FSFE and the war in Europe

[Michael Kesper]

Hi all,

Am 17.03.22 um 21:38 schrieb Carsten Agger:
> In response to Paul and Vitaly:
> 
> I am personally horrified and appalled by the Russian attack on Ukraine and the crimes they are currently committing. It is tragic, and it's something we had very much hoped not to see in Europe in our lifetimes. It's destroying Ukraine, it's destroying civil society and the small remains of press freedom in Russia itself - basically dragging down all that's good about Russian in the most stupid nationalism imaginable, and it's threatening all of Europe. It *is* horrifying.
> 
> In spite of this personal opinion, I think that responding to this war is a bit outside of FSFE's remit. I'm not even sure it would be possible for it to make a statement on a non-free software related event, even as horrifying as this one, given that free software is the only area the FSFE is really working on.


I beg to differ. If we have a look at FSFE's constitution [0]:

"The distribution of information and the forming of an opinion are done increasingly by digital
media, and the trend is to foster the use of those means for a direct citizen participation to de-
mocracy. Therefore, a central task of the FSFE is to train proficient citizens in these media,
thereby promoting democracy."

Putin directly attacks the idea of a liberal, democratic society. He attacks everything what "Europe"
as an idea stands for. And, as FSFE by its constitution is not an "apolitical" nerd club, I think we
very well should say something about it.

My personal opinion
Michael

[0] https://fsfe.org/about/legal/Constitution.en.pdf
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 659 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20220318/c305aa9e/attachment.sig>