Board meeting, November 13th, 2023
Board members present
- Stephen Frost (Snow-Man) (Vice-President)
- Héctor Orón Martínez (zumbi) (Treasurer)
- Zach van Rijn (zv) (Secretary)
- Joe Conway (jconway)
- Milan Kupcevic (milan)
- Jonatas L. Nogueira (jesusalva)
- Jeremy Stanley (fungi)
Board members partially present
- Michael Schultheiss (schultmc) (President)
- Forrest Fleming (fsf)
Board members absent with regrets
- None
Board members absent
- None
Registered guests present
- William Pine (Liaison, The Mana World)
- Mark Atwood (of NTPsec and of Amazon)
- Célestin Matte
These are the minutes for the November 13th, 2023 SPI Board Meeting, held at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. LOG.
President's report
We received updated paperwork needing Stephen's signature from Merrill Lynch. Martin Michlmayr has been working on outstanding treasurer's reports and should have them completed shortly.
Vice President's report
- None
Treasurer's report
Payments are being processed as usual, there were some issues with BRL and INR which we have been work around them and we have already been paying some of the pending requests, I expect to complete remaining BRL and INR payments over the week. Jonatas has accepted to join treasurer team as assistant and we are pretty excited about it. Treasurer has acquired new computer to deal with SPI treasury stuff in a better way going forward (i.e. personal laptop holding SPI confidential data broke) Treasurer has been using new Debian reimbursement system and asked SPI sysadmin to start working on deploying the system for SPI. This system is not yet usable, but a heads-up that this is coming. 2021 CHAR500 has been signed and paid. Awaiting charities bureau review. We are working with auditors to finalize last year accounting audit. Monthy reports have not been updated since 202302, but we have been working on them (thanks tbm) and those are expected to be updated this week.
Secretary's report
There are some ongoing discussions about planning a face-to-face meeting. Nothing solid yet. I remain available to support other roles. Please send conflict-of-interest forms if you have not. I will directly mail anyone with outstanding forms.
Vote On Minutes For Previous Meetings
Vote on minutes for meeting Monday October 9th 2023
| Joe Conway | Yes |
| Stephen Frost | Yes |
| Milan Kupcevic | Yes |
| Héctor Orón Martínez | Yes |
| Jonatas L. Nogueira | Yes |
| Jeremy Stanley | Yes |
| Zach van Rijn | Yes |
Vote passed with 7 yes, 0 abstain, 0 no.
Items up for discussion
Apple Developer Account Billing
(From Jonatas):
- We're charging Apple Developer Account to all projects using it, which doesn't make much sense
- Martin Michlmayr proposed earlier to move it to SPI General Fund as it is not much and there are no costs to scale it up or down.
- The other details are on the agenda page.
- Propose a Motion to move Apple Developer Account billing to SPI General Fund, effectively overturning an earlier decision to split the fixed cost between projects
Vote on Motion to move Apple Developer Account billing
| Joe Conway | Yes |
| Stephen Frost | Yes |
| Milan Kupcevic | Yes |
| Héctor Orón Martínez | Yes |
| Jonatas L. Nogueira | Yes |
| Jeremy Stanley | Yes |
| Zach van Rijn | Yes |
Vote passed with 7 yes, 0 abstain, 0 no.
Assign someone to oversee/deal with #6983
(From Jonatas)
6983 is a request to merge a couple Microsoft Azure accounts. Lots of back and forth with Microsoft support expected.
Stephen and/or Perdu can probably help.
There is a separate discussion about the possibility of hiring an independent contractor or finding a trusted volunteer to help with tasks that do not require Officer approval.
NTPSEC/ARDC refund of grants
(From Fungi)
- The motion from last meeting stated "if no objections are raised"
- There was an e-mail discussion between the board members and representatives of ardc and ntpsec, objections were raised, rebuttals went unanswered for nearly a month though
(From Jonatas)
- The funds were not spent (Snow-Man can talk on this), and ARDC is asking the money to be returned. Legal counsel said it is OK to do that
- ARDC did reply, "[...] We await correspondence following the SPI board meeting."
(From Fungi)
- A representative of ardc replied to ntpsec representative's points on october 17, and there was no subsequent reply from ntpsec that i saw
Mark Atwood provides some background on the situation from his perspective.
Stephen points out that SPI is only able to approve invoices when a valid contract is in place.
Stephen is open to further delays only if Mark is able to convince ARDC to rescind their refund request.
Mark will reach out to ARDC directly.
Other business
(From Jonatas)
- TMW liaison is asking to remember he opened a ticket about a Google Play account which wasn't answered.
- Spring cleaning of board queue: Can tickets 6282 (Arch Linux), 6571 (Battle for Wesnoth), 6646 (OpenZFS) and 6759 (OpenZFS) be closed?
Stephen does not see any need to keep them open if the work on the ticket has been resolved (and a signed contract would be a resolution).
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned until Monday December 11th, 2023 at 20:00 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org.
Appendix A: Current Board Membership
| Last elected | Name | Role |
|---|---|---|
| July 2021 | Michael Schultheiss | President |
| July 2021 | Stephen Frost | Vice President |
| July 2022 | Héctor Orón Martínez | Treasurer |
| July 2022 | Zach van Rijn | Secretary |
| July 2023 | Joe Conway | |
| July 2022 | Forrest Fleming | |
| July 2021 | Milan Kupcevic | |
| July 2022 | Jonatas L. Nogueira | |
| July 2022 | Jeremy Stanley |