While you elected me as your representative in 2017, that doesn't give me a mandate to be representative for life.
While some outspoken people from the inner circle have been quick to speak up publicly about the independent Fellowship mailing list, people with other views have either contacted me privately or not spoken at all. Since the changes in 2018, many people have been afraid to speak against censorship and other bullying because they are afraid they will be the next victim, that is the nature of the problem we face. Many people only choose to express their opinion in the privacy of a ballot box. As my final duty as I go into Fellowship retirement, I intend to give you all that opportunity and pass the torch to the leaders you give that mandate to. Membership status in FSFE is also a hot topic. In any organization, membership means one thing: participation in decision making through voting in elections and general meetings. When FSFE abolished[1] elections last year, they published a blog stating[2] they were just simplifying the membership procedure. Minutes[3] of the annual general meeting show only one new member was accepted under the "simplified" procedure they promised you. The failure to acknowledge the rest of you as members denies you the ability to participate in decisions or choose your leader. Here is the 2019 election calendar: - Nominations for the position of Fellowship Council (3 seats) open immediately, send your nomination to this list, please include the word "[nomination]" in your message subject so that it isn't missed - Nominations close 12:00 UTC next Friday, 10 May 2019 - If only 3 or less nominations are received, they are the automatic winners. Otherwise, voting will open as soon as possible after nominations close. - Voting closes at 14:03 CEST (12:03 UTC) on Sunday, 26 May, exactly one year after the FSFE staff met in their Berlin headquarters to abolish[1] elections. As we all believe in Free, there are not a lot of rules. We will probably not use Doodle to run the poll. The set of eligible voters is all those people who are subscribed to this list at 9am UTC on Monday, 6 May 2019. Now that FSFE has formally cut ties with the Fellowship, it leaves some important questions for each of us: Do you accept being force-subscribed to the Supporter program? You can reject that by exercising your rights under the GDPR, simply write to [email protected] and write "I never agreed to join the Supporter program, I will only be in the Fellowship" Are you still a Fellow? That is you choice too, you can stay or leave at your discretion. Does the Fellowship need to be legally incorporated or not? Does the Fellowship really need a leader, a Fellowship council or some other decision-making body? I'm not personally volunteering for that, I am only volunteering to coordinate the election for 2019. I feel that starting with 3 people allows a few different opinions to co-exist and build from there. Do Fellows want to put your money into an official Fellowship bank account or trust and then ration it to FSFE, FSF and other organizations by instalment, on a pay-for-performance basis? Do you want to subject these organizations to periodic evaluations, like GSoC students, giving them a pass or fail? Or does the Fellowship not want to have any money? This is your choice, not mine. Some people already asked me about copies of the Fellowship contact data or helping to manage the mailing list. It is the right of the whole Fellowship to decide who makes decisions about your data. You appoint those people when you vote. As the Fellowship makes its intentions clear through a democratic vote, I will look at how to hand over control of the domain fsfellowship.eu, contact data, the mailing list, the GA mailing list archives and everything else to the new Fellowship Council. Some people made enquiries about unsubscribing and GDPR. This mailing list serves exactly the same purpose as previous mailing lists, you already opted-in to Fellowship communications, it has just migrated to more resilient infrastructure, so it is not spam. The FSFE made it impossible for some people to communicate through the old list, thereby forcing the creation of a parallel infrastructure. Matthias Kirschner also removed the blog of the fellowship representative from Planet FSFE, that is a very heavy-handed act of censorship and I personally have no trust in any FSFE infrastructure after that. If GDPR is applicable, that means the Fellowship has 30 days to respond to any requests to remove your data and there is no reason to believe this wouldn't be respected. If you consider yourself a candidate for Fellowship Council, please consider publicly sharing your nomination, your platform and your preferred answers to the questions above. This is your Fellowship. Good luck. Regards, Daniel 1. https://fsfellowship.eu/assets/minutes-2018-05-26.en_.pdf 2. https://fsfellowship.eu/assets/2018-05-26-fsfe-abolishes-elections.pdf 3. https://fsfellowship.eu/assets/minutes-2018-10-07.en.pdf _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://lists.fsfellowship.eu/mailman/listinfo/discussion
