gmane.org.spi.general

Re: Phone number for donations?

Jeremy Baron — 2013-05-11T18:30:52

FYI, one problem I noticed with that plan in the past is that a given
phone # can only be the forwarding target for (or even associated with
I think) a single Google voice account at once. So whatever # an
individual wants to have it forward to can then not be used for a
similar solution for some other organization that individual is
involved with.

Anyway, these are implementation details; IMO we can let whichever
board members want to be part of the ring group figure it out without
design by committee. (Or maybe they do want more suggestions about how
to do it?)

-Jeremy

Re: Phone number for donations?

Josh Berkus — 2013-05-11T17:50:07

Folks,

While this hasn't come up often, it's also easily fulfilled.  Let's just
get a Google Phone number.  It can ring Michael, Bdale and me.  It'll be
free, and we can forget about it.

--Josh

Re: Phone number for donations?

Ean Schuessler — 2013-05-11T17:34:40

----- "Joshua D. Drake" wrote:   


You can get a 1-800 number through Gafachi for about $2 per month and 
around $0.03 per minute of use. If it was bound to an instance of Asterisk 
you could set up extensions and have those ring to anyone's phone anywhere 
you wanted. I think similar things can be done with a Google Voice but I only 
have personal experience setting up a SIP/IAX connection with Asterisk and 
a VOIP vendor. 


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Re: Phone number for donations?

Joshua D. Drake — 2013-05-11T16:32:24

On 05/11/2013 08:51 AM, Bdale Garbee wrote:

I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect that a corporation have a 
phone number. The fact that we don't is actually rather embarrassing. A 
simple forwarding number that can be redirected as needed should be in 
place.

JD

Re: Phone number for donations?

Mason Loring Bliss — 2013-05-11T16:24:59


A private phone number sufficed here. I can't see great utility in adding to
process complexity unless it comes up more frequently than it evidently does.

That said, I do wonder if additional funds couldn't be put to good use -
Debian's marketing is almost entirely word of mouth. It could conceivably be
worth lowering the bar for prospective donors. I asked for a number because I
wanted to donate, but to do so I dug through the web pages, looked at the
whois database, and finally located and subscribed to a mailing list that
included greylisting delays. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there have
been other folks wishing to donate using the same mechanism who simply gave
up somewhere before completing the hunt.

Re: Phone number for donations?

Bdale Garbee — 2013-05-11T15:51:09


Nope.  The fact that I can't recall anyone ever asking for a phone
number before probably means this is a fairly rare occurrence...

Bdale
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Re: Phone number for donations?

Hilmar Lapp — 2013-05-09T19:36:02

Has a Google Voice number been considered?

-hilmar

On May 9, 2013, at 2:34 PM, Michael Schultheiss wrote:

Re: Phone number for donations?

Michael Schultheiss — 2013-05-09T19:34:09

SPI doesn't have its own phone number.  I'll provide you with my number
off list.

Michael Schultheiss
Treasurer, Software in the Public Interest, Inc.

Phone number for donations?

Mason Loring Bliss — 2013-05-09T19:07:26

I'd like to start making small, regular donations to SPI, explicitly for
Debian. I use my bank's bill-pay function for this sort of thing.
Unfortunately, my bill-pay service requires a US phone number for the
recipient, and I'm not finding such a thing in the SPI web site.

The WHOIS database lists a non-US number, which I can't use for the purpose.

Is there a solution for folks who require a phone number to donate? For
various reasons, only one of which is laziness, writing out checks by hand
and mailing them isn't a good option for me, and I don't tend to allow things
to pull through a credit/debit card directly.

Thanks in advance for clues!

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

Joe Nahmias — 2013-05-07T21:33:06

Don't know if I can make the meeting, but wanted to add my voice as 
another SPI Contributing Member in support of this as a restricted 
donation.  I think it's a great cause and one of the better things we 
can do with the SPI cash we have!

--Joe

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

Bill Allombert — 2013-05-03T19:04:42

Why specifically $10,000 ?

Cheers,
Bill.

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

Anthony Towns — 2013-05-05T14:55:53

+1 in general with the idea.

Based on the 31st Dec 2012 vs 31st Dec 2011 treasurer's reports; SPI's
general funds increased by $11k from $35k to $46k last year, so $10k sounds
like a sensible figure to choose too.

On 4 May 2013 03:16, Josh Berkus <josh< at >postgresql.org> wrote:



It might be helpful to have some "one sentence" requirements/problem
statements as to what's not working at the moment for SPI. I gather at
least one issue is "SPI's bespoke system isn't usable by external
bookkeepers, reducing the work that can be cheaply outsourced by the board."

For comparison, over the last couple of years Linux Australia has switched
to using Xero for its accounting -- it's a New Zealand based, proprietary,
software-as-a-service solution, that partners with banks to make inputting
data fairly easy, and has been a very effective solution, both at making it
easier on the volunteer treasurers involved, and in helping the
organisation scale to do more things. I'm not actually sure if SPI's
mission these days inclu

Treasurer's Report as of 2013-04-30

Michael Schultheiss — 2013-05-09T02:56:04

This report uses a cash-based method of accounting, recording donations
when deposited (not when the check was written or received by us) and
recording expenses when sent or scheduled for payment (not when
incurred).

Income Statement
for the Period April 01, 2013 - April 30, 2013

 Income
   Ordinary Income
        ankur.org.in                     1,000.00
        Arch Linux                         470.80
        DebConf 13                      12,907.84
        Debian                          11,861.79
        Drizzle                          4,500.00
        FFmpeg                             110.00
        freedesktop.org                    100.00
        FreedomBox Foundation            4,000.00
        Haskell                          5,368.60
        Jenkins                             90.00
        LibreOffice                     34,750.40
        Open Bioinformatics Foundation  37,447.31
        OpenWrt                             52.00
        PostgreSQL                       2,681.97
        Privo

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

Josh Berkus — 2013-05-07T17:29:38

MJ,


Yes, there have been a couple of calls for making the grant restricted.
 I think that's probably the way we should go ... we'll discuss it at
the Board meeting next week.

--Josh Berkus

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

MJ Ray — 2013-05-07T09:31:50

Jimmy Kaplowitz <jimmy< at >spi-inc.org>

I did read the full bullet point, but didn't think the rest needed
quoting.

The problem is not my reading comprehension.  The problem is that the
above reasoning makes no sense to me: if they're committing to do this
work, why do they need the donations to be unrestricted?  Surely if
the donations are insufficient funding, they need to add more funds,
not use these funds for other work.  We should donate restricted for
the project, not for the outcome, so it'll be usable towards it even
if the total is insufficient.


I don't trust the Conservancy like I trust SPI.  I have a perception
that they're more like a perpetuating trust than an autonomous and
open association, and rather more conservative than liberal.  I didn't
find a page about its current purposes or bylaws on its website, but
that may be partly due to my lack of familiarity with US numbered
forms.  The form 990 for the latest year only lists the most
significant activities and largest three programmes.  The

SPI resolution 2013-05-06.jmd.1: MinGW as associated project

Jonathan McDowell — 2013-05-06T16:39:36

This doesn't look controversial to me; I'd like to present it at the
meeting this Thursday if there isn't any disagreement.

WHEREAS

1. MinGW is a substantial and significant Free Software project.

2. The MinGW developers would like SPI's support and assistance,
including taking donations and holding trademarks.

THE SPI BOARD RESOLVES THAT

3. MinGW is formally invited to become an SPI Associated Project,
according to the SPI Framework for Associated Projects, SPI Resolution
1998-11-16.iwj.1-amended-2004-08-10.iwj.1, a copy of which can be found
at http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/resolutions/2004/2004-08-10.iwj.1/

4. Earnie Boyd is recognised by SPI as the liaison to SPI for MinGW and
is responsible in the first instance for communicating the wishes of
MinGW to SPI. In the event of the need for a replacement Keith Marshall
will name the new liaison.

5. This invitation will lapse, if not accepted, 60 days after it is
approved by the SPI Board.

J.

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

Josh Berkus — 2013-05-03T19:05:40

I talked to Bradley about this.  The SFC is willing to consider a
restricted grant from us if that's one of the board's requirements.

--Josh Berkus

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

Jimmy Kaplowitz — 2013-05-03T19:33:30

Hi Zack,

On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 08:45:27PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:

I agree with everything Josh said in his reply - we should proceed on both
fronts. I'm mainly replying because of the next paragraph:


Yes, the software workflow available to Michael as Treasurer and Josh as
Assistant Treasurer is very inadequate. The software available formerly to Josh
as Treasurer and especially me as the preceding Treasurer was even more so.
While we need professional bookkeeping help, both their work and the Treasurer
volunteers' work will be much more streamlined with better software.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy< at >spi-inc.org

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

Josh Berkus — 2013-05-03T19:04:32


If you look at last month's board meeting, you'll see a rather strident
proposal from me that we hire a new bookkeeper.  I think we need to do
that *also*.  I agree that that's more important than software we'll get
in a year.  Fortunately, we have the money to do *both*.

One of the problems we encounter, though, is that most bookkeepers won't
deal with our wonky ad-hoc system.  This puts a lot of ongoing burden on
the volunteer treasurer, and causes the bookkeeper so be less effective.

--Josh Berkus

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

Stefano Zacchiroli — 2013-05-03T18:45:27

As an example: wouldn't those money (+ a good deal of extra other) be
better spent to pay a professional accountant than in this fund-raising
initiative? I'm convinced that at SPI scale, that would make a real
difference in the quality of service offered to affiliated projects.

Don't get me wrong: I've worked with SPI accountant(s) for many years
and I know they do *a lot* of work. But that doesn't mean they could
scale indefinitely. At some point, given the purpose of SPI, you should
probably question whether accounting is the kind of internal job you
want to keep volunteer or go professional.

That said, I'm torn on this matter. I'm *very* excited by SFC
initiative. I think their goal is laudable, I know how seriously they
work, and that makes me confident that they can be successful with this
initiative and have a real impact on the day-to-day activities of NPOs,
and in particular umbrella organizations like SPI. But that doesn't mean
that *SPI* money are well spent by participating in the fund-raising.

Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

Josh Berkus — 2013-05-03T17:16:09

Ah, I didn't see the "General Donation" note.  I'll need to ask Bradley
about that.  I agree that I wouldn't be OK with the $10K being repurposed.


Part of the project will be developing requirements, as part of Phase 0.
 I will be contributing to that portion, and I suspect others from SPI
will as well.


The SPI Board has, historically, been blissfully ignorant of the burdens
its treasurers labor under.  Feel free to interview Michael on the
topic, or Jimmy.


I understand your desires, but unless you want to vote additional money
to pay for someone's time to develop written requirements independant of
the Conservancy project, it's not going to happen (it might not happen
even if you do).  There are 3 people familiar with the real requirements
of SPI's accounting, and none of us have free time, or we'd already be
working on software.


Again, it's an open source project, with a development mailing list.
Among other things, your experience based on hledger would be valuable,
as would your contribution to