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
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 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)
Dear all,
"The Free Software community at its best" – that's how 14 February 2019
could be described. Hundreds of posts in blogs and social media,
beautiful custom artwork, handsome pictures and interesting events. And
all that in order to thank Free Software contributors for their
outstanding work to maintain and extend our freedoms.
It took us a while to select a few of the many highlights we saw during
the day. Read our report to get an impression of what happened that day:
https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20190329-01.html
I hope you enjoyed this day as much as we did. If you feel that we
forgot some special highlight (which we surely did considering the
amount), please share it with us.
And please remember: Thanking Free Software contributors like
developers, translators, artists or testers is possible throughout the
whole year :)
Best,
Max
--
Max Mehl - Programme Manager - Free Software Foundation Europe
Contact and information: https://fsfe.org/about/mehl | @mxmehl
Become a supporter of software freedom: https://fsfe.org/join
Hello,
in our last press release on the EU Copyright Directive, Alexander
Sander says:
"The exclusion of Free Software code hosting and sharing providers from
this directive is crucial to keep Free Software development in Europe
healthy, solid and alive"
How do we come to this conclusion? We can probably give thanks to
Microsoft for their good lobby work, that they could get an exception
for GitHub (maybe the purchase of GitHub had finally probably something
good):
"Open source software developing and sharing platforms like GitHub
should remain out of scope." [1]
Finally, I don't think this will help us. Other open source platforms,
such as Mastodon instances, have to install upload filters if they don't
want to end up in court. I am not a lawyer and I can't find a section in
the directive that contains the opposite or can dispel my concerns about
this. Can our legal team tell us what does
"Providers of services such as open source software development and
sharing platforms,[...] are also excluded from this definition" [2]
in the "EU Copyright Directive" exactly mean for free and open source
software projects that are not "software development and sharing
platforms"?
Next, Alexander says in our names:
"We call on the European Commission to promote the dissemination of Free
Software filter technologies, including financial support, for instance"
No, I won't do that and I completely disagree! I urge the FSFE to argue
*against* uploadfilters and censorship. Because it doesn't matter if the
censorship machine has an open or a closed license, At the end of the
day uploadfilters serve censorship and censorship has to be abolished.
There's already enough free software being abused for purposes of
oppression and to spy on privacy in the surveillance capitalism, we
don't need another one.
I hope that we will reconsider our goals we shared in this press
release.
Christian Imhorst
[1]
https://github.blog/2019-02-13-the-eu-copyright-directive-what-happens-from…
[2]
https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Copyright_Final_compromise.…
-------- Originalnachricht --------
Betreff: [FSFE PR][EN] Copyright Directive – EU safeguards Free Software
at the last minute
Datum: 26.03.2019 12:59
Von: press(a)fsfe.org
An: press-release(a)lists.fsfe.org
= Copyright Directive – EU safeguards Free Software at the last minute
=
[ Read online: https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20190326-01.en.html ]
The European Parliament adopted the controversial Copyright Directive by
348 votes in favour, 274 votes against and 36 abstentions. Today's vote
marks the end of years of debate in the European Union. Heated
discussions about the introduction of upload filters ended up in
protests of tens of thousands people in the streets all across Europe.
In a last minute action back in September 2018, the European Parliament
adopted an amendment and pushed it through the trilogue to at least
protect Free and Open Source Software.
“We are glad we were able to raise awareness and understanding of
what drives software development in Europe nowadays among many
policy makers. The exclusion of Free Software code hosting and
sharing providers from this directive is crucial to keep Free
Software development in Europe healthy, solid and alive. we are
dismayed that the EU missed the opportunity to renew copyright to a
reasonable extent. As upload filters are now introduced, we urge the
European Commission to avoid filtering monopolies by companies this
directive actually intended to regulate. We call on the European
Commission to promote the dissemination of Free Software filter
technologies, including financial support, for instance within the
framework of research programmes Horizon2020 and Horizon Europe.”
says Alexander Sander, Policy Manager of the Free Software
Foundation Europe.
The Free Software Foundation Europe and Open Forum Europe started a
campaign to “ Save Code Share [1] ” in 2017. More than 14.000 people
supported our call with an open letter which requests EU legislators to
preserve the ability to collaboratively build software online in current
EU Copyright Directive proposal.
1: https://savecodeshare.eu/
== About the Free Software Foundation Europe ==
Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to
control technology. Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our
lives; and it is important that this technology empowers rather than
restricts us. Free Software gives everybody the rights to use,
understand, adapt and share software. These rights help support other
fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, press and privacy.
The FSFE helps individuals and organisations to understand how Free
Software contributes to freedom, transparency, and self-determination.
It enhances users' rights by abolishing barriers to Free Software
adoption, encourage people to use and develop Free Software, and
provide resources to enable everyone to further promote Free Software
in Europe.
http://fsfe.org
_______________________________________________
Press-release mailing list
Press-release(a)lists.fsfe.org
https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release
This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All
participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other:
https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
Hi,
maybe this is of interest to you:
The Core Infrastructure Fund supports the ‘building block’ technologies,
infrastructures, and communities relied upon by digital security and
circumvention tools strengthening internet freedom, digital security,
and the overall health of the internet.
Common applicants come from the community of developers and organizers
working on open-source projects recognized as critical dependencies of
one or more active platforms or tools strengthening internet freedom and
digital security.
https://www.opentech.fund/funds/core-infrastructure-fund/
Best,
Alex
--
Alexander Sander - EU Public Policy Programme Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-157 923 472 12
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 | (fsfe.org/join)
Hello,
I don't know whether this is an issue with the FSFE Web site or some real
news, but I see the following item on the FSFE front page (https://fsfe.org/):
"""
Jonas Öberg joins FSFE as Executive Director
02 March 2019
FSFE has recruited long-time Free Software activist Jonas Öberg to be the
organisation's Executive Director. He joins the organisation's leadership team
on March 1.
"""
I suppose the clue that not everything is as it should be is the URL it links
to:
https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150301-01.en.html
And Karsten Gerloff is quoted as FSFE President in the article itself, which
would surely take us back to 2015.
Meanwhile, Jonas was involved in the FSFE-in-2020 activity I asked about
almost a month ago. I wonder if there is anything still to report about that.
Paul
Hi all,
There is a EU directive which may make it impossible to install custom
software on your radio devices, e.g. routers, mobile phones, or embedded
devices. You can help convince the European Commission to limit the
number of device categories this affects, but the period is ending this
Monday.
It is not hard to participate. I've just published a blog post
summarising the topic (long version here [^1]) and providing basic
arguments that you can reuse:
https://blog.mehl.mx/2019/protect-freedom-on-radio-devices-raise-your-voice…
Please spend a few minutes to make your point by Monday. We need to show
the Commission that there are people who actually care for user freedom
on their devices, and who want to control their technology.
Thanks for raising your voice!
Best,
Max
[^1]: https://fsfe.org/activities/radiodirective/
--
Max Mehl - Programme Manager - Free Software Foundation Europe
Contact and information: https://fsfe.org/about/mehl | @mxmehl
Become a supporter of software freedom: https://fsfe.org/join