“Software in the Public Interest, Inc., will hold a public board of directors meeting on Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 19:00 UTC. [...] SPI meetings are held on the OFTC IRC network, irc.oftc.net, in #spi. [...] Agenda“
A couple of weeks ago, I asked why people do and don’t join SPI? The answers I got can be grouped into a few headings:-
- Don’t know about SPI
-
“I admit that I was unaware of SPI. However seeing its age, a few familiar names on the board and also on the project list it looks like a solid organisation.”
“I too am unfamiliar with your organization”
“I guess I would be yet aother person who was not aware of this group.”
“Lack of awareness of SPI is probably the biggest hurdle. I too, was unaware of SPI. I am aware of the Linux Foundation and the FSF and others, but how does SPI differentiate itself and its goals from those organizations?”
- Don’t know about joining
-
“The membership page on the SPI website is buried at the bottom of a secondary menu. One has to really go looking for it. And this definitely gives the impression that adding members is not a very high priority.”
“I’ve been looking a while for how to join, is not the first time, I did before and never found it until now”
- Don’t see why to join
-
“Even as an open source software advocate, I have not joined SPI because my particular interest and focus is on Plone. The Plone Foundation handles largely the same functions that SPI does for smaller, independent groups.”
“Why, what’s in it for me? The betterment of mankind or bragging rights when a corporations steals all of my work and gets rich off of it.”
“If you are someone who is very interested FOSS (free and open source software) rights and licenses, you are probably more inclined to become a part of the FSF (Free Software Foundation) or the OSI (Open Source Initiative).”
I’d welcome any thoughts you have on how we should overcome these barriers, either in the comments here, or on IRC #spi – I think I should be there a bit before or after the meeting. I’ll try to summarise the best over the next Wednesday or two.
I’m probably in this camp:
“If you are someone who is very interested FOSS (free and open source software) rights and licenses, you are probably more inclined to become a part of the FSF (Free Software Foundation) or the OSI (Open Source Initiative).”
If i want to support free software in general i would join/support one of the Free Software Foundations. I would probably go for the FSFE simply because i live in europe.
If i’m more interested in the technical side of free software or in a special project i would join the special project like debian, kde, gnome, apache,…
Basically i don’t see the need in having a SPI. For me we already have way to much organisations: FSFs, OSI, Linux Foundation, Apache Foundation,…
Sometimes i have the impression that it is a little bit like software. Instead of joining an existing project/organisation a start my own and yet another project/organisation just to have my own pet.
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Two small differences in SPI that I don’t want to wait for next Wednesday before pointing out:-
1. SPI is older than most other free software organisations except FSF – it came before OSI, before Linux Foundation, before Apache Foundation and so on – and supports debian, drupal, postgresql and more – it’s no pet org;
2. SPI is one of the few organisations that ordinary free software developers can really join and participate fully – as I understand it, full FSF and OSI memberships are by some sort of invitation, Linux Foundation and FSFE are by payment, Apache Foundation is by meritocratic invitation (which is fairer IMO).
FSF associate Membership is by payment. This makes you an associate member, without the right to vote. https://www.fsf.org/join
I know about the “associate member” scams. I think a member who has no voice isn’t a full member. Full membership is by invitation only, as far as I can tell. It’s not really comparable to the https://members.spi-inc.org/ level of contributing membership.
I suspect the astonishingly low profile of SPI is almost the soul reason more folks don’t join/support it.
I looked at it a few years back when I was looking at how Debian was financed, but SPI didn’t look especially keen for money then. Also as a non-US citizen their tax exempt status doesn’t make it as efficient as it could be. Not obviously better than handing money to individual DD.
But even if you know SPI exists their activity in support of projects in not that obvious. For example they claim to support OpenOffice.org but a quick attempt to find out what they have actually done drew a blank.
The website could do with concrete examples of contributions they have made, things they have done, so people can get a clearer idea of whether it is an organization worth joining or donating money to. At the moment you search madly for anything that doesn’t just look like bureaucracy, and that isn’t terribly appealing (even if someone has to do the boring financial paper work for these project – say “we do some of the boring paperwork for…” examples include obtaining EU trademark for…, allowing cheap credit card payment to support our project etc). The home page says it all – busy telling me about Plone, and what it encourage other people (programmers) to do, is a complete turn-off, if nothing else put a stock photo of someone pretty on there to catch the eye, and revamp the language, stick the “click and pledge” button on the front page and more folks will click on it.
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