On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > MJ Ray wrote: > > "Joshua D. Drake" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I plan on actively recruiting new projects. There are many, many FOSS > >> projects out there that could use SPI services, that have no idea who we > >> are. > > > > There are also many who know who SPI are and then still set up > > independent foundations anyway. Do you know some reasons why? > > Well I don't "know" but I could guess. SPI, just really doesn't exist. > This is an advocacy problem. We have been around for years and yet Open > Source and FOSS have ran off without us.
I, too, would like to see SPI grow and accept new projects, but I prefer to do this passively. By being an organisation that says 'yeah, we're here, and if you need us, let us know,' I think we do the best service we can to the community. If we take an aggressive recruiting stance I think we raise expectations above what is reasonable for what we provide and risk hurting the community we seek to help. As projects like PostgreSQL and others that have joined us in the last few years find SPI's services beneficial to their projects, word will get out and projects that need the services we provide will find us. Thus I don't think it is an 'advocacy problem' so much as a problem of our history. We have been around for around a decade, but for most of that time SPI was both dysfunctional and not actively interested in expanding. It is only in the last few years, largely since board elections were introduced in 2003, that SPI has become able to seriously accept and back up projects. It takes time to build up from there to a critical mass where projects realise that it makes more sense to go to a well-oiled SPI than to go it alone. Frankly I believe that for large projects that have their own foundations to see a benefit in using SPI instead of their own organisations, SPI has to be large enough to be able to fund a serious paid bookkeeper/accountant around the calendar to take care of our increasingly complex books, and to have a handful of preferably pro bono lawyers we can tap as needed for our member projects, perhaps one day in partnership with SFLC? We also need to have a track record of problem-free money handling, and while we appear to be there now, our history still weighs. SPI is ready to accept more projects, but only just. > We have the potential to be very influential in the process. We have to decide as an organisation if our purpose is to influence the community or simply be the wall the community can lean against while it does its work. Personally, I prefer and believe the latter. SPI has a very important role not being filled by any other organisation simply to exist for its projects and act in the best interests of our projects. This is our niche. > > One reason I have seen is that SPI does not advocate and market its > > projects in the way a single-project foundation usually does. Would > > you address that and how? > > Oh, heh see above. I have some specific ideas in mind, I mention some of > them in my platform: > > * A more physical presence of SPI and the associative projects at well > known events such as OSCON, LinuxWorld, and USENIX. > > * Working in FOSS hubs (such as S.F., Seattle and Portland) to foster > workshops, talks and training opportunities not only for new FOSS > community members, but also businesses that can help in the market drive > of FOSS. > > * Work with SPI members to sponsor individuals to give talks related to > FOSS at every possible legitimate opportunity. > > * Work to have all associative projects work together to provide a more > influential presence to communities, governments and businesses. I believe that we should make every reasonable effort to assist our associated projects in doing any advocacy they wish, within the bounds of their budgets and our charter. I don't believe our role is to be an independent lobby group, but our projects are free to be with our backing. SPI holds projects' assets and money, and distributes it at their bidding, but has very little money of its own, most of which goes to administering projects' collective assets. We can fund our projects with their own money within the boundaries of the purposes stated on our certificate of incorporation, but need not and probably cannot afford to do them directly ourselves. I do not believe SPI needs a presence per se at conferences and tradeshows and the likes; the presence of our member projects who are able to handle smaller amounts of assets only because of SPI's backing is all the presence SPI needs. I prefer to leave advocacy to groups who specialise in it, and keep our role as that of a backroom organisation that does whatever it can to sustain its member projects, rather than the community as a whole. The whole community is the sum of its parts, and that is the best thing we can do for it. > > Another reason is that SPI is controlled by developers and not users. > > Would you address that and how? > > Hmmm... I am not sure this is actually a problem. At least not the way I > think you think so. As long as the respective projects work to actually > integrate SPI into their projects, this problem should largely go away. > > PostgreSQL has done this quite a bit. We are very proactive in the use > of SPI. SPI is controlled by its membership made up mostly of the membership of its member projects, not either developers or users specifically. How a member project chooses to integrate SPI into itself is entirely up to it, and as long as they are not working against SPI, its goals, or its member projects, it will always have SPI's blessing. OFTC sees SPI as an integral part of its own governing structure, while other projects can and do see it as little more than a wallet. >From my platform[1], "I would...like to see and assist with SPI's continuing growth toward a life as a truly relevant member of the free software/open source communities at large and to the increasing number of projects now associated with SPI." The best way to be relevant to the community is to be there for our member projects, not to act as an independent project in our own right. 1: http://www.spi-inc.org/secretary/votes/vote6/cdlu.txt - - David "cdlu" Graham - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Guelph, Ontario - http://www.cdlu.net/ _______________________________________________ Spi-general mailing list Spi-general@lists.spi-inc.org http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
