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
There is an interesting article on LWN about Free Software and voting:
https://lwn.net/Articles/797557/
Several commenters argued that electronic voting itself should not be
done. E.g. one of the first commenters (Roberto) wrote that:
It is indeed pretty sad to see that in 2019 we still need to explain,
again and again, why electronic voting is not feasible. I have been
involved in public debate about electronic voting since the early
2000, when it was unfortunately introduced in France. Here is a
recent summary of the key points, in English, that should make a nice
reading.
http://www.dicosmo.org/MyOpinions/index.php?post/2016/02/25/A-rule-of-thumb…
Do you agree with this criticism or what do you think about that topic?
Best regards,
Matthias
PS: Btw. there was also a good episode of John Oliver explaining this to
a broader audience: $youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svEuG_ekNT0
--
Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 |(fsfe.org/support)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) Weblog k7r.eu/blog.html
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
Hi all,
I'm sure many of you are aware that students at all levels of education
are forced to use nonfree software, and more recently, nonfree network
services in order to receive their education and fulfil the course
requirements (see https://www.gnu.org/education/ for prior writings on
this).
I'm having a bad day today because I'm currently a studying at a
programme that is an exception to the above, with a lot of focus on
using free software. But for some reason, a tutorial today was behind a
Google sign-in wall and the lecturer didn't want to export the tutorial
(which is just a jupyter notebook file) and upload it on the existing
learning management system for students to download and study.
This led me to imagine some possible ways in which the FSFE and/or other
organisations in the free software movement could try to work on this
topic:
1. A survey of students and instructors about their experiences and/or
policies in mandatory nonfree software and nonfree network services in
university classrooms (which can establish the magnitude of the problem,
and help identify ways to change this)
2. A campaign for instructors to pledge not to mandate the use of
nonfree software and network services and/or eliminate them from the
curriculum of their courses
Apologies for the hastily written email, but if anyone in the list is
interested in this topic, I'd love to here more.
Best,
Dem
--
Demetris Karayiannis
Linguistics, University of Eastern Finland
Homepage URL: dkarayiannis.eu
Hi!
Some of you may have noticed that in recent news, the ISOC has announced
the sale of the non-for-profit .org TLD registry to a private equity fund.
Many organizations and individuals find this highly questionable, among them
Creative Commons, EFF and Wikimedia, and even the FSF in the US.
I would like to suggest that the FSFE also joins this campaing / petition.
You can find more information at https://savedotorg.org/
Regards,
Harald
--
- Harald Welte <laforge(a)gnumonks.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
============================================================================
"Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option."
(ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)
* Richard Stallman [2019-11-06 04:33 +0100]:
> I am against using computers to enter votes.
> See stallman.org/evoting.html.
Thank you for the pointer. I did not know about that page.
Best regards,
Matthias
--
Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 |(fsfe.org/support)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) Weblog k7r.eu/blog.html
Dear all,
As you already know the SFScon is hosting our Community meeting this
year. Along with the dedicated FSFE track on Saturday morning and the
afternoon community meeting, we will be having a booth with merchandise
during the entire course of the SFScon. That means starting Friday
morning and ending Saturday evening.
Would anyone of you be interested in joining us at the booth for any
time slot during the event? It would be great if people at the booth
would be able to take turns for breaks, and we are expecting a lot of
SFScon visitors to stop buy.
Please, let me know if and when would anyone of you coming would be
interested.
Thank you very much in advance,
Kind Regards,
Galia
--
Galia Mancheva- Project Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe | www.fsfe.org
+49-30-27595290 (office)
+32 488 070 135 (mobile)
fingerprint: 4195 1315 E14A A00A 0119 6F17 8040 8B16 CADD 6573
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030
Hi all
if it happens that you come to the Chaos Communication Congress this year you
could be interested in the FSFE's call for participation:
https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20191102-01.html
also if you know someone who is going there who might have interest, please
share the call. You find the text of the call within the link and hereafter in
copy:
# Call for sessions "about:freedom" during 36C3
In the context of the 36th Chaos Communication Congress happening from
December 27th to 30th in Leipzig, the FSFE is happy to host an assembly again
inside the cluster "about:freedom". We offer attention and a stage for
self-organised sessions by and for our community and friends, and this is our
call for participation.
For our sessions at the FSFE assembly, we are looking for inspiring talks,
hands-on workshops, community/developer/strategy meetings or any other public,
informative or collaborative activities. Topics can be anything that is about
or related to Free Software – from your private project to global community
projects. While we welcome submissions on technical topics, we also further
encourage non-technical talks that address philosophical, political,
economical, and/or other aspects regarding Free Software, particularly for
this year related to digital sustainability. As part of our cluster
about:freedom, we also look forward to sessions about related subjects that
have a clear connection to Free Software, in particular privacy, data
protection, encryption, the commons and internet policies.
For our friends, it is also possible to have informal meetings, announcements
or other activities at our assembly. In this case, get in touch and we will
see what we can do. If you are a musician and like to help forming our first
Free-Software-song sing-along big band, please also get in touch.
# Formalities
If you are interested in hosting a session, please apply before
** Monday, November 18, 18:00 UTC **
by sending an email to eal(a)fsfe.org with the subject “Session at 36C3” and use
the following template:
Title: name of your session
Description: description of your session
Type: talk / discussion / meeting / workshop …
Length: 30 / 60 / 90 / 120 min
Tags: put useful tags here
Link: (if there is a helpful link)
Expected number of participants: 20 or less / up to 50 / up to 100 /
beyond
About yourself: some words about you/your biography
Time limitations: exclude days or times you are not able to present
You will be informed latest on Tuesday, November 26, if your session is accepted.
# Good to know
* Be aware that an acceptance in our call does not guarantee or offer you a
ticket! Please check the CCC-announcements and proceed according to their
requirements for the tickets.
* If your session is accepted we will happily take care of its proper
organisation, advertising and everything else that needs to be done. You
are then welcome to simply come and host your session.
* For your inspiration see our sessions during 35C3, 34C3, 33C3 and 32C3.
Please, share this call with your friends and/or your favourite channels.
Best,
Erik
--
No one shall ever be forced to use non-free software
Erik Albers | Programme Manager, Communication | FSFE
OpenPGP Key-ID: 0x8639DC81 on keys.gnupg.net