On 01/10/2019 16:11, Lori Nagel wrote: > The FSF has a private associate members forum that is only for associate > members who pay their dues ($120 a year last I checked). > So yeah, for just $120 a year, no only do you get free libre planet > admission, but you get access to a private forum as well.
What, exactly, is the benefit of a private forum? During my time as Fellowship representative in FSFE people regularly gave me reports of abusive behaviour in private communication channels. It happens in just about every organization. The Debian Christmas lynchings (debian-private) are one of the more extreme examples of that. > There are people there who feel that RMS should have stepped down a long > time ago. There are also people who support RMS and strongly disagree > with the > smear campaign against him. I think the reason that the FSF hasn't made > an official statement on it, is that they lose either way. Either all > the RMS supporters leave because > the FSF said they disown him, or the people who think he should have > stepped down leave because of all this negative publicity (people who > feel RMS makes the free software movement look bad). RMS is FSF's #1 volunteer. FSF doesn't have to take sides on any accusations against him but they do need to be willing to defend the rights of all volunteers, including Stallman, to have due process. Anybody who makes a mistake has a right to due process, not a witch hunt. If FSF doesn't support the right to due process in every single accusation against any volunteer, then no volunteer should support them. Even FSFE made an attempt to observe due process when pushing sham allegations against a volunteer. So on that metric, they are one step ahead of FSF, even if they are only walking in the swamp. > Richard Stallman encourages people to join the FSF at this time to > ensure they stick to their original mission, promoting the four software > freedoms. I have also seen RMS's comments to that effect. We have to remember that RMS has spent the better part of his life doing FSF and has been through a horrible ordeal. Independent observers have reached different conclusions, for example, I think people should personally evaluate all the organizations supporting the same principles and give their money to the best one. I don't make any attempt to speculate which organization is best right now. People also have the option to pool their money into a local organization and keep it in reserve there until there is more clarity about the bigger organizations. Regards, Daniel _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://lists.fsfellowship.eu/mailman/listinfo/discussion
