As far as I'm concerned, with out elections, my impression is it's a staff-office in Berlin that is effectively domain-name-squatting on fsfe.org .
On 28 Aug 2018 11:09, "Bernhard Reiter" bernhard@intevation.de wrote:
Hi Luke,
Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 10:18:11 schrieb lukerogers@tutanota.com:
I never saw an association cancel the elections. Is that legal?
that is only part of the story: Legally there is an association based on German law to support FSFE's work where we have chosen a minimal approach for members because those members are legally responsible, may hold legal assets for Free Software and we want to be sure that it cannot be taken over. (I darkely remember that we also had the history and some lessons of Richard Stallman's legal associations in mind.)
The membership of the e.V. of course has to be able to vote and legally be responsible for the actions of the executive representatives.
In 2005 we wanted to have something like a "supporting membership", because many people wanted to show that they are continuously supporting us financially and otherwise as FSFE. We called this fellowship because we thought this to be a cool name and there we no voting rights. Later there was the idea to get more member into the e.V. maybe even changing the legal structure towards one that is much more open for members and refrains from the minimal principle. This is a course of action that some in the FSFE still believe could be worth examining or enacting the in the future. To do steps into this direction we started doing a temporary membership selected by our supporting members. This was governed by the constitution which a larger majority of the members have to agree to.
In the last years we found out that this was not working as we had expected. Many supporting members fould the elections to be a hassle, they took up a lot of time and there was not as many candidates we would like to. Many time we had to do a lot to even find and encourage candidates. After trying to fix the situation a majority came to the conclusion that FSFE would be better off without those temporary seats to pursue other ways to include more people that care for Free Software and are willing to do the hard work of a small NGO. So the large majority changed the constituion again. In order to have more time to be dedicated to actually working towards furthering Free Software and organisation related to it.
My fellowship contribution isn't going to FSFE next year, give the money to a local group where everything is done by volunteers and not careerists in Berlin.
In my conviction we need paid employees, many successful NGO have them. The work needs full time dedication. The wages paid by FSFE are below the average for comparable tasks.
The FSFE transparency pages are hilarious. FSFE chose the transparency checklist from Transparency International because it lets them have transparency credentials but their checklist doesn't ask to publish the salaries like the FSF and other groups.
Can you supply the link to the salary lists of those organisations? (A quick search could't find it. Is there also information to place this salary in comparison what people in the same place and position would get?)
In order to be able to win and hold employees, we at FSFE negociate the salaries between e.V. and each person individually and in private. The salaries are controlled by the e.V. members, the public because you can divide the number of people with the published budget and see the average numbers and the tax office because we can only pay salaries that are comparable to similiar positions to retain our charity status.
Best Regards, Bernhard