[Fsfe-se] Jabber official meeting

[Henrik Sandklef]

Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> On Aug 22, 2007, at 2:46 PM, Henrik Sandklef wrote:
> 

> In general the point of democracy is that _everyone_ has a vote. When  
> just the party members have a vote, and you can think of the  
> Fellowship as a political party, you get oligarchy. It seems  
> hypocritical that a political action group (the FSFE) who lobbies on  
> behalf of the people of Europe is steered by an unelected board and  
> that only Fellows can interact via Jabber with the FSFE.

OK, we also read emails every now and then ;)

Anyone can interact with FSFE, e g vie e-mail*. If everyone should have
a vote then we can easily be mislead by another organisation that might
have a different agenda than ours. Given that, it's not strange that
only members have a vote.

Everyone can become a fellow. Everyone can become a member (see below)
and everyone can become president.


*) For swedish issues:    sweden at fsfeurope.org
  For European issues:   team at fsfeurope.org

> Here art two easy steps toward transparency and openness:
> 
> 	1. Let anyone who wants to participate in the FSFE Jabber meetings -  
> don't limit them to Fellows.

So far we haven't had any jabber meeting. Only physical meetings here in
Gothenburg.

Every (physical) meeting so far have been open and the invitations are
always sent on this ML. You've been with us a couple of times.


> 	2. Describe the process by which the leadership of the FSFE gets  
> elected

Can anyone vote?
- The members of the General Assembly votes

  A note on bootstrapping,
  How was the first General assembly elected then?
  It wasn't. The first General Assembly started the org.

Can anyone become a member of GA?
Yes. The people in the GA are usually the ones being the moset active in
the FSFE Team.

Can anyone join the Team?
Yes. The process here is basically the same as for say companies,
organisations (even Debian as you've had as an example before), agencies
...  You have to have some proven skills (social, legal, hacking,
political ....) and there has to be a need for it as well.

The steps above prevents take-overs better.

> Until things like this are done, the FSFE will continue to receive
> criticism for its lack of openness. And not just from me.  :)

Some of the work we do and the people/project/org(...) who assign it to
us do demand the setup we have.