Discussion September 2018

discussion@lists.fsfe.org

37 participants
22 discussions

Mozilla: "We’re taking a break from Facebook"
by Jonke Suhr 04 Oct '21

04 Oct '21

Hey all, irregardless of the split in our community between privacy pragmatists and privacy absolutists, I think we should take note of this step Mozilla has taken, as I believe FSFE still has a Facebook page (last active on September 21st as far as I can ascertain). > Dear global community we’ve had the opportunity to interact with over the past several years here: > > We’re taking a break from Facebook. > > At Mozilla we champion platforms and technologies that are good for the web and good for the people that use it. > We stand up for transparency and user control because they make the web healthier for us all. > > That’s why we are pressing pause on any Facebook activity. Mark Zuckerberg has just promised to improve Facebook’s settings and make them more protective, which is a start! Please do that! But we can’t help but think we’ve heard it before, so we’re still going to wait and see what materializes before we resume spending our ad dollars or time here. > > IN THE MEANTIME: > If you need support for Firefox or want to tweet at us, you can find us here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/ > and https://twitter.com/mozilla (Non-tracked link to the source: https://web.archive.org/web/20180323091845/https://de-de.facebook.com/mozil…) What do you guys think? Best regards, Jonke

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transparency about the fellowship
by Daniel Pocock 20 Jan '20

20 Jan '20

Hi everybody, In the blog about fellowship elections being cancelled[1], the fellowship has been likened to a corporate donor. A similar comparison was made in the invitation to the extraordinary general assembly. On the transparency page[2], there is a link to donor information[3] where FSFE identifies the significant corporate donors, especially those who contribute more than 10% of the budget. The fellowship appears to contribute[4] about a third of the budget, more than any other single donor. That was almost EUR 190,000 in 2016 A single fellow also made a bequest of EUR 150,000 to FSFE and they were not identified publicly. Every corporate donor who contributes over 10% is named publicly. Does anybody feel that the same transparency principle should apply in cases such as bequests? Corporate donors (whether they are publicly listed or private companies) typically have to publish some information publicly, at a bare minimum, we can see in which country they are domiciled and who their directors are. I feel it is a good idea to publish more details about FSFE membership and fellowship. In comparison, while at RMLL, I was at the session about April where they announced that they have 4,000 members[5] and clarified that these are all full members of the association with a right to vote. FSFE currently publishes[6] the names of all legal members (GA members), there are 29. FSFE has not directly published statistics about the fellowship though, although the page[7] about the last elections showed there were 1,532 people eligible to vote. There is a weekly report circulated in the team mailing list that gives a membership breakdown by country. As fellowship representative, I feel that the information in this report is quite important for the fellowship at large. I also feel that it is important for other reasons: - giving volunteers transparency, the same details that GA and team are aware of - being consistent with the availability of information about the corporate donors (e.g. we can see where corporate donors are domiciled, so it is important to know where the fellows are predominantly domiciled) - as the "E" in FSFE is for Europe, I feel it is important to demonstrate the extent to which FSFE is engaged in each European country The dissemination of the fellowship statistics on the team mailing list stopped shortly after the extraordinary general assembly. I notice that the fellowship numbers had been increasing last year but in the last few months it has been decreasing. Personally, I suspect that two factors may be responsible: - the renaming of "fellow" to "supporter", many of the email templates and web pages only started using the new term in the last few months. I personally feel this is a downgrade, as a fellow is by definition a member of a fellowship while a supporter is a more external role. Other people may have had the same feeling and quit. - increasing awareness about the GA decision[8] in October to begin the process of abolishing elections There is also a report circulated each week about mailing list subscriptions. I notice in this report that there is a strong correlation between the number of fellows in each country and the number of mailing list users in each country. The blog[1] about removing the elections asserts that fellows are a "purely financial contributor" but if they are active in the mailing list and volunteering, I feel that statement does not adequately describe the fellowship and it is even more critical to have details on the transparency page and to ensure the GA meeting in October puts in place a new procedure for community members to vote. Regards, Daniel 1. https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180526-01.en.html 2. https://fsfe.org/about/transparency-commitment.en.html 3. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html 4. https://fsfe.org/about/funds/2016.en.html 5. https://www.april.org/association#Chiffres_cles 6. https://fsfe.org/about/team.en.html 7. http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_29119d29f759bbf8 8. https://danielpocock.com/our-future-relationship-with-fsfe-2018

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FSFE-in-2020: Who are we?
by Jonas Oberg 14 Oct '19

14 Oct '19

Hi everyone, I wanted to point you to this open internship position at the FSFE: https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170811-01.en.html As you know, when the FSFE was founded, we put together a document describing our self conception. That was 16 years ago, and while I believe it to still be relevant, we'll be looking at making a new committment towards a revised organisational identity later this year. As a part of this work, we're looking for an intern to support the process for 3-6 months, working closely with me and others in the FSFE on analysing how the different groups within and outside of the FSFE perceive the organisation's identity, which will then work towards understanding how aligned they are, and supporting a renewed committment towards a self conception. We've already started the work, and will be looking for someone who could jump on board quite soon indeed, so don't wait to send this to someone you think might be interested! Work description and other application details on the page above. Sincerely, -- Jonas Öberg, Executive Director Free Software Foundation Europe | jonas(a)fsfe.org Your support enables our work (fsfe.org/join)

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FSFE and censorship - not true?
by virgilva＠keemail.me 07 May '19

07 May '19

Greetings FSFE folks!Daniel Pocock writes FSFE is censoring people:https://danielpocock.com/what-is-the-difference-between-moderation-a… <https://danielpocock.com/what-is-the-difference-between-moderation-and-cens…> Please tell us this is not to be true? Virgil

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resigning as Fellowship representative
by Daniel Pocock 23 Sep '18

23 Sep '18

(I would kindly request that my signed resignation be forwarded unaltered to all registered fellows/supporters not on the mailing lists.) Dear fellows, Given the decline of the Fellowship and FSFE's migration of fellows into a supporter program, I no longer feel that there is any further benefit that a representative can offer to fellows. With recent blogs, I've made a final effort to fulfill my obligations to keep you informed. I hope fellows have a better understanding of who we are and can engage directly with FSFE without a representative. Fellows who want to remain engaged with FSFE are encouraged to work through your local groups and coordinators as active participation is the best way to keep an organization on track. This resignation is not a response to any other recent events. From a logical perspective, if the Fellowship is going to evolve out of a situation like this, it is in the hands of local leaders and fellowship groups, it is no longer a task for a single representative. There are many positive experiences I've had working with people in the FSFE community and I am also very grateful to FSFE for those instances where I have been supported in activities for free software. Going forward, leaving this role will also free up time and resources for other free software projects that I am engaged in. I'd like to thank all those of you who trusted me to represent you and supported me in this role during such a challenging time for the Fellowship. Sincerely, Daniel Pocock FSFE Fellowship Representative

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to git or not to git
by Alessandro Rubini 19 Sep '18

19 Sep '18

This is the question. Or, better, to github or not to github. Once upon a time, github was a bad hosting site, because the site code is not free, and we should have rather preferred gitorious. I did. But then gitorious closed shop and I had to go to the various projects (hosted elsewhere) that had submodules and make a commit to change the link. Not many projects, I admit, but still an unpleasant operation. Besides, all past history is now broken because of the dangling submodule link. I'm able to bisect anyways, but will my user be able too? And this problem is replicated for all repo owners. Not nice. So, besides self-hosting (unfeasible for whole-kernel repos) I moved to github. Well, not using it other than as a git repo why should I care that the code (that I do not use) is not free? Maybe because I contribute visibility to that specific unfree provider, but they were "friendly" guys. Now, they are microsoft. Same people. Same site. Different owner, different money-flow. Shall I (we) change attitude? Most smart people say no, that nothing changed. I'm aware the new owner is not worse than most other companies -- but they are the same ones who wanted to kill us out of the market, before turning into friends who still would love if we disappeared. So, I feel a little uneasy, and I'm now wondering where to push my yet-unpushed projects (while keeping previous stuff on github for several reasons -- mostly link-rusting issues). How does the free software community feels in this respect? thanks /alessandro

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Talos II (FSF RYF candidate)
by Timothy Pearson 16 Sep '18

16 Sep '18

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Just wanted to pass this along from the FSF on this side of the pond in case you haven't seen it yet: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/support-the-talos-ii-a-candidate-for-re… - -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJZuEx+AAoJEK+E3vEXDOFbEI4H/ii1wPQbq6xhZF0F5hcS3Kfi 03oE0E1Xaj5IV2FM30sExO/Lf8I5jl+VQnVdrsiCoIIqBev4DcfxA/vfJ4SUY24y hmbwzafi8g2zffaLSICIChiAEEcDHlaQniTU4S6wxNWv4RyIUrkEYvqUvwRNnpUv g69V8VxYUqcjnHtZVpu9gwAmPgc1TXNW508i4fnMP3EHX1DEmW5pBLmRvPvGsRor 9th3F/ezacfqkPlkuWmL2YLb7wRvTzTJw6CMXInpKDyK+kQCMvL3Tgyp2HFZcCm7 skpS+uconvRQhpp/InVYYCh/e6CrHznpxyEhvug0elX0lZDpqvmv1Hv0sTY3mEU= =WEgY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Unsubscribe
by Franco Labella 15 Sep '18

15 Sep '18

Gentile responsabile, ricevo da qualche giorno le mail di questa lista a cui non mi sono mai iscritto. Cancellatemi. Franco Labella --- Questa email è stata esaminata alla ricerca di virus da AVG. http://www.avg.com

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Microsoft to warn users not to install a different browser
by Bjoern Schiessle 13 Sep '18

13 Sep '18

Hi all, I'm sure some of you remember the anti trust case of the European Commission against Microsoft in 2009. The argument back then was: "Microsoft's tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice." As a result Microsoft agreed to not bundle the Internet Explorer with Windows 7 in Europe. Instead users got a "ballot box" to chose a browser. According to Wikipedia[1] the "ballot box" was removed two years later with a update, in March 2013 the European Commission fined Microsoft €561 million. Now, 9 years later I read "Microsoft to ‘warn’ Windows 10 users not to install Chrome or Firefox"[2]. So 9 years later the dialog is back again, but it does the complete opposite this time. It warns user to install anything else beside Microsoft Edge. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission [2] https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17850146/microsoft-windows-10-chrome-fir… Cheers, Björn -- Björn Schießle Coordinator Germany Free Software Foundation Europe (https://fsfe.org) www: https://www.schiessle.org gnupg/pgp key: 0x0x2378A753E2BF04F6 fingerprint: 244F CEB0 CB09 9524 B21F B896 2378 A753 E2BF 04F6

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improving the tone of discussion in FSFE
by Daniel Pocock 12 Sep '18

12 Sep '18

Hi all, I've been in discussion with a few people trying to troubleshoot the root cause of problems in recent discussions. >From my perspective, there are a couple of things that have really undermined my confidence in the community and keep things at a frosty level. The way that Matthias has used my first name in the minutes[1] of the previous GA meeting. Normally the full name of the person proposing a motion is presented in a regular font and placed under the motion, but I feel that putting my first name in the titles is intended to attract vilification. The minutes look unprofessional and bring the organization into disrepute. I'd kindly request that Matthias corrects the minutes. For example, the motions should look like this: Title of motion Text of motion. Proposed by: D. Pocock One of the worst things about leadership mistakes is that people emulate them. Subsequent to the way the president has prepared the minutes, other members of the community have emulated this behaviour, most recently Bernhard, putting my name into the subject line of an email[2] reply. Everything spiralled downwards from there with somebody else changing the subject to "Bernhard lectures". All those emails can be traced directly back to the way the minutes were prepared and I feel that Matthias needs to apologize. There have been frequent, almost always disparaging references to missing the 2017 meeting. This has usually happened in private but came up again in Reinhard's post[3] just last week. It is essential to show respect for volunteers when something goes wrong in their life and they have to miss an event. Reminding people about such things in such an ugly way is a guaranteed way to poison relationships. Furthermore, no volunteer should feel pressure to disclose the reason they had to miss a meeting or change their plans. I'd request that Matthias clarify where these comments originate from, for example, did the chair of the meeting say something disparaging or fail to stop disparaging discussions about the absence? Why does the chair not intervene to maintain respect for volunteers in such instances? Notice that these things also happen in private discussions and I feel that some of what is now appearing in public is a reflection of that. I sincerely hope that the president will clear these things up on behalf of the organization. Regards, Daniel 1. https://fsfe.org/about/legal/minutes/minutes-2017-10-15.en.pdf 2. https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/2018-September/012543.html 3. https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/2018-August/012473.html

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Discussion September 2018