On the structure of the FSF Europe (was: Re: membership)

[Georg C. F. Greve]

Hi all,


 || On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:42:46 +0200
 || Josef Dalcolmo <dalcolmo at vh-s.de> wrote: 

 jd> This is not a democratic system, but a system set up by a few
 jd> self-nominated individuals. 

The people currently in the FSF Europe were nominated by (and in
direct agreement with) Richard Stallman. You may disagree with him,
but please take this criticism where it belongs.


 jd> As such it has no political validity.

The FSF does not claim to be representing everyone, the only people we
may represent are those who publicly state that we do because they are
happy with the work we do. 

Other than that, we only speak for ourselves.


 jd> Why is it then however, that anyone can become a member of the
 jd> FSF (in the USA)?

You can't and never could. I even went so far as to ask Richard
whether this has ever changed without my knowledge. It hasn't.
 

 jd> Does RMS not worry about hostile takeovers?

He does. 

Which is why we had very long discussions with him on the structure of
the FSF Europe until we convinced him that our democratic model with
the possibility of involving everyone was stable enough to truly
become the sister organization of his FSF.


All the other points had been discussed before and you can find the
proper answers in the archives. Therefore continuing this thread seems
to be a waste of energies that would better be used to promote Free
Software.


In the end it boils down to this:

If you feel another organization is required to promote Free Software,
please go ahead and create it. We certainly won't think badly of you
for doing that and will be happy to work with you on promoting Free
Software.


There is a lot of work to do and there are many ways of getting deeply
involved in the FSF Europe even without becoming a member.

Please use them and give us a chance to get to know you by your deeds,
just like I'd like to ask everyone to judge us by what we do and say
and not by whether Microsoft employees could join or not.


If you feel the FSF Europe is doing bad things and you cannot work
with us, this would make me personally sad, but it is your decision
and you're free not to work with us.

But if you - like me - feel the FSF Europe is a necessary and
important step in order to reflect and assist Europe's buzzing Free
Software community, please help us freeing Europe's computer users.

Regards,
Georg

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
GNU Business Network                        (http://mailman.gnubiz.org)
Brave GNU World	                           (http://brave-gnu-world.org)
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