Hi,
yes, what Christian says is a maybe more elaborate phrasing of what I also
wanted to say.
Greetings!
On 9/19/19 10:31 AM, Christian Loosli wrote:
Hi all,
I mostly agree with Agustin and Jens:
I think that people should be elected into positions based on their
suitability for that position, which means that things like sex, gender, race,
cultural background, sexual orientation etc. pp. should neither be an
advantage nor a disadvantage. Otherwise people with backward mindsets thinking
that "$xy can't do $z" will go "Oh, you only got into position $z due to
being $xy", which doesn't help. Also worst case, but exaggerated, if indeed
people are picked not based on suitability, you could e.g. pick someone for a
communicative job that is rather introvert or someone for a finance job that
doesn't like numbers, then people with the above mentioned mindset would feel
that their odd views are even more confirmed, that $xy can't do $z.
From a personal point of view, I e.g. do not think that someone from the
LGBTQ+ spectrum would represent me any better on a board. What is important to
me is that I feel welcome and an not harassed / discriminated due to that.
And that is what we need to achieve: our community needs to be inclusive and
welcoming, so we shall not tolerate discrimination based on sex, gender,
cultural heritage etc. pp.
When we have a diverse base, chances are obviously high that people elected
into positions have all kind of different backgrounds.
And that is what I think we need to recommend to other communities, so that
FOSS as a whole is a place where everybody feels welcome and nobody suffers
from discrimination based on who they are. On the other hand, I do not feel
that we are in the position to make strong pushs or even build up public
pressure when it comes to elections and choices of other organizations.
I don't know how FSF elections internally work, but if we map it to KDE, I'd
see it as very awkward if an external organization would interfere with our
board elections and say "You should pick candidate $x or you must add
candidates $y and $z".
tl;dr: I think we need to ensure that both we and FOSS has a diverse, broad
base and work on issues preventing that, not interfering with other
organizations elections and processes.
Kind regards,
Christian
Am Donnerstag, 19. September 2019, 04:59:09 CEST schrieb Valorie Zimmerman:
As many of you know, Richard Stallman has stepped down from the FSF.
However, his supporters on the FSF Board remain. The FSF is on our Advisory
Board, according to https://ev.kde.org/advisoryboard.php
Accordingly, I would like us (the KDE Community) to advise them to
diversify their Board, as RedHat has done here:
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/open-letter-free-software-foundation-board-di
rectors. If we cannot do this as a community, I would like to ask the Board
to do this on our behalf.
All the best,
Valorie
