On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 11:04:47AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> I have never seen SPI explicitly solicit official Debian
> project input [...]
FWIW, I started receiving all the internal correspondence between board
members when the leader@d.o address was changed to point to me, and was
also explicitly invited to join the #spi channel on OFTC to participate
in meetings as the Debian representative to SPI when I was elected DPL.
Debian developers are given automatic status as contributing members in
SPI, and I know two board members have explicitly encouraged people
to be involved in SPI recently:
http://wiki.gag.com/cgi-bin/blosxom/2006/07/20#2006.07.20
http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/freesoftware/20060705-00.html
> Funny that such considerations seem so one sided. What was
> the last time that the input of Debian as a project (as opposed
> to opinions of individuals) were sought out by SPI? Or do such
> considerations only apply to Debian, and not to SPI?
I've been doing my best to get some Debian input into SPI decisions
before they have a chance to ask; that's resulted in this motion to
try to clear up the SPI/Debian accounting issues [0]:
] Motion 2006-05-16.dbg.2: Pre-2001 Debian/SPI funds divison:
] All SPI funds from prior to 2001 are assumed to be 95% Debian's
] (in trust) and 5% SPI's own funds.
] Moved by David Graham, seconded by Branden Robinson
(I'd suggested a 90:10 split), and some more speed in handling debconf
reimbursements [1].
OTOH, there's still the issue of SPI's activities being visible to Debian
in general, rather than just me or the board members who happen to be
DDs personally. That hasn't been particularly great, by any measure,
IMO. Postgresql has taken the interesting step of having two different
people interacting with SPI -- Joshua Drake who's board liason, and
Robert Treat who's board observer. I'm not 100% clear on the definition
of the roles, but I assume Joshua gets to say "quickly, shift money over
here so we can hold a conference", while Robert's job is to make sure
the Psql community have confidence SPI is doing the right thing, which
presumably includes occassional explanations of what's been going on.
It might be worthwhile for us to consider something like that too --
like finding another DD who can join the board list, and who's job is
to make sure that some of the stuff discussed there actually gets out
to everyone else when it should.
> And why can't they offer their individual expertise now, as
> opposed to us waiting for an official statement by the new board?
For the same reason candidates during the DPL election process shouldn't
go to journalists or other projects and speak in ways that might be
mistaken for an official position of the Debian project: it's misleading,
and inappropriate.
> Nothing seems to prevent the individuals named from providing their
> input _right now_ -- is there? What am I missing?
One important question is whether what we're doing aligns with SPI's
chosen direction -- but we're in the middle of an election which will
in part decide what direction SPI takes.
Cheers,
aj
[0] http://www.spi-inc.org/secretary/minutes/20060516.txt
[1] http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20060704.162039.5f29510e.en.html
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