Board meeting, June 11th, 2015
Board members present
- Joerg Jaspert (Ganneff) (Vice President)
- Michael Schultheiss (schultmc) (Treasurer)
- Martin Michlmayr (tbm) (Secretary)
- Robert Brockway (Solver)
- Joshua D. Drake (linuxhiker)
- Jonathan McDowell (Noodles)
- Gregers Petersen (glp)
- Martin Zobel-Helas (zobel)
Board members partially present
- None
Board members absent with regrets
- Bdale Garbee (bdale) (President)
Board members absent
- None
Board advisors present
- None
Registered guests present
- Bill Allombert (yp17)
These are the minutes for the June 11th, 2015 SPI Board Meeting, held at 20:30 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG.
President's Report
Bdale Garbee was not present, so there is no report from the President.
Treasurer's report
Michael Schultheiss has published the May treasurer's report.
Jonathan McDowell asked whether the "Fifth Third Business Elite Checking" account showing up twice in the May treasurer's report was an error. Michael confirmed that there were two such accounts, one for SPI's general PayPal account and one for Debian's PayPal account. He will make this distinction clearer in the future.
Secretary's report
Martin Michlmayr has completed the outstanding minutes.
Outstanding minutes
Vote on Meeting Minutes for 14th May 2015:
| Robert Brockway | Abstain |
| Joshua D. Drake | Yes |
| Joerg Jaspert | Yes |
| Jonathan McDowell | Yes |
| Martin Michlmayr | Yes |
| Gregers Petersen | Yes |
| Michael Schultheiss | Yes |
| Martin Zobel-Helas | Yes |
Motion passed with a vote of 7 yes, 1 abstain, 0 missing.
Items up for discussion
Resolution 2015-06-11.jdd.1: Sponsorship of travel to PostgreSQL conference in Cuba
PostgreSQL would like to pay for some travel expenses for a conference in Cuba. Josh Berkus from PostgreSQL obtained legal guidance from Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) on paying travel expenses to Cuba and Joshua D. Drake proposed a resolution for the SPI board to vote on.
Michael Schultheiss would prefer the "limitations set forth" explicitly listed in the resolution. Robert Brockway would like to pass the exact wording of the resolution past SFLC and recommended the SPI board defer a vote to allow time to consult with SFLC.
Michael agreed to consult SFLC and the board agreed to vote by email once the resolution has been ratified by SFLC.
Audit of SPI financials
Martin Zobel-Helas recently proposed on the spi-general list to make SPI's bookkeeping process more transparent and asked whether it would make sense to perform an annual audit of SPI's financial records by someone who is not involved in SPI's financial process.
Joshua D. Drake and Michael Schultheiss pointed out that audits in the US are typically done by Certified Public Accountants (CPA). Martin Michlmayr noted that New York State has audit requirements for non-profits that meet certain requirements. Michael explained that we haven't hit the required audit threshold yet.
Martin Michlmayr observed that Martin Zobel-Helas is probably looking for an informal review rather than a formal audit. He added that he had asked about how SPI's accounting process worked before and didn't get any answers.
Michael said that he had had a conversation with Bradley M. Kuhn at FOSSETCON about migrating to ledger-cli. Michael offered to add the bookkeeping spreadsheets and other source materials (such as scanned checks) to the board-private git repository, so other board members could take a look.
Any other business
Jonathan McDowell has been working on a rewrite of the SPI members site. His hope is to get it done before the end of the month, so it can be used for the board election. We can then finally do a member cleanup after the election.
Joerg Jaspert has been asked if SPI's CA (certificate authority) is interested in cross-signing DNSKEY material for root zones. Joerg is not sure about the request. On the one hand, it would greatly increase the visibility of our CA, which may be a good thing. At the same time, it would also greatly increase the gain for attackers should they get their hands on our CA key, suddenly making us a target. Joerg will raise the question on spi-private.
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned until Thursday, July 9th, 2015 at 20:30 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. This will serve as the Annual General Meeting.
Appendix A: Current Board Membership
| Last elected | Name | Role |
|---|---|---|
| July 2013 | Bdale Garbee | President |
| July 2013 | Joerg Jaspert | Vice President |
| July 2014 | Martin Michlmayr | Secretary |
| July 2012 | Michael Schultheiss | Treasurer |
| July 2012 | Jonathan McDowell | |
| July 2013 | Joshua D. Drake | |
| July 2013 | Martin Zobel-Helas | |
| July 2014 | Robert Brockway | |
| July 2014 | Gregers Petersen |
Appendix B: Resolutions
Resolution 2015-06-11.jdd.1: Sponsorship of travel to PostgreSQL conference in Cuba
WHEREAS 1. PostgreSQL.Org is an affiliated SPI project. 2. PostgreSQL.Org wishes to financially sponsor travel to a PostgreSQL conference in Cuba. 3. Josh Berkus of PostgreSQL Core has sought legal advice from Software Freedom Law Center in regards to this opportunity. 4. Joshua Drake, Director with SPI and PostgreSQL.Org Liaison, has approved the request on the requirement that SPI also approve the request. THE SPI BOARD RESOLVES THAT 1. It understands the legal requirements surrounding the sponsorship. 2. It approves a financial sponsorship of the conference based on the limitations set forth.