On 22 February 2012 16:09, Richard Stallman <r...@gnu.org> wrote: > The US also require visitors to give their fingerprints. This actually > lead some of our contributors to avoid events like the Boston Summit. > > Bravo for them -- everyone should refuse! Notwithstanding that, a > meeting in the US is useful because there are many GNOME developers in > the US; they can attend without crossing any frontier. However, it could > be good to have some sort of video link with a site in Europe > so that people there can work with the US developers without having > to cross a frontier. > > But I think GNOME Asia is really meant to be international, right? >
Exactly, and not just GNOME Asia, but any of the GNOME events for the common cause of spreading GNOME awareness to humans be they in India, Asia or any other part of the world which unfortunately many countries' bureaucrats fail to understand. >From one paragraph of the reasons specified by the German Embassy at New Delhi for refusing issuance of visa to one of the speakers at Desktop Summit 2011, it is evident that they do not consider any of the community events as an international obligation despite of providing an invitation letter for participation from the registered organization, KDE e.V. : [German->English translation using Google Translate] Since the willingness to return after all could not be found, the visa lack fulfillment of the grant requirement of Article 21, Section 1 of the Visa Code under Article 23 paragraph 4 letter c), 32 paragraph 1 letter b) of the Code on Visas was refused. Under Article 23 paragraph 4 letter b), 25 paragraph 1 Visa Code allows a Member State nationals who may not meet the specific requirements of the Schengen Article 5 para 1 Borders Code, the entry into its territory on humanitarian grounds, on grounds of nationalinterest or permit because of international obligations. Derarti-ge reasons were neither argued nor are they seen. Even if the entry conditions of Article 5 ยง 1 Schengen Borders Code would be answered in the affirmative and the other conditions for granting visas Code 21, Section 1 A. The speaker refused visa above was me, but it could have been anybody. The GNOME foundation faced and bore loss for two visa rejections for the event last year. It would be great to have more efforts towards making GNOME events more clearly visible as international obligations since they are organized for the benefit of the world as a whole. > > -- > Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St > Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's > nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony > http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ > _______________________________________________ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > -- Chandni Verma www.chandniverma.blogspot.com
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