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,
this is not an election, this is a farce. And I will not vote for anyone
in this farce. There is no election commitee I trust, so I doubt that
these are free and fair elections. The only thing you'll get here is
maybe a tendency, what the rebels, malcontents and mavericks of the FSFE
community want or don't want.
I support FSFE and not FSF - among other things - because of Stallman.
No question RMS did much good for the Free Software movement. After all,
he founded it and he is one of the reasons why Free Software even
exists. But I don't think he should stay any longer the figurehead of
the Free Software movement. Seems the longer he has any say, the longer
he will poison the well. He hurts his mission with statements about
sexual abuse, dehumanizing disabled people and denigrating women.
Btw: I have written 2 emails to lists.fsfellowship.eu. I think they
never get it to his mailling list and I can not find them in the
archive:
https://lists.fsfellowship.eu/pipermail/discussion/2019-May/thread.html
Looks like I am censored by Daniel Pocock.
Regards
Christian Imhorst
Am 13.05.2019 10:41 schrieb Ingrid Schwarz:
> Hello,
>
> Sorry everybody for not replying over the weekend, here are some of my
> policies
>
> Many Fellows use the fsfe.org email addresses. The Fellowship Council
> will demand a meeting with Richard Stallman and Matthias Kirschner to
> understand the conflict about the FSFE name and also represent the
> interests of Fellows who may be unaware of the conflict or
> inconvenienced. If FSF really objects to the name like in the leaked
> email then Fellows need to stop using it now, we shouldn't be trying
> to extort things from FSF. People can't accuse the last Fellowship
> rep of being entitled when FSFE is even more brazen using the name of
> another organization. But I would try to get a good deal for Fellows
> to keep their email addresses even if FSFE loses the name, this is why
> it is so important for Fellows to have a voice in the Fellowship
> Council now.
>
> Another group where I volunteer runs an annual ball. We sell tickets
> to all our friends, dress up and have a lot of fun. Most members are
> able to sell between 6 and 10 tickets, enough to fill a table.
> Fellowship groups can bid to host a Fellowship ball in their city each
> year.
>
> Before I write a lot more about my ideas, I would like to see the
> policies of other candidates.
>
> One candidate has proposed to delete people from the mailing list
> without consent. I don't feel comfortable about that and if we are
> both in the Fellowship Council, I would vote against it.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ingrid
>
>
>
> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> On Wednesday, May 8, 2019 5:16 PM, Ingrid Schwarz
> <ingrid.schwarz(a)protonmail.ch> wrote:
>
>> Dear fellows,
>>
>> Conflict like this doesn't erupt spontaneously.
>>
>> Daniel isn't even a candidate but people are attacking him. They talk
>> about respecting the Code of conduct in one sentence and break it in
>> the next. He promised a smooth transition for the new council, I can't
>> see any way that he profits from helping run the election, why can't
>> people just say thank you and move on?
>>
>> Both Daniel and Armijn have described thuggish behavior from FSFE
>> bosses. Now we see it for ourselves.
>>
>> I came across this quote from Georg Greve on the fsfellowship site:
>>
>> "The Fellowship is an activity of FSFE, and indeed one of the primary
>> ways to get involved in the organisation. It is a place for community
>> action, collaboration, communication, fun, and recruitment that also
>> helps fund the other activities of FSFE, for example, the political
>> work."
>>
>> Moving the list to get around censorship appears to be a good example
>> of that 'community action', activism and political work.
>>
>> That is what political action looks like. It was effective. Now
>> everybody knows there is censorship in FSFE. We didn't know before and
>> now we do. It shouldn't be happening. If only more FSFE actions could
>> get their point across so clearly. That's activism, isn't that what we
>> signed up for? People can learn from somebody like Daniel.
>>
>> I can't see any harm that can come about by having a fellowship
>> council but I can see many benefits this council will have for free
>> software. So I hereby nominate.
>>
>> Yours,
>>
>> Ingrid
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discussion mailing list
> Discussion(a)lists.fsfellowship.eu
> https://lists.fsfellowship.eu/mailman/listinfo/discussion
Hello,
got caught by surprise by the launch of the Fairphone 3.
It is clear that their success of pushing the state of the art in the area of
consumer mobile phones is based on Free Software (like Android).
The details are interesting, as there can always be something improved.
Does somebody have alreadys looked at the new model from the Free Software
side?
Having 10 out of 10 repairability score from iFixit is very good,
they are keeping their high standards from FP2.
https://www.fairphone.com/en/2019/09/17/ifixit-repairability/
My experiences:
* I know a few persons owning and running FP1 for years, very reliably,
almost 6 years. When the battery could not officially produced anymore
(understandable), the community found a replacement. Some still run the FP1.
Problem: the chipset choice made it hard to have a better software support
and Android 4.4 is dropping out of support by important apps.
* The two FP2 models I saw in vicinity had small hardware issues with touch
an rebooting, it was less a workable "mainstream" phone than others.
The modular approach was cool, though. I read that root and other "ROM"s
were possible.
* The FP3 announcement policy did not work for me. On of the persons with the
FP1 needed a replacement (because of software and battery life) and a used
phone with lineagesOSmicrog was bought, because the state of the FP3 was
unclear in the first half of this year.
I've heard that a sailfish OS port to FP3 is likely. :)
That is also a mobile phone operating system which (limited) success is based
on Free Software a lot.
What are your experiences?
What is the best argument you could make for something if you wanted to raise
the chance of this person buying an FP3?
Best Regards,
Bernhard
--
FSFE -- Founding Member Support our work for Free Software:
blogs.fsfe.org/bernhardhttps://fsfe.org/donate | contribute
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)
Hi all,
As you know, the REUSE project aims to make Free Software licensing
easier and clearer, especially for developers. Our tool automates a lot
of processes around that:
https://git.fsfe.org/reuse/tool
To make it easier, people can install it via pip, but we are not present
in multiple popular distributions' package repositories. Right now, it's
Arch Linux (through AUR), Fedora, and OpenSUSE (in an old version).
Is someone here who could help us get REUSE tool packaged for e.g.
Debian, Ubuntu, NixOS etc? I'm looking forward to collaborate on that :)
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
Hi all,
I am looking for a tiny laptop in a size of 9 or 10 inch that runs GNU/Linux
and that I can easily take with me on my backpacking vacations. Battery power
is a more important feature for me than computational power. I will basically
use it for writing text and mails and browsing the web. Ok, if I can run GIMP
that would be nice, but not necessary.
If you know of a company that sells such a laptop with GNU/Linux pre-installed
I would consider to support them. Else, I will install it by myself.
Thanks for any recommendations,
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
Hi
Not sure if this helps, but this may be useful:
http://www.educatinggirlsmatters.org/howtohelp.html
in terms of who we could try and work with to promote free software and
development skills to. These charities are set up, I assume to create
really good outcomes for people, well if we can help develop skills and
also in doing so, and in contributing provide meaningful experience,
then that would help achieve the aims of these charities.
Paul
--
Paul Sutton
http://www.zleap.nethttps://www.linkedin.com/in/zleap/
Twitter : @zleap2018
gnupg : 7D6D B682 F351 8D08 1893 1E16 F086 5537 D066 302D
Hi all,
fyi: a weird Analysis of Tech Against Terrorism initiative was published:
Analysis: The use of open-source software by terrorists and violent
extremists -
https://www.techagainstterrorism.org/2019/09/02/analysis-the-use-of-open-so…
"The case of Gab illustrates the threat that open-source software can be
abused by anyone, including terrorists and violent extremists."
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)
Hi all,
Does anyone of you consider going to BalCCon, a conference about Free
Software and IT security in Novi Sad, Serbia? It's going to take place
on 13-15 September.
https://2k19.balccon.org
This will be the second time I will attend, and I liked its cosy style
and friendly audience. There also is an area for groups and projects to
present themselves. I thought about offering an FSFE space but would
love to share this joy and responsibility with other Free Software
enthusiasts.
So, anyone in? :)
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