That’s a longer title than I’d like, but I want to try and catch the attention of anyone who might have missed more directed notifications about this. If you’re not an SPI contributing member there’s probably nothing to see here…

Although I decided not to stand for re-election at the Software in the Public Interest (SPI) board elections last July, I haven’t stopped my involvement with the organisation. In particular I’ve spent some time working on an overhaul of the members website and rolling it out. One of the things this has enabled is implementation of 2009-11-04.jmd.1: Contributing membership expiry, by tracking activity in elections and providing an easy way for a member to indicate they consider themselves active even if they haven’t voted.

The plan is that this will run at some point after the completion of every board election. A first pass of cleanups was completed nearly a month ago, contacting all contributing members who’d never been seen to vote and asking them to update their status if they were still active. A second round, of people who didn’t vote in the last board election (in 2014), is currently under way. Affected members will have been emailed directly and there was a mail to spi-announce, but I’m aware people often overlook these things or filter mail off somewhere that doesn’t get read often.

If you are an SPI Contributing member who considers themselves an active member I strongly recommend you login to the SPI Members Website and check the “Last active” date displayed is after 2014-07-14 (i.e. post the start of the last board election). If it’s not, click on the “Update” link beside the date. The updated date will be shown once you’ve done so.

Why does pruning inactive members matter? The 2015 X.Org election results provide at least one indication of why ensuring you have an engaged membership is important - they failed to make a by-laws change that a vast majority of votes were in favour of, due to failing to make quorum. (If you’re an X.org member, go vote!)