I just asked this question over on another site and thought I’d widen it to here:-
I’m standing for election to the board of Software in the Public Interest this month, so I was wondering how many users who contribute to free and open source software have joined? If so, why? If not, what’s stopping you?
http://www.spi-inc.org is the organisation’s website. Even if I don’t get elected, I’m interested to know why people do and don’t join and would like to summarise the answers to SPI, so please mention if that’s not OK with you.
I’ll summarise some of the other answers I’ve had in a day or two.
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.
As Clayton said, I’ve been looking a while for how to join, is not the first time, I did before and never found it until now that Clayton said that was part of some submenu that BTW was the only one I didn’t looked for (normally “About” is just a page, not a menu)…
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I’ve read the by-laws and guidelines of SPI and I agree with them, but (as an example) I can’t find a single reference to ‘Free Software’ on them. It always alludes to ‘software available to the general public’, which definition I can’t find either. I find the available information about SPI too much generic.
This is the main reason why I’ve not become a SPI member, I know what SPI is doing, and I know it’s a good job but I think the goals, motivations and procedures of SPI are not enough clearly explained or detailed. I’m reluctant to join a group which theoretical fundamentals are not so clear to me. (probably my fault, I could have requested more info or something)
I believe that SPI was formed around the time the whole “free software”/”open source” naming debate was kicking off and “software available to the general public” was adopted as a compromise, trying to avoid splitting the community, but I wasn’t a member then and didn’t find the discussion archive when I just looked.
If you think it should be changed, please join and make the point to the board or the by-laws update working group when it starts (I think almost all members think some updates are needed).
I agree that more of the working information needs to be summarised and published. My requests to update the website so far have been a dismal failure, so I guess most members don’t see the problem. More members who do see the problem would be a good thing, I think.