Meeting agenda items - contentious issues

John Goerzen writes ("Today's meeting"):
> Reminder: there is an SPI board meeting today at 1900 UTC. [...]

Well done for posting that, with the timezones too.

> Also, please view the agenda at http://www.spi-inc.org/secretary/agenda/
> prior to the meeting and review all resolutions and minutes pending.

Indeed.

> We have many items on the agenda today, some of which are complex
> issues. I intend to do my best to hold the meeting to one hour.
> [...]

I'm hoping that the following issues can be simply voted on at the
meeting:

5. Outstanding minutes (David Graham)
+ October 5th, 2004
6. Resolution 2004-10-15.iwj.1: Efficient Board Meetings (Ian Jackson)
- Amendment 2004-10-18.dbg.1 (David Graham)
7. Resolution 2004-10-15.dbg.1: Non-meeting voting (David Graham)
8. Resolution 2004-10-16.dbg.1: Committee Framework (David Graham)
9. Resolution 2004-10-28.dbg.1: Treasurer's Budget (David Graham)

There has been discussion on the lists of most of these. I will send
a separate mail to restate/clarify my positions on them.

The following issues should be deferred and therefore removed from the
agenda:

10. Resolution 2004-11-08.iwj.1: GNUstep as Associated Project
(Ian Jackson) -- deferred

I haven't received any reply from the FSF yet, so we should
postpone this as previously discussed.

11. New project request: OpenC++ (unclaimed)

There has been little preparation on this item despite an imprecation
to the `entire board' in last week's reading to do some homework.
Speaking personally, I'm still waiting for a reply to my (rather
late) question to the OpenC++ developers.

There is no motion ready for this, so it should be deferred.

I also note the following items:

3. President's update (John Goerzen)
4. Treasurer's report (Jimmy Kaplowitz)

I'm disappointed that these reports aren't ready to read now. I think
these items should be deferred until the next meeting, as it is now
too late for the Board to properly consider any report that might be
made at this late stage. (I'm assuming that there is no need to make
a decision needs to be made on some urgent matter.)

Ian.

There are a few issues on the agenda today about which there has been
some disagreement. I'll just briefly restate my positions:

6. Resolution 2004-10-15.iwj.1: Efficient Board Meetings (Ian Jackson)
- Amendment 2004-10-18.dbg.1 (David Graham)

If you want meetings to be preceded by discussion and drafting, so
that we can properly consider our decisions, I urge you to vote in
favour of my new Efficient Board Meeetings resolution. It clearly
places the responsibility for resolution drafting and timely report
writing, on the person who wants the item on the meeting agenda. It
places the responsibility for raising an issue in a timely way on
the person who cares about that issue. It also allows
in-IRC-meeting discussion of urgent issues.

If you want IRC board meetings to _contain_ substantial discussion,
including the real-time typing of reports to the Board, clamour to
speak, etc., then you should vote for David Graham's amendment. If
the amended version passes, there will be no requirement that
resolutions and reports will be drafted in advance. We will
therefore be forced into often-chaotic in-meeting drafting, and
hasty consideration of issues.

If neither version of the resolution is passed, then the existing
Efficient Board Meetings resolution is the status quo. This still
says that agenda items should be accompanied by a ready-to-vote
resolution; however it fails to provide clearly enough for the
pre-meeting discussion and is vaguer about the responsibility for
draftng.

> 7. Resolution 2004-10-15.dbg.1: Non-meeting voting (David Graham)

I'm still worried that a disgruntled board member might lose a vote
and then claim that it didn't count. The board cannot pass a
resolution which asserts that such future things will count.
Although a board member who voted in favour of this non-meeting
voting resolution would find it hard to later claim that they didn't
agree with it, we are unlikely to get unanimous affirmative
agreement from the entire board, and we'd have to get it again from
every incoming board member.

So, in the absence of some reassurance from Greg, I will be voting
against this resolution in its current form.

> 8. Resolution 2004-10-16.dbg.1: Committee Framework (David Graham)
> 9. Resolution 2004-10-28.dbg.1: Treasurer's Budget (David Graham)

These are both good and I will be voting in favour.

Ian.