Discussion October 2017

discussion@lists.fsfe.org

26 participants
17 discussions

Fwd: FSCONS highlights -- @Ifi, 4-5 november 2017
by Paul Boddie 17 Oct '17

17 Oct '17

Hello, I promised to pass this on, but was probably going to ask on this list whether anyone was aware of it. I went to FSCONS a whole five years ago and met quite a few FSFE people, but I think it hasn't been as popular amongst FSFE people in recent years. Paul ---- FSCONS: The Free Society Conference November 4-5, Oslo, Norway https://fscons.org/2017/ A meeting place for social change, focused on the intersection between technology, culture and society. The conference brings together people from a wide range of fields, and merges the technical with the social, seeking both to activate and challenge. Your input in open discussion and brainstorming are as important as the talks given during the conference. Here are some highlights of the awesome schedule we are excited to share with you: Keynotes: Linda Sandvik @hyper_linda, Code Club co-founder, part of the Brexodus. Linda likes solving problems that make the world a better place and has a passion for open data, open knowledge, citizen science and serious games. Come to her talk, and discover your natural affinity for teaching yourself new things. Vladan Joler @TheCreaturesLab and Share Lab Vladan and his Share Labs have mapped the power relations of Facebook CEOs, metadata explorations into browsing histories, quantifying political information warfare and creating stunning and insightful infographics of this data-driven research at https://labs.rs/ Meet Linda and Vladan at FSCONS, get your ticket today at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fscons-2017-oslo-tickets-37008324896 Speaker highlights: Jérémie Zimmermann, La Quadrature du Net online freedom organization, will speak about Hacking With Care, a collective composed of hackers-activists, caregivers, artists, sociologist, growing quite literally by contact and affinity. Bradley Kuhn, free software activist, president of the Software Freedom Conservancy, on the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation, editor in chief of copyleft.org, will explain how the basis of free software and free culture licensing is crumbling. Øyvind Kolås @hodefoting pippin, award-winning creator of digital media tools, GIMP/GEGL developer, digital artist. Learn how to create minimal graphical operating environments with Øyvind. Vinay Gupta, @hexayurt, re.silience security in critical infrastructure, Ethereum release coordinator. Have you ever wondered how user interface shapes human identity? Patricia Aas, @pati_gallardo, Vivaldi browser programmer & security noob, fell involuntarily into the media searchlights by asking some hard questions on the lack of transparency in the recent Norwegian goverment electronic vote. You can hear her story at FSCONS. Patrice Riemens, cultural/Internet activist, 'FLOSSopher', advocate of Free Software, staff member of autonomist journal Multitudes, and member of the Dutch hackers club 'Hippies from Hell'. Cryptocurrency meets Universal Basic Income: Is this a good idea? FSCONS also has 20 other speakers speaking on diverse topics ranging from digital activism and internet censorship to digital art and hacking. We also have four hands-on workshops where you can learn video editing, lockpicking, how to make peer-to-peer applications and how to hack with care. This is an intimate conference where you have an opportunity to have a discussion with speakers and other attendees. FSCONS aims to be an accessible conference, and through the support of Fritt Ord and NUUG Foundation is able to offer tickets at the low price of 750NOK (about 80€) Get your FSCONS ticket today at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fscons-2017-oslo-tickets-37008324896

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New FOSS email webamin
by Ioli Papadopoulou 15 Oct '17

15 Oct '17

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PMPC flyers containing QR-codes for the translated pages
by Gergely Székely 14 Oct '17

14 Oct '17

Dear All, Here you can find flyers containing QR-codes for the translated pages of the PMPC campaign: https://git.fsfe.org/gergely/PMPC_QR-code_flyers The main idea is to have an easily and cheaply reproducible PMPC campaign material that can be both posted on bulletin boards and given to the hands of people. Another benefit is that it is easier to scan a QR-code than typing an url for people using mobile devices. I also think it would be a good idea to mobilize FSFE activists in cities (where there are enough activists) to spread the flyers in streets to reach as many people as possible. What do you think? Best, Gergely

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improving fellowship communication (GA motion)
by Daniel Pocock 13 Oct '17

13 Oct '17

Hi all, Since being elected as one of the fellowship representatives, I've been looking at various ways to perform this role effectively. For people who joined FSFE through the FSFE fellowship program, the fellowship representatives are the most senior elected representatives designated in the FSFE constitution[1] and therefore it would appear logical to me that as the representatives, we would be the ones trusted to make decisions about communication with our constituency. In practice, however, this is not the case and people in various parts of the organization (this was discussed in the GA list) have expressed various concerns (e.g. data protection laws, member expectations) for not empowering the fellowship representatives to communicate directly with the people who voted for us. The original request I sent to the GA is at the bottom of this email. Personally, I felt these concerns demonstrated a lack of trust and confidence in the fellowship representatives and in fact even a lack of trust and confidence in humanity to organize ourselves democratically. Having served in various representative roles in the past where membership lists were always available to me I actually felt somewhat insulted by these responses and uncertain about whether the fellowship representative role is meant to be only an illusion of representation rather than an active representative. I put forward a motion for the GA meeting to address this for the future. To maximize the possibility of achieving consensus at the GA meeting (motions are not usually voted on), the motion is not retrospective and does not attempt to clarify the current status of membership data under privacy laws or whatever else, it is only about avoiding further ambiguity in the future. To ensure the GA can understand how people feel, it would be interesting to get opinions from the community: - when you join an organization such as FSFE and you provide personal data such as your name and email address, do you expect that office holders and elected representatives would have some access to this data in performing their roles? - do you feel it is reasonable for people who are in a position of trust to have some discretion in how they use the data as long as they do so in the best interests of the organization, it's mission and it's members? Or do you believe the organization should strive to obfuscate the data so that even office holders can't read it and put systems in place so communications are sent out to members through an opaque process? - what are the practices you have seen in other community organizations in the free software space and can we learn anything from them in developing best practice? Proposed motion: The GA recognizes the stark difference between the way FSFE coordinates contributor data and other organizations are doing things. FSFE supporter data is only available to Reinhard, Jones, system-hackers(?), ISP staff and third-parties involved in payment processing. The GA resolves to let supporters choose to be a "silent" supporter who simply donates and expects nothing in return and contributors who choose to volunteer and are identifiable to other contributors through a PGP keyring, directory or other means. Where somebody chooses to be in the former category, their personal data will remain under a somewhat default data protection regime (need-to-know access only) whereas if they choose to be in the latter category, they will be informed that a less stringent data protection policy is in effect. Where somebody in the latter category (contributor) provides information that is only required to process a donation (credit card billing address, payment card details, etc), that information will remain under strict privacy controls. Background to this motion: In Debian, for example, all trusted contributors are identified in a publicly distributed PGP keyring and many more contributors are identified through resources like contributors.debian.org and the Ultimate Debian Database. Many people feel that a de-centralized organization like this is more appropriate for robustness and for empowering volunteers. Regards, Daniel 1. https://fsfe.org/about/legal/constitution.en.html -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: improving fellowship communication Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 10:53:27 +0200 From: Daniel Pocock <daniel(a)pocock.pro> To: ga(a)fsfeurope.org Hi all, As I've been elected as a fellowship representative, I feel it is important a) to know who I am representing b) to be able to communicate with them directly I've asked Erik if he could provide contact details for the fellowship and he stated that data protection prevents this and requires all communication to go through Reinhard. It is standard practice for just about any other elected representative to have this basic data. For example, when I was elected as employee representative on a pension committee, I was given a full list of all members. In most countries people who run for public office are given a list of all the people registered to vote at the deadline, this also helps with transparency and detecting errors. I feel it is important for FSFE to address this. Personally, I would like to email a report about my own activities to fellows from time to time, probably using a reply-to header set to the discussion list. I would not object to signing a confidentially agreement, committing to store the data securely, limiting my use of any such data to FSFE purposes and committing not to use the data to promote myself or endorse any future candidates in fellowship elections. Regards, Daniel

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Is lack of software freedom a valid reason for refusal?
by Carsten Agger 08 Oct '17

08 Oct '17

I imagine a number of situations: * Suppose I'm unemployed and dedicated to only using free software - I'm offered a job where I'll have to use Windows and Microsoft Word. If I refuse the job because of software freedom. Can I still be claim unemployment benefit? * I'm an unemployed programmer and get offered at job where I have to *write* proprietary software - I refuse because I won't participate in taking users' freedom. Can I still be claim unemployment benefit? * I want to park my car in the city, but it's only possible to pay by downloading one of two proprietary apps (real-world situation in Copenhagen) on my smartphone. Can I refuse to pay an eventual fine on the grounds that I couldn't pay? ... etc. I think the ideal must be for the lack of software freedom to *always* be accepted as a valid reason to refuse a given piece of software, but pragmatically, it may not always be possible (especially, many people like to have jobs and may prioritize that above not using/writing proprietry software).

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"joining" the FSFE
by Daniel Pocock 02 Oct '17

02 Oct '17

Hi all, Whenever I'm discussing FSFE with people at an event, somebody inevitably asks me about the joining process or what it means to be an FSFE member. There has actually been some ambiguity about this. The main page of the web site has a "Join the FSFE" button, it is very prominent. It links to a page where "join" is in the URL: https://fsfe.org/fellowship/ams/join.php?ams=join and the title says "Join the FSFE" Anybody who has ever joined any other organization before is going to assume that after following these links and completing the form they are an equal member of the organization. In practice, the organization has different groups: - the GA members (the first group) being the only members of the legal body, the "Join" page doesn't give any instructions for people to pursue this type of membership nor does it tell people that they are not becoming voting members - The "Join" links on the web site should probably say "Become a donor" because that is what they are about, asking people to become regular donors (this is the second group) - people can also be a volunteer (the third group), without being either a legal (voting) member or a donor, the join link doesn't actually give people any information about how to do this I've tried to raise this in the GA a few times but the "Join the FSFE" button remains prominent on the web site and I feel this undermines the organization in the eyes of the wider community and also challenges the relationship between the organization and those people who have already engaged with us. I proposed a motion for the GA meeting to finally resolve this, give us clarity in the future and hopefully putting the issue behind us in a way that will gain respect and confidence from anybody who "joined" and subsequently became disillusioned about it. Would anybody like to comment on this topic, share their experience with the joining process or comment on your impression of the buttons and text currently in use? Proposed motion: The GA recognizes that the widespread use of the word "Join" on the FSFE web site may have caused many fellows and volunteers to believe their payment made them a member of the incorporated association. The GA resolves that a notice should be published on the web site clarifying the situation, the notice should be sent to everybody who completed the form to "Join the FSFE" and any future communication, through the web site or other marketing materials should make it unambiguous whether people are being solicited to join the incorporated association, volunteer their time or become a financial supporter and also making them aware of the alternative roles they can have in the organization. Regards, Daniel

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Is it acceptable to use proprietary software (platforms) to promote software freedom?
by Erik Albers 02 Oct '17

02 Oct '17

Hi all, Maybe you noted in the Newsletter May [1] a pro and contra between our Executive Director and our Fellowship representative: On the FSFE's Planet, we had an interesting dialogue popping up between our executive director Jonas Öberg who argues that sometimes you can use proprietary software to further free and open source software [2] although you should be aware about the risk of backfiring. And Daniel Pocock, our new Fellowship representative, answered with "the risk of proprietary software" [3] and that "no deal might be better than a bad deal", meaning that if you cannot achieve something with Free Software you should consider just doing without it. In our European core team we are having a lively discussion now about the pros and cons of using proprietary software platforms like Facebook, Meetup, Twitter and alike to send out our message of software freedom. You may have noticed that the FSFE for example runs a Twitter-account. We do this under some rules but in particular under the rule that these "services are an addition to the FSFE's communication channels and not a replacement. The teams have to make sure to always provide the information accessible by using Free Software without pushing people to create accounts on proprietary platform." Means that every information on a proprietary platform is only a mulitiplication of information that is given somewhere else, accessible and created with Free Software. Now I would be interested what you think? Do you think that - although the use of proprietary platforms is ethically not supportable - the chances of convincing new people to use and further Free Software are worth the punishment? Or do you think that our message should not occur on platforms like Facebook or Twitter at all, because it contradicts our efforts in getting people to use decentralized services, run with Free Software and therefore potentially harm us in the long run? Thank you for sharing your opinions on this, Erik [1] https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201705 [2] http://blog.jonasoberg.net/using-proprietary-software-for-freedom/ [3] https://danielpocock.com/risks-of-using-proprietary-software -- No one shall ever be forced to use non-free software Erik Albers | Communication & Community Coordinator | FSFE OpenPGP Key-ID: 0x8639DC81 on keys.gnupg.net

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Discussion October 2017