El Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 12:13:24AM +0300, Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic deia: > > Now, about refunding the donations made to FSF since 2015. I can't be > the only person realizing that FSF has been one of the main reasons > Libreboot was started and has been the biggest promoter of Libreboot > ever since. Through their RYF certification, FSF has been instrumental > to the success and financial stability of the Libreboot project and her > lead developer. In my opinion those donations were well deserved. > Moreover, donations to nonprofits are non-refundable. >
Yes, no organization could work if they never know when people would suddenly decrease their budget. What is perfectly reasonable for any donor is to stop any future donations for whatever reasons, or even try to convince others to stop future donations. Past donations should already be spent or allocated and can't be returned, that seems obvious. > she hasn't requested the FSF's RYF certification of the Libreboot > laptops be revoked. > Even if she wanted how could that work ? The only reason RYF certification should be revoked should be that the certified hardware is found to have freedom problems unknown of when it was certified (either new facts discovered or new analysis of the consequences of the facts previously known). It's not like minifree is going to recommend people to install windows on their products. It would be not credible for the FSF to grant RYF just because someone wants to (they check their criteria are fulfilled). Likewise it would make no sense for FSF to de-certify something just because someone says so. Checking the criteria needs to be triggered by someone requesting it, but just as this trigger is not enough by itself to achieve certification, a request for decertification would not be enough to decertify anything. Besides, if someone looses faith in a certifier it makes little sense to ask from them either new certifications or decertifications, because they no longer value their decisions. What any seller can do at their choosing is to advertise or not the certification status of their merchandise. Although any seller considering that buyers may trust certifiers the seller does not trust may decide to continue advertising the certifications as long as they're true, because the information might be interesting to customers who don't share the same trust decisions. I don't know what's the point of furthering this discussion, since we don't have enough knowledge of facts, and probably we shouldn't have. I don't have any reason to believe FSF is discriminatory and at the same time I don't see anything Leah would gain by raising all this for no good reason. I guess the only thing I can say to GNU, FSF and libreboot people including Leah is thanks for your contributions to software freedom. I hope they continue in whatever way is less harmful to all. I think the need for a deblobbed coreboot still exists. I wrote in another list why I think the effort to liberate old hardware (as new as feasible, but that's unfortunately old) is worthwhile. https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-August/011182.html I don't really know exactly how to go on from here: - reconcilement, and staying in the previous situation ? - libreboot fork in let's say GNUboot and libreboot and what kind of collaboration between them ? and who would lead the hypothetical GNUboot ? - libreboot goes on outside GNU, lead by Leah, and any unhappy libreboot contributors stay in coreboot only ? But still, I keep reading this stuff, just around Software Freedom Day. and not feeling any happy. At least I think I understand what people is saying. Except a small part: https://libreboot.org/gnu/ "If this were FSF Europe, where anti-discrimination laws are much stronger (FSFE is in Germany), they'd likely have a lawsuit on their hands. That may still be possible, but it's probably not necessary in this case." Can someone explain this paragraph to me ? I'm not asking for details on any particular situations, which are likely private. More on legislation in Germany and Boston and specially why some cases might need a lawsuit and some cases not (in general, an abstract analysis would do, even if it does not apply to this case or covers more possible cases). I'm very unused to these kind of cases, but in general, a lawsuit might not be necessary if parties reach some agreement. If parties reach an agreement then publicity of the issue should not be necessary either ? So in which cases might this arise ? Let's imagine the parties reach an agreement for whatever reason (which might be related to what could each party obtain in a lawsuit and the likeliness of it, regardless of whether each party thinks laws, society, lawyers, juries or judges are as they should be) but other members of the public with knowledge of the situation think the agreement, or at least the silence about the case is not in the public interest despite the parties being entitled to agree to whatever they want. If there is no agreement, what other options are there for a lawsuit not being necessary ? If there were insufficient proof for something believed true it would be more like a lawsuit not being possible, easy or advisable, or even likely but I wouldn't call it unnecessary. If there was fear of worse consequences in case of a lawsuit (like further harassment, suffering, vengeance or anything) then the lawsuit might not be safe, advisable, worthwhile, wise, etc. But I still wouldn't call it unnecessary. If there's something you think should be a crime but it isn't in the applicable current law, then you could say it is not necessary to sue, but you wouldn't say it is possible. So when is boycott to one party necessary and lawsuits possible but probably unnecessary ? Maybe I'm reading too much in just one word. Nobody is perfect in our choice of words.
