Hi Maxi,
I love the constructive research that you have started here.
Email privacy was not as topical when foss4g email lists started getting
collected, and tracing technologies such as mail chimp were as
assessable as mail chimp is now. So we are right to retrospectively
develop our policy in this area.
If you are up for it, I suggest following a similar process to what we
did for getting the OSGeo Code of Conduct in place.
1. Research best practice policies. Find one that meets OSGeo community
requirements (ideally addressing the majority of the ideas on this email
thread)
2. Ideally find something that has been adopted and maintained as best
practice among many organisations. (This is the Open Source Way).
3. Reference it, copy it verbatim, tweak it, or collate with other
sources, (possibly into a wiki page)
4. Propose to OSGeo community for adoption. Collate feedback, tweak.
5. Have OSGeo adopt the policy.
Warm regards Cameron
On 18/12/2015 4:26 am, Daniel Kastl wrote:
Hi,
I wanted to share some thoughts, because I don't want that Maxi's
concerns are buried under lots +1's, that "we are just doing our best
for a successful FOSS4G". Maybe Maxi's initial email was a bit strong
and contained the "LocationTech" keyword ;-)
I don't think anyone (and for sure not Maxi) wants FOSS4G or OSGeo not
to be successful, and nobody is against marketing.
However doing something with good intent doesn't mean, that it's
right, right?
If there is a privacy policy, we need to respect it and handle
personal data (like email addresses) accordingly. If there is no
privacy policy, we probably should have one, because there are at
least a few countries I know, where not being able to opt-out or
receiving unwanted emails can become a legal issue quickly (and cost
money).
I remember a few months ago the discussion about Code of Conduct,
where some people thought, we don't need that, because we're
well-educated and friendly people, respecting each other, etc.. A code
of conduct wasn't something I cared about that time, because maybe
it's not common in countries where I live. But I learned, that it's an
important document for North American countries. And I think the
privacy topic is a widely discussed issue in European countries, and
we have some lessons learned about services/organizations trying to
track us.
So that's maybe the reason, why some are not so happy to click an
encrypted link with tracking ID (and whatever else). While I think you
already get tracked, when you open the email and the transparent image
gets loaded.
Speaking as a Japanese citizen, it's even seen as bad practice here to
sent HTML emails, so almost every commercial email is text only with
beautiful ASCII art and is really hard to look at.
While reading this thread I had the following questions actually:
- Is the collected database of email addresses available on request
for every local chapter?
- If a local chapter passes it to some third party organization (in
this case LocationTech, but replace it with any other name), what
happens with these addresses later? Are they now merged with the
"LocationTech Tour" database or the whole Eclipse address pool, etc.?
- If I didn't open my email, because I'm not from North America, will
I be removed from the database and future announcements?
I think most email addresses collected from further events were for
registration purpose. There is no way to register without giving OSGeo
an email address.
And even if we won't harm anyone, we didn't ask those people, if they
would like to opt-in for a newsletter-like service.
So I find it somehow OK (gray-zone) to use the existing address
collection for marketing future global FOSS4G events (it's only once a
year), but you need to understand that FOSS4G NA is a regional event,
and that the emails probably haven't been filtered by region. If we
continue this practice, will then every local FOSS4G be able to spread
the word in the name of OSGeo using a collected address list of the
past 10 years?
Personally I think, that as a community we can do much better
marketing than using MailChimp.
Maybe it's a good idea to add an opt-in form to FOSS4G registrations,
where people can sign up for event announcements, even with regional
preferences eventually?
Best regards,
Daniel
On 18/12/15 01:09, Steven Feldman wrote:
+1,000,000 to what Paul has said
I also passed the FOSS4G 2013 list (which included names for 2011 and
previous FOSSS4Gs) to the 2014 team in the spirit of fraternal
support to future FOSS4Gs, I believe that was the right thing to do
even though we neglected to have specific opt in/out option. No doubt
they passed the extended list to 2015 and they have in turn shared
with 2016. This is good not bad.
We need to separate the animus towards LT from the apparent horror at
the use of a ‘commercial’ service like MailChimp. Those of us who
earn our living from Open Source Geo need to promote Open Source Geo
and that means outreach to people who may not be followers of our
mailing lists, so we need other channels. e-mail marketing is an
established way of reaching potential FOSS4G participants, it is not
evil, it probably isn’t spam (even if you haven’t opted in) as long
as you provide an immediate opt out from further mail (which
MailChimp does really well).
If LT are willing to allow us access to their large contact list,
surely that is something we should say thank you for not complain
about? We might want to ask ourselves why their list is so much
larger than ours? We have a list of several thousand accumulated from
previous FOSS4Gs, using MailChimp enables us to clean that list down
to interested participants very efficiently by providing a simple opt
out.
There is no reason why we should not continue to maintain a growing
list of people who have attended, sponsored or expressed interest in
OSGeo/FOSS4G. The norm should be that you are opted in by default as
a result of past interest but every mail provides the option to opt out.
Evangelising Open Source Geo is IMHO immensely worthwhile. To do that
you need to be a bit pushy while finding the right balance.
Let’s applaud our advocates, conference organisers and marketeers,
not moan at them
Apologies if this is a bit ranty (the first draft was way more ranty)
Peace and goodwill to everyone for the holiday season whatever your faith
______
Steven
On 18/12/2015 6:28 am, Jody Garnett wrote:
Thanks for the productive discussion - some of those privacy policies
seem to be website specific ( rather than for an organization as a
whole ).
We just are rebooting the webcom so the timing is good for a privacy
discussion. It may be easier to start here and then branch out to
project / committee email lists and a foundation wide policy.
We have a different understanding of foss4g Maxi.
On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 4:08 AM Massimiliano Cannata
<massimiliano.cann...@supsi.ch <mailto:massimiliano.cann...@supsi.ch>>
wrote:
Dear Gert, deal all,
after a few days of discussion I would like to sum up some
considerations to re-focus to subject of my first e-mail and that
in my opinion should led OSGeo foundation to at least one or two
argument for discussion.
1- Some FOSS4G events made use of "aggressive" marketing
strategies using mailing lists where the users didn't explicitly
agree in being notified.
2- There are laws on privacy protection which are different for
different countries/region (this is explained for example at this
resource, but I'm not a loyer:
http://www.lsoft.com/resources/optinlaws.asp )
3- OSGeo act globally and should be respectful as much as possible
of all the existing rules
4- FOSS4G is the OSGeo's label of their Free and Open Source
Software For Geospatial conferences
Said that each person or organization is responsible for its acts
(and is free to behave as he/she/it prefer), I would like that
OSGeo - and FOSS4G that is with no doubt recognized as an OSGeo
event - act in respect of a well defined privacy protection policy
with is
as much protective of privacy as possible.
Example of Privacy Policy can be found for example in:
- Apache foundation
(http://www.apache.org/foundation/policies/privacy.html)
- Eclipse foundation (https://eclipse.org/legal/privacy.php)
- Debian (http://www.debianit.com/privacy-policy/)
- Software Freedom Conservancy
(https://sfconservancy.org/privacy-policy/)
- OpenStack (https://www.openstack.org/privacy/)
From a short reading all of them seems state that they do not pass
information to third parties and do not use these information for
sending newsletter unless explicitly agreed.
So, if I raised you attention to this hot topic and in the future
people will be more sensitive and respectful of privacy when they
act in the name of FOSS4G or OSGeo I'm 1000% happy and accept any
blame on me.
Best regard,
Maxi
2015-12-15 23:38 GMT+01:00 Gert-Jan van der Weijden - Stichting
OSGeo.nl <gert-...@osgeo.nl <mailto:gert-...@osgeo.nl>>:
First: I took the opportunity to change the subject of this
thread to a less shouting version (CAPS LOCK and spam live
side-by-side on my email-irritation-scale)
Second: Funny to see how the use of two different channels
(mailing list vs. MailChimp) kind of reflect the different
approaches to reach the -more of less- same goal.
Any expanding organisation / movement / community comes to a
point where the classical channels (like a mailing list) reach
their limits,
and "new" marketing (yuch! marketing==ugly & bad!) channels &
methods may help to stretch beyond borders. Which comes at a
cost (as Maxi tries to tell, I guess).
Food for thought for the Board face2face meeting in January
(and for the entire community) to determine
- what our goals are
- what our values are
- and how these two compare to each other.
Kind regards,
Gert-Jan
*Van:*Discuss [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] *Namens
*Rob Emanuele
*Verzonden:* dinsdag 15 december 2015 21:51
*Aan:* David Bianco
*CC:* OSGeo Discussions
*Onderwerp:* Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4GNA - SOMEONE IS
WATCHING YOU :-o
Hey David,
The emails on the mailing list were cultivated by past FOSS4G
NA attendees, people opting in in other ways, and from lists
that were given by members of this and last year's committee.
If we're spamming people who didn't opt in, it is not
intentional and apologies for the spam (the world certainly
doesn't need more spam). We'll take a look at the list moving
forward to try to prevent from sending emails to anyone who
didn't opt in.
Thanks,
Rob
On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 2:48 PM, David Bianco
<m...@davidbianco.net> wrote:
I believe MailChimp has policies against adding emails to your
list without a user's authorization.
http://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/
On Tue, Dec 15, 2015, at 10:16, Rob Emanuele wrote:
Thanks for pointing out that it wasn't yet posted to
OSGeo-Discuss, I just posted it.
There's a one-click unsubscribe button from that mailing
list, sorry for the spam!
On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 12:31 PM, Massimiliano Cannata
<massimiliano.cann...@supsi.ch> wrote:
Just a funny note...
Nice to see that LocationTech has a FOSS4G email (!!!!
WOW!!!!!)
and.....
that all the link on the received e-mail are connected
with my user_id (I have one????? Yes)
and....
that they are tracked (!!! without inform me !!!)
and...
that I have been added to a list that i'm not
subscribed.... (http://mailchimp.com/about/mcsv/)
But...
Where did they get my e-mail from?
why thy didn't simply post the news to the
discussion-osgeo list?
what do they want to track?
*If you want to see the FOSS4G-NA without been traced
here is the link https://2016.foss4g-na.org/*
#SPAM #NOT-SO-FAIR #LIKE-MICROSOFT-THAT-SPY-ME #SCARY
Best,
Maxi
--
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Professore SUPSI in ingegneria Geomatica
Responsabile settore Geomatica
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Dipartimento ambiente costruzione e design
Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana
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<tel:%2B41%20%280%2958%20666%2062%2014>
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Istituto scienze della Terra
Dipartimento ambiente costruzione e design
Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana
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Tel. +41 (0)58 666 62 14
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