supporting our fellowship representative

Mirko Boehm mirko at fsfe.org
Tue Aug 28 15:11:02 UTC 2018


Thank you for your careful and civil contribution to this discussion, Paul.

Mirko.

> On 28. Aug 2018, at 07:28, Paul Boddie <paul at 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
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--
Mirko Boehm | mirko at kde.org | KDE e.V.
FSFE Team Germany
Qt Certified Specialist and Trainer
Request a meeting: https://doodle.com/mirkoboehm

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