Re: Apply for membership now!

[Florian Snow]

Hi Cornelia,

Thank you for starting a discussion on an important topic!


"Cornelia S."  writes:
> I have learnt the FSFE is abolishing their community representatives
> in their board (remember the Linux Foundation?)

Yes, that is something that the GA discussed at their last meeting (I
was not there because I was not a member at the time)[0].  The
Fellowship seats are one measure to grow the membership base because the
elected people often stay in the GA after the end of their term.  There
is a conflict between what is ideal for an election and what is ideal
for growing the GA, though.  In an election, ideally, there are multiple
people who are qualified for the position.  In terms of growing the
membership, an election is not the ideal tool, though, because it means
multiple qualified people compete for one position and several people
that really should become part of the GA do not in the end.


> All you need an e-mail to m...@fsfe.org and say that you apply.

Yes, this process has been there for a long time and it does grow the
membership slightly.  I actually joined through this process recently.
Matthias discusses applications with the GA and if the GA agrees, people
are admitted until their actual confirmation (or potential rejection,
but that is unlikely with the discussion beforehand) at the following GA
meeting.  One problem with that process is that it does not scale well.

Another problem with that system is that it has no mechanism to increase
diversity.  For all these reasons, the GA is looking into better ways to
increase membership and as part of that process, we are want to abolish
the Fellowship seats.  Another way of looking at it is this: What good
is an election if the candidate who loses the election can just apply to
become a GA member right after the election?


> Please do it now!

I understand your worries about losing representation.  The path to
membership through some form of application will always be there,
though, so there is no rush.  The GA always has the power to admit new
members and from my understanding of German law (the FSFE is a German
e.V.), there is no way to take away that kind of power from the GA.  The
GA will always be able to vote on anything within the scope of an e.V.

Also, I promise that I will vote against any motion to remove the
Fellowship seats as long as we do not at the same time take steps to
have a decent replacement system in place.  I feel very strongly about
this and if you had not written this email, I would have not made a
public statement about my intention to vote this way, but I would have
voted that way anyway.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: forums, mailing lists and other tools

[Florian Snow]

Hi,


hellekin  writes:
> I am very much interested in the topic of using Discourse to promote
> the agenda of free technologies and a public digital infrastructure,
> which I already proposed informally to the FSFE at various
> occasions. I already proposed to host it myself and offered to use it
> as an experimental tool in support of the Public Money Public Code
> campaign.

This may have been mentioned before, but there is a Discourse instance
at community.fsfe.org.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: impact of Gmail's "promotions" tab on free software communities

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> There are several cases where people told me this particularly bad
> behaviour, together with some specific example of how it impacted
> them, was enough to make them give up on hotmail but in each case they
> had migrated to gmail.

The reason might be that people want a nice webmailer and while Google
does filter the mail if they think it is a promotion (and some of our
mails are of a promotional nature), they do not harrass people like
Microsoft/Hotmail do.  Google will usually accept email from personal
mail servers and if they don't, they give you a clear reason.  So at
least from that perspective, their behavior is fine.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: forums, mailing lists and other tools

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

One way out of these bad practices is perhaps making use of either GNU
Guix ([1]) --- which is a package manager that has roll-backs, aims for
reproducible builds, avoids bundling and empowers the end-user because
it can be used even in non-root, besides it can be installed in any
system distribution that has most basic tools from the GNU project ---
or GuixSD ([1]) --- a system distribution which uses GNU Guix as package
manager and also GNU Shepherd as service/daemon manager.

[1] .

2018-01-31T21:19:27+0100 Carsten Agger wrote:
> I was thinking that this warning might in fact apply to my own
> practices. I don't really work in JavaScript, but I'm using a lot of
> Python packages in my day-to-day, and I almost never install them from
> Debian packages.
>
> Why not?
>
> * Versions. Often the packaged versions of Django, Plone, and a lot of
> others, are outdated. People normally don't install these things from
> Debian packages. Plone has its buildout system which pulls stuff from
> PyPI and other repositories, and for Django applications I always use
> pip against PyPI for installing.
>
> * Non-root install. When using pip and virtualenv, everything can be
> installed locally. This also means you can fix things in the source
> code without having or using root access.
>
> * Multiple installs - you can have multiple versions of the same
> package in non-root environments on the same host - something Django &
> Plone sites use really a lot.
>
> So there's actually good reasons not to use Python libraries through
> Debian packages. I imagine the same is the case for JavaScript
> libraries, not least regarding the necessity of having several
> different versions coexist in the same OS install.
>
> *On the other hand*, I do realize that if a key dependency suddenly
> goes missing on PyPI, the applications will break. But I don't think
> the correct solution for that is to use the Debian package except in
> very specific circumstances - building an in-house mirror of the
> dependencies would seem to work better. Or what do you think?
>
> Best
> Carsten
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Re: Apply for membership - or meet us at FOSDEM :-)

[Reinhard Müller]

Hi, all!

Am 2018-01-31 um 23:39 schrieb Cornelia S.:
> All you need an e-mail to m...@fsfe.org and say that
> you apply.

Daniel has already supplied a pointer to the web page giving some
background information about the GA, its role in FSFE, and the
expectations held towards its members. There are plans to improve that
page in the near future, so the call to apply for membership right now
comes a little premature, but yes, membership in the GA (the group that
forms the legal backbone of FSFE) always was and is open to everybody
with a strong and long-term commitment and involvement in FSFE.

> I wil apply after FOSDEM.

Talking about FOSDEM - FSFE as usual has a booth there, and as usual,
you are invited to stop by, say hello, buy a T-shirt, talk with us, and
find out which of the countless options to get involved in FSFE's work
suits you best :-)

Thanks,
-- 
Reinhard Müller * Financial Team
Free Software Foundation Europe



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Re: Apply for membership now!

[Federico klez Culloca]

Sorry, I'm rather new here.

What does any of this entail?

Do you have any link to documentation explaining what you're talking about? Can 
fellows (or whatever we are called now) become voting members? Or is there any 
other requirement? Or is this open to anyone?

Thank you
Federico

Il 31 gennaio 2018 23:39:58 CET, "Cornelia S." 
 ha scritto:
>I have learnt the FSFE is abolishing their community representatives in
>their board (remember the Linux Foundation?)
>You should apply to become voting member of the FSFE, to change this.
>All you need an e-mail to m...@fsfe.org and say that you apply.
>Please do it now! Copy me/list if you have done it, so we see who
>applies. I wil apply after FOSDEM.
>
>Regards,
>Cornelia

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Re: Apply for membership now!

[Daniel Pocock]

On 31/01/18 23:39, Cornelia S. wrote:
> I have learnt the FSFE is abolishing their community representatives in
> their board (remember the Linux Foundation?)
> You should apply to become voting member of the FSFE, to change this.
> All you need an e-mail to m...@fsfe.org  and say that
> you apply.
> Please do it now! Copy me/list if you have done it, so we see who
> applies. I wil apply after FOSDEM.
> 



Are you referring to this process?

http://wiki.fsfe.org/Teams/GA
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Apply for membership now!

[Cornelia S.]

I have learnt the FSFE is abolishing their community representatives in their 
board (remember the Linux Foundation?)
You should apply to become voting member of the FSFE, to change this.
All you need an e-mail to m...@fsfe.org and say that you apply.
Please do it now! Copy me/list if you have done it, so we see who applies. I 
wil apply after FOSDEM.

Regards,
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Re: forums, mailing lists and other tools

[Carsten Agger]

On 01/18/2018 10:28 AM, Daniel Pocock wrote:


There is an issue:
a) if the JavaScript is distributed as minified blobs and we can't
rebuild it easily from source,
b) if a large application makes heavy use of things like the NPM
repository for its build process

A lot of developers have given up trying to package large
JavaScript-heavy web applications for Debian because they are incomplete
or not really free software somewhere in the stack or the tool chain.

The front-end developers end up using other repositories like NPM,
thinking it is easier than doing something through Debian or Fedora, but
it turns out that is just laziness, this type of thing would never
happen if the code had been properly packaged:

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/18/01/13/0149252/erroneous-spam-flag-affected-102-npm-packages

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/16/03/23/0652204/how-one-dev-broke-node-and-thousands-of-projects-in-11-lines-of-javascript

Conclusion: if stuff is not properly packaged in the beginning it
becomes a minefield for support in the future.
I was thinking that this warning might in fact apply to my own 
practices. I don't really work in JavaScript, but I'm using a lot of 
Python packages in my day-to-day, and I almost never install them from 
Debian packages.


Why not?

* Versions. Often the packaged versions of Django, Plone, and a lot of 
others, are outdated. People normally don't install these things from 
Debian packages. Plone has its buildout system which pulls stuff from 
PyPI and other repositories, and for Django applications I always use 
pip against PyPI for installing.


* Non-root install. When using pip and virtualenv, everything can be 
installed locally. This also means you can fix things in the source code 
without having or using root access.


* Multiple installs - you can have multiple versions of the same package 
in non-root environments on the same host - something Django & Plone 
sites use really a lot.


So there's actually good reasons not to use Python libraries through 
Debian packages. I imagine the same is the case for JavaScript 
libraries, not least regarding the necessity of having several different 
versions coexist in the same OS install.


*On the other hand*, I do realize that if a key dependency suddenly goes 
missing on PyPI, the applications will break. But I don't think the 
correct solution for that is to use the Debian package except in very 
specific circumstances - building an in-house mirror of the dependencies 
would seem to work better. Or what do you think?


Best
Carsten
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Re: forums, mailing lists and other tools

[Florian Snow]

Hi Stephane,


Stephane Ascoet  writes:
> Le 29/01/2018 à 09:53, Daniel Pocock a écrit :
>> You can simultaneously solve your problems with public transport and
>> finding a date by purchasing a motorbike.
>
> Hi, I can't believe how much you're trying to find even the silliest
> answers to avoid seeing reality, especially here at FSFE!!!

I am pretty sure Daniel was joking here.  I don't think he believes that
motorbikes actually get you dates.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: breaking bad habits like Doodle and Facebook with, plugins?

[Florian Snow]

Hi Carmen,


Carmen Bianca Bakker  writes:
> If you start treating rights and freedoms as something that can be
> negotiated individually, the "powerful" will misuse this to transfer
> the rights of the "weak" over to them.

I agree, but I see this as an issue with specific implementations.  It
might be difficult in reality to allow people to waive certain freedoms
because you cannot really tell if they were coerced in some form, but
when talking about the abstract idea of giving up rights, I think the
individual should be allowed to do that.


> I'm a staunch individualist, but the individual right to opt out of
> freedom is not one that I can comprehend or support.

I also cannot comprehend it and I am not sure I can support it in cases
where the decision cannot be reversed, but a decision for non-free
software can be reversed at any point, so I think anyone is free to
decide for non-free software even if I would recomment against it.  And
just to make this clear: I think writing non-free software is a
different question and perhaps should not happen, but I have not
completly figured that out for myself yet.  :-)

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: forums, mailing lists and other tools

[Florian Snow]

Hi Jonas,


Jonas Oberg  writes:
> By and large, I believe *where* a certain piece of code runs is immaterial
> to the question, and what matters is the interface the user of a service is
> subject to.

> Let's imagine for a second that Google and Facebook rewrote their frontend
> to use only CSS/HTML, and avoid JavaScript. Would that magically make their
> service more respecting of my freedom? I do not believe so. It would still
> be a proprietary service.

I agree with you, but I see multiple different questions involved here:
1) Is it Free Software?
2) Do I control my data?
3) Is it ok to execute client-side code (in order to see information)?

So what you describe would satisfy 1 and 3, but Facebook would still
process my data in a way I may disagree with.  This is a privacy-related
question, though, not a Free Software question.


> It would still be a proprietary service.

I am not quite sure I would call it that, though.  It might even be a
free service then that locks in my data.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: forums, mailing lists and other tools

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> One idea I've put forward at RHL'18 today is that it may be useful to
> have a series of events over the next 12 months, maybe piggy-backed on
> bigger events, to discuss the way organizations choose their
> communications tools.

I think this is a cool idea.  I am very interested in finding the right
tools for certains tasks and I would love to find out the advantages and
disadvantages of tools that the community already uses.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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