So Mako blogged about a lack of interest in SPI and says:

SPI still suffers from a lack of interest and activity by participants in its member projects. SPI handles Debian's money and every Debian developer should be interested and involved in SPI; yet only a relatively small percentage are. I've run SPI sessions, talks, and BOFs at three of the last four Debian conferences but haven't been able to make a satisfactory dent in either the Debian community or SPI.

However it seems to me that, for Debian, SPI just handle donations and our trademark. That's great and and I'm really glad someone is doing it. I'm sure it's relevant for people trying to sort out hosting or new buildds that need funding but for a lowly developer I don't really see that this is very relevant nor why I should become a contributing member of SPI and vote.

Mako goes on to say "SPI has continued to be mired in a number of bureaucratic issues." but if I wanted bureaucracy and pointless pedantry then I would actually read the posts on -legal instead of just skimming the subject lines.

I went and read the SPI website (no new news since April 2005 despite the upcoming election?) and Mako's old talk on SPI and the accompanying notes but I still don't quite get its relevance yet.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me.