On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 08:56:06AM +1100, Herbert Xu wrote: > Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net> wrote: > > > Obviously you haven't been paying attention to his work as SPI > > treasurer. Amazingly enough he has shown that he can indeed be a > > calm person with a good sense of judgement. You also can't deny > > that in both modes he does manage to get a lot of work done. > > Quite the contrary. I think he makes a fine treasurer. However, there > is an improtant difference between the treasurer and the DPL. If the > treasurer runs amok, then the DPL can replace him. I urge you to get a better command of the facts. Review http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/spi-bylaws The Debian Project Leader has no authority at all over any of the officers of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. The SPI Treasurer cannot be removed except by a vote of the contributing members of SPI. At present, the Debian Project Leader acts only as an advisor to the SPI Board and does not have a vote. > If the DPL runs amok, it is much harder and would cause much more > damage to Debian to remove him. Frankly, I wouldn't underestimate the ability of the SPI Treasurer to do damage. As presently arranged, only he and the SPI President can get anything done with SPI's accounts, which include all of Debian's money, and title to Debian's physical assets (such as auric.debian.org, which was on loan to Debian until last month, when Sun Microsystems transferred ownership of the machine and its attached RAID array to the Debian Project of Software in the Public Interest). The SPI President cannot be removed by the Debian Project Leader, either. Just having an inactive Treasurer for several months put us in quite a fix, one that we're still recovering from. (Where "we" is both Debian and SPI.) Incoming donations ground almost to a complete halt and the closure of SPI's old P.O. Box in Tracy, California has no doubt frustrated many donors. Some of those donors have had the patience to look up the new address and re-send their donation; I am sure that others have not. I wouldn't dream of encouraging you to vote for a candidate who you reasonably feared would "run amok" if elected. The question here is whether such a fear can be reasonable when you have a four-year historical record to look at with respect to a given candidate, and someone who is already entrusted with access to approximately $40,000. Finally, I would remind you once again to check the headers of the mail that started this thread. -- G. Branden Robinson | If you have the slightest bit of Debian GNU/Linux | intellectual integrity you cannot branden@debian.org | support the government. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- anonymous
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