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I'm sorry; you have reached the wrong list; I've forwarded your mail
on to the correct group of folks.

-Alec

On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 9:32 PM, Yuri Vasilevski <yvasilev@g.o> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am currently at DebConf in Argentina, and today there was a BoF
> by Bdale Garbee about SPI [1] with another 5 members of the SPI board
> present and participating. And that reminded me about the discussions
> that where happening on this list some time ago, so after the BoF I
> approached Luk Claes (one of the members of the board and a friend) to
> ask him about the doubts regarding how SPI could work and what could
> be the advantages and the disadvantages of Gentoo having a relationship
> with SPI.
>
> From what we talked, SPI could provide three services to Gentoo:
>
> 1) Helping to take care of all the paperwork regarding legal status,
>   trademarks, copyright and such.
>
> 2) Offering legal advice and helping in court for free. And if they can,
>   that's not only limited to USA, but also to other countries.
>   (As an example he told me that there was a case where someone
>   registered a domain name in Spain with debian in it and they managed
>   to contact a Spanish lawyer and he arranged a settlement for that
>   case.)
>
> 3) Gentoo can accept (in some cases tax deductible) donations through
>   them in the USA. For this they accept four ways making the donations
>   (two electronic ones, checks and wire transfers), as well as, they
>   provide ways to channel this money where it's needed (like in the
>   case of DebConfs that some of Debian's money that came from donations
>   in the USA was made available for use in this conference in
>   Argentina).
>
> And the good part is that the tree options are completely independent,
> so Gentoo, or any project for that matter, can join with any subset of
> the three options mentioned above.
>
> I also asked whenever they were in a position to accept a project the
> size of Gentoo and I was told that they should be able to accept Gentoo.
>
> Also being, us gentoo developers, part of a big free software project
> makes us by default contributing (aka voting) members of SPI in case we
> (as individual developers) join it, so we should be able to have some
> influence on how things are run within SPI, as well as, if some people
> are interested they should be eligible for being a member of the
> board.
>
> So, After this very long preamble I would like to express that I think
> we should seriously consider joining SPI with, maybe, just a subset of
> the options they provide. And I'll go option by option (in reverse
> order) now:
>
> 3) This one I'm unsure, if I am not mistaken, Gentoo Foundation has the
>   right status to be able to accept tax deductible donations. So for
>   me it would make sense to join if the SPI method is more flexible and
>   makes it easier and friendlier for the donor to make the donation. Or
>   else it might also make sense to have it as a completely parallel
>   channel and see how it works so in case it works well, Gentoo will be
>   able at some point to free itself from dealing with the related
>   paperwork.
>
> 2) I think this one is very good to have, as well as, it is a good way
>   to get to know SPI better and to see if later we should outsource
>   more responsibilities to them. So for me, this reason alone is good
>   enough to join it and then see how open, trustworthy and efficient
>   they are so we can make a qualified decision on whenever to change or
>   not our status within SPI.
>
> 1) This is the most delicate one and the one I have no clue about. I
>   don't know what is involved in keeping all the paperwork done, nor
>   how much time and energy it consumes. So I can not say how much sense
>   does it make to do it in house as apposed to outsourcing it.
>
> So, I would like you to consider my proposal as well as to offer you my
> services as proxy for any questions you might have for the SPI board
> members here at DebConf, or, you can always contact them directly [2]
>
> Here is also some info on guidelines for the projects wanting to join:
> http://www.spi-inc.org/treasurer/associated-project-howto.html
>
> Kindest regards,
> Yuri.
>
> [1] https://penta.debconf.org/dc8_schedule/events/223.en.html
>
> [2] http://www.spi-inc.org/contact
>
>