Re: please be excellent to each other (Re: application for FSFE e.V. membership and resignation)

[Daniel Pocock]

On 27/08/18 16:02, Erik Albers wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I like to believe that your activities and communication are with good
> intention and you like to change things for the good. However, you should keep
> in mind that we are a organically grown organization with an established
> communication and community culture. And although we are in a process of
> change, the methods you use are currently maybe not the best approach to
> achieve your goals.
>
> In any case it would be helpful if you could to stick to our rules of
> communication and try to be excellent to each other.

When council included a motion in the agenda of the extraordinary
general meeting calling for the immediate termination of my membership,
that was not "being excellent to each other".

Council has unleashed this poison into the community and only the
president can drag us out of that by resigning.  Trying to shift the
blame onto me won't make any difference.  I have felt bad about this
organization ever since I saw that motion in the notice of meeting.  Any
way you look at it, it is bullying and abusive behaviour.


>
> On 27.08.2018 13:19, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>> The notice of meeting for 2018 (attached)
> This message was sent internally to all (temporary) members of FSFE. It is not
> allowed on FSFE mailing lists to forward private notes without prior consent
> of the original author.
>

This looks like another attempt at censorship

How am I to communicate with the people who voted for me to represent
them?  Do I have to send documents through wikileaks instead of using
the mailing list?  Wouldn't that be absurd for an organization like FSFE?

The document in question is simply the invitation to our annual general
meeting and I would encourage everybody to attend a meeting like that. 
I'm a member of many other groups and they all gain legitimacy by
engaging as many people as possible in their annual meetings.  What has
FSFE got to hide and why?

> If you like to make a point about something having been discussed in a private
> channel, you can paraphrase the content but you are not allowed to forward it
> to one of FSFE's public mailing lists that is even publicly archived [1] and
> therewith available for everyone with an Internet access.
>
> Such an activity, I guess, is illegal in many jurisdictions as a potential
> invasion of privacy. Definitely it is forbidden on our lists.

Where is the private content in the notice of the meeting?  Everything
in the notice of meeting eventually appears in the minutes which are
published on the FSFE web site.

Please stop trying to scare people with censorship, the FSFE community
is not that gullible.



>
>
>> For example, you previously wrote in a private GA discussion that my
>> communications to fellows should be censored to ensure that
>> communications maximize donations (your comment in February: "people
>> might even stop to support us financially" if I write emails to the the
>> people who I am mandated to represent).  But that is nonsense: the role
>> of a representative is not to maximize donations, my role is to ensure
>> the money already given to you is being spent as well as possible.  For
>> trying to fulfil that role, you immediately set up an illegal conspiracy
>> to stab me in the back, publishing an internal censorship policy for
>> future communications and calling an extraordinary general meeting[4] on
>> a Saturday while I was out in Kosovo doing real free software activities
>> and voting on a motion tacked onto the end of the agenda to immediately
>> terminate my membership without cause.  It is never nice to write such
>> strong words, but in a case like this, fellows deserve to know the ugly
>> truth about FSFE Council's behaviour and as the elected representative I
>> would be negligent if I didn't blow the lid on this.  As the #MeToo
>> movement has demonstrated, sometimes it is necessary to call out
>> obnoxious behaviour to begin a process of reform.
>
> You are using very offensive language here that is against our code of 
> conduct:
>
>   "To foster tolerance, respect and hospitality in our community, we
>   agree not to engage in discriminatory, disparaging or offensive speech
>   or actions"
>
> Please refrain from doing so.


This looks like another attempt at censorship, this time trying to use
the code of conduct as justification.


>
>
>> Personally, I feel that my highest responsibility is to those who
>> elected me and gave me a mandate and I do not wish to be in a position
>> that puts me above the rest of the wider FSFE community 
> Then please consider your audience and as a representative of our community, I
> kindly ask you to help establish a friendly and peaceful environment for every
> participant.
>
> Personally, in times of fake-news, populism and attention economy, this is
> something that I would love to see the Free Software community to excel:
> transparent, fact-based discussions with respect towards each other.

Fact: 2

github and the like (Re: to git or not to git)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 01:19:54 schrieb Guido Arnold:
> We need a decentralized infrastructure that makes their intentions
> irrelevant.

This is the direction where I believe we must head.

However while doing so, as always in a long struggle, we need to be pragmatic.
So each of us shall take steps as they can.

Github is 
  * central by design, 
  * a service that earns money with proprietary software development 
  * profits from being the biggest (aka network effecs)
  * based on proprietary software.
  * also offering (and pushing) only one software configuration management
product (git)

So if we all want to have a good choice we need to work against those effects.
Possible ways to act against some aspects
 * Go to the competition, e.g. Bitbucket (professional, proprietary, but
   offers hg), or Gitlab (neo-proprietary, no hg)
 * Pay for your service (so others can make money with service to you)
   E.g. if you are a company, try phacility (a service based on Free Software,
   offering a choice of SCMs, but expensive)
 * Self-host if you can (e.g. we self-host hg and wald.intevation.de based on
   old Fusion forge)
 * Use hg or other trackers if you can.
 * Advertise your software on more general places (e.g. pypi or npm)
 * Learn to use other SCMs, trackers, build systems and so on, which is
   good for your understanding as well (because you lean what is concept and
   what is just github sugar making you mentally fat. >:)) Embrace
   contributing to Free Software with other tools.

But if there is a Free Software product developed github, for pragmatic 
reasons you can collaborate there. 

Doing some of the other stuff maybe a bit uncomfortable at first, but there 
just few pluses for you personal or your company over the mid term. And for 
everybody: having a choice a few years down the line.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

-- 
FSFE -- Founding Member Support our work for Free Software: 
blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard https://fsfe.org/donate | contribute


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Re: application for FSFE e.V. membership and resignation

[Harald Welte]

Hi Daniel,

I have been watching your rants on FSFE list and in other places for
a significant amount of time.  Like others, I do believe your intentions
are good, but your tone and behaviour is not constructive at all.
Actually, I think you're damaging/discrediting your own position by
the agressive tone.

What you are conveying with this kind of messages (to me) is that you
feel personally injured and that you'd like to get as much attention
to that.

I don't have as much insight into the activities of the FSFE e.V. or
into the fellowship to comment in extensive details on the facts.
However, I've been involved with Free Software for more than two decades
now, and consider myself as a friend and supporter of the FSFE without
ever having had any formal role or title in it, or ever being a member.

As a side note, to put things into some perspective: To me, from the
very beginning of the fellowship establishment, it was always *very*
clear that being a fellow is not equal to being a voting member of the
legal entity (e.V.).  This model is quite commonly used in German
e.V.'s, so no surprise at all.

What I am missing in your communication and related threads is the clear
evidence that a reasonable number of "fellows" are actually supporting
your position in these arguments.  Without the clear support from at
least a number of fellows, I think your argument is moot.

So to summarize:

* please change your tone to a less aggressive one

* please allow the larger audience to understand if there are really a
  [significant] number of fellows that make the complians you raise,
  or whether you are making those complaints merely based on your own
  understanding of what your role as [former] fellowship representative
  should be?

Regards,
Harald
-- 
- Harald Weltehttp://laforge.gnumonks.org/

"Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option."
  (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)
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supporting our fellowship representative

[lukerogers]

What I'm reading in this mailing list is scary

I never saw an association cancel the elections.  Is that legal?

I want to give my full support to Daniel Pocock and commend him for his 
tenacity in the pursuit of transparency and truth.  It looks like the GA is 
full of yes-men but Pocock is the fiercely independent advocate that us fellows 
need.

If somebody isn't happy about the job Pocock does then instead of making 
insults and character assassinations, run for election against him.  But you 
are all afraid Pocock or somebody else like him would be voted again by the 
silent majority, you abolished the elections.  How pathetic you all are.

No more elections?  My fellowship contribution isn't going to FSFE next year, 
give the money to a local group where everything is done by volunteers and not 
careerists in Berlin.

The FSFE transparency pages are hilarious.  FSFE chose the transparency 
checklist from Transparency International because it lets them have 
transparency credentials but their checklist doesn't ask to publish the 
salaries like the FSF and other groups.  Top marks to Pocock for exposing that 
in his thread on transparency.  Keep it up.

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Re: please be excellent to each other (Re: application for FSFE e.V. membership and resignation)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Daniel,

Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 09:25:08 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
> When council included a motion in the agenda of the extraordinary
> general meeting calling for the immediate termination of my membership,
> that was not "being excellent to each other".

any organisation(+) reserves the right to exclude members that heavily 
obstruct the way it works. There is a point where this has to be done just so 
that people can go seperate ways. 

(+) <>

It seems some people were asking the question if you were obstructing the FSFE
from the inside for example with numerous motions that were hard to understand 
and never had a chance to pass because you were not able to convince others 
about them. Putting this to an explicit vote in May gave you security that 
you could stay in the FSFE for good. Otherwise if it had been time to end the 
relationship, maybe it is better to part ways for both parties. This may hurt 
your feelings, but it may also protect you from getting deeper into a bad 
relationship. The good part about an NGO is: You can leave and join a 
different one.

> Council has unleashed this poison into the community and only the
> president can drag us out of that by resigning. 

It would be unhelpful for a president that is supported by the majority
of e.V. members to resign. Matthias is doing very good work for Free Software 
and FSFE, in my eyes.

> How am I to communicate with the people who voted for me to represent
> them?  Do I have to send documents through wikileaks instead of using
> the mailing list?  Wouldn't that be absurd for an organization like FSFE?

It is a matter of privacy and about understanding each other.
Without context a statement can be missunderstood easily.
It makes sense that within FSFE we educate each other, so we must be able
to say and write "temporary" opinions just to get them corrected.
Of course our internal invitation to e.V. members is internal, so we can have 
an effective internal meeting. There are many other occasions that are open 
to the public. Maybe it helps if you imagine sending an invitation to three 
friends for a meeting and someone makes this a social media invitation public 
for all. To me it would be rude.

> The document in question is simply the invitation to our annual general
> meeting and I would encourage everybody to attend a meeting like that. 

We don't, it is an internal meeting, we need work to get done.
To participate you need to have a lot of context, something that cannot be 
provided on the spot. We took a great effort to help you have and understand 
this context (as we do with all new members to the e.V.).

> I'm a member of many other groups and they all gain legitimacy by
> engaging as many people as possible in their annual meetings. 

(I doubt it, most organisations have internal meetings, even public political 
parties. But this is beside the point I guess.)

> What has FSFE got to hide and why?

At the core (and simplified):
FSFE has to maintain a way to work constructively.

> I feel betrayed, both as the representative and also as an
> ordinary fellow who didn't get to vote again this year.
>
> Fact: you can't tell me and other fellows how to feel
>
> But facts aren't everything. 

I do respect your feelings and kindly ask you to respect the feelings
of others in the FSFE. As one of the founding members I feel it to be my duty
to keep FSFE together as an organisation that can do work towards Free 
Software (and a better society as a result).

Unfortunately I feel that many of your inputs over the last months have been 
overly bureaucratic and in cases unrespectful about other people within FSFE 
and their work. So it maybe better if you would leave FSFE.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

-- 
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blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard https://fsfe.org/donate | contribute


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Re: supporting our fellowship representative

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi Luke,

Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 10:18:11 schrieb lukerog...@tutanota.com:
> I never saw an association cancel the elections.  Is that legal?

that is only part of the story:
Legally there is an association based on German law to support FSFE's work
where we have chosen a minimal approach for members because those members
are legally responsible, may hold legal assets for Free Software and we want 
to be sure that it cannot be taken over. (I darkely remember that we also had 
the history and some lessons of Richard Stallman's legal associations in 
mind.)

The membership of the e.V. of course has to be able to vote and legally be 
responsible for the actions of the executive representatives.

In 2005 we wanted to have something like a "supporting membership", because 
many people wanted to show that they are continuously supporting us 
financially and otherwise as FSFE. We called this fellowship because we 
thought this to be a cool name and there we no voting rights. Later there was 
the idea to get more member into the e.V. maybe even changing the legal 
structure towards one that is much more open for members and refrains from 
the minimal principle. This is a course of action that some in the FSFE still 
believe could be worth examining or enacting the in the future. To do steps 
into this direction we started doing a temporary membership selected by our 
supporting members. This was governed by the constitution which a larger 
majority of the members have to agree to.

In the last years we found out that this was not working as we had expected.
Many supporting members fould the elections to be a hassle, they took up a lot 
of time and there was not as many candidates we would like to. Many time we 
had to do a lot to even find and encourage candidates. After trying to fix 
the situation a majority came to the conclusion that FSFE would be better off 
without those temporary seats to pursue other ways to include more people 
that care for Free Software and are willing to do the hard work of a small 
NGO. So the large majority changed the constituion again. In order to have 
more time to be dedicated to actually working towards furthering Free 
Software and organisation related to it.

> My fellowship contribution isn't going to FSFE next
> year, give the money to a local group where everything is done by
> volunteers and not careerists in Berlin.

In my conviction we need paid employees, many successful NGO have them.
The work needs full time dedication. The wages paid by FSFE are below the 
average for comparable tasks.

> The FSFE transparency pages are hilarious.  FSFE chose the transparency
> checklist from Transparency International because it lets them have
> transparency credentials but their checklist doesn't ask to publish the
> salaries like the FSF and other groups. 

Can you supply the link to the salary lists of those organisations?
(A quick search could't find it. Is there also information to place this 
salary in comparison what people in the same place and position would get?)

In order to be able to win and hold employees, we at FSFE negociate the 
salaries between e.V. and each person individually and in private. The 
salaries are controlled by the e.V. members, the public because you can 
divide the number of people with the published budget and see the average 
numbers and the tax office because we can only pay salaries that are 
comparable to similiar positions to retain our charity status.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

-- 
www.intevation.de/~bernhard   +49 541 33 508 3-3
Intevation GmbH, Osnabrück, DE; Amtsgericht Osnabrück, HRB 18998
Geschäftsführer Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner


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Re: github and the like (Re: to git or not to git)

[mray]

On 28.08.2018 09:29, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
> Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 01:19:54 schrieb Guido Arnold:
>> We need a decentralized infrastructure that makes their intentions
>> irrelevant.
> 
> This is the direction where I believe we must head.
> 

Just want to throw in a relevant link to a project combining ActivityPub
and git: https://github.com/forgefed/forgefed



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Re: to git or not to git

[Stefano Maffulli]

On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 11:36 PM Alessandro Rubini  wrote:

> So, besides self-hosting (unfeasible for whole-kernel repos) I moved
> to github. Well, not using it other than as a git repo why should I
> care that the code (that I do not use) is not free?


if you're not using the other pieces of github (issues, wiki, projects,
etc) I don't see why one should care that the code distributing the content
of your repository is non-free. The underlying git tool is free, your data
and repository history is distributed because of git's nature, and you own
it too. It would be different if you used the other tools, because those
are proprietary and hard to move data around.


> Maybe because I contribute visibility to that specific unfree provider,


you sure would contribute to its network effect... hard choice to make
here. When OpenStack moved off of Launchpad/bzr for example, they decided
to self-host git+gerrit but used GitHub exactly to help discoverability of
the project.


> but they were "friendly" guys.
>

Were they really? They didn't have had a clear understanding of what free
software/open source was, at least at the beginning where they happily
promoted 'forking' of any project hosted there, even those without a proper
license.



> Now, they are microsoft. Same people. Same site. Different owner,
> different money-flow.  Shall I (we) change attitude? Most smart people
> say no, that nothing changed.


I'm in the "Nothing changed" camp: they where not friendly before and
neither are the new owners. To be clear, they were (and are) not hostile
either.


> How does the free software community feels in this respect?
>

You need a larger sample :)

/stef
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Salary details (was Re: supporting our fellowship representative)

[Paul Boddie]

On Tuesday 28. August 2018 11.09.09 Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> 
> Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 10:18:11 schrieb lukerog...@tutanota.com:
> > The FSFE transparency pages are hilarious.  FSFE chose the transparency
> > checklist from Transparency International because it lets them have
> > transparency credentials but their checklist doesn't ask to publish the
> > salaries like the FSF and other groups. 
> 
> Can you supply the link to the salary lists of those organisations?
> (A quick search could't find it. Is there also information to place this
> salary in comparison what people in the same place and position would get?)

For the FSF, you'll find the salaries of directors in the following:

https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/Form990_FY2017.pdf

(Interesting that they have some Neo FreeRunners still, and a "bagel cart" 
which I had to look up. I don't envy the job of people having to make these 
filings.)

This is closer to what I've seen for the FSFE:

https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/FinancialStatement_FY2017.pdf

Similarly, for Software Freedom Conservancy, the information of interest is 
here:

https://sfconservancy.org/docs/conservancy_Form-990_fy-2016.pdf

In effect, searching for the legal filings for non-profit/tax-exempt 
organisations should yield salary information. It is possible that some salary 
details do not have to be reported on an individual basis, but under the 
regime applying to the two organisations featured above, I would expect that 
FSFE directors' salaries would need to be indicated.

There are other points in Luke's mail that are worth discussing, but I think 
it is helpful to focus on this particular topic separately.

Paul
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Re: supporting our fellowship representative

[Joe Awni]

As far as I'm concerned, with out elections, my impression is it's a
staff-office in Berlin that is effectively domain-name-squatting on fsfe.org
.

On 28 Aug 2018 11:09, "Bernhard Reiter"  wrote:

Hi Luke,


Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 10:18:11 schrieb lukerog...@tutanota.com:
> I never saw an association cancel the elections.  Is that legal?

that is only part of the story:
Legally there is an association based on German law to support FSFE's work
where we have chosen a minimal approach for members because those members
are legally responsible, may hold legal assets for Free Software and we
want
to be sure that it cannot be taken over. (I darkely remember that we also
had
the history and some lessons of Richard Stallman's legal associations in
mind.)

The membership of the e.V. of course has to be able to vote and legally be
responsible for the actions of the executive representatives.

In 2005 we wanted to have something like a "supporting membership", because
many people wanted to show that they are continuously supporting us
financially and otherwise as FSFE. We called this fellowship because we
thought this to be a cool name and there we no voting rights. Later there
was
the idea to get more member into the e.V. maybe even changing the legal
structure towards one that is much more open for members and refrains from
the minimal principle. This is a course of action that some in the FSFE
still
believe could be worth examining or enacting the in the future. To do steps
into this direction we started doing a temporary membership selected by our
supporting members. This was governed by the constitution which a larger
majority of the members have to agree to.

In the last years we found out that this was not working as we had expected.
Many supporting members fould the elections to be a hassle, they took up a
lot
of time and there was not as many candidates we would like to. Many time we
had to do a lot to even find and encourage candidates. After trying to fix
the situation a majority came to the conclusion that FSFE would be better
off
without those temporary seats to pursue other ways to include more people
that care for Free Software and are willing to do the hard work of a small
NGO. So the large majority changed the constituion again. In order to have
more time to be dedicated to actually working towards furthering Free
Software and organisation related to it.


> My fellowship contribution isn't going to FSFE next
> year, give the money to a local group where everything is done by
> volunteers and not careerists in Berlin.

In my conviction we need paid employees, many successful NGO have them.
The work needs full time dedication. The wages paid by FSFE are below the
average for comparable tasks.


> The FSFE transparency pages are hilarious.  FSFE chose the transparency
> checklist from Transparency International because it lets them have
> transparency credentials but their checklist doesn't ask to publish the
> salaries like the FSF and other groups.

Can you supply the link to the salary lists of those organisations?
(A quick search could't find it. Is there also information to place this
salary in comparison what people in the same place and position would get?)

In order to be able to win and hold employees, we at FSFE negociate the
salaries between e.V. and each person individually and in private. The
salaries are controlled by the e.V. members, the public because you can
divide the number of people with the published budget and see the average
numbers and the tax office because we can only pay salaries that are
comparable to similiar positions to retain our charity status.

Best Regards,
Bernhard


-- 
www.intevation.de/~bernhard   +49 541 33 508 3-3
Intevation GmbH, Osnabrück, DE; Amtsgericht Osnabrück, HRB 18998
Geschäftsführer Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner

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Re: to git or not to git

[Carsten Agger]

On 08/28/2018 01:19 AM, Guido Arnold wrote:


What I see as the crucial part is the "social" component. I'm afraid
this somewhat derails Alessandro's intended discussion as my point
totally ignores "who" the current owner of github is.

If you have a project and are looking for more developers to join it,
you need some kind of visibility so potential developers get aware of
you. In that sense, github serves as a social network and its current
state is close to amazon or ebay - and that is what I suspect is why
they even bothered to buy it.


Yes,  Github has become the "Facebook" or "Google" of free software code 
hosting - nearly everybody uses it, and many of the hugest projects have 
moved to it.


This is not all bad. In my own company, we used to use our own, 
self-hosted Git server (we still do, for some things) which we access 
over SSH. This means that even though our software was always Free 
Software, it wasn't publicly available. Over the years (since 2011, but 
gaining momentum since 2014) we've been moving everything to public 
repositories on Github, so now our code is also publicly available, 
which is a good thing. (Though it's not /that/ important with regard to 
the question of it being Free Software or not.)


I'd say, though, that my experience is that the "social media" aspect of 
Github is not as important as e.g. on YouTube or eBay. People find your 
software if they hear of it somewhere, in distro repositories, through 
clients, co-workers, mailing lists, forums, etc., and it's not so 
important where it's hosted. PyPI and CPAN (for Python and Perl) are 
more important, I think, but also not really social media.


A thing that /is/ nice, though, and that makes it very irritating that 
Github isn't free software, is the pull request and code review 
functionality. After using it, it's hard to go back to inspecting diffs 
in terminal windows.


Now, following Microsoft's acquisition, we're considering moving to a 
self-hosted Gitlab server. And I hope more people will do that. I think 
this centralization of having one site for search, one for selling 
stuff, one for code, one for social interaction, etc., is the sickness 
of the age - and one that very much promotes the proprietary business 
model. So my immediate hope on hearing about Microsoft's acquisition was 
that this would mean Github decaying and the hosting splintering - but 
not in two, three or even five new pieces, but in a million little 
pieces. As you say, self-hosting and decentralization is the best thing 
we can hope for - and that is also our best hope for avoiding these 
giants' proprietary software and all-pervasive surveillance, to which 
we're becoming all too used.


Best
Carsten
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Re: supporting our fellowship representative

[Reinhard Müller]

Hi,

Am 2018-08-28 um 15:04 schrieb Joe Awni:
> As far as I'm concerned, with out elections, my impression is it's a
> staff-office in Berlin that is effectively domain-name-squatting on
> fsfe.org .

I guess that you know how offending this is to the numerous volunteers
in FSFE, especially for those not based in Berlin - like, for example,
myself. It does, however, speak for itself that such statements usually
origin from people who have never participated in any of FSFE's activities.

Best,
-- 
Reinhard Müller * Financial Team
Free Software Foundation Europe



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Re: supporting our fellowship representative

[Paul Boddie]

On Tuesday 28. August 2018 15.32.24 Reinhard Müller wrote:
> 
> Am 2018-08-28 um 15:04 schrieb Joe Awni:
> > As far as I'm concerned, with out elections, my impression is it's a
> > staff-office in Berlin that is effectively domain-name-squatting on
> > fsfe.org .
> 
> I guess that you know how offending this is to the numerous volunteers
> in FSFE, especially for those not based in Berlin - like, for example,
> myself. It does, however, speak for itself that such statements usually
> origin from people who have never participated in any of FSFE's activities.

I wouldn't phrase my own thoughts in such terms, and I do recognise the effort 
made by both staff and volunteers within the FSFE, but I do also recognise the 
frustration some people have that their involvement with the organisation is 
largely confined to paying their membership dues.

Having begun my involvement with the FSFE in a fairly active way, only for 
that involvement to gradually diminish over the years, I don't consider it 
completely inappropriate for me to point out that the organisation struggles 
to engage and empower its membership.

Some of these struggles are matters of practicality. For instance, which tools 
are available to supporters to amplify their own personal efforts to use, 
develop and advocate Free Software?

(We have, at the moment, an ongoing thread about not using GitHub in the face 
of arguably overstated claims about that platform's "network effects", but 
what kind of network effects does the FSFE offer?)

Other problems arise from the organisation's positioning. While some people 
may like the idea of the FSFE as a kind of "FSF light", others including 
myself expect the organisation to take a principled and effective stand on 
matters of software freedom and associated concerns. To do otherwise is to 
misrepresent an entire family of related organisations.

Luke wrote:
> I want to give my full support to Daniel Pocock and commend him for his
> tenacity in the pursuit of transparency and truth.  It looks like the GA
> is full of yes-men but Pocock is the fiercely independent advocate that us
> fellows need.

As the Fellowship did elect Daniel as representative, with various other 
candidates expressing similar views, I find it disturbing that if these views 
are dissenting then they will no longer find a voice in the leadership of the 
organisation. While it may be claimed that others in the leadership do, in 
fact, share his views on some matters, the rest of us are now obliged to take 
those claims at face value.

I can understand that the elections seemed like a distraction, especially 
given a turnout of 265/1532 in the last one [1]. However, such disengagement 
was probably informed by the fact that the Fellowship representatives are 
vastly outnumbered in the governing body of the organisation, making their 
only effective role as some kind of conscience of the membership.

I don't agree with Daniel on everything, but I can sympathise with him here 
given that his current predicament is practically a consequence of a number of 
factors in the way this organisation is structured and run. And while people 
might not want the obvious to be said out loud, the result will be that people 
end up voting with their money instead.

Paul

[1] https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_29119d29f759bbf8
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Re: supporting our fellowship representative

[Mirko Boehm]

Thank you for your careful and civil contribution to this discussion, Paul.

Mirko.

> On 28. Aug 2018, at 07:28, Paul Boddie  wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday 28. August 2018 15.32.24 Reinhard Müller wrote:
>> 
>> Am 2018-08-28 um 15:04 schrieb Joe Awni:
>>> As far as I'm concerned, with out elections, my impression is it's a
>>> staff-office in Berlin that is effectively domain-name-squatting on
>>> fsfe.org .
>> 
>> I guess that you know how offending this is to the numerous volunteers
>> in FSFE, especially for those not based in Berlin - like, for example,
>> myself. It does, however, speak for itself that such statements usually
>> origin from people who have never participated in any of FSFE's activities.
> 
> I wouldn't phrase my own thoughts in such terms, and I do recognise the effort
> made by both staff and volunteers within the FSFE, but I do also recognise the
> frustration some people have that their involvement with the organisation is
> largely confined to paying their membership dues.
> 
> Having begun my involvement with the FSFE in a fairly active way, only for
> that involvement to gradually diminish over the years, I don't consider it
> completely inappropriate for me to point out that the organisation struggles
> to engage and empower its membership.
> 
> Some of these struggles are matters of practicality. For instance, which tools
> are available to supporters to amplify their own personal efforts to use,
> develop and advocate Free Software?
> 
> (We have, at the moment, an ongoing thread about not using GitHub in the face
> of arguably overstated claims about that platform's "network effects", but
> what kind of network effects does the FSFE offer?)
> 
> Other problems arise from the organisation's positioning. While some people
> may like the idea of the FSFE as a kind of "FSF light", others including
> myself expect the organisation to take a principled and effective stand on
> matters of software freedom and associated concerns. To do otherwise is to
> misrepresent an entire family of related organisations.
> 
> Luke wrote:
>> I want to give my full support to Daniel Pocock and commend him for his
>> tenacity in the pursuit of transparency and truth.  It looks like the GA
>> is full of yes-men but Pocock is the fiercely independent advocate that us
>> fellows need.
> 
> As the Fellowship did elect Daniel as representative, with various other
> candidates expressing similar views, I find it disturbing that if these views
> are dissenting then they will no longer find a voice in the leadership of the
> organisation. While it may be claimed that others in the leadership do, in
> fact, share his views on some matters, the rest of us are now obliged to take
> those claims at face value.
> 
> I can understand that the elections seemed like a distraction, especially
> given a turnout of 265/1532 in the last one [1]. However, such disengagement
> was probably informed by the fact that the Fellowship representatives are
> vastly outnumbered in the governing body of the organisation, making their
> only effective role as some kind of conscience of the membership.
> 
> I don't agree with Daniel on everything, but I can sympathise with him here
> given that his current predicament is practically a consequence of a number of
> factors in the way this organisation is structured and run. And while people
> might not want the obvious to be said out loud, the result will be that people
> end up voting with their money instead.
> 
> Paul
> 
> [1] https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_29119d29f759bbf8
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> 
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> participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other:
> https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct

--
Mirko Boehm | mi...@kde.org | KDE e.V.
FSFE Team Germany
Qt Certified Specialist and Trainer
Request a meeting: https://doodle.com/mirkoboehm



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Re: supporting our fellowship representative

[Michael Kesper]

Hi all,

Am 28. August 2018 15:04:42 MESZ schrieb Joe Awni :
>As far as I'm concerned, with out elections, my impression is it's a
>staff-office in Berlin that is effectively domain-name-squatting on
>fsfe.org

I don't know how you come to that conclusion.
FSFE existed for years before the supporting campaign called "Fellowship".
For years it also has been critizised as being too intransparent and closed. 
Real membership was invite-only and restricted to about a dozen people. 
Nowadays everyone can apply for it.

Best wishes
Michael

P.S.: The loudest voices aren't always the most reasonable ones.
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Re: terminating memberships responsibly (was: please be excellent to each other (Re: application for FSFE e.V. membership and resignation))

[Daniel Pocock]

On 28/08/18 09:27, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 09:25:08 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
>> When council included a motion in the agenda of the extraordinary
>> general meeting calling for the immediate termination of my membership,
>> that was not "being excellent to each other".
> any organisation(+) reserves the right to exclude members that heavily 
> obstruct the way it works. There is a point where this has to be done just so 
> that people can go seperate ways. 



I would agree with that, but normally that involves a process of
mediation and then a specific communication with the member about it. 
The FSFE constitution requires a member  be given a reason for exclusion
and an opportunity to appeal.  Those processes were not followed.  What
happened in May smells more like a conspiracy of kindergarten children
trying to kick somebody out of the playground.

It was attempted in a very underhanded and juvenile manner, an
administrative motion tacked onto the last page of a 9 page notice
(attached), reading "The current Fellowship representatives' membership
ends immediately after the this extraordinary General Assembly."  Some
people didn't even notice it was buried in the document, some people
felt it wasn't intended to be noticed.  When I asked council to explain
it before the meeting, they gave no explanation or response.

In cricket terms, this is underarm bowling but then it just isn't
cricket, is it?  It isn't sportsmanlike.

On a personal level, this is behaviour that is poisonous.  It is cruel
and disrespectful in so many ways.  I'm calling this out not only for
myself, but for any situation where there may actually be a legitimate
reason to exclude a member, it should not be forgotten that the person
is a human being and they should be treated like one.

I understand there are some cultural differences in Germany and maybe
that explains some autocratic and impersonal tendencies but in this
case, I just don't see how Matthias and the rest of the executive could
not understand that this motion was toxic.  What's more, FSFE is an
organization that relies heavily on a volunteer community so treating
any one member of the community this badly suggests those in leadership
are not qualified for their roles.

If people had differences of opinion with me, there have been many
opportunities to discuss that with me at events but for the record, I'd
like to make it clear no other member ever did so.

However, even though I agree with you for the general case that a member
may need to be excluded from time to time, in this case we are talking
about an elected representative.  Only the most serious grounds, such as
criminality, should be reason to recall an elected representative and
even then it should be a decision for fellows, not a group of 9 members
of FSFE e.V., almost half of them staff, at a clandestine meeting in
Berlin on a Saturday.

Also, it is not correct to moan about a democratically elected
representative "obstructing" anything: it is their responsibility to
speak up.  An elected representative would have no reason to exist
otherwise, would they?  It seems some of the FSFE staff want the
representative to be a cheerleader who pats them on the back when they
do something good and keeps their mouth shut about everything else.  If
fellows wanted a puppet like that, they made a mistake voting for me.

What your email also suggests is that some people did see the motion as
a way to attack me personally, not just as an administrative side effect
of the constitutional change.  That is really chilling stuff for an
organization that promised democracy to the community and raised
hundreds of thousands of Euros from fellows who believed in that democracy.


>> Council has unleashed this poison into the community and only the
>> president can drag us out of that by resigning. 
> It would be unhelpful for a president that is supported by the majority
> of e.V. members to resign. Matthias is doing very good work for Free Software 
> and FSFE, in my eyes.

So why is FSFE afraid to allow the full community to vote for president
or allow anybody from the community to nominate for the role of president?

I am not seeking to nominate myself either but I have to ask, even if
Matthias is a good president, can we be certain that any of the 1500
fellows might also be equally good or even better at the job?


> Unfortunately I feel that many of your inputs over the last months have been 
> overly bureaucratic and in cases unrespectful about other people within FSFE 
> and their work. So it maybe better if you would leave FSFE.

Could that simply be an inevitable reflection of the way things were
done at the extraordinary meeting in May and the persistently bad
behaviour towards the fellowship before that?

Ever since the week after I was elected fellowship representative people
have been talking about eliminating the elections.  How could anybody
feel welcome in that environment?

A

Re: supporting our fellowship representative

[Christian Kalkhoff]

Hi Luke,

Am Dienstag, 28. August 2018, 10:18:11 CEST schrieb lukerog...@tutanota.com:
> No more elections?  My fellowship contribution isn't going to FSFE next
> year, give the money to a local group where everything is done by
> volunteers and not careerists in Berlin.

Thank your ongoing willingness to support the cause and local groups, even if 
you seem dissatisfied with FSFE at the moment. But i really have to ask you to 
not call the employees names.

When I joined the Fellowship back in 2011 I wanted to support Free Software.. 
As I got to know more and more people from the larger community, I was 
motivated to start a new local group in Munich. In the beginning I was a bit 
unsure about what help I could expect from the official body. But as the Wiki 
stated and still states, there are plenty of services and resources (not 
talking about technical services) Fellows/Supporters can use for their work.

As I used more and more of those services to help spread the word about Free 
Software in Munich and Southern Germany, I was really encouraged and supported 
by those very employees to request what we/I needed. A significant part of 
this support came from our today's president, who IMHO would have been a lot 
faster up the ladder outside of FSFE, if this was his objective. 

And of course he wasn't the only one: Ulrike, Erik, Rainer, Reinhard 
(volunteering full time), Karsten, many interns that since have moved on and 
people I have not yet met due my recent absence, do a fantastic job to enable 
me to work for Free Software in my (rare) spare time. 

Long story short: Up until today I haven't met every single member of the GA, 
who mostly are volunteers on their own. But what I was able to do in Munich, 
Augsburg and now Kiel wouldn't have been possible without the permanent 
support from the employees in Berlin/Düsseldorf (and of course many, many 
volunteers that stay unnamed here).

I am pretty sure that the support I received will be given to those who ask. 
So giving money to FSFE helps spreading Free Software in all of Europe, not 
only locally.

I just wanted to tell my story to a) free the employees of FSFE from untrue 
accusations b) show what FSFE IMHO really is about. It's about Free Software, 
not a yearly vote "forced" upon a community which just wants to work for Free 
Software

Of course, if the Fellowship votes would have been cancelled without any 
replacement, that would have hurt the checks and balances. But at the same 
time people are now invited to apply for membership, the larger community and 
every supporter by itself now can do this.

Just my two cents.

Christian


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Re: Salary details (was Re: supporting our fellowship representative)

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi Paul,

Am Dienstag 28 August 2018 14:30:22 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> In effect, searching for the legal filings for non-profit/tax-exempt
> organisations should yield salary information. It is possible that some
> salary details do not have to be reported on an individual basis, but under
> the regime applying to the two organisations featured above, I would expect
> that FSFE directors' salaries would need to be indicated.

there are number of differences how non-profit organisations for the public 
benefit have to be organised and are controlled from the US and Europe, 
especially Germany. I am not an expert on those differences, I guess they 
stem from a different balance between privacy and public right and duty.

In Germany an association (an "eingetragenger Verein" (e.V.)) can be 
tax-except and there are members that are responsible to control the actions 
of the associations, which is also checked by the tax office. Care is taken 
that that members cannot just give themself money. A balance has to be 
registered with the court, but no individual salaries. It makes sense to me 
that if you do not have the controlling structure of en e.V. it makes sense 
to list individual salaries. But if you have it - like in Germany - it makes 
sense to not demand publication of some of those details.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

-- 
www.intevation.de/~bernhard   +49 541 33 508 3-3
Intevation GmbH, Osnabrück, DE; Amtsgericht Osnabrück, HRB 18998
Geschäftsführer Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner


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