[nomination]for Fellowship Council renewal and activism

Florian Snow floriansnow at fsfe.org
Tue May 28 05:26:17 UTC 2019


Hi Christian,


Christian Imhorst <christian.imhorst at fsfe.org> writes:
> But I have a problem with the personality cult around him.

While I think that RMS is often misunderstood and usually does not talk
about topics that he is well informed about, I also worry about the
personality cult.  What happens to a community focussed on one leader
once that leader passes? (Hopefully this will be in the distant future for
RMS.)  Luckily, I don't think the Free Software community as a whole is
purely focussed on RMS.


> I think there should be more people in the FSF besides RMS talking at
> conferences. More people in the FSF who make their contributions.

As far as FSF staff goes, I have seen several at talks around the world:
John Sullivan and Molly de Blanc were at this year's FOSDEM, for
example.  That being said, I would argue that the FSF, just like the FSF
is more than just the staff.  We as a community need to give talks,
organize booths, local groups, and so on to promote our organizations.
If it was only staff doing talks, we would need a lot more money.


> We need more diversity in the Free Software movement, because it means
> respecting people as they are, without prejudice. Diversity brings
> solutions to complex problems of the present and the future we can not
> handle with solutions from the past. This requires people who see the
> world with different eyes. People have to be able to contribute to the
> Free Software movement with their whole personality as they are.

I completely agree!  We are actively taking steps to make our staff and
teams more diverse.  It is by no means an easy task because the pool of
active contributors that we usually draw from for our teams, is not very
diverse.  If you have any ideas in this regard or just generally want to
help, please let me know.

Happy hacking!
Florian


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