<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Thank you for your careful and civil contribution to this discussion, Paul.<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Mirko.<br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 28. Aug 2018, at 07:28, Paul Boddie <<a href="mailto:paul@boddie.org.uk" class="">paul@boddie.org.uk</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">On Tuesday 28. August 2018 15.32.24 Reinhard Müller wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">Am 2018-08-28 um 15:04 schrieb Joe Awni:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">As far as I'm concerned, with out elections, my impression is it's a<br class="">staff-office in Berlin that is effectively domain-name-squatting on<br class=""><a href="http://fsfe.org" class="">fsfe.org</a> <<a href="http://fsfe.org" class="">http://fsfe.org</a>>.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">I guess that you know how offending this is to the numerous volunteers<br class="">in FSFE, especially for those not based in Berlin - like, for example,<br class="">myself. It does, however, speak for itself that such statements usually<br class="">origin from people who have never participated in any of FSFE's activities.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">I wouldn't phrase my own thoughts in such terms, and I do recognise the effort <br class="">made by both staff and volunteers within the FSFE, but I do also recognise the <br class="">frustration some people have that their involvement with the organisation is <br class="">largely confined to paying their membership dues.<br class=""><br class="">Having begun my involvement with the FSFE in a fairly active way, only for <br class="">that involvement to gradually diminish over the years, I don't consider it <br class="">completely inappropriate for me to point out that the organisation struggles <br class="">to engage and empower its membership.<br class=""><br class="">Some of these struggles are matters of practicality. For instance, which tools <br class="">are available to supporters to amplify their own personal efforts to use, <br class="">develop and advocate Free Software?<br class=""><br class="">(We have, at the moment, an ongoing thread about not using GitHub in the face <br class="">of arguably overstated claims about that platform's "network effects", but <br class="">what kind of network effects does the FSFE offer?)<br class=""><br class="">Other problems arise from the organisation's positioning. While some people <br class="">may like the idea of the FSFE as a kind of "FSF light", others including <br class="">myself expect the organisation to take a principled and effective stand on <br class="">matters of software freedom and associated concerns. To do otherwise is to <br class="">misrepresent an entire family of related organisations.<br class=""><br class="">Luke wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">I want to give my full support to Daniel Pocock and commend him for his<br class="">tenacity in the pursuit of transparency and truth. It looks like the GA<br class="">is full of yes-men but Pocock is the fiercely independent advocate that us<br class="">fellows need.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">As the Fellowship did elect Daniel as representative, with various other <br class="">candidates expressing similar views, I find it disturbing that if these views <br class="">are dissenting then they will no longer find a voice in the leadership of the <br class="">organisation. While it may be claimed that others in the leadership do, in <br class="">fact, share his views on some matters, the rest of us are now obliged to take <br class="">those claims at face value.<br class=""><br class="">I can understand that the elections seemed like a distraction, especially <br class="">given a turnout of 265/1532 in the last one [1]. However, such disengagement <br class="">was probably informed by the fact that the Fellowship representatives are <br class="">vastly outnumbered in the governing body of the organisation, making their <br class="">only effective role as some kind of conscience of the membership.<br class=""><br class="">I don't agree with Daniel on everything, but I can sympathise with him here <br class="">given that his current predicament is practically a consequence of a number of <br class="">factors in the way this organisation is structured and run. And while people <br class="">might not want the obvious to be said out loud, the result will be that people <br class="">end up voting with their money instead.<br class=""><br class="">Paul<br class=""><br class="">[1] <a href="https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_29119d29f759bbf8" class="">https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_29119d29f759bbf8</a><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">Discussion mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:Discussion@lists.fsfe.org" class="">Discussion@lists.fsfe.org</a><br class="">https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion<br class=""><br class="">This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All<br class="">participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other:<br class="">https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct<br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class="">
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">-- <br class=""></div><div style="text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Mirko Boehm | <a href="mailto:mirko@kde.org" class="">mirko@kde.org</a> | KDE e.V.<br class="">FSFE Team Germany<br class="">Qt Certified Specialist and Trainer<br class="">Request a meeting: <a href="https://doodle.com/mirkoboehm" class="">https://doodle.com/mirkoboehm</a><br class=""></div></div></div>
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