacted by the "Debian Spain" association and
  by Javier de la Cueva and has rejected to transfer the trademark over to
  SPI unless the following terms are met:
      * Deletion of all Internet web pages with prior references to
        Mr. Martínez trademark appropriation.
      * Payment of 3,000 Euros as a fee for having made the defense of
        the trademark and the costs.
      * SPI letter granting him the rights to use perennially the trademark
        "Debian".

4. The SPI Board considers the transfer term unacceptable.

THE SPI BOARD RESOLVES THAT

5. SPI will initiate legal actions against Mr. Martinez.

6. SPI will provide a notarized and apostilled Power of Attorney to
  the Spanish lawyer Javier de la Cueva, who will act in a Pro Bono basis,
  and will litigate on behalf of SPI.

7. SPI will provide certificates of the trademark registry and any other
  relevant documents to Javier de la Cueva needed to provide
  documentary evidences necessary to defend the case.