What I'm reading in this mailing list is scary
I never saw an association cancel the elections. Is that legal?
I want to give my full support to Daniel Pocock and commend him for his tenacity in the pursuit of transparency and truth. It looks like the GA is full of yes-men but Pocock is the fiercely independent advocate that us fellows need.
If somebody isn't happy about the job Pocock does then instead of making insults and character assassinations, run for election against him. But you are all afraid Pocock or somebody else like him would be voted again by the silent majority, you abolished the elections. How pathetic you all are.
No more elections? 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.
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. Top marks to Pocock for exposing that in his thread on transparency. Keep it up.
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
On Tuesday 28. August 2018 11.09.09 Bernhard Reiter wrote:
Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 10:18:11 schrieb lukerogers@tutanota.com:
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?)
For the FSF, you'll find the salaries of directors in the following:
https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/Form990_FY2017.pdf
(Interesting that they have some Neo FreeRunners still, and a "bagel cart" which I had to look up. I don't envy the job of people having to make these filings.)
This is closer to what I've seen for the FSFE:
https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/FinancialStatement_FY2017.pdf
Similarly, for Software Freedom Conservancy, the information of interest is here:
https://sfconservancy.org/docs/conservancy_Form-990_fy-2016.pdf
In effect, searching for the legal filings for non-profit/tax-exempt organisations should yield salary information. It is possible that some salary details do not have to be reported on an individual basis, but under the regime applying to the two organisations featured above, I would expect that FSFE directors' salaries would need to be indicated.
There are other points in Luke's mail that are worth discussing, but I think it is helpful to focus on this particular topic separately.
Paul
Hi Paul,
Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 14:30:22 schrieb Paul Boddie:
In effect, searching for the legal filings for non-profit/tax-exempt organisations should yield salary information. It is possible that some salary details do not have to be reported on an individual basis, but under the regime applying to the two organisations featured above, I would expect that FSFE directors' salaries would need to be indicated.
there are number of differences how non-profit organisations for the public benefit have to be organised and are controlled from the US and Europe, especially Germany. I am not an expert on those differences, I guess they stem from a different balance between privacy and public right and duty.
In Germany an association (an "eingetragenger Verein" (e.V.)) can be tax-except and there are members that are responsible to control the actions of the associations, which is also checked by the tax office. Care is taken that that members cannot just give themself money. A balance has to be registered with the court, but no individual salaries. It makes sense to me that if you do not have the controlling structure of en e.V. it makes sense to list individual salaries. But if you have it - like in Germany - it makes sense to not demand publication of some of those details.
Best Regards, Bernhard
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
Hi,
Am 2018-08-28 um 15:04 schrieb Joe Awni:
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 http://fsfe.org.
I guess that you know how offending this is to the numerous volunteers in FSFE, especially for those not based in Berlin - like, for example, myself. It does, however, speak for itself that such statements usually origin from people who have never participated in any of FSFE's activities.
Best,
On Tuesday 28. August 2018 15.32.24 Reinhard Müller wrote:
Am 2018-08-28 um 15:04 schrieb Joe Awni:
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 http://fsfe.org.
I guess that you know how offending this is to the numerous volunteers in FSFE, especially for those not based in Berlin - like, for example, myself. It does, however, speak for itself that such statements usually origin from people who have never participated in any of FSFE's activities.
I wouldn't phrase my own thoughts in such terms, and I do recognise the effort made by both staff and volunteers within the FSFE, but I do also recognise the frustration some people have that their involvement with the organisation is largely confined to paying their membership dues.
Having begun my involvement with the FSFE in a fairly active way, only for that involvement to gradually diminish over the years, I don't consider it completely inappropriate for me to point out that the organisation struggles to engage and empower its membership.
Some of these struggles are matters of practicality. For instance, which tools are available to supporters to amplify their own personal efforts to use, develop and advocate Free Software?
(We have, at the moment, an ongoing thread about not using GitHub in the face of arguably overstated claims about that platform's "network effects", but what kind of network effects does the FSFE offer?)
Other problems arise from the organisation's positioning. While some people may like the idea of the FSFE as a kind of "FSF light", others including myself expect the organisation to take a principled and effective stand on matters of software freedom and associated concerns. To do otherwise is to misrepresent an entire family of related organisations.
Luke wrote:
I want to give my full support to Daniel Pocock and commend him for his tenacity in the pursuit of transparency and truth. It looks like the GA is full of yes-men but Pocock is the fiercely independent advocate that us fellows need.
As the Fellowship did elect Daniel as representative, with various other candidates expressing similar views, I find it disturbing that if these views are dissenting then they will no longer find a voice in the leadership of the organisation. While it may be claimed that others in the leadership do, in fact, share his views on some matters, the rest of us are now obliged to take those claims at face value.
I can understand that the elections seemed like a distraction, especially given a turnout of 265/1532 in the last one [1]. However, such disengagement was probably informed by the fact that the Fellowship representatives are vastly outnumbered in the governing body of the organisation, making their only effective role as some kind of conscience of the membership.
I don't agree with Daniel on everything, but I can sympathise with him here given that his current predicament is practically a consequence of a number of factors in the way this organisation is structured and run. And while people might not want the obvious to be said out loud, the result will be that people end up voting with their money instead.
Paul
[1] https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_29119d29f759bbf8
Thank you for your careful and civil contribution to this discussion, Paul.
Mirko.
On 28. Aug 2018, at 07:28, Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk wrote:
On Tuesday 28. August 2018 15.32.24 Reinhard Müller wrote:
Am 2018-08-28 um 15:04 schrieb Joe Awni:
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 http://fsfe.org.
I guess that you know how offending this is to the numerous volunteers in FSFE, especially for those not based in Berlin - like, for example, myself. It does, however, speak for itself that such statements usually origin from people who have never participated in any of FSFE's activities.
I wouldn't phrase my own thoughts in such terms, and I do recognise the effort made by both staff and volunteers within the FSFE, but I do also recognise the frustration some people have that their involvement with the organisation is largely confined to paying their membership dues.
Having begun my involvement with the FSFE in a fairly active way, only for that involvement to gradually diminish over the years, I don't consider it completely inappropriate for me to point out that the organisation struggles to engage and empower its membership.
Some of these struggles are matters of practicality. For instance, which tools are available to supporters to amplify their own personal efforts to use, develop and advocate Free Software?
(We have, at the moment, an ongoing thread about not using GitHub in the face of arguably overstated claims about that platform's "network effects", but what kind of network effects does the FSFE offer?)
Other problems arise from the organisation's positioning. While some people may like the idea of the FSFE as a kind of "FSF light", others including myself expect the organisation to take a principled and effective stand on matters of software freedom and associated concerns. To do otherwise is to misrepresent an entire family of related organisations.
Luke wrote:
I want to give my full support to Daniel Pocock and commend him for his tenacity in the pursuit of transparency and truth. It looks like the GA is full of yes-men but Pocock is the fiercely independent advocate that us fellows need.
As the Fellowship did elect Daniel as representative, with various other candidates expressing similar views, I find it disturbing that if these views are dissenting then they will no longer find a voice in the leadership of the organisation. While it may be claimed that others in the leadership do, in fact, share his views on some matters, the rest of us are now obliged to take those claims at face value.
I can understand that the elections seemed like a distraction, especially given a turnout of 265/1532 in the last one [1]. However, such disengagement was probably informed by the fact that the Fellowship representatives are vastly outnumbered in the governing body of the organisation, making their only effective role as some kind of conscience of the membership.
I don't agree with Daniel on everything, but I can sympathise with him here given that his current predicament is practically a consequence of a number of factors in the way this organisation is structured and run. And while people might not want the obvious to be said out loud, the result will be that people end up voting with their money instead.
Paul
[1] https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_29119d29f759bbf8 _______________________________________________ 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
-- Mirko Boehm | mirko@kde.org | KDE e.V. FSFE Team Germany Qt Certified Specialist and Trainer Request a meeting: https://doodle.com/mirkoboehm
Hi Paul,
Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 16:28:44 schrieb Paul Boddie:
I do recognise the effort made by both staff and volunteers within the FSFE, but I do also recognise the frustration some people have that their involvement with the organisation is largely confined to paying their membership dues.
as a small organisation, we have increasingly build up more ways to get involved with the FSFE, to meet us, to get support material, to request or send speakers, get some pieces of personal infrastructure like the blog you have been using.
You certainly know, but for other readers, see https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.en.html
Having begun my involvement with the FSFE in a fairly active way, only for that involvement to gradually diminish over the years, I don't consider it completely inappropriate for me to point out that the organisation struggles to engage and empower its membership.
It is part of our core mission to empower people to benefit and help to further Free Software (and related advances in society), in this sense we will always be struggling. And also naturally there are several ways to do so and we are having internal and public discussions about how to improve.
Where my understanding is different from yours is: To me it is about all people and not about "members" in a strict sense. In my eyes FSFE shall not "respresent" a defined group. I'd rather like to help people educate themselfs (in the better sense of enlightment) about Free Software.
Still there are many possible paths to discuss and I am very open for good ideas. As with anybody the constraints of personal time let me focus on those ideas that quickly show a promise an improvement over all the other ideas that have been tried before.
Some of these struggles are matters of practicality. For instance, which tools are available to supporters to amplify their own personal efforts to use, develop and advocate Free Software?
And how many tools shall FSFE provide? (We are not a good hoster for instance, because there are many Free Software based hosting offering we are unable to beat. And of course we want people to be able to select from many Free Software based and Free Software friendly service offerings, so it would be unwise to create a competing offering. where there already are some good ones that could improve.)
(We have, at the moment, an ongoing thread about not using GitHub in the face of arguably overstated claims about that platform's "network effects", but what kind of network effects does the FSFE offer?)
A main offering is personal networking, education, places to exchange and including access to knowledge from some of Europe's most experienced Free Software folks.
Other problems arise from the organisation's positioning. While some people may like the idea of the FSFE as a kind of "FSF light", others including myself expect the organisation to take a principled and effective stand on matters of software freedom and associated concerns. To do otherwise is to misrepresent an entire family of related organisations.
FSFE's positioning has been strongly principled from the beginning, has and will maintain that. The difference to our elder sister from the US is that we are using a political style that is more fitting continental Europe because of the cultural differences. The results we've reached with this "European style" have been far-reaching, even world-wide with getting a voice for Free Software heard in international organisations for example like the WIPO (https://fsfe.org/activities/wipo/wipo.en.html).
As the Fellowship did elect Daniel as representative, with various other candidates expressing similar views, I find it disturbing that if these views are dissenting then they will no longer find a voice in the leadership of the organisation. While it may be claimed that others in the leadership do, in fact, share his views on some matters, the rest of us are now obliged to take those claims at face value.
Being a member of the e.V. for about 18 years that has the duty to control the official executives of FSFE, I'm considering criticism and the views you have been mentioning. I'll voice them myself if necessary. We have a number of e.V. members, many being former fellows or even some former fellowship representatives. Feel free to ask them as well (or read their posts and publications). Look at FSFE's actions.
And please ask. We are trying to answer all questions about FSFE's work as good as we can. Some on mailinglists, some personally, some in texts on the website or elsewhere.
I can understand that the elections seemed like a distraction, especially given a turnout of 265/1532 in the last one [1]. However, such disengagement was probably informed by the fact that the Fellowship representatives are vastly outnumbered in the governing body of the organisation, making their only effective role as some kind of conscience of the membership.
As explained in my previous post, the idea was not working out on a larger scale. Each fellowship representative has been given extra attention by e.V. members to make sure they are getting information, background and mentoring to be able to help forming some of FSFE's opinion. (However most people overestimate the influence of the e.V., FSFE's opinion is formed more in other places like internal mailing lists, meetings with Free Software people, public lists. You can have access to this without being a e.V. member so you haveing access to the places where most of the opinion building happens.)
I don't agree with Daniel on everything, but I can sympathise with him here given that his current predicament is practically a consequence of a number of factors in the way this organisation is structured and run.
Sometimes a person's way of working is highly incompatible with a specific group. This is not to say who has the better way of working. Though, if this is the case, it is better to split ways. There are many other groups and maybe later it is possible again to cooperate on topics of joined interest.
And while people might not want the obvious to be said out loud, the result will be that people end up voting with their money instead.
It is correct: Some people may support other organisations instead of FSFE or even in addition of FSFE, if they seek something else to what we are offering. Note that in the last years the supporters of FSFE have been growing, so in total we may even win more people by offering more of what we did in the past, for example the new https://publiccode.eu/ initiative.
Best Regards, Bernhard
On Wednesday 29. August 2018 09.17.56 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 16:28:44 schrieb Paul Boddie:
I do recognise the effort made by both staff and volunteers within the FSFE, but I do also recognise the frustration some people have that their involvement with the organisation is largely confined to paying their membership dues.
as a small organisation, we have increasingly build up more ways to get involved with the FSFE, to meet us, to get support material, to request or send speakers, get some pieces of personal infrastructure like the blog you have been using.
You certainly know, but for other readers, see https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.en.html
It is interesting to bring up the blog service because there were moves to abolish it, presumably so that only the planet aggregation service would need to be maintained instead. In fact, I only use the provided blog service out of convenience (since maintaining my own blog wouldn't be a problem, although it would be something else to look after), and I even thought initially that FSFE-hosted blogs would be automatically aggregated, which turned out not to be the case.
I can understand the motivations for not wanting to maintain a WordPress instance, but I recall perceiving that this was another area where the commitment to the Fellowship was being gradually reduced. We went from blogs being a central part of the Fellowship presence to being a hidden part of the site where aggregation then became needed for them to be seen at all.
But what the planet and blog services provide is a venue where people can hopefully exchange views, learn from each other, and collaborate generally. Such well-advertised, coherent, high-quality venues are seemingly not as common as one might think, which is why de-emphasising the role of the blogs was a bit mysterious from a strategic perspective.
[...]
Some of these struggles are matters of practicality. For instance, which tools are available to supporters to amplify their own personal efforts to use, develop and advocate Free Software?
And how many tools shall FSFE provide? (We are not a good hoster for instance, because there are many Free Software based hosting offering we are unable to beat. And of course we want people to be able to select from many Free Software based and Free Software friendly service offerings, so it would be unwise to create a competing offering. where there already are some good ones that could improve.)
There are good arguments for the FSFE not providing much in the way of common services, at least if it imposes an unreasonable burden. So, to take that GitHub discussion into account, if people wanted to host countless Linux kernel repository clones, that would appear to be a distraction from more important things, in my view: people could do that elsewhere.
At the same time, services that coordinate activities and perhaps archive some of the technical artefacts would be within the remit of the organisation. In the latter regard, the aim would be to guard against things disappearing from the Web, thinking of all those repository hosting services that no longer exist.
(We have, at the moment, an ongoing thread about not using GitHub in the face of arguably overstated claims about that platform's "network effects", but what kind of network effects does the FSFE offer?)
A main offering is personal networking, education, places to exchange and including access to knowledge from some of Europe's most experienced Free Software folks.
OK, but continuing from what I wrote above about high-quality venues for collaboration, how effective are the ones that the FSFE provides? For instance, this mailing list is pretty general and to the bafflement of some readers tends to veer off into FSFE organisational politics rather often.
Now, I still feel that this list could be more active in ways that are more relevant to people. Meanwhile, more specific topics could find a home within the FSFE's operations. One example from personal experience is that of Free Software groupware.
Good luck to anyone trying to find a venue for discussions about general technologies, interoperability, and other matters pertinent to a topic as mundane as groupware! People would evidently rather have discussions focused on their specific products or have participants sign up for pay-to-play organisations instead. In the end, the only venue I've found for that topic happens to be a Debian mailing list originally dedicated to the packaging of an Apple-related product that was released as Free Software.
In this regard, I perceive a lack of continuity between the FSFE's advocacy and practical measures to make the advocacy believable. It is all very well saying that public organisations, for example, should be using Free Software, but a commitment needs to be made to support the development of the software they need, even if it is to act as the body that puts all the right people in the same room. Otherwise, the advocacy is little better than cheerleading, which is how some of it comes across.
Other problems arise from the organisation's positioning. While some people may like the idea of the FSFE as a kind of "FSF light", others including myself expect the organisation to take a principled and effective stand on matters of software freedom and associated concerns. To do otherwise is to misrepresent an entire family of related organisations.
FSFE's positioning has been strongly principled from the beginning, has and will maintain that. The difference to our elder sister from the US is that we are using a political style that is more fitting continental Europe because of the cultural differences. The results we've reached with this "European style" have been far-reaching, even world-wide with getting a voice for Free Software heard in international organisations for example like the WIPO (https://fsfe.org/activities/wipo/wipo.en.html).
I have some concerns about things like upholding licence compliance. It seems rather strange to me that those of us who care about copyleft licences not being violated by corporations with apparent impunity seem to need to support organisations based in the US to look after these things in Europe.
And this is where transparency means rather a lot. Beyond any reasonable legal caution, the FSFE should be able to indicate the extent of its work in such matters. Currently, I perceive very little transparency, which means that I have to conclude that very little is going on behind closed doors.
Now that might seem unfair, but just as the average crowdfunding campaign participant starts to get anxious about any lack of communication on the status of their "pledge", those of us who have supported the FSFE financially (and even those who have merely given their endorsement) cannot simply regard the supposed, but invisible, activity of others as any different from inactivity. It is only human to seek reassurance that something is indeed happening, and such reassurance has to be concrete, not vague or aspirational.
[...]
And while people might not want the obvious to be said out loud, the result will be that people end up voting with their money instead.
It is correct: Some people may support other organisations instead of FSFE or even in addition of FSFE, if they seek something else to what we are offering. Note that in the last years the supporters of FSFE have been growing, so in total we may even win more people by offering more of what we did in the past, for example the new https://publiccode.eu/ initiative.
Particularly this latter campaign is interesting in the context of the Fellowship now apparently being regarded as a failed attempt to increase engagement amongst supporters, members and others. In contrast to previous campaigns which seemed to solicit supporter contributions, this one appears much more closed and opaque.
Although I can understand the need to prevent haphazard communication and uncoordinated advocacy that undermines the campaign's objectives, this and similar initiatives risk failing to take advantage of the insights of the broader community, potentially failing to meet the expectations of those who might have expected something better or more convincing. And with that, we see another source of potential frustration and disappointment.
Naturally, one reaction to criticism is to tell people to take their "business" elsewhere, assuming that such people are uncommon and that there will be plenty of newcomers to step into the gap, anyway. But apart from being generally disrespectful towards those who would support the organisation (although depressingly familiar from the broader realm of "open source"), the ultimate consequence of doing this is to put the organisation in decline as people start to perceive it in some of the more contentious and provocative terms already seen in this discussion.
Paul
Am 2018-08-29 um 18:17 schrieb Paul Boddie:
Fellowship now apparently being regarded as a failed attempt to increase engagement amongst supporters, members and others.
I have no idea how you come to this statement.
The election of exactly one person per year from the pool of financial supporters into a 2-year membership in the legal association has been a failed attempt to improve community participation in FSFE's decisions. But that's something completely different.
Thanks,
On Wednesday 29. August 2018 18.35.52 Reinhard Müller wrote:
Am 2018-08-29 um 18:17 schrieb Paul Boddie:
Fellowship now apparently being regarded as a failed attempt to increase engagement amongst supporters, members and others.
I have no idea how you come to this statement.
The election of exactly one person per year from the pool of financial supporters into a 2-year membership in the legal association has been a failed attempt to improve community participation in FSFE's decisions. But that's something completely different.
Certainly, using the construct of the Fellowship to facilitate wider participation in executive decision-making appears to have failed.
However, writing as someone who perceived the Fellowship as being a way of getting involved with the activities of the FSFE, as well as something of a differentiator from other organisations with similar goals, the decline and elimination of the Fellowship seems to have had a negative impact on general engagement, at least as far as I can see from visible public activity related to the organisation.
Of course, I could be completely wrong and may have missed obvious indications of a vibrant supporter community, but then we return to those matters of transparency and effective communication that seem to lie at the heart of many of the misunderstandings and grievances articulated in this and in earlier discussions.
Paul
Hi Paul,
Am Mittwoch 29 August 2018 19:02:48 schrieb Paul Boddie:
Certainly, using the construct of the Fellowship to facilitate wider participation in executive decision-making appears to have failed.
even this I would not unconditionally agree too. The fellowship has help us to grow and to bring in more opinions.
However, writing as someone who perceived the Fellowship as being a way of getting involved with the activities of the FSFE, as well as something of a differentiator from other organisations with similar goals, the decline and elimination of the Fellowship
The Fellowship continues, under the name of "supporter". The change was also made to honor active FSFE people that were not able to support us financially, as there were missunderstandings of the terms with some which kept active Free Software back.
seems to have had a negative impact on general engagement, at least as far as I can see from visible public activity related to the organisation.
My observation is different, as you have written, there is too much politics on this lists, less people prefer mailinglists and the technical sphere is getting bigger and more complicated. Also FSFE (which includes our active people and supporters) has been growing and endures growing pains while trying to find better ways to communicate with each others.
Of course, I could be completely wrong and may have missed obvious indications of a vibrant supporter community, but then we return to those matters of transparency and effective communication that seem to lie at the heart of many of the misunderstandings and grievances articulated in this and in earlier discussions.
In history of FSFE, we were reaching more goals when we were limiting our time spending on bureaucratic issue and discussion general concepts (like "democray", "transparency", "governance") because in my experience there are some vocal people that we will never win over by discussing this in too much depth. In contrast we are losing other people that want Free Software policy and other stuff done, while doing so. Thus personally do not share the conclusion of your observations.
Best Regards, Bernhard
Hi Paul,
some of your topics are very interesting, thanks for the feedback!
Am Mittwoch 29 August 2018 18:17:46 schrieb Paul Boddie:
== FSFE offerings of personal blogs
It is interesting to bring up the blog service because there were moves to abolish it, presumably so that only the planet aggregation service would need to be maintained instead.
But what the planet and blog services provide is a venue where people can hopefully exchange views, learn from each other, and collaborate generally. Such well-advertised, coherent, high-quality venues are seemingly not as common as one might think, which is why de-emphasising the role of the blogs was a bit mysterious from a strategic perspective.
Your argument is interesting as it brings up a strategic perspective of high quality contents, which I will have to think about more.
Questions I am asking myself: I was not involved in the deeper arguments of running a blog or not. From a distance it looks like running a serious service for a number of people is expensive and we cannot do it with volunteers alone. FSFE's costs of running a service would be higher than buying this from numerous service providers. Is this extra money well spend?
If you are right and there is a lot better coherency and advantages to FSFE, we could try to contract a service provider. However how do we get better contents on the platform? In the end we cannot really influence the contents of blogs, so they could have anything, even something that is bad for Free Software. Of course we could keep illegal contents out of the blogs, but if we had to come up with a "guidelines what would be appropriate" on our blogs to fellows, this would add another layer of maintenance and contents "inspection".
[..]
There are good arguments for the FSFE not providing much in the way of common services, at least if it imposes an unreasonable burden.
[..]
And when is a burden unreasonable? If we would have 200% the costs of an available commercial service vendor? Each offering will have to be weighted on its own, given the value and what else we could have done with the funds and resources.
At the same time, services that coordinate activities and perhaps archive some of the technical artefacts would be within the remit of the organisation. In the latter regard, the aim would be to guard against things disappearing from the Web, thinking of all those repository hosting services that no longer exist.
There are plenty of services to preserve what has been on the web (e.g. archive.org). It would be a major undertaking to build something up that lasts.
OK, but continuing from what I wrote above about high-quality venues for collaboration, how effective are the ones that the FSFE provides? For instance, this mailing list is pretty general and to the bafflement of some readers tends to veer off into FSFE organisational politics rather often.
That is a good question. Especially with new people coming in that have been socialised with other communication media (group messengers, social media, micro blogs).
Now, I still feel that this list could be more active in ways that are more relevant to people. Meanwhile, more specific topics could find a home within the FSFE's operations. One example from personal experience is that of Free Software groupware.
It is ontopic here to discuss any topic related to Free Software (as long as it happens in a respectful manner, which goes without saying). I believe there is a different problem of who is your target audience.
Good luck to anyone trying to find a venue for discussions about general technologies, interoperability, and other matters pertinent to a topic as mundane as groupware!
You can start a discussion here, but I take it would not really thrive.
Personal background: As you may know I have been coordinating a group that constructed a Free Software groupware for about 10 years, and I probably would not spend much time discussing this here, because I would need to write and amount of text filling a book before I got some of my arguments presented in a way that I believe that others have a chance to understand them. My personal time does not allow for this, and nobody will pay me for it either. So you won't get my detailled opinion here and not elsewhere. It would not be fun for me to repeat the basic arguments without getting into the deeper ones that demand a lot more context, so I probably won't do it. (Please do ask anyway, I'll always trying to help if I can.)
My theory is that Free Software has been so successful (because almost everyone is using it and most consumer devices freshly activated run a a Free Software operating system) that being Free Software has becoming such a broad topic that a few exchanges on some digital media just won't work. We have also seen a decline on general Free Software fairs and conference, they all get more specialised.
In this regard, I perceive a lack of continuity between the FSFE's advocacy and practical measures to make the advocacy believable. It is all very well saying that public organisations, for example, should be using Free Software, but a commitment needs to be made to support the development of the software they need, even if it is to act as the body that puts all the right people in the same room. Otherwise, the advocacy is little better than cheerleading, which is how some of it comes across.
Given our limited resources, we cannot just start an implementation project for some software product. We have noticed this early in FSFE. Our elder sister did and successfully reached the initial goals of their GNU "project" a few years ago. However this were different times. We found out with FSFE that it is much too easy for the opponents of Free Software to work against us on a policy level, for which technical hacking cannot provide resistance. In order to allow many other people to hack on Free Software, we must sure that politics, laws and procurement policies allow them to do this. The people and organisations that profit from less empowered users have become a much harder political opponent over the last years. So far I do not think that FSFE's resources are well spend if we would directly do development of missing Free Software components.
== license compliance
I have some concerns about things like upholding licence compliance. It seems rather strange to me that those of us who care about copyleft licences not being violated by corporations with apparent impunity seem to need to support organisations based in the US to look after these things in Europe.
While it is fine to support our elder sister in the US of course, license compliance is a main topic and activity of FSFE. The question is what is the goal of the compliance, we want organisations to come to compliance and stay there, because this is the best for everyone.
For this we offer a large (I think still the largest) community of legal and technical people to give advise, specific and general and we also follow a number of cases. Just as the FSF (US) we prefer an internal approach first, because we assume that a non-compliance may have been an oversight and it is better to get people to listen and to understand before you go public or legal.
For some of the activities see: https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/legal-conference.en.html
And this is where transparency means rather a lot. Beyond any reasonable legal caution, the FSFE should be able to indicate the extent of its work in such matters. Currently, I perceive very little transparency, which means that I have to conclude that very little is going on behind closed doors.
Or see the links to the reports from https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170619-01.en.html
It is only human to seek reassurance that something is indeed happening, and such reassurance has to be concrete, not vague or aspirational.
Over time we have increased our publically available reporting as much as we could, just look at the monthly https://fsfe.org/news/newsletter.en.html
and our documentation of long running current and concluded activities: https://fsfe.org/work.en.html
== PMPC
for example the new https://publiccode.eu/ initiative.
In contrast to previous campaigns which seemed to solicit supporter contributions, this one appears much more closed and opaque.
In the past we had more open (up to do what you want in that area) and more close campaigns. So it depends on the topic, which I think is fair enough. For some topics we can make a greater impact by making a participation easy, because many people like our work, but can only spare 5 minutes for a particular topic. This way we have won 151 organisations and 18000 individual supporters up to now.
Although I can understand the need to prevent haphazard communication and uncoordinated advocacy that undermines the campaign's objectives, this and similar initiatives risk failing to take advantage of the insights of the broader community, potentially failing to meet the expectations of those who might have expected something better or more convincing.
The best time to have more influence is to participate in the creating of campaigns, in many cases we are given an early indicator about what is going one, sometimes beta versions or more. As we do not warn some of our political opponents too early, we do some of it on our internal mailing lists. So if you want to participates in campaigns like this, go to a local meeting, get on one of the local mailinglists and then start your actions with your coordinator. Reading this mailinglist and responding to announcements also helps to be involved in a campaign early on.
Naturally, one reaction to criticism is to tell people to take their "business" elsewhere, assuming that such people are uncommon and that there will be plenty of newcomers to step into the gap, anyway. But apart from being generally disrespectful towards those who would support the organisation (although depressingly familiar from the broader realm of "open source"), the ultimate consequence of doing this is to put the organisation in decline as people start to perceive it in some of the more contentious and provocative terms already seen in this discussion.
I agree with the dangers and this is why I'll try my best to be respectful. This includes removing people that are disrespectful to others, we may have been to lax about this lately and may have seen some decline of participation because of this. To cite a recommendable work about how to run technical Free Software initatives from Karl Vogel:
https://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#prevent-rudeness Nip Rudeness in the Bud
Best Regards, Bernhard
On Thursday 30. August 2018 09.45.15 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
some of your topics are very interesting, thanks for the feedback!
Thank you for indulging me in this discussion which has probably covered more ground already than many previous discussions on some of these topics. My apologies if this is a long message.
== FSFE offerings of personal blogs
[...]
If you are right and there is a lot better coherency and advantages to FSFE, we could try to contract a service provider. However how do we get better contents on the platform? In the end we cannot really influence the contents of blogs, so they could have anything, even something that is bad for Free Software. Of course we could keep illegal contents out of the blogs, but if we had to come up with a "guidelines what would be appropriate" on our blogs to fellows, this would add another layer of maintenance and contents "inspection".
I have generally perceived the role of the blogs as providing an insight into FSFE activities, an insight into peripheral Free Software activities, and as some kind of "conversation starter". However, we don't necessarily see all that much of the first category, and an outsider might well conclude that the FSFE does all sorts of strange things based on what else is published (such as articles in my own blog).
Still, one might hope that the blogs act as that "conversation starter", with discussion possibly moving to places like this list, but we don't really see much of that, either. So it seems that regardless of the technology employed, the FSFE does not necessarily provide a particularly effective forum for driving Free Software discussions, development and strategy. At least from the perspective of a distant collaborator or outsider.
[...]
At the same time, services that coordinate activities and perhaps archive some of the technical artefacts would be within the remit of the organisation. In the latter regard, the aim would be to guard against things disappearing from the Web, thinking of all those repository hosting services that no longer exist.
There are plenty of services to preserve what has been on the web (e.g. archive.org). It would be a major undertaking to build something up that lasts.
I don't think that the scope of what the FSFE would need is anywhere near to what archive.org does, either in their Web archiving role or just for cultural artefacts. It just needs to keep its published content in place, which is admittedly something that many organisations fail to do as they "refresh" their Web sites. (Even supposed custodians of knowledge such as universities are surprisingly appalling at this, I find.)
Naturally, the cost of providing services has to be considered, and I agree that it isn't the FSFE's purpose to act as a hosting provider at the expense of its other activities. But the organisation does need to avoid the trap of outsourcing everything because people do then rightly wonder about the value provided by the organisation.
I could make observations about other organisations in this domain. For instance, the Python Software Foundation chose SourceForge for repository hosting back when people were still using CVS/Subversion. It then switched to self-hosting using Mercurial, but people started to clamour for Git usage and then GitHub usage with all the usual dubious assertions that this entails.
I understand that people don't want to do their own hosting, but at some point someone has to do the hosting, and then one needs to consider the burden on individuals. It is a bit like discussions about "social media" platforms, but I doubt that anyone participating in this list would advocate moving everything to Facebook and have fsfe.org redirect to some Facebook URL.
Meanwhile, there are arguably dormant organisations like Qi Hardware which still manages to maintain all its Web resources, and it may even be the case that most of those resources are still fully usable and not read-only archives. Although I acknowledge the challenges of hosting services, sometimes I think that people make arguments based on those challenges to pursue another agenda.
This extends to arguments about using more "agile" tools for communication. People seem to think that e-mail is too much effort and that forums would be better, and so on. But this is often motivated by people wanting to spend as little effort as possible on their interactions (hence observations about messages sent from people's phones). The result is often low-quality "tweeting" of opinions and unsustainable collaboration.
(Given your own considerable experience, I imagine that you have also seen situations where advocacy for "low-threshold editing" on things like wiki services, to pander to people who want to do "quick edits", ends up with incoherent content and spam that is someone else's job to tidy up.)
[...]
Good luck to anyone trying to find a venue for discussions about general technologies, interoperability, and other matters pertinent to a topic as mundane as groupware!
You can start a discussion here, but I take it would not really thrive.
Indeed. And we lack mechanisms to take such discussions further. Here, the Python community provides another lesson. Up to about ten years ago or so, the concept of "special interest groups" was actively cultivated. There were areas where it was felt that Python-based solutions could be developed to meet the needs of potential users. Some of these evolved a consensus that has led to enduring solutions, such as database access interfaces that are still used today.
However, another phenomenon emerged which involves people promoting specific solutions and denigrating others. Instead of reaching a consensus, the goal of some people was to try and dominate others and persuade the audience to pick their solution as the winner. (I propose the term "alpha-dogging" for this kind of behaviour.)
This usually ends up with complacency and the eventual surprise of discovering that competing technologies have surpassed the things that everybody was told to use, because "we solved this already" was always the response when people questioned the effectiveness of the favoured solutions. So we need to cultivate more specialised forums whilst guarding against the tendency to call victory on something and to use that to close down discussion.
Personal background: As you may know I have been coordinating a group that constructed a Free Software groupware for about 10 years, and I probably would not spend much time discussing this here, because I would need to write and amount of text filling a book before I got some of my arguments presented in a way that I believe that others have a chance to understand them.
I have some familiarity with your own achievements in this and other realms, and I obviously appreciate those, particularly as I probably use some of the affected software every day. But it is interesting to see how some of the software somehow lost momentum and relevance, meaning that people were no longer considering Kolab (version 2 and earlier) as a competitive solution.
That isn't a criticism of such software, however, because it clearly kept working for those who had deployed it. But for people like myself who like to think that we are aware of the state of Free Software solutions in different areas, in investigating this mismatch between our perceptions and those of people freshly evaluating such solutions (regardless of any biases those people might have had) it became apparent that there was a gulf between what we wanted to suggest to potential adopters and what was available and acceptable to them.
And again, this is where organisations like the FSFE have to be able to substantiate and support their advocacy with activities that make their claims a reality. Without some kind of mutually-beneficial collaboration in specific areas of activity, the usual divide and conquer approach of the proprietary software vendors will just continue unchecked. And collaboration has to be ongoing, reviewing where the advocacy oversells the reality.
[...]
Given our limited resources, we cannot just start an implementation project for some software product. We have noticed this early in FSFE. Our elder sister did and successfully reached the initial goals of their GNU "project" a few years ago. However this were different times. We found out with FSFE that it is much too easy for the opponents of Free Software to work against us on a policy level, for which technical hacking cannot provide resistance. In order to allow many other people to hack on Free Software, we must sure that politics, laws and procurement policies allow them to do this. The people and organisations that profit from less empowered users have become a much harder political opponent over the last years. So far I do not think that FSFE's resources are well spend if we would directly do development of missing Free Software components.
A huge structural problem that has increasingly been noticed is that no-one wants to fund Free Software in general. For the most part, companies will fund things to get their products out the door, Free Software or otherwise, and if they can avoid paying for "infrastructure components" then they will. Here's a recent apt commentary with some strong language about this phenomenon:
https://carlchenet.com/foss-passive-consumerism-kills-our-community/
Now, I don't necessarily expect the FSFE to directly fund software development. Meanwhile, since the FSF wishes to see software development done, I would expect it to pay people a decent wage for the work it wishes to see done. Unfortunately, there is a culture of people doing work "for exposure" which means that people are tempted into doing things for free to get their name known.
The consequences are often (1) nothing actually getting done, (2) people burning out as they try and fit their volunteer work in around everything else in their lives, (3) the perception that Free Software is a product of hobbyists who can be paid with pennies. So while I accept that policy activities are vital to allow Free Software to be deployed, it also must be recognised that without a sustainable development culture there will be no Free Software to deploy.
== license compliance
I have some concerns about things like upholding licence compliance. It seems rather strange to me that those of us who care about copyleft licences not being violated by corporations with apparent impunity seem to need to support organisations based in the US to look after these things in Europe.
While it is fine to support our elder sister in the US of course, license compliance is a main topic and activity of FSFE. The question is what is the goal of the compliance, we want organisations to come to compliance and stay there, because this is the best for everyone.
So do other organisations. Unfortunately, there are well-known individuals in the Free Software community who disparage some of those organisations, arguably in pursuit of their own personal goals.
For this we offer a large (I think still the largest) community of legal and technical people to give advise, specific and general and we also follow a number of cases. Just as the FSF (US) we prefer an internal approach first, because we assume that a non-compliance may have been an oversight and it is better to get people to listen and to understand before you go public or legal.
For some of the activities see: https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/legal-conference.en.html
My problem with this is that it doesn't seem very transparent. And again, there are individuals who have sought to mischaracterise other organisations who have tried to discuss general matters of compliance openly. Meanwhile, a vacuum has formed around licence compliance that has been exploited by various opportunists.
What this communicates to outsiders like myself is that other organisations are (1) more likely to offer practical support and advice below the level of formal legal consultation (which is, to be honest, where most developers want to be operating), (2) more open about the legal and regulatory challenges facing Free Software, and (3) more active with regard to upholding Free Software licences and defending well-intentioned Free Software usage in Europe.
Again, this may be an unfair impression, but I can only work with the visible facts I have to hand. And when an organisation solicits support, it surely falls on that organisation to make a clear and convincing case for such support. On this particular matter, and in contrast to the outreach done by other organisations, I have difficulties seeing such a case.
Once again, my apologies for a long message which still didn't discuss everything it needed to. However, I hope it provides another perspective that, to some extent, maybe some other people also share.
Paul
Hi Paul,
Am Donnerstag 30 August 2018 21:56:58 schrieb Paul Boddie:
Thank you for indulging me in this discussion which has probably covered more ground already than many previous discussions on some of these topics. My apologies if this is a long message.
no problem, you are welcome! Thanks for caring for Free Software. Given the heated tangled discussion on this list, please take my apologies for a brief answer. There is probably more time for longer exchanges at a later point of time.
== FSFE offerings of personal blogs
Still, one might hope that the blogs act as that "conversation starter", with discussion possibly moving to places like this list, but we don't really see much of that, either. So it seems that regardless of the technology employed, the FSFE does not necessarily provide a particularly effective forum for driving Free Software discussions, development and strategy. At least from the perspective of a distant collaborator or outsider.
What worked best in many years were to bring people together at event, supporter meeting, local group, conferences and so on. People that already had an connection to each other via FSFE. If you want to become more involed in this, try to go to one or organise one yourself.
It is true that we haven't found a cool response to the challenges that new electronic media has brought to high quality exchanges. Should be wo more micro-blogs, social medias, chats or what else? What keeps the coherency. We are not the only group that has this problems. Combined with more topics in society generally, less political actions by young people and growing success of Free Software worldwide leading to growth problems we do have a combination of challenges. The best inspritation I've found is the book of Tina Rosenberg, called "Join the club".
== Preserving knowledge
I don't think that the scope of what the FSFE would need is anywhere near to what archive.org does, either in their Web archiving role or just for cultural artefacts. It just needs to keep its published content in place, which is admittedly something that many organisations fail to do as they "refresh" their Web sites. (Even supposed custodians of knowledge such as universities are surprisingly appalling at this, I find.)
Keeping our contents and history in place is something that we do (as far as I know). Not every revision of course, but everything significant. Do you have examples of what contents you are missing.
the organisation does need to avoid the trap of outsourcing everything because people do then rightly wonder about the value provided by the organisation.
And we don't however, FSFE's aim is not to directly produce software, we want others to be able to do it in several aspects. For many is much better if there are several choises of service providers that are not FSFE. It helps us to be in a position to evalutate those providers.
I could make observations about other organisations in this domain. For instance, the Python Software Foundation chose SourceForge for repository hosting back when people were still using CVS/Subversion. It then switched to self-hosting using Mercurial, but people started to clamour for Git usage and then GitHub usage with all the usual dubious assertions that this entails.
This always is a hard question for an organisation: What does this contribute to our core mission? A question like this has to be weighted for each case. If the core missiong of the PSA is to further Python, they may profit from the lower entry barrier of github and live with the drawbacks. Just like the FSF took advantages at some time of computers with proprietary compilers, proprietary operating system, proprietary microcode on chips and other stuff in order to raise the chances to have more Free Software in the future.
Personally I had hoped that the PSA would have decided differently. (I am one of the co-maintainers of an old issue tracker technology they are still using, called roundup. We have a hard time competing with a development based on proprietary software money like github, bitbucket or gitlab.) But if Python lost important young people because of the higher barrier, the github move may contribute for them being there and relevant in 2 years and not leaving the field to languares more geared towards the interest of large corporations like Swift or Go (meanwhile both Free Software languages and technically good, the influence of lage computing companies and their needs is still very strong.)
I understand that people don't want to do their own hosting, but at some point someone has to do the hosting, and then one needs to consider the burden on individuals.
In my eyes a long term solution needs professionals running them, otherwise there is a too great risk of not having the necessary stability (for support, security, updates, maintenance). FSFE could run this, like any organisation could, but why should it. What is bad about buying bread from a professional bakery, produce from a farmer, news from a journalist and get thaught by a teacher? I could probably do each one of this myself, but not everything together.
It is a bit like discussions about "social media" platforms, but I doubt that anyone participating in this list would advocate moving everything to Facebook and have fsfe.org redirect to some Facebook URL.
Facebook's service is far away from FSFE to be considered a vendor. Still we may need to go there to talk to people who we want to get educated about Free Software and we could only reach there. (If only for telling them why they should not be on Facebook.)
Meanwhile, there are arguably dormant organisations like Qi Hardware which still manages to maintain all its Web resources, and it may even be the case that most of those resources are still fully usable and not read-only archives. Although I acknowledge the challenges of hosting services, sometimes I think that people make arguments based on those challenges to pursue another agenda.
There are many very interesting approaches not just Qi Hardware. I like them. We need more of them. And they need more buyers.
FSFE is about making it possible they can get more fraction and stay allowed. Think about the radio frequency initiative, that would just outrule to use some devices, no matter how clever they be constructed. Think about how we try public and private procurement to make it possible to prefer Free Software (or other open resources) or at least buy it at all.
This extends to arguments about using more "agile" tools for communication. People seem to think that e-mail is too much effort and that forums would be better, and so on. But this is often motivated by people wanting to spend as little effort as possible on their interactions (hence observations about messages sent from people's phones). The result is often low-quality "tweeting" of opinions and unsustainable collaboration.
(Given your own considerable experience, I imagine that you have also seen situations where advocacy for "low-threshold editing" on things like wiki services, to pander to people who want to do "quick edits", ends up with incoherent content and spam that is someone else's job to tidy up.)
A low barrier does not guarentee good contents, however a high barrier also does not. A low barrier to me means that I could contribute more in many situations, so I do prefer a low barrier to contributors and well supported tools. Github has developed some advances in this field, just as Sourceforge did. And of course with many people supporting them with their attention and feedback. What can we do to keep Free Software tools to keep up with those improvements, how can we make other advantages of Free Software more popular (think decentralised communication where XMPP with OpenPGP was way ahead of many messengers, but still failed to get the large traktion)?
Professionally I stay away from Github as much as I can, but I cannot fully, because otherwise I cause trouble for people I am developing Free Software for, which would mean that I couldn't to it up to the extend that it wouldn't be Free Software in the end.
== Places to discuss
Indeed. And we lack mechanisms to take such discussions further. Here, the Python community provides another lesson. Up to about ten years ago or so, the concept of "special interest groups" was actively cultivated.
I'm a big fan of Python and its decision structure. Still they are also having problems to maintain the consistency and the rate of innovation. And were using a single person as technical lead (Guido van Rossum). The main point is: Their mission is quite different from FSFE's.
However, another phenomenon emerged which involves people promoting specific solutions and denigrating others. Instead of reaching a consensus, the goal of some people was to try and dominate others and persuade the audience to pick their solution as the winner.
I believe that some competition is good. Having several solutions to chose from is good. Hopefully people will select on merits and not just style of presentation of course.
== Groupware
But it is interesting to see how some of the software somehow lost momentum and relevance, meaning that people were no longer considering Kolab (version 2 and earlier) as a competitive solution.
For historic reasons I am still using it each day and it is old, but quite stable. Missing a number of features and so on. I still have customers who use it with surprising stability. :) But its old and not competitive anymore for a new installation. My story about this is, that together with others I had to hand over the torch to somebody else. It did not turn out how I had hoped it would, but as the former coordinator, I am not in a position to criticise my followers in detail, they did the best they could and followed what they perceived was the right way.
[..]
it became apparent that there was a gulf between what we wanted to suggest to potential adopters and what was available and acceptable to them.
And again, this is where organisations like the FSFE have to be able to substantiate and support their advocacy with activities that make their claims a reality.
I've learned many lessons about this the hard way. I don't think this would work. If we ever meet, we should have a beer over this conversation.
== Funding Free Software
A huge structural problem that has increasingly been noticed is that no-one wants to fund Free Software in general. For the most part, companies will fund things to get their products out the door, Free Software or otherwise, and if they can avoid paying for "infrastructure components" then they will. Here's a recent apt commentary with some strong language about this phenomenon:
https://carlchenet.com/foss-passive-consumerism-kills-our-community/
(Sorry, stopped reading the link very soon, as it does not promise a thought out contribution to the debate.)
My assessment of the situation is different, I believe more and more companies are funding Free Software development, in some areas it is the only way now to stay competitive. Examples Google with Android, Chromuim, Angular, Go. Facebook with React, Twitter with Bootstrap, Microsoft with Visual Code, and many many others like IBM, Redhat with Linux.
Now, I don't necessarily expect the FSFE to directly fund software development. Meanwhile, since the FSF wishes to see software development done, I would expect it to pay people a decent wage for the work it wishes to see done.
The funds of FSFE and FSF are soooo little compare to what it take to do anything of medium significance in software engineering. We may be able to do a few very important missing links, small stuff at the maximum.
Unfortunately, there is a culture of people doing work "for exposure" which means that people are tempted into doing things for free to get their name known.
It is one of the motivations for people to work on Free Software, but we need more professionals and thus we need more money for Free Software which means more companies and customers of companies that want this.
The consequences are often (1) nothing actually getting done, (2) people burning out as they try and fit their volunteer work in around everything else in their lives,
To any volunteer, my advise as a volunterr is: Always prepare for the long run. Don't overstretch.
(3) the perception that Free Software is a product of hobbyists who can be paid with pennies.
This perception is fuelled by people who do not want to see the number of professional offerings or who do not want to pay for software or service at all.
So while I accept that policy activities are vital to allow Free Software to be deployed, it also must be recognised that without a sustainable development culture there will be no Free Software to deploy.
FSFE does foster development culture and we may even do more. Still it is more important that if a person starts a Free Software business he or she is allowed to do so and get a fair chance to win over business.
== license compliance
For some of the activities see: https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/legal-conference.en.html
My problem with this is that it doesn't seem very transparent. And again, there are individuals who have sought to mischaracterise other organisations who have tried to discuss general matters of compliance openly. Meanwhile, a vacuum has formed around licence compliance that has been exploited by various opportunists.
This maybe a area we need to get into the details. Within FSFE we had a number of discussions about this lately and they have also been tied with specific persons more often than I would have liked. Being effective on such a topic means that we find, hold and motivate people and sometimes for personal or other reasons there are gaps. (I consider this a daily operational question where a public debate about it would just be unhelpful.)
What this communicates to outsiders like myself is that other organisations are (1) more likely to offer practical support and advice below the level of formal legal consultation (which is, to be honest, where most developers want to be operating), (2) more open about the legal and regulatory challenges facing Free Software, and (3) more active with regard to upholding Free Software licences and defending well-intentioned Free Software usage in Europe.
Again, this may be an unfair impression, but I can only work with the visible facts I have to hand. And when an organisation solicits support, it surely falls on that organisation to make a clear and convincing case for such support. On this particular matter, and in contrast to the outreach done by other organisations, I have difficulties seeing such a case.
You maybe right in that FSFE has been less public about what it does in recent years. We believe that we need to help that more people understand, can follow and come to their own conclusions about licensing "enforcement" and how the different players interact. Otherwise FSFE too much becomes the organisation who forces decisions, which has long term disadvantages. If people like us to put in more resources on this topic, it is good to get this as feedback.
Once again, my apologies for a long message which still didn't discuss everything it needed to. However, I hope it provides another perspective that, to some extent, maybe some other people also share.
Thanks for sharing your perspective and giving me a chance to respond.
Best Regards, Bernhard
On Friday 31. August 2018 13.16.57 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Am Donnerstag 30 August 2018 21:56:58 schrieb Paul Boddie:
Thank you for indulging me in this discussion which has probably covered more ground already than many previous discussions on some of these topics. My apologies if this is a long message.
no problem, you are welcome! Thanks for caring for Free Software. Given the heated tangled discussion on this list, please take my apologies for a brief answer. There is probably more time for longer exchanges at a later point of time.
Agreed. I'll fast-forward to a couple of points that I want to make, however. Other things deserve more of my time today, unfortunately.
[...]
https://carlchenet.com/foss-passive-consumerism-kills-our-community/
(Sorry, stopped reading the link very soon, as it does not promise a thought out contribution to the debate.)
I did mention strong language. But I also sympathise with the sentiments because there are certain observations that are difficult to ignore.
[...]
Unfortunately, there is a culture of people doing work "for exposure" which means that people are tempted into doing things for free to get their name known.
It is one of the motivations for people to work on Free Software, but we need more professionals and thus we need more money for Free Software which means more companies and customers of companies that want this.
The consequences are often (1) nothing actually getting done, (2) people burning out as they try and fit their volunteer work in around everything else in their lives,
To any volunteer, my advise as a volunterr is: Always prepare for the long run. Don't overstretch.
Unfortunately, the "for exposure" culture encourages people to overstretch. In one case in the Python community, someone who had been "all over" every topic of concern eventually burned out:
http://jessenoller.com/blog/2015/9/27/a-lot-happens
I've seen other people being misrepresented, ejected and blamed for their good work. In a professional context such things would be described as exploitative, and in many cases there would be consequences, maybe even in the despicable "light regulatory touch" jurisdictions.
But since this kind of "noble volunteerism" meshes with a popular flavours of capitalism, such people and the lessons they have for us are readily forgotten, their misfortune seen as "regrettable" but somehow an acceptable cost to bring about other people's success. I mention this particularly because it may help some people to understand why people become so aggrieved and feel mistreated.
(Incidentally, "for exposure" is the term used in the photography sector, perhaps as a form of dark humour. If you want to needlessly upset people, suggesting to professional photographers that they do their work "for exposure" is almost guaranteed to do the trick. But I admire their stubbornness, whereas professionals in our sector are only too happy to indulge practices like unpaid internships.)
(3) the perception that Free Software is a product of hobbyists who can be paid with pennies.
This perception is fuelled by people who do not want to see the number of professional offerings or who do not want to pay for software or service at all.
There most certainly are professional offerings, yes. But then again, there are people like Werner whose PGP libraries are being used by billion dollar corporations as the foundation of their businesses' operational viability, and yet it apparently took security scares in other cryptographic libraries and Edward Snowden's remarks to crack open wallets and get things funded at a more tolerable level.
So while I accept that policy activities are vital to allow Free Software to be deployed, it also must be recognised that without a sustainable development culture there will be no Free Software to deploy.
FSFE does foster development culture and we may even do more. Still it is more important that if a person starts a Free Software business he or she is allowed to do so and get a fair chance to win over business.
I am not arguing about taking opportunities away from business, though. In fact, I am arguing against the zero-sum game played by various businesses, the result of which is a shoal of little fish whose only defence is not to be big enough to be noticed by the big (proprietary) fish that everybody else has to deal with.
From conversations I have had over the years, I sometimes wonder whether certain companies regard their Free Software competitors as worse enemies than the proprietary vendors and solutions they should all be doing their best to defeat. So that game of divide and rule continues, of course.
Paul
Hi all,
Am 28. August 2018 15:04:42 MESZ schrieb Joe Awni joe.awni@gmail.com:
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
I don't know how you come to that conclusion. FSFE existed for years before the supporting campaign called "Fellowship". For years it also has been critizised as being too intransparent and closed. Real membership was invite-only and restricted to about a dozen people. Nowadays everyone can apply for it.
Best wishes Michael
P.S.: The loudest voices aren't always the most reasonable ones.
Hi,
Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 17:32:20 schrieb Michael Kesper:
Real membership was invite-only and restricted to about a dozen people. Nowadays everyone can apply for it.
note that Michael writes about the formal membership of the e.V. which is a legal backbone of the FSFE (but not identical to it). It was always the case that formally everyone could apply. And it does make sense to only admit some, because carrying the responsibilities demands some time and dedication. Both hasn't really changed.
Our "fellowship representative" initiative worked out in that we've got to know a few people a lot better and they got to know the FSFE inner working better. And we want this to happen with more people (which does not work out with how the initiative was turning out) and people can apply for this.
Best Regards, Bernhard
Hi Luke,
Am Dienstag, 28. August 2018, 10:18:11 CEST schrieb lukerogers@tutanota.com:
No more elections? 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.
Thank your ongoing willingness to support the cause and local groups, even if you seem dissatisfied with FSFE at the moment. But i really have to ask you to not call the employees names.
When I joined the Fellowship back in 2011 I wanted to support Free Software.. As I got to know more and more people from the larger community, I was motivated to start a new local group in Munich. In the beginning I was a bit unsure about what help I could expect from the official body. But as the Wiki stated and still states, there are plenty of services and resources (not talking about technical services) Fellows/Supporters can use for their work.
As I used more and more of those services to help spread the word about Free Software in Munich and Southern Germany, I was really encouraged and supported by those very employees to request what we/I needed. A significant part of this support came from our today's president, who IMHO would have been a lot faster up the ladder outside of FSFE, if this was his objective.
And of course he wasn't the only one: Ulrike, Erik, Rainer, Reinhard (volunteering full time), Karsten, many interns that since have moved on and people I have not yet met due my recent absence, do a fantastic job to enable me to work for Free Software in my (rare) spare time.
Long story short: Up until today I haven't met every single member of the GA, who mostly are volunteers on their own. But what I was able to do in Munich, Augsburg and now Kiel wouldn't have been possible without the permanent support from the employees in Berlin/Düsseldorf (and of course many, many volunteers that stay unnamed here).
I am pretty sure that the support I received will be given to those who ask. So giving money to FSFE helps spreading Free Software in all of Europe, not only locally.
I just wanted to tell my story to a) free the employees of FSFE from untrue accusations b) show what FSFE IMHO really is about. It's about Free Software, not a yearly vote "forced" upon a community which just wants to work for Free Software
Of course, if the Fellowship votes would have been cancelled without any replacement, that would have hurt the checks and balances. But at the same time people are now invited to apply for membership, the larger community and every supporter by itself now can do this.
Just my two cents.
Christian
On 28/08/18 23:04, Christian Kalkhoff wrote:
As I used more and more of those services to help spread the word about Free Software in Munich and Southern Germany, I was really encouraged and supported by those very employees to request what we/I needed. A significant part of this support came from our today's president, who IMHO would have been a lot faster up the ladder outside of FSFE, if this was his objective.
That is the whole problem: we have people who have done some very good work and I wouldn't have been a contributor if I didn't see that. When something bad like this happens, it is hard for anybody to believe it.
Nonetheless, it is there in the notice of meeting and the minutes.
If you look at any of the significant resignations of CEOs or political leaders, it is usually the same pattern: they have done many good things but then they made one miscalculation and they have to go for the good of the organization.
Somebody else then gets to have a turn at leading and they may also make a really strong contribution too.
Notice that in this case, there is quantifiable evidence that the number of fellows has been falling since they were told they are only "supporters". These reports are not public but I've seen them on the private lists. If you combine that with the handling of the elections, it is a big enough miscalculation that the talk of a resignation is well within reason. In any organization with a genuine democracy, there would already be at least one other person campaigning for the role of president right now.
Regards,
Daniel
Daniel,
Am Mittwoch 29 August 2018 22:57:18 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
If you look at any of the significant resignations of CEOs or political leaders, it is usually the same pattern: they have done many good things but then they made one miscalculation and they have to go for the good of the organization.
to me this is a highly simplified view and I do not share it. To me it is a lot of work to be the leading moderator of an organisation, I don't think what you've stated above would stand a serious examination. In addition the FSFE is not just another company or political party.
Notice that in this case, there is quantifiable evidence that the number of fellows has been falling since they were told they are only "supporters".
Even if there were, I cannot see how you would link it to the name change. And even if you did, maybe it was good to clarify the relation as it has been from the beginning even in the name? In addition the FSFE is not about the number of supporters, it is about furthering Free Software and the education of Free Software for the public benefit.
In any organization with a genuine democracy, there would already be at least one other person campaigning for the role of president right now.
As I did explained elsewhere: The FSFE cannot be a "democracy" (as we cannot know who is the "demos" and we are not a mandatory "membership" organisation like a state.)
Best Regards, Bernhard
On 29.08.2018 22:57, Daniel Pocock wrote:
If you look at any of the significant resignations of CEOs or political leaders, it is usually the same pattern: they have done many good things but then they made one miscalculation and they have to go for the good of the organization.
Somebody else then gets to have a turn at leading and they may also make a really strong contribution too.
This approach might work in a big organisation but not in a small one as we are. Let me give you the point of view of a staffer:
We are currently 5 employees and the president. We sit in a tiny office in Berlin together (you have been here, you know how tiny it is), we split the work in departments, we keep an eye on people getting their free time but also always having someone available in the office, we plan long-time campaigns together, we spent weekends together working for Free Software, share trains, hotels etc.
To let everything for us and for the FSFE run smoothly we need trust, flat hierarchies and good relationships.
What staffers definitely not need is bullfighting alpha animals that just wait for something to happen and then to take over the leadership and tell the employees top-down what needs to be changed and be done in a different way.
And Matthias currently has full support by the staffers.
Best, Erik
On 30/08/18 10:17, Erik Albers wrote:
And Matthias currently has full support by the staffers.
The ideal president or chairperson needs to be somebody who can unite staff, volunteers, fellows, supporters, donors and external parties. To chair meetings, lead effectively and gain respect when representing FSFE publicly, they need to be above the controversial politics we have seen recently and acceptable to everybody.
The president doesn't have to be staff, it could be a volunteer too, we have over 1,500 people in the community and I'm sure there are many good candidates there.
Matthias could continue to lead the staff in the Executive Director role, given Jonas' recent news that he is vacating that role? Could this be the most constructive way to move forward and close the chapter on the recent politics?
Maybe a dramatic change of leader could also be a good alternative to the endless discussions about diversity. By making it a position for a volunteer, more people might apply for it.
Regards,
Daniel
On 09/03/2018 07:04 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 30/08/18 10:17, Erik Albers wrote:
And Matthias currently has full support by the staffers.
Matthias could continue to lead the staff in the Executive Director role, given Jonas' recent news that he is vacating that role? Could this be the most constructive way to move forward and close the chapter on the recent politics?
Maybe a dramatic change of leader could also be a good alternative to the endless discussions about diversity. By making it a position for a volunteer, more people might apply for it.
As a long-standing member of this community (I was active on FSFE mailing lists yearvs before I became a Fellow, now Supporter, in 2009) I see nothing in the current debate that indicates the abrupt replacement of the president or other key figures, let alone "dramatic" changes.
I think we should think constructively and always ask ourselves the question: How does this benefit Free Software the most? I don't see the current debate on this list as very conducive to anything.
Best Carsten
On 09/03/2018 08:04 PM, Carsten Agger wrote:
Typo alert:
As a long-standing member of this community (I was active on FSFE mailing lists yearvs before I became a Fellow, now Supporter, in 2009)
That was *2011*.
My apologies.
Sent using Zoho Mail ---- On Mon, 03 Sep 2018 20:04:07 +0200 Carsten Agger agger@modspil.dk wrote ---- On 09/03/2018 07:04 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote: > On 30/08/18 10:17, Erik Albers wrote: >> And Matthias currently has full support by the staffers. > > > Matthias could continue to lead the staff in the Executive Director > role, given Jonas' recent news that he is vacating that role? Could > this be the most constructive way to move forward and close the chapter > on the recent politics? > > Maybe a dramatic change of leader could also be a good alternative to > the endless discussions about diversity. By making it a position for a > volunteer, more people might apply for it. > > As a long-standing member of this community (I was active on FSFE mailing lists yearvs before I became a Fellow, now Supporter, in 2009) I see nothing in the current debate that indicates the abrupt replacement of the president or other key figures, let alone "dramatic" changes. All the crazy stuff on this list doesn't make you cringe? The culture of this organization is hideous. Everybody is infected with it. Get a new leader and get a new culture. Other people worry about too many details but they are right about the solution: change I think we should think constructively and always ask ourselves the question: How does this benefit Free Software the most? I don't see the current debate on this list as very conducive to anything. Funny question but how did a little posse in Berlin trying to a-- f--- the absent fellowship rep benefit free software? mh
Pretty much it....
Can't say l disagree.
On Mon, 3 Sep 2018, 21:08 Matthias Hager, matthias.hager@zoho.eu wrote:
Sent using Zoho Mail https://www.zoho.com/mail/
---- On Mon, 03 Sep 2018 20:04:07 +0200 *Carsten Agger <agger@modspil.dk agger@modspil.dk>* wrote ----
On 09/03/2018 07:04 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 30/08/18 10:17, Erik Albers wrote:
And Matthias currently has full support by the staffers.
Matthias could continue to lead the staff in the Executive Director role, given Jonas' recent news that he is vacating that role? Could this be the most constructive way to move forward and close the chapter on the recent politics?
Maybe a dramatic change of leader could also be a good alternative to the endless discussions about diversity. By making it a position for a volunteer, more people might apply for it.
As a long-standing member of this community (I was active on FSFE mailing lists yearvs before I became a Fellow, now Supporter, in 2009) I see nothing in the current debate that indicates the abrupt replacement of the president or other key figures, let alone "dramatic" changes.
All the crazy stuff on this list doesn't make you cringe? The culture of this organization is hideous. Everybody is infected with it.
Get a new leader and get a new culture. Other people worry about too many details but they are right about the solution: change
I think we should think constructively and always ask ourselves the question: How does this benefit Free Software the most? I don't see the current debate on this list as very conducive to anything.
Funny question but how did a little posse in Berlin trying to a-- f--- the absent fellowship rep benefit free software?
mh
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Hi,
Am Montag 03 September 2018 22:12:28 schrieb Stefan Uygur:
Pretty much it.... Can't say l disagree.
thanks for quoting the HTML email. Can you say to which you agree with in particular? Carsten's statement that we believes that everything is basically fine?
On Mon, 3 Sep 2018, 21:08 Matthias Hager, matthias.hager@zoho.eu wrote:
All the crazy stuff on this list doesn't make you cringe? The culture of this organization is hideous. Everybody is infected with it.
It is this kind of statements that we do not want here. Even if you'd have a few persons that write in a disrespectful tone, there is no need to generally accuse everybody.
What shall we do if questions are asked? Even in a disrespectful tone? We had chosen the path to allow them and reply with answers and a good tone. So we attempt to err in doubt of the argument. However if the tone is degrading, we need to be more strict about our moderation policy to protect the other people who want to ask and discuss in a civil tone.
Get a new leader and get a new culture. Other people worry about too many details but they are right about the solution: change
Sorry, change without detailed plan or purpose is just activism. Something I do not like in politics in general. Do you?
Funny question but how did a little posse in Berlin trying to a-- f--- the absent fellowship rep benefit free software?
Daniel had several potential ways to make sure his opinion and vote would have been represented. He had chosen to not pursue any of them. There also is a second fellowship representative. And the change voted upon there was already in planning before Daniel became to have a fellowship seat. He knows all this and could not convince others about his ways of working over several months and now does not accept what a majority has concluded and goes public here. It is yours do judge the discussion of course.
Regards, Bernhard
Bernard, I clearly quoted to Matthias's email, was that hard to understand this.
I don't think l have posted anything disrespectful here, ever in this ml.
So be nice and respect my feedback/opinion and stop with your lecturings plus insinuations pls.
Stop talking on behalf of Matthias Kirchner and let him exercise his own defence. I don't think I called you into this, don't remember mentioning your name.
More you talk this way and more he is not showing up more people will get convinced that things are upside down in this organisation.
This is becoming really noisy now, l have asked clearly to stop this debate that is running on different threads and let the main representative to feedback and respond to issues raised. Not accusations but issues. Apparently you ignored that email.
If you can be so kind to let Matthias to handle and talk on his behalf pls. Would appreciate that.
Best of luck.
On Tue, 4 Sep 2018, 09:06 Bernhard E. Reiter, bernhard@fsfe.org wrote:
Hi,
Am Montag 03 September 2018 22:12:28 schrieb Stefan Uygur:
Pretty much it.... Can't say l disagree.
thanks for quoting the HTML email. Can you say to which you agree with in particular? Carsten's statement that we believes that everything is basically fine?
On Mon, 3 Sep 2018, 21:08 Matthias Hager, matthias.hager@zoho.eu
wrote:
All the crazy stuff on this list doesn't make you cringe? The culture
of
this organization is hideous. Everybody is infected with it.
It is this kind of statements that we do not want here. Even if you'd have a few persons that write in a disrespectful tone, there is no need to generally accuse everybody.
What shall we do if questions are asked? Even in a disrespectful tone? We had chosen the path to allow them and reply with answers and a good tone. So we attempt to err in doubt of the argument. However if the tone is degrading, we need to be more strict about our moderation policy to protect the other people who want to ask and discuss in a civil tone.
Get a new leader and get a new culture. Other people worry about too many details but they are right about the solution: change
Sorry, change without detailed plan or purpose is just activism. Something I do not like in politics in general. Do you?
Funny question but how did a little posse in Berlin trying to a-- f--- the absent fellowship rep benefit free software?
Daniel had several potential ways to make sure his opinion and vote would have been represented. He had chosen to not pursue any of them. There also is a second fellowship representative. And the change voted upon there was already in planning before Daniel became to have a fellowship seat. He knows all this and could not convince others about his ways of working over several months and now does not accept what a majority has concluded and goes public here. It is yours do judge the discussion of course.
Regards, Bernhard
-- FSFE -- Founding Member Support our work for Free Software: blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard https://fsfe.org/donate | contribute _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
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Stefan,
I clearly quoted to Matthias's email, was that hard to understand this.
because of the HTML format of the email you were citing, I wasn't sure if you really meant to support what you have cited or meant the included citation of the email that redated it.
I don't think l have posted anything disrespectful here, ever in this ml.
So be nice and respect my feedback/opinion and stop with your lecturings plus insinuations pls.
At least the above statement is something that I could read as disrespectful, as I merely wanted to understand what you mean. The second part of my email was to repond to what you have only cited and originated from matthias.hager@zoho.eu.
Stop talking on behalf of Matthias Kirchner and let him exercise his own defence. I don't think I called you into this, don't remember mentioning your name.
Please respect that I can speak out for whomever I'd like, whenever I like.
This is our mailinglist, so it's partly mine and I blieve I can speak out, just like anybody to defend a civil tone here. The statements you've cited are not civil in my opinion.
Not accusations but issues.
Up to now I believe I have responded to all questions, to some questions more then once. This a least clarifies the position where I stand. And it saves others to to explain some of the things which have been explained before. I don't think it necessarily takes FSFE's anchor person to respond to each question, especially when it was already explained sufficiently (for most) by many.
Best Regards, Bernhard
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512
Stop talking on behalf of Matthias Kirchner and let him exercise his own defence. I don't think I called you into this, don't remember mentioning your name.
Please respect that I can speak out for whomever I'd like, whenever I like.
This is our mailinglist, so it's partly mine and I blieve I can speak out, just like anybody to defend a civil tone here. The statements you've cited are not civil in my opinion.
I usually don't post here but this is a tone I'm not comfortable with from you Bernhard. You don't have an automatic right to copy someone else's identity and speak for their behalf, if you refer to the freedom of speech then that is a totally different thing altogether.
"This is my mailinglist so I can say what I want." and then "You are not civil." is not something I would hear on a TV debate I think. You claim your right to be somewhat rude since you moderate the list, in that case maybe you should stick to only moderating and not voicing your opinions since you can be mistaken for what some would call "an asshole"?
Kind regards, Andreas
Hi Andreas,
Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 07:31:05 schrieb Andreas Nilsson:
Please respect that I can speak out for whomever I'd like, whenever I like.
I usually don't post here but this is a tone I'm not comfortable with from you Bernhard. You don't have an automatic right to copy someone else's identity and speak for their behalf,
I agree that people should speak for themselfs and and this is what I've did. I've voiced my support of how FSFE and its president currently works and just like everybody can voice their criticism. Both should be done in a civil tone.
This is our mailinglist, so it's partly mine and I blieve I can speak out, just like anybody to defend a civil tone here. The statements you've cited are not civil in my opinion.
"This is my mailinglist so I can say what I want." and then "You are not civil." is not something I would hear on a TV debate I think. You claim your right to be somewhat rude since you moderate the list, in that case maybe you should stick to only moderating and not voicing your opinions
[..]
I'm not a mailinglist moderator of this list. I'm not claiming the right to be rude. I point out what I believe is non-civil, but in a civil tone. (Of course I may sometimes fail at doing so, thus I am listening what others write and set out to clarify what I've meant if this needs to be the case.)
While we are at speaking as oneselfs: Another example I'd find un-acceptable is astro-turfing or using sockpuppets to make it appear like an opinion is carried by many people. What do you think about this?
Regards, Bernhard
Hi Andreas,
Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 08:59:54 schrieb Bernhard E. Reiter:
While we are at speaking as oneselfs: Another example I'd find un-acceptable is astro-turfing or using sockpuppets to make it appear like an opinion is carried by many people.
My message could have been missinterpreted as it was in reply to your email. So just to clarify: it was meant as a general question, while discussing what is supposed to be acceptable on this list.
I am not aware of any astro-turfing or sockpuppets on this list.
== Details As always I've put some email addresses in a search engine if people refer to their experience to better understand what they mean, as a number of people run a blog or are involved in other organisations. The background is that some spam and chatbots are getting more and more sofisticated and if a message is phrased very generally or very provocative it does not makes sense to respond to the questions. It just unlikely that an email address is used the first in public only on this list. I've asked Daniel about two email addresses, because I found the exchange with the quoted HTML email and him strange and hope to clear up unwritten suspicions some may have.
Best Regards, Bernhard
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512
Hi Bernhard.
While we are at speaking as oneselfs: Another example I'd find un-acceptable is astro-turfing or using sockpuppets to make it appear like an opinion is carried by many people. What do you think about this?
For opinions, one head one vote. Sock puppets is not good in my opinion but I don't have more sock puppet accounts to agree with me. :)
Kind regards, Andreas
Hi Stefan,
Am Dienstag 04 September 2018 13:07:28 schrieb Stefan Uygur:
This is becoming really noisy now, l have asked clearly to stop this debate that is running on different threads and let the main representative to feedback and respond to issues raised. Not accusations but issues. Apparently you ignored that email.
initially I could not see it on the mailinglist. (Due to my mail setup, which is now improved.) Sorry for not responding. Let me respond here to your main point:
It is also my expectation that FSFE will officially respond. I believe Matthias will do this sooner or later, after having spoken the relevant FSFE teams.
However I do not necessarily think he has to respond quickly, especially not if he feels that all important points have already been raised by others on the list. (Otherwise it would come down to a possible denial of service method: just call the president and he has to personally respond.)
Best Regards, Bernhard
On 04/09/18 10:06, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Hi,
Am Montag 03 September 2018 22:12:28 schrieb Stefan Uygur:
Pretty much it.... Can't say l disagree.
thanks for quoting the HTML email. Can you say to which you agree with in particular? Carsten's statement that we believes that everything is basically fine?
Bernhard, are you trying to change/misrepresent the intention of somebody else's email?
Funny question but how did a little posse in Berlin trying to a-- f--- the absent fellowship rep benefit free software?
Daniel had several potential ways to make sure his opinion and vote would have been represented. He had chosen to not pursue any of them. There also is a second fellowship representative. And the change voted upon there was already in planning before Daniel became to have a fellowship seat. He knows all this and could not convince others about his ways of working over several months and now does not accept what a majority has concluded and goes public here. It is yours do judge the discussion of course.
Now you are misrepresenting me
As I wrote[1] in February, I actually support the idea of replacing the fellowship elections with a better system.
The meeting in May voted on two motions though. The first motion abolished any future election for a representative.
The second motion included a very aggressive and ultimately toxic option to immediately end the last remaining fellowship representative's membership of the association. It was tucked away on the last page of a 9 page document where not all members noticed it. To put it bluntly, that motion is like somebody spitting in my face and then expecting me to respond politely. It implies that volunteers, like myself, are disposable and deserve little respect.
The president should have anticipated that it would be hard for people to work together in a friendly manner after such a vote and that is one of several reasons the call for his resignation is far from a trivial issue.
Regards,
Daniel
1. https://danielpocock.com/our-future-relationship-with-fsfe-2018
Hi Daniel,
Am Dienstag 04 September 2018 23:22:33 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
are you trying to change/misrepresent the intention of somebody else's email?
please read the exchange again and look at the quotes, I was asking what ostendali@gmail.com meant by quoting from an HTML mail by matthias.hager@zoho.eu.
BTW: as both email addresses have no direct hits on an internet search engine, they strongly support your points and they have similiarities in writing styles, I'm just asking you directly: What is your connection to these email addresses?
The second motion included a very aggressive and ultimately toxic option
Please reread my last explanations and what other wrote about this. Others don't share your view. It does not make sense bringing this up again and again.
Regards, Bernhard
On Wednesday 5. September 2018 08.42.17 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Am Dienstag 04 September 2018 23:22:33 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
are you trying to change/misrepresent the intention of somebody else's email?
please read the exchange again and look at the quotes, I was asking what ostendali@gmail.com meant by quoting from an HTML mail by matthias.hager@zoho.eu.
I think that some people got confused by the message produced by the "Zoho Mail" service which evidently has poor-quality plain text output. It was only when I explicitly selected the HTML message part that I got something that coherently separated the different opinions.
Still, some of the ways of expressing dissatisfaction were not entirely constructive or polite, even though I might recognise the underlying frustration. And here I support your - Bernhard's - right to continue to respond. It is no-one's place to request that discussion be halted and that people remain silent in anticipation of an official response.
I think that there are things, perhaps not directly related to representation within the FSFE, that can be discussed constructively and which can inform our understanding of this very situation. There are hardly hundreds or even tens of messages per day in this mailing list, so if someone does not wish to read them, may I suggest using a better mail client or reading the online archives instead?
BTW: as both email addresses have no direct hits on an internet search engine, they strongly support your points and they have similiarities in writing styles, I'm just asking you directly: What is your connection to these email addresses?
Well, the former address has been used by someone on this list for quite some time. It is therefore possible to review messages going back as far as 2016 to determine whether any such suspicions are valid or not.
Although we should always be cautious about whether people are who they claim to be on the Internet, we should also exercise restraint in accusing people of not being who they might say they are. Otherwise, we risk denying someone their voice and ultimately their identity, which is a very undesirable outcome indeed.
Paul
Paul,
Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 11:47:54 schrieb Paul Boddie:
Although we should always be cautious about whether people are who they claim to be on the Internet, we should also exercise restraint in accusing people of not being who they might say they are. Otherwise, we risk denying someone their voice and ultimately their identity, which is a very undesirable outcome indeed.
this I agree to, sorry if my email was too direct and could be interpreted as accusation itself. My intention was more to create an opportunity to clarify this. As also written in my other mail, currently I am not aware of identify abuse on this mailinglist.
Regards, Bernhard
My connection with Daniel? He is our representative, long live our representative Looks like you are trying to whip up another excuse to send our rep back to us in a body bag and evade answering serious questions funny FSFE accusing people of trolling and identity abuse, maybe the whole organization should be disbanded, the FSFE raison d'etre could be trolling the FSF? Sent using Zoho Mail ---- On Wed, 05 Sep 2018 12:20:32 +0200 Bernhard E. Reiter bernhard@fsfe.org wrote ---- Paul, Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 11:47:54 schrieb Paul Boddie: > Although we should always be cautious about whether people are who they > claim to be on the Internet, we should also exercise restraint in accusing > people of not being who they might say they are. Otherwise, we risk denying > someone their voice and ultimately their identity, which is a very > undesirable outcome indeed. this I agree to, sorry if my email was too direct and could be interpreted as accusation itself. My intention was more to create an opportunity to clarify this. As also written in my other mail, currently I am not aware of identify abuse on this mailinglist. Regards, Bernhard -- FSFE -- Founding Member Support our work for Free Software: blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard https://fsfe.org/donate | contribute _______________________________________________ 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 Matthias,
Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 14:16:15 schrieb Matthias Hager:
My connection with Daniel? He is our representative, long live our representative
A number of people that were previously supporter or fellows-only have to become into internal communication channels and the e.V. membership. Mirko is also an active fellowship-seat holder.
The problem with Daniel is that he seems to have an incompatible style of working with many people within FSFE (volunteers, staff, supporters). Main reason seems to be that he sometimes uses personal accusations and he keeps repeating things, even if they have been explained to him in many ways. He also does not seem to respect that if he had tried multiple times to convince others about a point and did not convince a significant number of people, the large majority does not want to discuss a taken decision again and again. In addition he seems to take a change that predates his involvement in the e.V. and the existing of a motion that make it extra clear that he can continue to be active in the e.V. personally. It wasn't personal, as many explained to him.
Looks like you are trying to whip up another excuse to send our rep back to us
[..]
and evade answering serious questions
In the last week I took an extra effort to explain the situation, which included answering many questions, some even multiple times. Which questions do you want me or FSFE to answer in addition?
funny FSFE accusing people of trolling and identity abuse, maybe the whole organization should be disbanded, the FSFE raison d'etre could be trolling the FSF?
The FSFE consist of multiple persons, which hold a variety of opinions. The criticism coming from me was about aggressive phrasing and explicit or implicit accusations that I believe we must be intolerant to as a group. According to who writes what: I wanted to have an open statement for clarification, because there were some initial signs. I did appologize for my writings that came with a great potential for missunderstandings.
To becoming involved with FSFE is to help forming opinions, meet with other Free Software people and help promoting Free Software. (That are two major points from https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.en.html)
Best Regards, Bernhard
Bernhard,
A private message sent to the GA list just yesterday contradicts what you said. Would you like to republish all the GA mails in public or would you prefer to simply acknowledge you were wrong and withdraw everything you said?
What is really sinister about your attack on me is that you weren't even replying to something I said and the strong point in Matthias H's message was not about me at all.
Matthias was linking your concerns about "identity abuse" to the FSF / FSFE question. It is extraordinary to see how far people will go to avoid questions about that, you went into this horrible and unjustified tirade against me, makes me feel like I took a bullet for RMS.
Regards,
Daniel
FSFE Fellowship Representative
Hi Daniel,
Daniel Pocock daniel@pocock.pro writes:
A private message sent to the GA list just yesterday contradicts what you said.
I am sorry, but I have no idea what you are trying to say.
Would you like to republish all the GA mails in public or would you prefer to simply acknowledge you were wrong and withdraw everything you said?
I am sorry, but still no clue. Either way, I know at least some of Bernhard's comments to be true, so if one were wrong, why would he withdraw everything said? By the way, you repeatedly make statements here that you must at least by now know are not true, so please apply the same standard to yourself.
Matthias was linking your concerns about "identity abuse" to the FSF / FSFE question. It is extraordinary to see how far people will go to avoid questions about that, you went into this horrible and unjustified tirade against me, makes me feel like I took a bullet for RMS.
The FSF and the FSFE are sister organizations and I see no actual identity abuse there. I am not sure which question people are avoiding there and I have no idea which figurative bullet you are taking about.
Happy hacking! Florian
Hi Daniel,
Am Mittwoch, 5. September 2018, 20:21:08 CEST schrieb Daniel Pocock:
A private message sent to the GA list just yesterday contradicts what you said.
I don't think it does. I've tried to explain internally and externally to you why I see your behaviour as damaging to FSFE . And I've asked you to leave FSFE for the better.
What is really sinister about your attack on me
My point is not about attacking you, but about getting back to a situation where me and others that want to do work towards furthering Free Software can do so. Which to me means working without you. There is no point around it that your style and way of working is incompatible with what I believe can work within FSFE. This is about us and a line we need to draw. I've tried much to explain it to you, as I believe that everybody needs to be given a fair chance to understand. I am sorry to read that it is not helpful for you, thus I'll stop explaining and will most likely ignore most of your posts from now on.
Best Regards, Bernhard
5. Sep 2018 21:24 by bernhard@fsfe.org mailto:bernhard@fsfe.org:
My point is not about attacking you, but about getting back to a situation
The point most people would get from your emails over the last weeks would be that you are an immature bully who probably doesn't have a job. You gave us an election, you didn't like the result and for more than a year you've been cranky like this, making life hell for this poor volunteer who took on the role. Bernhard, you have do all the things you accuse him of and a lot worse.
You burnt the relationship with FSF, trolling them for years, it pops up every now and then on this list and you can't deny it.
Burnt the FSFE Rheinland community when you shamelessly exploited the volunteers as much as you could and then shut their office.
Burnt the fellowship, dumbed us down to be supporters with our representative caught in the crossfire. Of course if it was a real fellowship then the fellows would be defending him but it looks like Daniel is the captain going down with his (fellow)ship after any serious fellows used the lifeboats to get as far away as possible.
Half of you are playing a game pretending nothing is wrong and the other half of the people in FSFE must be just really gullible or asleep
What a freak show
Daniel, maybe you do need to resign. Nothing more you can do here. After they stopped elections, you didn't need to say anything, arrogance like that speaks for itself!
Don't leave because Bernhard wants it but because when you lie down with dogs, you'll get up with fleas. Somebody like you is above people like this. Resigning requires courage and true leadership and that's why Matthias Kirschner can't understand.
Dear lukerogers,
your message is offensive and a personal attack to another list-subscriber. In my function I shall protect other community members and list-subscribers in a way that they can feel at ease without fearing any form of attack, reprisal or harassment. I am not going into more detail here, you already received a private message with more information about the further procedure. I only post this message to the list, so people know that we care.
Best regards, Erik
On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 7:42 AM Bernhard E. Reiter bernhard@fsfe.org wrote:
please read the exchange again and look at the quotes, I was asking what ostendali@gmail.com meant by quoting from an HTML mail by matthias.hager@zoho.eu.
BTW: as both email addresses have no direct hits on an internet search engine, they strongly support your points and they have similiarities in writing styles, I'm just asking you directly: What is your connection to these email addresses?
I cannot believe that an organization like FSFE has a little minded people like you Bernhard. Yes I am talking to you with the specific tone and directly because you are the disgrace of Free Software and the community. Otherwise you will have not written such a shameful insinuation. If you have had just googled, for the sake of your intelligence, my name, you will have seen that that email is associated to my name.
The fact that I do not write often in this list does not give me less entitlements and gives you more etc. I am the supporter of Free Software and the community and I promote both equally for more than 2 decades.
I pay the community and the organization for which you work for and you are paid for, you and your president Matthias. You don't pay me but I do pay you.
Therefore I believe I have more entitlements then you do and if I demand explanation and the intervention of the legal representative, which is the president, that person either have to show up or it has to go away.Because I am not in the mood to allow such person to represent free software and the community.
I am sick of receiving your emails and you speaking on behalf of Matthias. In the community like Free Software there is no space for ass kissers.
Shame on you.
Go home all of you.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512
Hi Stefan.
I couldn't help but notice the nature of how disappointed you seem to be at Bernhard. I don't know what Bernhard has done in the past days that this debate might have taken place but I do know that stating a view on a doing that hasn't been done is wrongful.
What has Bernhard done to be put to shame and go away in your thinking?
Kind regards, Andreas
On Wed, 2018-09-05 at 18:03 +0100, Stefan Uygur wrote:
On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 7:42 AM Bernhard E. Reiter bernhard@fsfe.org wrote:
please read the exchange again and look at the quotes, I was asking what ostendali@gmail.com meant by quoting from an HTML mail by matthias.hager@zoho.eu.
BTW: as both email addresses have no direct hits on an internet search engine, they strongly support your points and they have similiarities in writing styles, I'm just asking you directly: What is your connection to these email addresses?
I cannot believe that an organization like FSFE has a little minded people like you Bernhard. Yes I am talking to you with the specific tone and directly because you are the disgrace of Free Software and the community. Otherwise you will have not written such a shameful insinuation. If you have had just googled, for the sake of your intelligence, my name, you will have seen that that email is associated to my name.
The fact that I do not write often in this list does not give me less entitlements and gives you more etc. I am the supporter of Free Software and the community and I promote both equally for more than 2 decades.
I pay the community and the organization for which you work for and you are paid for, you and your president Matthias. You don't pay me but I do pay you.
Therefore I believe I have more entitlements then you do and if I demand explanation and the intervention of the legal representative, which is the president, that person either have to show up or it has to go away.Because I am not in the mood to allow such person to represent free software and the community.
I am sick of receiving your emails and you speaking on behalf of Matthias. In the community like Free Software there is no space for ass kissers.
Shame on you.
Go home all of you.
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
Andreas, You really are asking me this question while the reason of my disappointment is clearly quoted? Seriously?
But l will try to help you by listing just a couple of reasons:
1. He accused my email address to be associated somehow with Daniel and he even deared to do a research on my email. 2. He is continuously talking on behalf of Matthias Kirchner since the beginning while several people including myself calling the latter into discussion. 3. He is an ass kisser and l detest such people
If Matthias Kirchner has his personal issues, incapable of performing his duties and therefore not able to represent this organisation why can't he just quit?
Even the fact that you ask me why l am disappointed upsets me and makes me clearly think you are not following the flow of tue threads or maybe you simply ignore. Because, if you didn't realize l removed everything and quoted only 2 paragraphs to make sure where I've been triggered.
Now, really, l am tired of explaining myself to fsfe internal audience for things that are obvious.
I am and remain at the opinion that all the stuff has to go and fsfe need complete change for the sake of survival of fsfe itself.
Else, it can continue and remain a tiny meaningless association but in that case pls rename it fsfg hence it can represent Germany only not the entire Europe.
The way things are right now fsfe does not deserve to be representing free software community or better is not representing.
I hope this clears things in better, pls do not debate further or ask morr explanations as you can go back amd read all the history of mails in this ml and try to understand in better my reasoning.
Ciao and best of luck.
On Thu, 6 Sep 2018, 06:13 Andreas Nilsson, emitter@hush.com wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512
Hi Stefan.
I couldn't help but notice the nature of how disappointed you seem to be at Bernhard. I don't know what Bernhard has done in the past days that this debate might have taken place but I do know that stating a view on a doing that hasn't been done is wrongful.
What has Bernhard done to be put to shame and go away in your thinking?
Kind regards, Andreas
On Wed, 2018-09-05 at 18:03 +0100, Stefan Uygur wrote:
On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 7:42 AM Bernhard E. Reiter bernhard@fsfe.org wrote:
please read the exchange again and look at the quotes, I was asking what ostendali@gmail.com meant by quoting from an HTML mail by matthias.hager@zoho.eu.
BTW: as both email addresses have no direct hits on an internet search engine, they strongly support your points and they have similiarities in writing styles, I'm just asking you directly: What is your connection to these email addresses?
I cannot believe that an organization like FSFE has a little minded people like you Bernhard. Yes I am talking to you with the specific tone and directly because you are the disgrace of Free Software and the community. Otherwise you will have not written such a shameful insinuation. If you have had just googled, for the sake of your intelligence, my name, you will have seen that that email is associated to my name.
The fact that I do not write often in this list does not give me less entitlements and gives you more etc. I am the supporter of Free Software and the community and I promote both equally for more than 2 decades.
I pay the community and the organization for which you work for and you are paid for, you and your president Matthias. You don't pay me but I do pay you.
Therefore I believe I have more entitlements then you do and if I demand explanation and the intervention of the legal representative, which is the president, that person either have to show up or it has to go away.Because I am not in the mood to allow such person to represent free software and the community.
I am sick of receiving your emails and you speaking on behalf of Matthias. In the community like Free Software there is no space for ass kissers.
Shame on you.
Go home all of you.
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
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Hi Stefan,
Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 19:03:46 schrieb Stefan Uygur:
If you have had just googled, for the sake of your intelligence, my name, you will have seen that that email is associated to my name.
when you wrote (on the 31th) that you | know and have been part of communities like FSFE for the last 20+ yrs and | represented some of them as president.
I got interested in your work and put your email address in a privacy aware search engine like https://duckduckgo.com/ https://www.startpage.com https://www.qwant.com/ (no hits which have the email address itself)
I am the supporter of Free Software and the community and I promote both equally for more than 2 decades.
It is for respect that I want to understand where my communication partner is coming from and it helps to make communication easier.
An open question is also an opportunity to clarify, as other may get the same ideas, but do not try to ask it openly.
I do pay you.
So far I have not been paid by FSFE, I held honoary positions, am a volunteer and a donor with my company. You'll find a link to my homepage from the blog in my footer.
Regards, Bernhard
On 05/09/18 08:42, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Hi Daniel,
Am Dienstag 04 September 2018 23:22:33 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
are you trying to change/misrepresent the intention of somebody else's email?
please read the exchange again and look at the quotes, I was asking what ostendali@gmail.com meant by quoting from an HTML mail by matthias.hager@zoho.eu.
BTW: as both email addresses have no direct hits on an internet search engine, they strongly support your points and they have similiarities in writing styles, I'm just asking you directly: What is your connection to these email addresses?
Putting my name in the subject line suggests you are just a big bully and don't really care how anybody answers that question because you've already assumed everybody who doesn't agree with you is in a conspiracy.
I assume everybody else in the community is a fellow and if they are new I warmly welcome them to the community, whether I agree with them or not.
I previously asked about giving the fellowship representatives a list of fellows so we can verify when a communication is from somebody in the fellowship. I also asked about having a PGP keyring for fellows, similar to that used for Debian Developers. Both ideas were rejected with reasons about privacy.
If FSFE prioritizes privacy and then you complain because you can't identify somebody posting a message from a possible alias, isn't that hypocrisy?
Putting my name in the subject line, background searches on people, accusing people of a "connection", character assassinations, changing people's words and another heavy-handed message you sent attacking me in another sub-thread: it all reeks of bullying and comes with a strong odour of censorship, you continue to help prove the concerns I raised at the outset.
Maybe other people are afraid to speak up or using aliases because they don't want to suffer the same intimidation and character assassination? Chilling.
Regards,
Daniel
FSFE Fellowship Representative
Hi Daniel,
Am Montag 03 September 2018 19:04:25 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
The ideal president or chairperson needs to be somebody who can unite staff, volunteers, fellows, supporters, donors and external parties. To chair meetings, lead effectively and gain respect when representing FSFE publicly, they need to be above the controversial politics we have seen recently and acceptable to everybody.
and how do you find such an ideal person?
The president doesn't have to be staff, it could be a volunteer too, we have over 1,500 people in the community and I'm sure there are many good candidates there.
Our anchor person has much to do, a volunteer wouldn't have enough time on her hands to do the job.
Matthias could continue to lead the staff in the Executive Director role, given Jonas' recent news that he is vacating that role? Could this be the most constructive way to move forward and close the chapter on the recent politics?
No, it couldn't. Politics don't go away. And the executive director position is almost as powerful as the anchor person position, so if you'd support Matthias in that position, you'd also support him in his current position.
Matthias is doing a very good job in my opinion (and in the majority of FSFE people I know).
Maybe a dramatic change of leader could also be a good alternative to the endless discussions about diversity.
Which endless discussion are you referring to? Diversity is a difficult topic with a lot of inertia in society. From the beginning we in FSFE have tried to enhance it, were only having a minor successes and we will try again with learned lessons. Thus we evolve and will continue the topic from now to then, discussing it. I see this as a good thing.
By making it a position for a volunteer, more people might apply for it.
May apply yes, but being able to do a good job on it: No, because they'd lack time.
Regards, Bernhard
On 04/09/18 09:54, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Hi Daniel,
Am Montag 03 September 2018 19:04:25 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
The ideal president or chairperson needs to be somebody who can unite staff, volunteers, fellows, supporters, donors and external parties. To chair meetings, lead effectively and gain respect when representing FSFE publicly, they need to be above the controversial politics we have seen recently and acceptable to everybody.
and how do you find such an ideal person?
In most organizations, they let any member of the community nominate for the position and then all the people can vote. An election.
The president doesn't have to be staff, it could be a volunteer too, we have over 1,500 people in the community and I'm sure there are many good candidates there.
Our anchor person has much to do, a volunteer wouldn't have enough time on her hands to do the job.
The key responsibilities are to prepare for the annual meetings and chair those meetings.
Everything else is optional or could be delegated to staff or other volunteers. Remember the days before email? Somebody could be on various committees and boards and if they stayed home one night they wouldn't hear about any of them.
Perpetuating the current burden on the president only guarantees that nobody else will apply to be in the role, perpetuating the culture that people are complaining about.
Regards,
Daniel
Am Dienstag 04 September 2018 23:21:36 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
and how do you find such an ideal person?
In most organizations, they let any member of the community nominate for the position and then all the people can vote. An election.
As others have pointed out before: This is not the case with many successful NGOs for the reasons mentioned several times.
Our anchor person has much to do, a volunteer wouldn't have enough time on her hands to do the job.
The key responsibilities are to prepare for the annual meetings and chair those meetings.
This is your opinion on how an organisation lobbying for Free Software should work, but not mine (and as far as I can say I am in agreement with the majority of people that build up, run and contribute to FSFE).
It seems you are unhappy with FSFE. You have voiced it multiple times, it did not resonate a lot. Please do not repeat it more often, it won't change people's view if it hasn't by now.
Regards, Bernhard
Hi all,
I don't know nothing about what's been talked about in this thread.
This is just a reminder that there are probably many subscribers like me who don't have a clue of what is at stake here.
Perhaps you should gather in a field, organize a tournament and come back when someone wins -- or have a good discussion somewhere IRL?
In any case, please keep in mind that some readers may be completely lost and partially fed up with the spectacle.
Thanks,
On 09/06/2018 12:25 AM, bzg@gnu.org wrote:
Hi all,
I don't know nothing about what's been talked about in this thread.
This is just a reminder that there are probably many subscribers like me who don't have a clue of what is at stake here.
Perhaps you should gather in a field, organize a tournament and come back when someone wins -- or have a good discussion somewhere IRL?
In any case, please keep in mind that some readers may be completely lost and partially fed up with the spectacle.
Thanks,
You can even have a tournament with libre software if desired:
https://www.xonotic.org/faq/#how-do-i-start-a-server
Last man standing gets control of the organization?
All jesting aside, I'm also tired of seeing this flood of internal politics and bickering. It makes the entire FSFe and membership look bad.
On 09/06/2018 08:51 AM, Timothy Pearson wrote:
On 09/06/2018 12:25 AM, bzg@gnu.org wrote:
[...]
Perhaps you should gather in a field, organize a tournament and come back when someone wins -- or have a good discussion somewhere IRL?
[...] All jesting aside, I'm also tired of seeing this flood of internal politics and bickering.
+1.
I no longer think this list is an appropriate venue for this ongoing discussion. I'd like it to move else-where, off-list or (better) IRL.
On 18-09-06 07:25:12, bzg@gnu.org wrote:
In any case, please keep in mind that some readers may be completely lost and partially fed up with the spectacle.
Thanks,
-- Bastien
Could not agree more.
I became a supporter back in June, I joined the list at roughly the same time. Since then, all I have seen are hundreds and hundreds of emails arguing about internal politics.
It's exhausting, and makes it seem that the fsfe does little more than talk about itself.
I'm sorry that you are having an internal conflict, but it really seems like you need to sort it in person - email appears to be failing you in this case.
Dear [formerly] silent majority,
Thank you so much for speaking up now and with very clear words. We hear you.
Now everybody let's get back to constructive work for Free Software.
Thanks,
Reinhard, You are reading and agreeing only now on this statement while l asked the exact same in the very beginning of the flame?
Pls do your homework before playing mastermind here.
I am speechless really.
On Thu, 6 Sep 2018, 09:08 Reinhard Müller, reinhard@fsfe.org wrote:
Dear [formerly] silent majority,
Thank you so much for speaking up now and with very clear words. We hear you.
Now everybody let's get back to constructive work for Free Software.
Thanks,
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 all,
On 06.09.2018 07:25, bzg@gnu.org wrote:
I don't know nothing about what's been talked about in this thread.
This is just a reminder that there are probably many subscribers like me who don't have a clue of what is at stake here.
Perhaps you should gather in a field, organize a tournament and come back when someone wins -- or have a good discussion somewhere IRL?
In any case, please keep in mind that some readers may be completely lost and partially fed up with the spectacle.
this is my favourite post to the discussion in the last days. Thank you so much for stepping up from the silence.
Please let us all try to calm down for a while and then let us discuss Free Software topics again.
Thank you, Erik
Erik, there is only one way to achieve your aiming in calming down situation and it is the one I suggested, that the current staff of FSFE has to go.
It is true that it is purely my personal opinion but it is also true that I have some experience in saying this, enough to say that FSFE will grow no longer if this suggestion is not taken seriously.
On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 9:24 AM Erik Albers eal@fsfe.org wrote:
Hi all,
On 06.09.2018 07:25, bzg@gnu.org wrote:
I don't know nothing about what's been talked about in this thread.
This is just a reminder that there are probably many subscribers like me who don't have a clue of what is at stake here.
Perhaps you should gather in a field, organize a tournament and come back when someone wins -- or have a good discussion somewhere IRL?
In any case, please keep in mind that some readers may be completely lost and partially fed up with the spectacle.
this is my favourite post to the discussion in the last days. Thank you so much for stepping up from the silence.
Please let us all try to calm down for a while and then let us discuss Free Software topics again.
Thank you, Erik
-- No one shall ever be forced to use non-free software Erik Albers | Communication & Community Coordinator | FSFE OpenPGP Key-ID: 0x8639DC81 on keys.gnupg.net _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
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I didn't start this thread to "win", I started this thread to say I will quit if things don't change. That is my right. Lot's of groups doing great things who deserve my money.
After watching the replies, now my decision is clear.
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6. Sep 2018 05:25 by bzg@gnu.org mailto:bzg@gnu.org:
Hi all,
I don't know nothing about what's been talked about in this thread.
This is just a reminder that there are probably many subscribers like me who don't have a clue of what is at stake here.
Perhaps you should gather in a field, organize a tournament and come back when someone wins -- or have a good discussion somewhere IRL?
In any case, please keep in mind that some readers may be completely lost and partially fed up with the spectacle.
Thanks,
-- Bastien _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org mailto:Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
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+1
On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 5:36 PM lukerogers@tutanota.com wrote:
I didn't start this thread to "win", I started this thread to say I will quit if things don't change. That is my right. Lot's of groups doing great things who deserve my money.
After watching the replies, now my decision is clear.
-- Securely sent with Tutanota. Claim your encrypted mailbox today! https://tutanota.com
- Sep 2018 05:25 by bzg@gnu.org:
Hi all,
I don't know nothing about what's been talked about in this thread.
This is just a reminder that there are probably many subscribers like me who don't have a clue of what is at stake here.
Perhaps you should gather in a field, organize a tournament and come back when someone wins -- or have a good discussion somewhere IRL?
In any case, please keep in mind that some readers may be completely lost and partially fed up with the spectacle.
Thanks,
-- Bastien _______________________________________________ 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
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