SPI invited X.Org to join as Associated Project

[Martin Peres]

On 09/01/15 21:18, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 09, 2015 at 04:58:10PM +0000, Daniel Stone wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Friday, January 9, 2015, Pat Kane <pekane52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I also am not sure what SPI is.   Could someone on the Board provide an
>>> URL for more info.
>>>
>> I should add that the SPI work has been extensively documented in the
>> board's meeting minutes, as well as the (much) more infrequent reports.
>> Those are usually pretty mundane, but quick enough to read that it should
>> be worth your while in any case.
>>
>> SPI, as noted, is an umbrella organisation founded from Debian originally,
>> that handles administrative tasks for independent organisations such as
>> Debian, Postgres, freedesktop.org, etc. Given how much of a nightmare we've
>> had being our own 501(c)3, I can only see this as a good thing.
>>
>> Personally I have a great deal of faith in the SPI and its history of
>> independence and commitment to FLOSS, but also in that of the board and its
>> decision-making - this process has been going a long time, not just a
>> kneejerk reaction - as well as the advice of the SFLC, which we seem to
>> have benefited from here.
>>
>> Still though, it seems like it'd be useful to have some kind of summary
>> including Jeremy's concerns: what concrete/legal form does the foundation
>> assume from here on in? What assets (including marks, domain names, etc)
>> does the foundation currently hold? What is the timeline for transitioning
>> to SPI and what practical effect will this have on mundane matters such as
>> reimbursing people for travel expenses? What concrete instantiation of our
>> relationship to SPI is there - a written agreement, representation within
>> SPI, other?
>>
>> I'm sure all of these have been thoughtfully considered, but having it all
>> written down would be nice.
> For Inkscape joining the Software Conservancy, we did a Fiscal
> Sponsorship Agreement (FSA) which defined the nuts and bolts of how many
> of these things work (or at least the decision-making process to decide
> them).  Will there be an equivalent sort of document for X.org/SPI that
> members could review in deciding their vote?

Sure, that would be the updated by-laws! About a year ago, I moved them
from a word document to Latex to make changes obvious.

I made some preliminary updates to our bylaws to accommodate for SPI
but we definitely need to contact them to review our current bylaws and
what need to be changed. I am no lawyer ;)

Here is the presentation I gave at FOSDEM 2014 about the state of the 
foundation
and our plans to move to SPI [1]. Here is the git repo for the bylaws 
[2] and
here is a copy of the repo accessible via cgit [3].

There are two branches:
- master: Current bylaws, in a latex/pdf form
- SPI: The changes I proposed for the SPI merge

Thanks everyone for looking into this! The more eyeballs we have on this 
matter, the
better it is for the foundation!

Martin Peres

[1] https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/xorg_foundation/
[2] http://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/foundation/bylaws.git
[3] http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~mperes/xorg_bylaws/