Re: Apply for membership and meet us at FOSDEM

[Carsten Agger]

On 02/05/2018 12:06 PM, Florian Snow wrote:

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:

It is quite simple to explain:

- the funds from fellowship/supporters pay the salaries and other major
expenses (over 50% of the budget comes from fellowship/supporter donations)

- but the fellowship/supporters only have 2 votes in the GA (and none
after the change), although some GA members are also
fellowship/supporter members too

I am not sure if a financial contribution alone warrants a voice in the
GA.  What about other donors, such as Google:  Should they get a vote in
the GA?  Don't get me wrong:  I want the community to have a say in what
direction the FSFE moves in, but I am not sure that financial
contribution is the right criterion.  That is something I would like to
define more clearly and then I see a good way forward to remove the
Fellowship seats and tell the community as a whole, not just financial
contributors how they can gain more influence within our organization.


Of course Google could not have a voice in the GA - they're a 
proprietary software company and by definition are not committed to the 
values of free software.


Regarding supporters/Fellows, I guess the point is whether the annual 
support should be considered "membership dues" or not. I.e., supporting 
an association financially doesn't by default give you any influence. If 
you join it, however, become a member and pay membership dues, that 
makes you a member.


So I think the point Daniel has been raising is this: Could 
supporters/fellows, before joining, have received the erroneous 
impression that their payments constitute membership dues for membership 
in the FSFE? Or, should they constitute such membership dues.


As I stated earlier I don't have the answer for that but found the 
arrangement a bit complicated when I became a Fellow back in 2011.


Best
Carsten
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Re: breaking bad habits like Doodle and Facebook with plugins?

[Mat Witts]

Hi Florian,

> [...] people have the right to give up their freedoms, but I don't
know why they would from a theoretical perspective.

Well, with the obvious possibility of again sounding a bit like a
lecturer with a hangover who has stumbled into the wrong theatre - I
have to say there are many theoretical perspectives available in terms
of accounting for / interrogating the human person. His makes it hard
for me to usefully grasp your perplexity. I think the best domains
capable of articulating much of this are social/political science and
moral philosophy but anthropology, psychology, biology and a few others
I have failed to bring to mind here may also have a bearing 

My comment about ideas of freedom having within them the seed of a
paradox - definitively the right to refuse the terms of freedom as
represented I think is slightly socratic/analytic in tone (which many
people still have a fondness for I think?). If I have you right, I think
you are suggesting that quibbling with end users about the quality of
their 'choice' (ahem) to say, use facebook over other free alternatives
would provide good evidence that the 'logic' that makes the paradox
visible can also be dismissed as 'impractical' and 'misguided' (which it
might be) - so either would prove you right.

The trouble is that the motivations (impractical or misguided as they
might be in your view) for human persons to refuse their rights then
there are again, many situations where this might work seems to me to
rather more counter the rationale based on the assumption of perfect
information symmetry that is confounding you and others. The politics of
the architecture of choice is interesting because often what appear as
choices are not choices at all in that decisions are made due to the
ambush of our cognitive apparatus by affective states, also manipulation
by dominant actors and so on and so forth, (behavioural insights -
'nudges' etc.) but even if we ignore all of that (and there are of
course many reasons why we ought not to since these factors perhaps
account for the majority of what you might see as sub-optimal choices)
we are still left looking at an array of what could be described as
enlightened choices for a human person when it comes to abstaining from
the ideal of freedom.

There are many cases where individuals have sacrificed themselves for
the sake of another, or a cause and although I understand you are not in
favour of such things, the power of the consensus on individual
sacrifice, both religious (Jesus on the cross, jihad etc.) and secular
(civil war, world wars) is perhaps ignored in this narrative of the
ideal of a rational human person, since it is connected (again rightly
or wrongly) with strongly motivating feelings like love, fear, power
(dominance), excitement and so forth. 

> I was talking about how someone might decide for themselves that they
want to use proprietary software X, but they can decide differently at
any later point.

Well, I've lost the context for this comment but taking as it is, and
depending on what use you had in mind, I don't see only one direction of
travel here, I see only countercurrents where people may use proprietary
and/or free software combined, interchangeably and alternately and it's
the job of organizations like the FSFE to make the benefits clear, which
sometimes they do really well, and sometimes that message gets lost in
the mixed imperatives of being an employee of the FSFE, an assembly
members, perhaps a small business owner working on our own account and
an FSFE member which I think Daniel is doing well to point out and
possibly seek to change

>> Proprietary software has to happen, because that's the way
international copyright law is configured,

> Do you mean "has to happen" in the sense of "it is inevitable" or do
you mean it ought to happen?

Both. I don't see the moral gap at all. The challenge for us all I think
is to lobby for policy changes to ensure large populations generally get
what they need from Free Software, by enforcing policy and cultural
change in those institutions, rather than putting too much effort into
manipulating (or perhaps 'massaging' is better?) technologically naive
end-users and attempting to block them with plugins and so forth. That
is a totalitarian impulse in my view and ought to be curtailed - even if
you want to give them that 'choice' (which may act more like a 'belief'
perhaps?)

Keeping on message for me is about highlighting the severe threat
Facebook is to individual security and privacy and to argue for change
at the company through political engagement with governments and INGO's,
I don't buy the privatization of responsibility here, it is our
institutions that need to change here and individuals ought to be able
to make their choices as freely as is the case now - but using more FS
when they are living their lives.   

> The idea was to write a plugin that people can voluntarily install and
then it would warn them of potentially 

Re: Apply for membership and meet us at FOSDEM

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> It is quite simple to explain:
>
> - the funds from fellowship/supporters pay the salaries and other major
> expenses (over 50% of the budget comes from fellowship/supporter donations)
>
> - but the fellowship/supporters only have 2 votes in the GA (and none
> after the change), although some GA members are also
> fellowship/supporter members too

I am not sure if a financial contribution alone warrants a voice in the
GA.  What about other donors, such as Google:  Should they get a vote in
the GA?  Don't get me wrong:  I want the community to have a say in what
direction the FSFE moves in, but I am not sure that financial
contribution is the right criterion.  That is something I would like to
define more clearly and then I see a good way forward to remove the
Fellowship seats and tell the community as a whole, not just financial
contributors how they can gain more influence within our organization.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: [GA] who is a member?

[Mat Witts]

> Today we had a poster near our FOSDEM booth saying "Join us at the Funky 
> Monkey", and indeed a nice bunch of people met in that pub. I didn't have the 
> impression that any of them felt having become a formal member of the legal 
> association by following the invitation to join.
Small sample bias? The thing to do would be to try to collect data on
whether or not the membership more broadly understand their position as
'member'? I have left the FSFE because (among other things) there
appears to be multiple levels of practical engagement with policy (which
is fine) but it is based on a rather obscure set of policies concerning
what membership means (which is not fine).

If words matter at all to us, (and they do to me) it seems timely to
think about how the concepts of fellowship/membership/sponsorship are
being transmitted, since new engagements on the level of governance will
be crucial to the effectiveness of the organization. This would help to
avoid nasty surprises for everyone later down the line when they find
out (like I have) that the words the FSFE like to use don't match my
expectations when I do get the time to delve into the internal politics
of the organization.

/ mat    
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Re: Apply for membership and meet us at FOSDEM

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> - in businesses, it is normal for votes at the AGM to be based on
> financial shareholding, a shareholder with more shares gets more votes. 
> In some countries I think non-profits can choose that model too.  It is
> complicated when mixing the votes of volunteers with the votes of
> financial donors though so this would be unlikely in FSFE.

What part do you think would be difficult?  Are you saying giving
non-paying volunteers a way to influence the GA is unlikely or excluding
some financial contributors from having influence would be difficult?

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Apply for membership and meet us at FOSDEM

[Florian Snow]

Hi Carsten,


Carsten Agger  writes:
> Of course Google could not have a voice in the GA - they're a
> proprietary software company and by definition are not committed to
> the values of free software.

To make this clear:  I am not advocating for companies getting a voice,
but what you are describing is not clear from Daniel's proposition.  If
financial contribution equals the right to vote for a representative in
the GA, then I am not sure how it would be justified to exclude some
financial contributions from that right.


> So I think the point Daniel has been raising is this: Could
> supporters/fellows, before joining, have received the erroneous
> impression that their payments constitute membership dues for
> membership in the FSFE? Or, should they constitute such membership
> dues.

Those are separate questions posed in two different threads.  In this
one, Daniel asked people to give him feedback at FOSDEM and to apply for
membership, in the other email thread, he asked the question you
described.  I think those are separate ideas.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: [GA] who is a member?

[Florian Snow]

Hi Mat,


Mat Witts  writes:
> I have left the FSFE because (among other things) there appears to be
> multiple levels of practical engagement with policy (which is fine)
> but it is based on a rather obscure set of policies concerning what
> membership means (which is not fine).

Thank you for that feedback.  Especially critical feedback can help us
improve.  I am trying to understand better what exactly you mean here;
would you mind elaborating a little bit about your experience?

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Apply for membership and meet us at FOSDEM

[Daniel Pocock]

On 05/02/18 13:09, Florian Snow wrote:
> Hi Carsten,
>
>
> Carsten Agger  writes:
>> Of course Google could not have a voice in the GA - they're a
>> proprietary software company and by definition are not committed to
>> the values of free software.
> To make this clear:  I am not advocating for companies getting a voice,
> but what you are describing is not clear from Daniel's proposition.  If
> financial contribution equals the right to vote for a representative in
> the GA, then I am not sure how it would be justified to exclude some
> financial contributions from that right.

There are many points related to that:

- some non-profits do accept corporate members, with or without voting
rights

- some non-profits allow donors to give to specific campaigns: so a
corporate could "vote" for the Public Money Public Code campaign by
making a donation that is only for that campaign.  FSFE could choose to
reject the donation if that condition is not acceptable.  Nonetheless,
each campaign could include an admin overhead cost that helps keep the
lights on in the office, so corporates could not avoid contributing to
essential operational costs.

- in businesses, it is normal for votes at the AGM to be based on
financial shareholding, a shareholder with more shares gets more votes. 
In some countries I think non-profits can choose that model too.  It is
complicated when mixing the votes of volunteers with the votes of
financial donors though so this would be unlikely in FSFE.

- the German laws for non-profits (this was mentioned on another list)
allow donors to specify that their donation or ongoing contributions be
used for capital purposes.  So any fellow/supporter can write an email
to cont...@fsfe.org and declare that all or a percentage of their
donations are for investment / capital reserves and that money can't be
spent on operating expenses or campaigns.  This might be very relevant
for people leaving a bequest to FSFE who want the money to have a
long-term impact and not be spent on one campaign.

So there are many ways that people can "direct" or influence the the
organization's activities without having annual elections or fellowship
representatives.  I think it is worthwhile to put a process in place to
explore all these things.  Is it possible that giving people more
choices and more control may increase the amount they are willing to donate?

Regards,

Daniel

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[GA] who is a member?

[Mat Witts]

Hi Florian,

>> I have left the FSFE because (among other things) there appears to be 
>> multiple levels of practical engagement with policy (which is fine) but it 
>> is based on a rather obscure set of policies concerning what membership 
>> means (which is not fine).

> I am trying to understand better what exactly you mean here; would you mind 
> elaborating a little bit about your experience?

Broadly, I would describe my experience in one way: initial enthusiasm about 
the FSFE transforming into ambivalence.

On one hand I am very energized by the work of the FSFE in keeping FS 
principles relevant to society, communities of developers and end users. On the 
other hand I am depressed and anxious about the specific features of the 
organization that frustrate that work through various contradictions at the 
level of organizational design which Daniel and a few others highlight in this 
thread and elsewhere so I won't repeat them here.

The danger I think is an organization like the FSFE is instrumental (though 
it's effectiveness is difficult to measure) in attenuating the most harmful 
effects of privately oriented institutional control over software development, 
but it is not immune to the potential to become 'weaponized' by well-meaning 
individuals, niches and other groups who themselves who are given far more 
control or influence over the organization than others in various ways.

This style of leadership although has benefits for some, it is generally I 
think problematic for society, communities of developers and end users - the 
objects the FSFE is claiming to support.

This is why I have chosen to cancel my financial support for the time being, 
until such time that a clearer picture emerges from the FSFE about it's policy 
priorities and future activities.

What is required is a clear set of policy priorities with robust evidence of 
support for them from the entire membership (and how 'membership' is to be 
construed seems to be unsettled too). There are many ways to do that from 
elections, polls, forums, working groups and all the rest of it but if either 
one is missing - 1) clear policy and 2) evidence of freely conferred deference 
to them from members (and it seems both appear to be weak in some instances) 
then no good will result and the FSFE will be on course for an arbitrary 
accumulation of capital causing all the overdetermined social problems and 
moral hazards that unaccountable accumulations of capital I think have proved 
universally to facilitate both in software development and anywhere where 
technical knowledge is distributed through networks framed by the monocultural 
havoc wrought by capital rather than the sympathetic wonder of diverse human 
collectives.

/ m 



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Re: [GA] who is a member?

[Carmen Bianca Bakker]

Je 2018-02-05 14:59:23, Mat Witts  skribis:
> There are
> many ways to do that from elections, polls, forums, working groups and
> all the rest of it but if either one is missing - 1) clear policy and
> 2) evidence of freely conferred deference to them from members (and it
> seems both appear to be weak in some instances) then no good will
> result and the FSFE will be on course for an arbitrary accumulation of
> capital causing all the overdetermined social problems and moral
> hazards that unaccountable accumulations of capital I think have
> proved universally to facilitate both in software development and
> anywhere where technical knowledge is distributed through networks
> framed by the monocultural havoc wrought by capital rather than the
> sympathetic wonder of diverse human collectives.

I am sorry.  This is one sentence?

Tiuokaze oni egale povus skribi esperante, ĉar laŭ mi tiom homoj
kapablas legi ĉi tiun tekston kiel kapablas legi la antaŭan.  Tamen
estas pli facile lerni legi ĉi tiun ol tiu.  Ĉefe mi uzas nur simplajn
vortojn, kiu faciligas kaj plaĉigas legadon, komprenadon kaj
transdonadon de ideoj, sed kiam mi bezonas malfacilajn vortojn por
eksprimi malsimplajn konceptojn, mi uzas tiujn maldense kaj sporade.
Parenteze, mi deziras al vi bonan ŝancon kun guglo tradukilo.

If you know what I'm saying.

Amike,

-- 
Carmen Bianca Bakker
en eo nl


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Re: [GA] who is a member?

[Mat Witts]

> I am sorry. This is one sentence?

Yes. Well observed. If you also notice it was a response to Florian's
invitation to 'elaborat[e] a little bit about your experience?'.

The request was a bit vague but

I wrote in good faith about my experience as requested. This included
some irritation which I conveyed in the way you observed. I was writing
from that point of view, a sense of irritation with how I think the FSFE
could do better, not from the perspective of trying to get a prize for
literature. If I hadn't been asked about 'my experience' I would not
have said any more about it since I find personal experience at times an
unreliable indicator of what perhaps needs to be done next - and yet
sometimes it's all we have - so I accepted the challenge.

Still on the subject of my personal experience then - it feels odd to be
asked to offer to help and then be criticized for trying to help! If I
had been asked to write an academic essay or a more reflective opinion
piece using simple English or Esperanto then I may have done so too, but
feeling judged on tone and grammar alone when the context is all about
me being asked to offer my personal experience in a mailing list is a
bit excessive too, don't you think?

 
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