[Fsfe-ie] 1-page letter, faxes at the ready (IFSO, irish org)

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

Maybe a name, logo, and informal association would be good for this list.

As I've mentioned here before, I also have seperate aims.  I'd like to
form an Ireland-based Free Software organisation.  It would not eat
this list, it should have it's own lists.  Support has been shown for
this idea and the name "Irish Free Software Organisation" (ifso.ie).

OT: re: IFSO in general

I hope to discuss this further on the list soon, but I'll outline
some points here since the topic was brought up:

I believe that every software user should have the freedoms promoted
by FSF, and I'm committed to making this happen.

In the past two years, I've met with the staff and committees of
half a dozen national, European, and American Free Software and
digital-rights groups.  I've been looking at how they've run
their orgs and trying to figure out the most effective methods.

I think it's time for an Irish org.  This org will not be set up
just for the sake of it, and not to create a priesthood or a divide
between board and community.  It will be set up to promote and
defend Free Software.  I'm going to work hard to make it effective,
and I'm looking for others who will share this goal.

>From looking at other orgs, I'm convinced of one thing: it must
be open and transparent.  It must focus on providing a service
to the community, to enable others.

We all have fulltime jobs or college schedules, and we'll all
be new to this level of software-freedom activity.  The task
is huge, but I think we're ready to start.

So, who will be on the board?
Picking a board may involve hurting peoples feelings.  It has to be
done, we'll have elections after one or two years.  Anyone that is
committed won't let hurt feelings stop them from contributing anyway.
The board will probably be formed from an agreement between members of
this list.  This list is a place where people can get help and
encourage others.  Capable people will become (semi-)obvious after
a while.

ciaran.

On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 10:22:43AM +0100, adam beecher wrote:
[an association]
> > Agreed.  This is still something I'm thinking about (how to set up
> > an effective organisation).  A board of five people would be great
> > but five people have to stand out as being capable.  This can only
> > wait so long.  At some point we should just make an org and if it's
> > suboptimal, we'll live with it for a year and have elections then.
> > Jan 5th would be a good cut-off date for an org, it's the 20th
> > anniversary of the GNU project.
> >
> To be clear, I'm not all that bothered about the actual organisation. As
> Adam Moran suggested, we have our organisation right here, so I'd be
> inclined to just give it a name and a logo. And don't make a big thing out
> of them either, they tend to take important energy away from the actual
> campaign. Something simple like "The Association of Free and Open Source
> Software Developers" with a plain-jane black-and-white logo (lots of faxes
> remember) is just fine.
> 
> I can go through examples of why I think this if you like (I (am/have been)
> involved with IrelandOffline, IE Watch and CorkWAN), but I'll assume for the
> moment that I don't need to. The only minor concern I have is the implicit
> tie with Free Software, but since it's just the mailing list at the moment,
> it's not really that important.