supporting our fellowship representative
Christian Kalkhoff
softmetz at fsfe.org
Tue Aug 28 22:04:08 UTC 2018
Hi Luke,
Am Dienstag, 28. August 2018, 10:18:11 CEST schrieb lukerogers at tutanota.com:
> No more elections? My fellowship contribution isn't going to FSFE next
> year, give the money to a local group where everything is done by
> volunteers and not careerists in Berlin.
Thank your ongoing willingness to support the cause and local groups, even if
you seem dissatisfied with FSFE at the moment. But i really have to ask you to
not call the employees names.
When I joined the Fellowship back in 2011 I wanted to support Free Software..
As I got to know more and more people from the larger community, I was
motivated to start a new local group in Munich. In the beginning I was a bit
unsure about what help I could expect from the official body. But as the Wiki
stated and still states, there are plenty of services and resources (not
talking about technical services) Fellows/Supporters can use for their work.
As I used more and more of those services to help spread the word about Free
Software in Munich and Southern Germany, I was really encouraged and supported
by those very employees to request what we/I needed. A significant part of
this support came from our today's president, who IMHO would have been a lot
faster up the ladder outside of FSFE, if this was his objective.
And of course he wasn't the only one: Ulrike, Erik, Rainer, Reinhard
(volunteering full time), Karsten, many interns that since have moved on and
people I have not yet met due my recent absence, do a fantastic job to enable
me to work for Free Software in my (rare) spare time.
Long story short: Up until today I haven't met every single member of the GA,
who mostly are volunteers on their own. But what I was able to do in Munich,
Augsburg and now Kiel wouldn't have been possible without the permanent
support from the employees in Berlin/Düsseldorf (and of course many, many
volunteers that stay unnamed here).
I am pretty sure that the support I received will be given to those who ask.
So giving money to FSFE helps spreading Free Software in all of Europe, not
only locally.
I just wanted to tell my story to a) free the employees of FSFE from untrue
accusations b) show what FSFE IMHO really is about. It's about Free Software,
not a yearly vote "forced" upon a community which just wants to work for Free
Software
Of course, if the Fellowship votes would have been cancelled without any
replacement, that would have hurt the checks and balances. But at the same
time people are now invited to apply for membership, the larger community and
every supporter by itself now can do this.
Just my two cents.
Christian
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