On 24 Jul 2001 17:15:54 +0200, Anders Lindback wrote:
Usually one then hold a yearly general assembly where all members can be present and where they have their chance to vote. In a larger organisation this is not the members themselves but representatives of the members who are alected in an local assembly. In FSFE the chapters would elect representatives which would then go on to the european assembly.
The most common in an elcttion is to let the board remain in place. Actually I've never been at an assembly where it's not be know beforehand who will be elected. Usueallay they have a election committy who gives one candidate to each position thus limiting the choice to pre-screened candidates who has no oposition.
I've also noticed that you've never watched a "hostile takeover" in this kind of organization. I've not been so fortunate. The technique is simple, you get a lot of your "friends" to join the organization and then get democratically ellected to the board of the organizations.
If you think that's difficult to do in an organization like the FSFE, just imagine the following: It's standard for a company to pay employees' assotiations dues. Imagine company X (or a big multinational company or a group of companies who have money to loose from Free Software's presence in the market) making all its employees members of FSFE. Then the company X would, helpfully, offer a place for the next assembly, and, coincidently, have a meeting with all their employees at the same place a few hours before (and maybe even later with the assembly in the middle). Imagine that company X put one of their directors in from of a team of candidates to the board and that all company's employees voted on him.
Tell me how do you protect yourself from this scenario? Every protection I've thought about I've also found either a easy work-around or that it made joining so difficult that it would never any member. This was the kind of protective measure FSF and FSFE decided to take.
-- Joao Miguel Neves