[Fsfe-se] [diskussion] Microsofts nya hot.

[Jonas Oberg]

Jeremiah,

I've taken the liberty of posting this reply to both lists, and setting
the Reply-To to fsfe-se at fsfeurope.org which I think is a better place to
discuss the FSFE.


> Where are the minutes from the board meetings?

If you mean the minutes from the General Assembly, we file them
regularly with the court in Hamburg where the FSFE is registered.

> Where is the criteria for getting elected to country teams?

What happens generally is that one or more persons in a country team
raises the issue of inviting someone else to join the team, whom they
have presumably met and trust would be a useful addition to the team. If
the rest of the team agrees, then the coordinator of the team invites
that person to join.

> Where is the criteria for getting elected to the team? 

This is similar to the country teams, but it is usually more strict.
More people in the core team have to know and trust the new person that
joins than in a country team.

> Is there a mission statement saying that regular votes are held for elected positions?

I don't understand what you mean by a "mission statement". The only
elected positions in the way you seem to think of them that we have is
the president, vice president and head of office. Those positions are
voted on by the General Assembly.

> What is the difference between the "GA" and the "Team"?

The General Assembly is the legal body responsible for the FSFE. The
core team is the executive arm of the GA and is lead by the president
and the vice president.

> In fact, the FSFE says they want a "structure that will allow transparency, plurality 
> and participation." However what that means is unclear. For example, can any member
> become "President"?

Yes, any member can be elected for president. The members of the FSFE
gather every year at the assembly where they vote on president for two
year terms. This is in the FSFE constitution which you can find on our
web pages.

> For example, the last section called "Decision Processes" offers not one single
> concrete demonstration of which office makes executive descision, who is directly
> responsible for policy, or how that policy gets formed. It merely says things like;

I think this shows at a misunderstanding of how we work. Very, very
rarely do we take executive decisions. I think this happens only a
couple of times a year at most. The FSFE is governed by consensus: not
by executive decisions.

Your problem seems to be that you don't understand what consensus means.
In a consensus decision, there is no quorum, and no votes. There's
either consensus or there isn't. If there isn't, you discuss the issue
until you reach consensus.

> A simple, clear answer to those questions would server the fellows well. As it is it seems like
> FSFE is just an extension of the FSF designed to prevent a non-FSF group from co-opting or forming
> a group in Europe that might duplicate or obviate the FSF. 

If you want to see a non-FSF group in Europe, I would suggest that you
found one. There are many non-FSF groups in Europe already, like the
FFII and EFF, working on areas that sometimes overlap, but I'm sure
there are room for more.

-- 
Jonas Öberg
Free Software Foundation Europe			( Join the Fellowship )
Tel. +46-31-780 21 61  Mob. +46-733 423 962     (   http://fsfe.org   )