On 21/06/17 12:22, Erik Albers wrote: > Now I would be interested what you think? Do you think that - although the use > of proprietary platforms is ethically not supportable - the chances of > convincing new people to use and further Free Software are worth the > punishment? > Or do you think that our message should not occur on platforms like Facebook > or Twitter at all, because it contradicts our efforts in getting people to use > decentralized services, run with Free Software and therefore potentially harm > us in the long run?
This was one of the longer debates on the discussion list in recent times and I wanted to ensure it is recognized in the minutes of this year's GA meeting. In the interest of gaining consensus, I proposed a couple of motions that neither prohibit nor endorse the use of the proprietary platforms and services for FSFE business. I also thought of one additional motion as I was writing this, it is at the bottom. I'd be interested to know if people feel these are accurate and if there are volunteers in the community who would want to help in their execution: Proposed motion: The GA recognizes the concern that without proprietary social media platforms, some people feel that our messages remain in a bubble and that we are preaching to the converted. FSFE must make it a high priority to identify and share strategies to burst the bubble without dependence on proprietary social media and will explicitly consider alternatives to proprietary social media in planning every future campaign and for all ongoing activities. Background to this motion: Suggestions in the discussion included looking at ways that organizations achieved this type of outreach before facebook, identifying relevant researchers and experts looking at this theme, building a directory of other organizations who have made a conscious decision not to use proprietary social media, establishing a network to share information between such organizations, organizing an event around this theme, sponsoring speakers to visit events outside our comfort zone, developing relationships with organizations that do not have a technology focus, involving people from other domains in the GA and more participation in real-world local events. FSFE will aim to achieve and document best practice in this area for other free software communities to follow. It would be desirable to prioritize this work for an internship. Proposed motion: The GA recognizes the wide range of opinions in the discussion about non-free software and services. As a first step to resolve this, FSFE will maintain a public inventory on the wiki listing the non-free software and services in use, including details of which people/teams are using them, the extent to which FSFE depends on them, a list of any perceived obstacles within FSFE for replacing/abolishing each of them, and for each of them a link to a community-maintained page or discussion with more details and alternatives. FSFE also asks the community for ideas about how to be more pro-active in spotting any other non-free software or services creeping into our organization in future, such as a bounty program or browser plugins that volunteers and staff can use to monitor their own exposure. Proposed motion: The GA recognizes that non-free hardware/Tivoization, non-free software and cloud services form a 21st century axis of evil and that FSFE's mission to fight one of these phenomenons can't be achieved without challenging all three. Due to the harm that they can cause to our human rights and their pervasive nature they require active resistance. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
