Today's trip to Düsseldorf

[Jonas Oberg]

Dear all,

I understand there has been some exchange here about Matthias
Kirschner's and my trip to Düsseldorf today. As I've been driving
until now, I haven't been able to follow, but allow me to clarify some
details from our perspective.

But first of all, a huge Thank You to Rainer who had done an amazing
job at sorting and collecting the material (mostly merchandise) which
Matthias and I were to bring to Berlin. It would not have been
possible without Rainer, and I can not with words express how thankful
we are for this.

This was the sole purpose of Matthias' and my trip to Düsseldorf: to
use a van to transport material to Berlin. We had not been invited to
or been asked to attend any other meetings. Only this morning did
Matthias learn about a so called "extraordinary meeting" to take place
at 7.30pm this evening.

I believed we had communicated we'd be in Düsseldorf only for some
time on Monday afternoon (and possibly Tuesday morning if we didn't
manage in time). Clearly, there was some miscommunication around
this, and I would like to apologise to Rainer for this and to Michael
for any problems this may have caused.

When Matthias and I finished our work already around 2pm, we therefore
decided to cancel the hotel nights in Düsseldorf (which we could do at
no cost), and instead use the daylight and go directly to Berlin.
Before doing so, we also tried to get in touch with both Rainer and
Michael, but were not able to reach either.


Both Matthias and I are happy to attend or invite to any meetings our
community in the area feel would be relevant. We would however
respectfully ask if those meetings can be communicated and planned
well in advance.

To be clear: the FSFE is currently in a process of negotiating with
one member of staff owing to some changes we're making in staff
allocation. Neither myself nor Matthias are able to comment on any
issue related to this prior to actually concluding those negotiations.

We do not believe it would be fair to the employee to discuss anything
about this in public before concluding the talk with the employee.
Doing so would also be at the risk of introducing legal liabilities
for the organisation.

I beg for some understanding and patience in this matter, until
such a time when we're able to share more information.


Sincerely,

-- 
Jonas Öberg, Executive Director
Free Software Foundation Europe | jonas at fsfe.org
Your donation enables our work (fsfe.org/donate)