Rectification of my last 2 mails to spi-general (membership)

Philippe Cloutier chealer at gmail.com
Sat Jul 16 22:04:52 UTC 2016


Hi,
I just sent 2 mails to this list which claimed or suggested that I 
became a SPI member yesterday after a delay of 1 year. If I understand 
correctly, I was actually an SPI member since the day I applied 
(2015-06-28). It is only the recognition of my contribution and the 
obtainment of the associated powers which took so long.

Apologies for that

By the way, I find the term "Non-contributing member" poor. For example, 
I have been contributing to SPI associated projects since before I 
applied to become an SPI member. Yet, I was for a non-negligible time a 
so-called "non-contributing member", until I applied to become a 
contributing member. This terminology is misleading, and although 
English is not my native language, it even seems distasteful to me to 
refer to a member as a "non-contributing member" (even if that member is 
actually not contributing).

It would seem better to simply distinguish "contributing members" from 
members in general. If a specific term is needed for members who are not 
recognized as contributing, perhaps "simple members", "unprivileged 
members" or "non-voting members" would do, but I reckon this is 
non-trivial (if we distinguish "non-voting members" from "voting 
members", there is an implication that all "voting members" 
(contributing members) exercise their voting privileges, which is 
obviously wrong).



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