On 2013-03-13 09:15, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
What kind of restrictions are you referring to?[...] because SPI cannot use its funds for any activity related to flying people to Cuba or transferring that money directly to Cuba. I am unaware of other such restrictions, but: Whatever is forbidden for a 501(c) charity uder the USA laws, is forbidden to SPI.
Ha, now I need to clarify that I absolutely did not have in mind US sanctions when I wrote about restrictions. Those are nothing to do with SPI's status, but a feature of general US law.
I said, "I suspect that I would be unconvinced by most ideas that suggested that we spend spend money in ways that it would not be permitted for SPI to spend money under relevant legislation and the SPI by-laws." I'm not trying to make a hard rule by that, only to give some kind of description for how I might respond (more or less favourably) to ideas that I haven't heard yet.
I was primarily thinking of the restrictions from SPI's bylaws where its purpose is specified (Article 2):
http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/by-laws/Before someone jumps in, I should again state that I'm not trying to set an acceptance rule by this. There are things allowed by SPI's bylaws that I don't think should be priorities for Debian money. (For example, the bylaws seem to permit general promotion of computer use unrelated to free software, and I don't see immediately that it makes sense to spend Debian money that way.) US sanctions aside, I'm sure there are also things disallowed by them that I would think were reasonable uses of Debian money from a less restricted source.
-- Moray