On 29/08/18 10:22, Reinhard Müller wrote:

Am 2018-08-29 um 11:05 schrieb Daniel Pocock:

...

If you don't have time to meet people personally, it is inevitable there will be some misunderstandings in electronic communications, especially for those trying to squeeze too many things into their life.

... says the person who didn't attend any of the two General Assemblies he was invited to, because, well, he had no time.

Yes, I do fully agree that a lot of misunderstandings, name-calling, mud-throwing and wasted time could have been avoided if only you had tried to talk to people (in person or by email) before making complaints or accusations in the public.

Do you notice how in my own message, I made significant effort to avoid being personal: instead of a focus on Bernhard's situation, I draw upon a mixed set of examples from multiple people.  But I didn't want to emphasize other people personally, so I left out their names.  The focus of my message was clearly the practical problems with people having a "life term" in the GA.

Your reply does the complete opposite: not only is it very personal, it is also inaccurate, misleading, insulting and disparaging.  For example, everybody knows I had already planned to go to the Balkans before the last-minute GA meeting was hastily arranged to avoid the elections.  But I don't want to focus on that or myself, I want to bring back the two issues I raised:

- this type of thing (and your message is a great example) seems to be happening a lot with electronic communications.  It also seems to happen far more frequently on the private mailing lists, that is one of the reason I'm using public channels.  So you actually help demonstrate what I wrote and I thank you for doing so as I didn't want to start picking out examples like this that were sent privately on the GA list

- what do you think about the general issue of the "life term" in the GA?  How do we avoid the organization becoming stale and ensure the people with the most energy and time to commit are able to get properly engaged in governance, attend meetings, propose motions or nominate for office?

Regards,

Daniel

I love how you trimmed " It is not necessary to name anybody" and then go on about avoidable name-calling while failing to avoid it yourself.

Sam

On Wed, 29 Aug 2018 10:22 Reinhard Müller, reinhard@fsfe.org wrote:

Am 2018-08-29 um 11:05 schrieb Daniel Pocock:

...

If you don't have time to meet people personally, it is inevitable there will be some misunderstandings in electronic communications, especially for those trying to squeeze too many things into their life.

... says the person who didn't attend any of the two General Assemblies he was invited to, because, well, he had no time.

Yes, I do fully agree that a lot of misunderstandings, name-calling, mud-throwing and wasted time could have been avoided if only you had tried to talk to people (in person or by email) before making complaints or accusations in the public.

Best,

Reinhard Müller * Financial Team Free Software Foundation Europe

---

Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion

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 Stefan,

Am Freitag 31 August 2018 09:59:32 schrieb Stefan Uygur:

can the legal representative of FSFE answer to these questions once for all pls?

it is not that easy, as it is okay to critise us, FSFE, its president and members in principle and some of the points are raised as general questions.

Note that several members of the e.V. have raised their voice meanwhile including Torsten, Reinhard, Mirko and myself. We are a part of the gruip who legally are responsible in the end for the e.V., though we do not represent it directly.

Best Regards, Bernhard

Dear all,

Am 2018-08-31 um 09:51 schrieb Sam Liddicott:

I love how you trimmed " It is not necessary to name anybody" and then go on about avoidable name-calling while failing to avoid it yourself.

I see that this came across much more agressive than it was intended. I apologize to everybody on this list for the inappropriate tone. You are right, please let's all go back to a constructive and forward-looking discussion.

I must confess that the back and forth in this thread makes it very hard for me to distill specific tangible questions out of the communication. So if there is anything you want to ask and it got buried in the previous discussion (or maybe you didn't even ask yet), it might help us a lot if you phrased your question again, ideally starting a new thread for that.

Thank you,

On 08/30/2018 03:49 PM, Nikos Roussos wrote:

...

This brings me back to the original question then: democracy. Annual elections and allowing all the community to participate can provide regular renewal. When somebody doesn't have the time any more, either they don't run for re-election or the community will help them depart by voting for an alternative candidate. Changing the tools and arbitrarily expelling people are a crazy alternative to something as easy to understand as democracy.

I understand that this may be your expectation, but this hardly true for any non-profit organization out there. You have a very specific view on how FSFE should operate democratically, but that doesn't mean that this is the only way, or even that democracy is the only way to run an organization.

I have been (and still am) member/supporter of various non-profit organizations and none of these apply the kind of democracy you envision. Rightfully so, in my opinion. As an example, I'm a member of EFF but there is no democratic way for me to be elected in the Board of Directors, or participate in their private strategic meetings. Same applies for FSF (US).

Many NGOs that I know of are run as traditional associations, with a yearly general assembly as te highest authority, a board elected by the participants at the general assembly; with all members being eligible to attend the general assembly and run for the board, and membership being open to everyone (maybe with well-defined limitations, such as a profession or geographical area) willing to pay membership dues.

That's true of some of the largest NGOs here in Denmark, and I believe it's a requirement in order to receive various kinds of public support (e.g., access to venues, for small associations). That has, on the other hand, of course, never been how e.g. the FSF or the FSFE (or the EFF) have worked. But it is true that such organization is a norm in some circumstances.

Best Carsten

Hello,

Am Donnerstag 30 August 2018 17:28:50 schrieb Mirko Boehm:

...

On 30. Aug 2018, at 07:34, Carsten Agger agger@modspil.dk wrote:

...

Many NGOs that I know of are run as traditional associations, with a yearly general assembly as te highest authority, a board elected by the participants at the general assembly; with all members being eligible to attend the general assembly and run for the board, and membership being open to everyone (maybe with well-defined limitations, such as a profession or geographical area) willing to pay membership dues.

even those organisations have internal power structures that would not allow some people to get to the top of the organisation (Unless many people join having a clear plan of taking over the organisation. There are some examples in history when this has happend, like to political parties. Where I believe it was okay.)

When doing my share helping to build FSFE, I found that some of the bigger NGOs where having problems pursing their missions and taking good decisions. They were very close to large consensus within their group, making this a problem. The idea with FSFE was to take an approach for a longer term. And to be able to hold and protect assets even if a large majority of people did not see the need for this. Yes, this was influenced by how Richard Stallman was able to set up a lighthourse for Free Software for decades.

Times have been changing since then, but some of the drawbacks of the "traditional way" of running a large membership organisation remain, we would be much less effective than we are now (in my current opinion).

What you describe as a norm is almost exactly the model Shane and I (and Jonas earlier on) suggested as a blueprint for how FSFE should operate. We suggested this for approval during the 2017 agenda. The proposal was accepted. Implementation is outstanding.

In my memory the creation of a proposal was approved in 2017, which means to get a plan and be able t better evaluate how the pros and cons would work out in the details as preparation for a decision to implement.

It is apparent that some of the old guard free software organisations are set up in an intransparent, autocratic model that is tailored to protecting the position of the figure heads.

Whether this is true and whether this is a good or bad thing aside: It was not the case for FSFE, as we did not have "figure heads" in the classical sense. We'd pushed the burden of being an anchor person on some of us. One reason is that the world of politics and lobbying, which we outset to change towards Free Software, in many aspects runs on personal connections and agendas. To "hack" this world, we needed someone to "pose" as a figurehead. But it never was about the figure heads. (Evidence to this is that the anchor person has changed two times already in less than 20 years.)

It is also apparent that all these organisation struggle with renewal and maintaining relevance and a contributor base. This is a fate I we should avoid for FSFE.

Many organisations face the challenge, actually each one I know, so I agree that we want a good solution for FSFE. However what is a good path forward? This has been subject to intense debates throughout all levels of FSFE, already leading to improvements here and there. Naturally this process we also did not implement many suggestions as they seemed to be less advantageous.

While doing all this the FSFE has mainly done many things for Free Software (most of you will be aware of, like helping the first mainstream documentary about Free Software and contractual problems with major proprietary software solutions to appear on maintream televison, convincing more than 18 thousand people code paid by public money should be published as Free Software and much more).

I don’t think inaction is a good approach.

A radical shift of structure (like moving to a "large membership" model) may promise some advantages down the road, but it may also could dimish the good work going on, for instance when we need to put significant energy aside for changing and running the structure. So it is not an easy decision.

Best Regards, Bernhard

Am Freitag 31 August 2018 13:22:56 schrieb Besnik Bleta:

...

convincing more than 18 thousand people code paid by public money should be published as Free Software

Funny that you declare you don't know the "demos" of the fellowship, although we pay (I myself no more) the membership fee through channels that easily let identify who we are and on the other hand you know that those 18 thousand people were “convinced”, when they simply might have shown their support to an idea older that FSFE's campaign.

"Convinced" was a short version, sorry if this was too brief. I've meant that many people acted upon it and a lot of them without having a strong tie to the FSFE or Free Software before.

The fellowship was a status were you financially supported FSFE and indicated that you wanted to be more involved. You could always participate without being a Fellow. And the "demos" means who should be allowed be part of a large membership organisation for Free Software? In a state there is a clear boundary and you are forced if you are a citizen to be part of its policial system.

For an NGO like FSFE, you can go somewhere else and join or support a different one. If we'd allow everyone, and started representing a state, we would not be able to bring in a non-mainstream point into the political debate, because the political debate would (ideally) already have the same representation of opinions.

...

A radical shift of structure (like moving to a "large membership" model) may promise some advantages down the road, but it may also could dimish the good work going on,

Suppressing the fellowship seat was a radical shift (otherwise no need for an extraordinary gathering), right?

No, as already explained: It did not work out as it was envisioned. When FSFE decided to set a new course without Fellowship set elections, we did not want to organise another last election to spare everything the effort as respect to the candidates and the supporters who are following the procedings. The out-of-band generally assembly was held because of the timeline and we were already late. (In retrospect we probably should have done this decision in the written form. But the result would have been the same.)

What are the reasons that the council think this move would not “dimish the good work going on”?

(You may know that I am not in the council and council did not decide this.) From my perspective: Because it reduces room for misunderstandings (that obviously had taken place with a minority of people) and let us find people who can help with the legal backbone in a better way in the future (causing less fuss).

Best Regards, Bernhard

On 09/03/2018 07:18 PM, Nikos Roussos wrote:

That's true for most associations, but even in these cases usually there are some limitations on how you get to be a member. In many associations, besides paying a membership, it is required that some existing members vouch for you. This provides some short of web of trust, but also acts as a fail-safe, preventing a group of people taking over an association just because they have the money to do so.

That's completely true! I believe that in this country (Denmark) it's not allowed for any association that wants to apply for public support to be discriminatory, i.e. there can be no arbitrary limitations to membership. But of course, you have to be a qualified nurse to be a member of the nurse's union, etc. In such a situation, other fail-safes can be constructed and are indeed important.Hostile takeovers of associations have happened!

I'm myself the treasurer of "Permakultur Randers", which is the permaculture association of Randers, and in order to become a member you must accept that this association has its focus in the vicinity of Randers. We *could* have demanded that people live here, if we wanted.

A common requirement is that people ust be physically present and the general assembly and can't delegate their vote. Other fail-safes which I think would be of interested were I to create a Free Software association in Denmark (something I refrained from, preferring the FSFE), one could make the bylaws virtually unchangeable by requiring an 80% majority in two consecutive general assemblies with no less than 80% of the membership present in each (that would make a hostile takeover very difficult bordering to the impossible in an association with more than a thousand members).

Another common failsafe is to have a bylaw which enables the expulsion of members who work against the association's bylaws. Thus, a Microsoft lawyer working to get  software patents could be expelled from a Free Software association.

Best Carsten

Hello Daniel,

Am Donnerstag 30 August 2018 21:28:21 schrieb Daniel Pocock:

There is a big difference: those other groups didn't promise people democracy, membership and representation.  FSFE did.

FSFE did not (as Harald and others have pointed out in detail), it cannot, as it does not make sense (as we cannot have a "democracy" in a strict sense as we do not know what the "demos" are and we do not have a mandatory "membership" like states.)

As an elected representative, would I be doing my job correctly if I didn't object to the sudden cancellation of the elections?

It wasn't sudden and it was okay to object, but the large majority of people was not following your arguments. (As explained before, you were not "elected" from a "demos", but selected from a group of supporters for a temporary term.)

This discussion about abolishing elections appeared in my inbox almost immediately after I was elected to the role.  Personally, it made me feel like I was not completely welcome in the GA from the outset and it also felt like the whole community and other candidates had been fooled by the process of nominations, campaigns and voting.

There seems to have been a number of misunderstandings, and I saw others explain the situation to you patiently, I've tried myself. Sorry it hasn't worked out and you are feeling badly. On the other hand you have started accusations and personal attacks even when the interpretations others were presenting to you were quite reasonable. Now we are reaching a point were personal missunderstandings and styles of working are dragged into the public, which I do not consider good for anybody.

On more than one occasion, I've been told that I should be conscious about how much money people donate and my communications to fellows are subject to censorship.  It makes me feel like the whole image of elections and representation are not up to the basic standards that people would reasonably expect.

In my understanding Nikos made an argument that he and many others reasonably do not expect this from all organisations that are similiar to FSFE.

You suggest that I'm setting a "high bar" but for most people in this community, a democracy with censorship of the representatives doesn't even reach the low bar.

(As a not-for-profit organisation that wants to convince others about Free Software, we cannot have a "democracy" in the strict sense, as we do not have a "demos" and no ... wait did I have to write this for the fourth time in a row? Why did I never see you responding to this argument? Could I expect an answer to this from someone who wants to understand how FSFE came to be and how a number of people feel about it?)

Regards, Bernhard