On 28/08/18 09:01, Harald Welte wrote: > 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.
If the abusive termination of somebody's membership by underhanded means doesn't deserve a firm response, what does? I would be just as outraged if any other member was subjected to similar tactics by FSFE's executive and as fellowship representative, I would be speaking up in their defence. > 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. No, it is not about attention. As somebody else commented, that looks like another attempt at character assassination. I simply feel that I have an obligation to the people who I agreed to represented to tell the truth about the organization, for better or worse. If all I wanted was attention I would have sent the email (or a blog) a lot earlier but I deferred doing so in the hope that there would be some sign of reform. How come we never hear anybody suggesting that Tank Man was a selfish attention seeker? > 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. As the "E" in FSFE is for Europe and many members are outside Germany, that may not be obvious to many of the people who have come into contact with FSFE. Original posts about the fellowship do talk about it being a class of membership and words like "join" have frequently been used. At least one article[1] in Linux Magazine talks about fellows having a vote at the GA after 12 months. It is remarkable to look at the way fellows are described there and in this post[2] and then read Erik's recent post[3] suggesting fellows are no more than another corporate donor who didn't deserve elections any more. However, that is only one aspect of the issue. > 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. One other fact that is not made public anywhere is that membership/fellowship numbers started dropping at the end of last year. We are talking about hundreds of people who stopped participating in the program, that is a fact. I don't know if those people sent a reason and if they didn't, we can only guess: was it because the change from "fellow" to "supporter" feels like a downgrade? Did some of them see the motion passed at the annual general meeting (October) to begin the process of removing elections? I suspect the former has had more impact than the latter. Many people agree that there is a lot of good work being done at FSFE and that is why people are frustrated about the governance issues, every time there is some change (e.g. renaming fellows to supporters, cancelling elections, ...) a few more people silently quit. This is another reason why it is important for serious public discussion to start, the previous discussions about these things all happened in a bubble. Instead of choosing to stop supporting FSFE, I would encourage people to come to Berlin on 7 October for the annual general meeting[4] and ask to be accepted as equal members. Regards, Daniel 1. http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/index.php/layout/set/print/Online/News/Free-Fellowships-at-FSFE 2. https://fsfe.org/news/2008/news-20081210-01.en.html 3. https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180526-01.en.html 4. https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20180827/ae43734e/attachment-0001.pdf _______________________________________________ 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
