Dear Stanford Liberationtech friends,
How are you? I hope that you and your families are all doing well and that
you're all enjoying the summer (or the winter, depending on your location)!
Please allow me to introduce you to Gonzalo (cc'ed), who has been working
with the Stanford Program on Liberation Technology over the summer to help
us spinoff Stanford Liberationtech as an independent organization. If you
have yet to meet Gonzalo, please don't be shy to say "hello."
Below are the recommendations that you provided in terms of the next steps
for a newly independent Liberationtech:
- *Corporate Governance: Fiscal Sponsorship, NOT Legal Status*. Most of
you recommended that we not incorporate legally as a 501(c)3 at this time.
Instead, you recommended that we use a fiscal sponsor instead. A number of
fiscal sponsors were proposed including Creative Commons; the Electronic
Frontier Foundation; Freedom House; the Free Software Foundation; the
Information Ethics and Equity Institute; Mozilla; Oasis; the Open Source
Institute; the Public Sphere Project; the Puerto Rico Science, Technology,
and Research Trust; the Renewable Freedom Foundation in Germany; Software
Freedom Conservancy; and Wikimedia. There is also the Tides Foundation. The
advantage of fiscal sponsors is that they can accept charitable
contributions on behalf of Liberationtech and take care of the legal and
accounting requirements needed to maintain the organization, thereby
freeing Liberationtech to pursue its vision and mission. We have decided to
find fiscal sponsors for different legal jurisdictions to ensure that we
have a global presence. [Down the line, the Sustainable Economies Law
Center was proposed as an organization to help Liberationtech incorporate
as a 501(c)3.]
- *Vision*. To organize the world's information about technology for
social good, especially privacy and security.
- *Mission*. To create and support a community of practice around
technology for social good that incorporates privacy and security by
design.
- *Hosting Service*. Most of you expressed concerns about hosting in the
U.S. and asked that Liberationtech use the most privacy- and
security-friendly legal jurisdiction instead. Most of you also
recommended Greenhost.
- *Website Design and Development*. Some of you kindly offered to work
on a pro bono basis to design and develop the Liberationtech website.
Others suggested contacting groups such as the Agile Collective, Aspiration
Technologies, CoTech, Digital Life Collective, Equalit.ie, and Greenhost
for these services. What should the website have? You asked that we keep
the Liberationtech website simple. Beyond a basic description and a list of
the board of advisers, you asked that we do the following:
- *Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)*. Most of you asked that we build a
site that is as simple as possible so that it may be viewed even by those
who have slow devices or weak bandwidth.
- *Just a mailing list, please*. Most of you also asked that we only
use open-source mailing list software that has been around for a
long time
for convenience (i.e., you get the email in your inbox) or
security reasons
and to make it easier for any list subscriber to download the
list or port
it from one device to another. (A minority of you asked Liberationtech to
move to Matrix.org or Discourse.org, but the majority eschewed using any
closed platform or anything more complex than a mailing list.)
- *Let me create my own list, please*. Many of you asked that we
allow list subscribers to create their own lists around specific
subjects,
whether by chapter (read more below), geography, sector, or topic. For
example, some of you asked that Calls for Papers (CfPs), jobs, and
announcements be moved to separate mailing lists.
- *Mirror it*. Many of you asked that we mirror the site at a number
of locations for security reasons.
- *Incubation*. A number of you asked that Liberationtech continue to
vet technology for social good projects as we have long done on the mailing
list. Some of you asked that Liberationtech work to raise funds to become
an incubator of technology for social good, where the funds would go to
support the development of projects based on the ideas the community likes
the most.
- *Directory*. Some of you suggested that we create a wiki (or similar)
with tips, good practices, tools, and apps for secure communication and
digital privacy, along with a list of the organizations and platforms that
work in the technology for social good space.
- *Funding*. Some of you suggested that Liberationtech contact
foundations such as Omidyar and the Open Technology Fund. Others suggested
that Liberationtech engage in crowdfunding. Yet others suggested charging a
yearly fee for people to create their own Liberationtech chapters in
geographies around the world.
Assuming that no one has a strong objection to any of the recommendations
above, we -- and that includes all of you who have volunteered your
services to help us spinoff Liberationtech -- will begin the process of
implementation and migration.
Any questions? Anything we overlooked? Please let Gonzalo or me know.
Thanks,
Yosem
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