On Tuesday 8. October 2019 17.44.02 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote: > > Am Freitag 27 September 2019 18:00:28 schrieb Paul Boddie: > > > > Admittedly, the rest of us don't tend to do things like park $100000 > > destined for improving Free Software in a bank account for four years > > This is book-keeping, the association is the formal employer of people > and because some incomes and costs for FSFE's mission come unplanned, > we want to make sure there is a reserve so we can be a proper employer. > Because FSFE is a public charity we must give a reason for the reserve.
I am sorry for the confusion here. In fact, I wasn't referring to the FSFE with my remark, but the following crowdfunding campaign promoted on this mailing list four years ago by a FSFE General Assembly member: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/roundcube-next--2#/ Some people might remember that although I broadly supported this campaign, I was rather annoyed by the suggestion that other people get on board to be part of a "community". My own experiences with related projects indicated that community-building and working with other projects was not exactly a priority amongst the people involved: https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/2015-June/010578.html Four years on, and I guess I was right to express what I did back then. I feel sorry for anyone who put up money and expected to see anything come out of it. [...] > > and not communicate with the people whose money that was, > > but apart from small things like that. Although I wasn't referring to the FSFE, I do wonder whether anyone else feels that there are certain common themes involved. For instance, a lack of transparency and a lack of responsiveness to genuine concerns. People can easily perceive these situations as "thanks for the money so that we can do our thing", at which point meaningful engagement ends. But I presume that many people involved with Free Software advocacy are not satisfied with a bunch of other people telling them that "we got this" (that is, they will deliver a solution on behalf of everyone else), not least because Free Software is a collaborative endeavour. There is a risk of sending the crude message that "we just want your money" (not any expertise you might have) which can also be demotivating and disempowering if it anoints a chosen entity to deliver "the solution" and relegates everyone else to being the unhelpful "competition". It is even worse when the money could have been doing some/more good elsewhere. [...] > > (Which brings me to the matter of FSFE's opaque legal conference that may > > or may not be funded by the supporters, out of which they get a list of > > vague topic headings and reassurances that it was a worthwhile exercise.) > > The conference is mainly a meeting of the legal network, see > https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/ln.en.html > and we report on it each year. > > The main advantage of the meeting that people can exchange themselves, > so there is no direct aim for a result. (FSFE was criticised before for not > forcing the agenda, but most people in FSFE believe that we cannot force > people's opinion, while it is good at the same time to bring people together > that are genuinely interested in Free Software licensing together.) > > https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201907.en.html only has a short report > and it could be longer. The one from 2018 almost seems too long for most > readers https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180530-02.de.html > Some donors of FSFE specifically sponsor the Legal conference, > so I'd personally expect this actually to be something that financially > supports other activies of FSFE. However this probably varies from year to > year. The problem when reconciling this activity with an organisation seeking to cultivate some kind of membership, community or broad support is in convincing this latter group that such an activity, from which they are largely excluded, is working in their interests and deserves to be part of the same organisation. In other words, when told that the organisation has "got this" (meaning that it is providing some kind of solution), the supporters can only assume and trust that the outcomes will be beneficial to them. Meanwhile, other organisations with arguably less "democracy" pursue such activities transparently and let their supporters know what they have been saying and doing. The impression this leaves is that there is the VIP track, with all the benefits and a degree of opacity within which conflicts of interest could easily develop, and then there is the ordinary supporter track. The inevitable tensions that such distinctions introduce tend to be rather damaging to any kind of collaborative endeavour in the long run. Paul _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
