Ean, It is true that SPI still is not performing like it should be.
It is also true that SPI has never performed like it should in its entire history. SPI has been dysfunctional from its very beginning. It's also been short on manpower through its entire lifespan. For whatever reason, SPI has not been of much interest to many Debian folks for most of the time, except for the occasional flamewar. Some of us are trying to make SPI better. It is a difficult thing to do, given the magnitude of the problems in the past, the lack of volunteer manpower (our single biggest problem), general lack of interest, and disagreements about the best way to proceed. Since your term as president of SPI ended, I have seen nothing but trolling from you. "SPI sucks, SPI sucks, you suck" sort of thing. Yes, we all know there are problems -- big ones, even. Yelling about them doesn't fix them. It is unfair to lay all of SPI's ills at Branden's feet. If memory serves, the treasurer before him literally *disappeared* for long periods of time. The board at that point often failed to meet due to so many members failing to show up. Branden inherited a huge mess. Yes, he made mistakes, but I think you are misconstruing this incident and incorrectly magnifying it as part of some sort of vendetta. In this particular instance, if memory serves, you sent the invoice to Branden inside a large box of other papers -- even though Branden had already resigned as treasurer by that time. The rest of us were not aware of it until later, and you had given mixed signals previously about whether or not you would charge SPI for your helpful efforts. It is unfair to lay all this at Branden's feet for another reason. While preside, you tried to usurp the authority of the SPI treasurer, a move that put SPI itself in quesitonable legal waters. While you were ultimately stopped, by the rest of the board and the expiration of your term, your actions led directly to Yet Another SPI Treasurer Crisis, not to mention one of the nastiest flamewars in SPI history. While it is true that Brainfood provided valuable help processing part of the accounting backlog, it is also true that the manner in which you handled it caused huge problems that linger today. Finally, you argue that Branden said nasty things about you publically. What you didn't state was that there was not one single active person in #spi at the time, and, again if memory serves, probably fewer than 20 the entire time. So, while technically true that #spi is not a private channel, you made the comments far more public than he did. I suspect that nobody paid much notice to them, and that Branden expected as much. Let's talk about some of the good things happening at SPI, too. David Graham has made tremendous work catching up with old never-posted minutes and resolutions. Several people have helped with that effort by updating many pages on the website. Several new projects have joined SPI. Jimmy & Branden recently produced the closest thing we've ever had to a true treasurer's report and successfully migrated to a more useful bank. The trademark committee has been actively working on projects in multiple countries. Wichert has migrated some of the SPI services to a new machine. I produced the first ever (as far as I can tell) annual report last year (a responsibility you neglected). In short, I think that SPI is finally *starting* to act like a real, competant organization, after almost 8 years. These are tentative baby steps, of course, and much remains to be done. I hope that 8 years from now, we can look back and see how far we've come, rather than continuing to point fingers. Maybe then, you, me, Branden, and everyone else can take some pride in the little contributions we have made to make SPI better, and SPI's past will no longer haunt its present and future. -- John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
