Re: banking and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

Hi Nico,

Thank you for those detailed thoughts.


Nico Rikken, 2024-02-25 13:30 +0100 (UTC+0100):
> And now with mobile apps being so abundant, it is assumed most people
> use the app. Some banks are eroding the online experience by removing
> features from the website and creating new features only in the app.
> This is something André is keeping track of in the Netherlands.

Yep, unfortunately what you're describing is part of a larger trend
that I also perceive as problematic.


> Regarding the security developments, in the Netherlands people are
> being robbed on the street where they are being forced to log into
> their app and transfer the maximum amount to an account of a money
> mule.

Well, while this is unfortunate, it's not something we can solve with
Free Software. It's a separate question.


> In 2021 the Dutch bank Knab started demanding users to switch to apps
> for authentication, removing support for the hardware identifiers.

I fear this will be the next step for many banks.


> As you mentioned, this is why TOTP isn't suitable, because there is
> no guarantee that the code is not copied. Solutions have to rely on
> an external copy-resistant chip/device that stores the material
> (could be a debit card) or rely on system on chips that have such
> features built in.

Well, at least currently, that is not what many banks do, though. They
implement this in software.


> In recent months I learned that methods of rooting now also come with
> methods to disguise the rooting to make sure that banking apps still
> function. It seems to be a cat and mouse game.

I think it is as long as the user controls the device. For devices
where the manufacturer takes great care that the user will never be in
control (as certain fruit related vendors do), this is much less of a
cat and mouse game, unfortunately.


> To enable a Free Software banking app, it would be great if banks
> would provide an API. I don't think this is a realistic expectation.
> Banks want control over the user experience and the features provided
> by banks differ. Will banks trust users to use various applications
> to do their banking? I expect them to only to support this if
> required by legislation.

I disagree here. The features are pretty uniform for at least the
basics and banks used to provide HBCI without problems for many years.


> Besides a Free Software app, the second best would be to run the
> banking application as much in Free Software as possible: in a
> webbrowser. Modern websites can leverage the power of web standards
> for integration including for authentication. It can be provides as a
> Progressive Web App (PWA), so the application itself is cached. All
> required interaction is defined by standards and it then becomes OS
> independent and can even run on new GNU/Linux smartphones.

Yes, I agree that this is the second best option, but it's quite a step
down. Just because you install non-free software through a browser,
doesn't make it any more free.

Happy hacking!
Florian

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Re: banking and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

Hi Guido,


Guido Arnold, 2024-02-22 22:07 +0100 (UTC+0100):
> Thanks for that! Do you mind sharing some sources of your research?
> I've had a discussion with a colleague a few days ago about the
> security of having both factors on the same device. I couldn't find
> good articles backing my point in the remainder of the lunch break.

Most of it were personal conversations and I can't really share that.
In regards to the second factor, I tried to find something public, but
all I could quickly find right now is a somewhat older video that
confirms some of what I describe:
https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8805-die_fabelhafte_welt_des_mobilebankings
(The video is in German.)

Happy hacking!
Florian

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Re: banking and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

Hi Paul,

Thank you very much for your very thoughtful response! 


Paul Boddie, 2024-02-27 16:34 +0100 (UTC+0100):
> What this tells us is that those wishing genuine accessibility to
> services are our allies.

Agreed. This is one of the areas we need to look into because
accessibility is a much broader angle that would help with similar
issues in the realm of appification.

Happy hacking!
Florian

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banking and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

ly, while this would theoretically enable someone
to provide such a service in Free Software, typically the second
factor app from the bank is still required for logging in, so that
doesn't help us all that much either.

At some point, I thought there was one example of a bank that does
allow TOTP as a second factor (or no second factor at all):
Paypal. But from what I understand, Paypal doesn't act as a bank in
that regard, they are only a payment provider and use their banking
license for other things. So the two are separate and that means that
even though it looks like a positive example in this regard at first,
Paypal isn't really because the requirements for payment providers are
very different.

I'm curious to hear what you think about this topic. What's your
experience with your bank? How do you do your banking? Is there an
important angle that I missed? I appreciate any feedback.

Happy hacking!
Florian

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Re: LibreJam - FSF* should host a Libre Game development tournament!

[Florian Snow]

Hi!


On Friday, January 7, 2022 5:21:10 AM CET Richard Stallman wrote: 
> It sounds like game jams have value for education in programming, but
> do they have value for the free software movement,

It depends.  It is a fun way to introduce people to programming and if we 
introduce people to Free Software right away, that may have benefits.  In my 
experience, though, a lot of participants are already programmers though and 
they participate for the challenge.  Most programmers have also heard about 
Free Software before (at least in my experience), so in that case, the benefit 
may be limited to reminding them that Free Software is important and possibly 
showing them how to properly license their repositories.  Because often times, 
they do publish the source code of those games anyway, it just lacks proper 
licensing because they don't want to bother with that.


> enough for free software activists to dedicate time to them for the sake of
> that?

I cannot judge that and I think a lot of what we do is trial and error.  So 
this might be worth trying.  Personally, I have taken a different approach to 
game jams.  For example the Global Game Jam is a distributed event with many 
different local organizers.  I have been involved with one in the past and 
helped set up a sample repository that participants could use and that 
repository had information on proper licensing and recommended the GNU AGPL3+ 
as a license.  That way, people were nudged in the right direction with little 
effort.  Another step further would be to convince a local organizer to only 
accept Free Software submissions.


One futher note because the question of (prize) money has come up: I don't see 
money as the main motivation for participants, so I wouldn't worry about that.  
My impression is that most games from a game jam are not commercially 
successful anyway and people mainly have fun writing something together.  So I 
wouldn't worry about offsetting any potential income from those games because 
the majority of them wouldn't make money anyway.

Happy hacking!
Florian


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Re: FSFE support for savedotorg / protesting the .ORG registry sale

[Florian Snow]

Hi Harald,

This came as a surprise to me even though I also deal with domains
registries at work.  I am not surprised about ICANN allowing this; their
policy has been consistently about monetary interests.


Harald Welte  writes:
> You can find more information at https://savedotorg.org/

I just signed this personally and I hope other people will as well.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

Hi Harald,

Thank you very much for the detailed and very nice summary of what
happened back then in Germany.  It was indeed an important victory for
democracy.


Harald Welte  writes:
> In fact, I find it highly problematic not only in public elections, but
> I also find it very problematic for any kind of democratic voting even
> within "private" entities.  I find it ridiculous that e.g. German political
> parties use electronic voting systems to elect their candidates.
[snip]
> But for political parties which nominate who will be on the
> list of people that I can then vote for in public elections? I would
> consider that quite problematic...

The party doesn't even have to vote on their candidates, they could just
nominate them if they wanted to, so I think whether or not they use
voting computers is an internal matter.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

Hi Bruno,


br...@tracciabi.li writes:
> For all the rest, it depends on the threat model: "cui prodest?" Who
> could have enough of an incentive to spend time, money and effort in
> manipulating any specific vote? For real political election the answer
> is always "a lot of people", so there is no reason to ever allow
> electronic voting for those.

I agree that manipulation is a real threat that should also rule out
voting machines.  However, manipulation is not the only issue with
voting machines and one important question around election systems is
always "How difficult is it for voter to understand?".  That can be a
reason not to use a voting system, even on paper, that avoids certain
defects, but most people may not understand properly.  The same is true
for electronic voting: While anyone can check if a ballot box is empty
in the morning, is sealed properly, and can then watch the vote count,
only a few experts can understand what a voting machine does and even
they need access to the hardware, and ideally to the source code.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Florian Snow]

Hi Richard,


Richard Stallman  writes:
> I am against using computers to enter votes.
> See stallman.org/evoting.html.

I agree completely.  Voting computers violate basic principles of
elections by making vote counting completely intransparent.  That is
something that John Oliver (as much as I like him) fails to mention
altogether.  I am glad voting machines have been deemed unconstitutional
in Germany.  I hope other countries will follow suit.  It also makes
financial sense because counting paper votes is way cheaper than
machines that need to be replaced every couple of years.


> We used to have a GNU package, GNU FREE, for holding elections.
> We decided, the developer and I, to withdraw it because software
> should not be used for that purpose.

I think such a tool could be useful for within organizations or in case
where the stakes are lower than in a political election.  There may be
cases where the convenience of voting online may be more important than
complete transparency.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: diversity

[Florian Snow]

Hi Geza,


Geza Giedke  writes:
> I've tried out the webbased platform (to complain about FSFE "welcoming"
> RMS' resignation)

I think that is a good use of it with the news items and I want to try
using it as a comment module for the blogs.



> I know that I'm old-fashioned in this respect, but I think for online
> discussions no better system than Usenet has been invented, but mailing
> lists are the next best options.

I'm generally with you, but I don't want to condemn a new solution if it
has the potential to attract more people.  But of course that means
integrating existing community members as well.  So I hope we can find a
good solution.


> Is there any software that could provide a (bidirectional) interface
> between a webforum and a mailinglist?

Discourse has a mailing list mode which I have been using (kind of) for
a while.  Why don't you try that and give some feedback here?  You can
activate it in the settings.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: How FSFE is organised

[Florian Snow]

Hi Bernhard,


"Bernhard E. Reiter"  writes:
> The "VIP track" is called "volunteer". :)

Really nicely said.  It took me half a paragraph to express the same
idea.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: How FSFE is organised

[Florian Snow]

Hi Paul,



Paul Boddie  writes:
> The problem with this from the perspective of an outsider, who is or
> has been supporting a community-oriented organisation like FSFE, is
> that it doesn't give me anything more than "indicators".

I agree that we should be more transparent about the Legal Network.  I
am sure it does great work, but even as a GA member, I still have a very
limited perspective.  I noticed that on several occasions.  I think
there have been some improvements in that regard, but not enough yet.  I
think something that would be good is news items about the work there.
Without knowing exactly what happens in the LN, it is hard for me to say
if that would be feasible, but I would imagine there are success stories
that all parties involved would be happy to talk about.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Fairphone 3

[Florian Snow]

Hi Bernhard,


"Bernhard E. Reiter"  writes:
> What are your experiences?

I had a terrible experience with the FP2 (broken case, terrible battery
life, random restarts, promised upgrade took forever) and so I switched
to a used phone.  As long as the damand on the market for used phones is
not large enough to encourage people buying new phones, that is a viable
alternative.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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diversity (was: Re: [nomination]for Fellowship Council renewal and activism)

[Florian Snow]

Hi Christian,


Christian Imhorst  writes:
> If you want more diversity, the first question must be: Why doesn't it
> work? The answer, that there are simply no woman, for example, just
> white cis man is imho something made easy.

Agreed.  I hope what I wrote didn't come off that way.  I meant to
describe a challenge, not make an excuse.  When in comes to the FSFE,
there are also additional issues to consider: For us, diversity should
probably also involve geographic or cultural diversity.  These are
tough questions to solve, but I think very important for the future of
our movement.


> We have to remove any and all barriers for speakers and activists to
> share their expertise and knowledge with the community.

Also agreed.  One of the ideas to reduce barriers was to examine the use
of mailing lists vs something without as many implicit rules (and
potentially more inviting design), such as our Discourse instance
(community.fsfe.org).  I would be interested to hear what you and others
on here think.  Have you tried out the platform yet?  If yes, what do
you think.  If not, why not?

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: How FSFE is organised

[Florian Snow]

Hi Paul,


Paul Boddie  writes:
> I am sorry for the confusion here. In fact, I wasn't referring to the
> FSFE with my remark, but the following crowdfunding campaign promoted
> on this mailing list four years ago by a FSFE General Assembly member:
>
> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/roundcube-next--2#/

I am also very unhappy with how that went.  I backed the campaign as
well and got nothing out of it.  I need to go back and find the original
announcement e-mail on this list, but I sincerely hope there was no
advertising *as* as GA member.  I would expect this to be clearly marked
as a private opinion.  If it was not, we need to communicate that better
for the future.


> Although I wasn't referring to the FSFE, I do wonder whether anyone
> else feels that there are certain common themes involved. For
> instance, a lack of transparency and a lack of responsiveness to
> genuine concerns. People can easily perceive these situations as
> "thanks for the money so that we can do our thing", at which point
> meaningful engagement ends.

That is indeed something we need to watch out for.  I personally feel
that people who engage with us, either here on the list or in our teams,
have access to a lot of information.  We usually share it within teams
because those teams work on those topics.  And if it sounds interesting
to everyone, we make it a news item or so.  We also work hard to make
those ways to engage more visible:  That is why we have a redesigned
contribute page on our website and why we don't have guest accounts
anymore.  If someone supports us by dedicating time, they get the same
benefits as a supporter and I feel that is a meaningful way to engage.
I know this is all anecdotal, but I very much felt that when I started
engaging with the FSFE.  I very quickly became part of many teams and my
opinion is always valued, especially because I tend to disagree.  So
what I understand from you is that we should do the same for people who
don't engage with us in our work, but who give us money.  What would you
feel is a good way to achieve that?

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: FSFE-in-2020: Who are we?

[Florian Snow]

Hi Mirko,


Mirko Boehm  writes:
> I think we are getting numb to bullshitting. So let me rephrase this
> in simple speech: The FSFE-in-2020 ground to a halt because the
> decision makers (our GA and the president) did not prioritise it

I'm sorry, but that is not my impression at all.  The process had
serious flaws from the get-go.  The survey had no clear aim, multiple
major statistical issues and as such was unable to produce any sort of
reliable results.  Multiple people pointed out those flaws in the
beginning of the process, but they did not get corrected anyway by those
in charge.  The reason they gave was that this was only supposed to be
the beginning of the process and it would give a very rough overview
with a more refined process to be added later.

However, at some point, we received a "final" report for the process
that had a lot of claims in it that were not supported by the available
data at all.  By that point, the process had taken up considerable
ressources and so last year at the GA, we had to decide between
continuing the process by pouring more ressources on it and stopping it.
Continuing would have meant pretty much starting over because of the
huge flaws the process had.  We also still didn't know the actual goal
of the process, so we decided against it.

The restructuring was largely independent of the identity process.
There were two major obstacles there, though.  One was that there was a
pad with some notes on how to possibly restructure the FSFE, but the pad
had no obvious structure and no clear suggestions.  In preparation for
the GA, Matthias asked mutliple times for actual motions or suggestions
to be written, yet nothing happened.  My impression was that you, Mirko,
did not have the time to update the pad or something like that.  At the
same time, we had the problem of an abusive GA member and started to
worry more about simply increasing the size of the GA.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Euro Elections and fsfe

[Florian Snow]

Hi Vitaly,


Vitaly Repin  writes:
> Strong assiociation with any political movement (eurosceptics,
> liberals, social democrats etc) is a mistake in my opinion.

I agree.  That is why the FSFE does not associate itself with a
political movement.  We want to be able to talk to any politician.



> Why can't FSFE monitor how each and every MEP voted for the matters
> regarding free software dyring the current and previous election term
> and present this statistics at FSFE web site (searchable web pages +
> json/xml)?

I like the idea, but I also worry about its effect.  Other groups have
similar lists, for instance the NRA about gun control in the US, and
there's a guy who makes US politicians sign a pledge to never raise
taxes and he tracks that.  It creates a problem when people take this
lists about singular issues as the sole basis for their vote.  Politics
is more complicated than that and I personally feel that while Free
Software is important, there are clearly more existential issues out
there that should take precedence.  Some politicians will be more
knowledgable about those than about Free Software and when it comes to
technology, they will vote with their trusted colleagues.  I would not
want to fault them for that.

That being said, if you think, if you think this is an important matter,
would you be able to compile and maintaint the data?

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: [nomination]for Fellowship Council renewal and activism

[Florian Snow]

Hi Christian,


Christian Imhorst  writes:
> But I have a problem with the personality cult around him.

While I think that RMS is often misunderstood and usually does not talk
about topics that he is well informed about, I also worry about the
personality cult.  What happens to a community focussed on one leader
once that leader passes? (Hopefully this will be in the distant future for
RMS.)  Luckily, I don't think the Free Software community as a whole is
purely focussed on RMS.


> I think there should be more people in the FSF besides RMS talking at
> conferences. More people in the FSF who make their contributions.

As far as FSF staff goes, I have seen several at talks around the world:
John Sullivan and Molly de Blanc were at this year's FOSDEM, for
example.  That being said, I would argue that the FSF, just like the FSF
is more than just the staff.  We as a community need to give talks,
organize booths, local groups, and so on to promote our organizations.
If it was only staff doing talks, we would need a lot more money.


> We need more diversity in the Free Software movement, because it means
> respecting people as they are, without prejudice. Diversity brings
> solutions to complex problems of the present and the future we can not
> handle with solutions from the past. This requires people who see the
> world with different eyes. People have to be able to contribute to the
> Free Software movement with their whole personality as they are.

I completely agree!  We are actively taking steps to make our staff and
teams more diverse.  It is by no means an easy task because the pool of
active contributors that we usually draw from for our teams, is not very
diverse.  If you have any ideas in this regard or just generally want to
help, please let me know.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Free Software in Munich - FSFE thanks cabaret artist Christine Prayon

[Florian Snow]

Hi Besnik,

On May 15, 2019 1:48:07 PM GMT+02:00, Besnik Bleta  
wrote:
>
>It’s hard not to see Prayon continuing her satire through her donation
>of the prize money. She doesn't keep the money given from the same City
>of Munich responsible for the defeat of free software.

Yes, indeed. It is very nice of her to use that money to support Free Software 
and a great connection to her talk about Munich's "progressiveness".

 
> FSFE should refuse taking that money. It's money coming from the
>50 + 37 = 87 million deal of City of Munich against Free Software.

Actually, awards typically come out of different budgets, so no need to worry.  
But even if it came from the nonfree software budget, wouldn't it be best to 
take some of that money and spend it on promoting Free Software instead?

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: FSFE and censorship - not true?

[Florian Snow]

On May 6, 2019 11:15:56 AM EDT, Daniel Pocock  wrote:
>Notice how the vast majority of messages come from people within that
>first group?
>
>Even though the second group is so much bigger, notice how very few
>fellows (0.25%) are actually engaged in the discussion, while 25% of
>the
>FSFE e.V. members have engaged in the discussion. 

I don't know. Could it perhaps be the case that those 25 percent do most of the 
work like in many organizations and that dealing with you can be part of that 
work?

Could it be that this message did not make it through because it again abused 
numbers in a misleading way?
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Re: Request for Clarifications

[Florian Snow]

On May 6, 2019 11:49:16 AM EDT, Daniel Pocock  wrote:
> the other censors

Aren't you that other person you are talking about in the third person?
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Re: Request for Clarifications

[Florian Snow]

Hi Mirko,

Calling Daniel's behavior a symptom is a gross understatement.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Request for Clarifications

[Florian Snow]

Hi Paul,

Thank you for asking this question.  Let me try to give you a summary to the 
best of my knowledge.  I am sorry this mail is going to be pretty long, but I 
need to provide some background here for this to make sense.

As far as I can tell the root cause of the issue with Daniel consists of two 
things:  He appears to understand the role of representative in such a way that 
it requires him to take opposition to the FSFE Executive (I sometimes see 
similar approaches to representation  in Anglo-Saxon countries), even when some 
Supporters/Fellows told him that they felt differently.  The second thing is an 
event that happened and felt personal to Daniel (I will get to that in a 
second).

So when Daniel was elected, he requested certain things and made suggestions, 
both reasonable steps to take.  Some of what he wanted, happened, some did not. 
 But there was always a debate about why or why not.  One of the things he 
requested was having access  to our Supporter database which we did not grant 
him because we heavily restrict access to that database for privacy reasons.  
However, we told him he could send mailings to supporters via our system and we 
considered setting up a mailing list for that purpose.  However, we were trying 
to figure out how we needed to ask for consent  to do that.

During the same time, Daniel made many suggestions and part of the problem with 
that was that he never followed through on any of those things.  He would 
suggest something and move on to the next topic so in the end, there were so 
many things happening at the same time that it bogged us down.  Another issue 
with his suggestions were, that they were often half-baked and he showed no 
willingness to improve on them nor did he say he was willing to help with the 
work involved.  There were some instances where we just told him, ok, go ahead, 
do it (as we often do with volunteers), yet there was not even a response from 
him.  One such example was an inventory of all non-free software in FSFE use: 
computer firmware, printers, coffee makers, everything where non-free software 
might be involved.  We asked about the purpose and told him how much work it 
would be (we were afraid of spending supporter money on actions with 
potentially very limited impact) and his response was that it could be 
automated. I asked him to start working on such a system and then there was no 
answer anymore.  So it certainly looked as if he wanted to tell other people 
what work to do, but not participate.  That is not how we typically do things, 
though.  We usually just do the work ourselves that we think is important.  I 
think that makes for a strong community.

His communication style created additional problems.  He often avoided giving 
clear answers and he quoted us out of context over and over again when 
responding to us.  When we clarified his mis-quotations, he ignored those 
clarifications and continued to repeat his inaccurate statements.  And when we 
pointed out his hostile tone, he told us why his tone was just right.

The reason he felt justified in his tone was the event I referenced before.  
Before Daniel was even on our screens as a candidate, the GA took a decision to 
restructure.  The idea at the time was that the elections should be replaced by 
a different path to membership.  When he became a GA member, Daniel repeatedly 
claimed that the vote scheduled during his candidacy was an attack on him.  
Yet, in reality, it had nothing to do with him because the GA had taken a vote 
to take those steps before Daniel was even a GA member.  What further worsened 
the matter was the options put on the ballot:  There was an option to keep 
current representatives active to the end of their turn, but there was also an 
option to have the term end with the vote to remove the position.  He took the 
latter option personally and thought it was an attack on him.

Part of the issue for him with that vote is a step that I personally also was 
not completely satisfied with:  We had some delays in the implementation and 
then had a choice: Do we spend money on organizing elections just so we can 
take a vote on not having those anymore a few months later at our regular 
annual meeting or do we have a short extraordinary meeting and not organize 
elections?  At the time, we chose to go with the extraordinary meeting, but in 
hindsight, I wish we had done it differently because of the way it looks.  Even 
back then, some people within the FSFE disagreed to have this extraordinary 
meeting, but we cannot change that now.  The end effect would have been the 
same anyway, just a few months later.  There were people who had doubts about 
ending the elections and I tried to show Daniel that we were not opponents, but 
agreed sometimes and disagreed at other times. However he either did not see or 
ignored it when people agreed with him and wound up attacking those that 
supported at least parts of what he wanted.

Whenever 

Re: The "rival" discussion mailing list

[Florian Snow]

Hi Novica,

On May 3, 2019 11:49:49 AM EDT, Novica Nakov  wrote:
> What is https://fsfellowship.eu/?

That is a very good question. I would urge Daniel Pocock, the webmaster, 
webhoster and ISP of that website to answer that question. It appears that he 
wants to receive funds of about 200,000 Euros so I would also ask him how he 
wants to handle taxes on those funds, how he wants to manage them exactly and 
so on.

Happy hacking!
Florian

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Re: Is there any hope for FSFE?

[Florian Snow]

Hi Besnik,

You are right. I forgot about the witch hunting clan within the FSFE. How silly 
of me!

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: [Attention] Do not follow to unsubscribe (was: Hijacking attempt by Daniel Pocock)

[Florian Snow]

Hi Christian,

I am also not directly involved in this, but I think legal action (not 
necessarily suing someone, but for example filing GDPR violations or possibly 
criminal charges with the police) are very much appropriate.  I am not sure 
what laws are concerned here in detail but I think such a massive violation of 
privacy and attacking & manipulating our infrastructure is not just a mess to 
be cleaned up, it requires the proper legal response as well.

The nice thing is that this is not a decision anyone needs to make for the 
community. For example, anyone who wants to can file a GDPR violation with 
their local data protection officer. Those who don't want to do that, don't 
need to.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: The "rival" discussion mailing list

[Florian Snow]

Hi Paul,

Thank you very much for your well thought out email (as always).  I agree with 
you that we need to resolve this, but I have no idea how.

Daniel's grievances with the FSFE are largely based on what I would call a 
misunderstanding. Yet he reacted angrily to any attempt of clarification.  He 
repeatedly told others what work they needed to do, but was never willing to 
participate himself.  He told us we didn't engage with him in person when we 
had the chance and when some of us responded by telling him he hadn't even 
stopped by to say hello to anyone at events that we had hoped we could talk, he 
called those people bullies.

He repeatedly makes claims that he must know are not true, both about what he 
claims is going on within the FSFE and, more recently about who is in charge of 
unsubscribing people from his mailing list.

The problem with the whole thing is that when he lies about things, he does not 
mind publishing private information or redacting it in a misleading way. He 
also uses private information out of context to support false claims.  When we 
respond to it, we stick to the rules, so we do not publish his countless 
hostile exchanges with the GA and we certainly do not publish more private 
information to refute his false statements.

If you're interested,  perhaps have a look at the Debian mailing lists. There 
is more of a public record of bad behavior there and Daniel's mails to those 
public lists are very similar to what we received on internal lists.

I tried for a long time, but I don't know how to get through to Daniel and I 
have run out of new ideas to try. I thought he was nice and reasonable based on 
meeting him in person and based on his writing at the time, but he appears to 
have gone on a rampage and I have no way of communicating with him anymore. I 
regret that very much.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Hijacking attempt by Daniel Pocock

[Florian Snow]

Hi everyone,

One of my corrections has not gone through either. I don't care about my mail, 
but it shows that Daniel lies even about these basic things such as not 
filtering mails.

Up until this episode, I still gave him the benefit of the doubt, but now I 
have no idea anymore how he could possibly think his actions would benefit Free 
Software if his accusations are full of lies, if he is breaking the law by 
spamming people, and if he repeatedly lies about how to unsubscribe.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Kundigung [Legal Team] leaving FSFE's legal team

[Florian Snow]

Hi Christian,

First of all, I have to say I am not happy that an email was published
here without the consent of the author.  In addition, the word "fsfegate
2.0" and the fact that this is a completely unknown person, makes me
feel uneasy about this email.

That being said, I would like to answer your email, Christian.
Essentially, I will treat the statements in the quoted mail as questions
from you personally that deserve an answer.  I will answer as many
questions as possible.

I have been a GA member for about a year, but I do not speak for the
GA.  We are individuals with differing opinions and that is what makes
us strong as an organization.  So I will just state my personal opinion
without speaking for anyone else and without claiming that my opinion is
the only possible one.


[Executive engaging the legal team less]

I am not a member of the legal team, so I do not have complete insight
into this.  If the statement is true, I could see multiple reasons for
it.  Perhaps management feels more confident regarding certain issues
due to prior counsel of the legal team.  Just an example, but there
might be a good reason for that.  It is also possible that not everyone
in the legal team would support that statement.


[Less visibility in regards to legal and policy issues]

My impression is very different and in fact, I would say we are gaining
visibility.  But either way, there is no hard data on this issue.


[too strong a focus on campaigns and lack of (long-term) vision]

I feel campaigns are good and important.  The idea here is to deliver
specific goals that can be measured.  I would say they play a very
important part in the question of "What do we want to achieve in the
next 5 years?".  More of the vision part comes in in selecting those
campaigns.  I do see occasional weaknesses here and we deal with them
when they happen, but I see no overarching problem here.


[losing sight of core goals]

I completely disagree with this statement.  Yes, we think about issues
such as gender equality because we think being more inclusive will
strengthen our movement as a whole.  That does not mean we lost sight of
our core goals.  Just look at our website, our mailing lists and check
which things we actually work on.  You will see that it is all about
Free Software and how it is perceived in the world.  Other issues like
inclusiveness is more a matter of how we communicate, thinking about new
channels to use, and so on.


[not institutionalizing knowledge]

I would say there is quite a lot of knowledge that _is_ being
institutionalized and documented, but I agree that this is something we
can probably still improve on.  This is a general issue with growing
communities that a lack of communication might arise.  I think we do
better here than other organizations I have seen, but there is still
room for improvement and I have seen many steps to clarify procedures,
to document information about people and events.


[all staff being on leave after FOSDEM and unanswered requests]

I have seen this in the past, but not this year for example, so the
situation about unanswered requests appears to be improving.


[no information to stakeholders about absent people]

I have not experienced that, but perhaps there is a process here that
needs clarification and documentation.


[emails stuck in mailing list queues; systems (VMs) down due to lack of
monitoring]

The situation with emails has improved somewhat in recent years with the
introduction of a general entry point for inquiries instead of several
different mailing lists.  However, we can still improve on that.  To me,
this is also a question of volunteer engagement and not just about
sponsors.  I would not expect the FSFE employees to deal with all
tickets/emails at all times.  We are an organization that is largely
made up of volunteers and there are many areas where I think more
volunteer engagement could help.  The FSFE is not the office in Berlin
and its employees, the FSFE is a community.  There is simply way more
work than we can handle and certainly way more work than staff can
handle on their own.  So we rely on volunteers to do some of the work
and even then, we could always use more hands.  That means some things
will not get dealt with and what I see is people doing their best to
prioritize well.


[no improvements but personal attacks from the vice president]

I have seen many improvements over the years, but we can always do more,
of course.  As for the personal attacks, I have a really hard time
imagining Heiki (our vice president) making personal attacks.  I have
experienced him as someone with strong integrity and carefully weighed
opinions who handles criticism in an exceptionally constructive way.
His emails are concise (quite the opposite of mine) and perhaps
sometimes a bit direct.  That might perhaps have been perceived as
arrogance, but I am certain if someone pointed out a specific situation
to Heiki that was problematic, he would clarify and, 

Re: [FSFE PR][EN] Copyright Directive – EU safeguards Free Software at the last minute

[Florian Snow]

Hi Christian,

Just a quick update here:
--
Edit of 28 March 2019: The original version of this press release urged
the European Commission to act to avoid filtering-monopolies, but our
description of our position on filters was unclear and incomplete. The
FSFE is not, and has never been, in favour of developing "fundamentally
flawed filtering technologies". The FSFE has been fighting against
upload filters since the beginning, e.g., as a signatory of Copyright
for Creativity or Create Refresh, and joined more than 80 organisations
asking the EU member states to reject the harmful Article 13 (now,
Art. 17). The FSFE will support solutions to preserve users' right to be
in control of technology and ethical standards for service operators.
--
https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20190326-01.en.html

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: FSFE and censorship - not true?

[Florian Snow]

Hi,

Thank you for subscribing to this list today and joining the discussion!

Regarding your question, as one of the moderators, I can tell you that the 
claims in the linked blog post are not true. The author either did not receive 
the full emails or is leaving out important parts himself. Either way, I saw 
some of the mails he is referring to and the quotes are not complete. Please 
take information from this blog with a grain of salt because the presented 
information is unfortunately often incomplete and one-sided. That is all I can 
say about the referenced blog post.

What we, and I personally, want to avoid here are further unproductive flame 
wars. That has been very difficult, but luckily there have been hardly any 
problematic emails after we announced to set this list to moderated. We, the 
moderators, and also other volunteers who are heavily involved in the day to 
day activities of the FSFE, want to hear criticism and we are actually working 
on providing an additional way for you to voice your criticism and ask 
questions.

I volunteered to write a proposal for that new option, but I have not found the 
time yet and I have felt emotionally drained from all the fights, to be honest. 
So please allow me to take a few more days and get back to you with more 
information once I have it.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: temporary moderation of this list

[Florian Snow]

Hi Stefan,


Stefan Uygur  writes:
> I said what l have to say it, is up to care team to let this email pass
> through. Although this won't change my decision and opinion about the
> current FSFE.

I accepted your email because the tone was decent.  We are not trying to
suppress opinions here, we just want a civil tone.  So of course your
emails goes through.  :-)


> However, remember the purpose for which FSFE was founded.
>
> It is my personal opinion and based on knowledge/experience of free
> software community, the way things are right now, the FSFE staff does not
> comply nor suitable to the scope for which FSFE was born.

I disagree because I think they do help promote Free Software which is
the reason for the existence of the FSFE.


> The real ruler of FSFE is not the internal regulation that a few have
> designed but the community around it.

I agree that the community is important, but I am not sure which
internal regulation you are talking about that a few have designed.  The
fact that we find our community important is one of the reasons why we
are temporarily moderating this list: Many people on here want to have
discussions about Free Software and felt this was increasingly difficult
with accusations boiling up about internal organization.  Both topics
are important, but our decisions was not based on which topics we like
or not, it was based on the harsh tone that kept on getting worse.


> This is community space and and organisation like FSFE has no other
> alternative but to listen to the community and not the internal staff.

I think you know that, but just for everyone who reads this: I am not a
staffer.


> The so heated topic you refer to is getting overheated for a reason. For
> instance, l personally did not agree with Daniel's behaviour but l did find
> reasonable his requests,

I agree that some of these requests were reasonable, as do many people
in the GA.  I don't want to drag this topic out too much, but let me say
this much: I was invited to the GA for the very reason that I disagree
with other people and look at things from a different perspective.  I
have disagreed with Matthias, Jonas, Bernhard, and pretty much everyone
else in the GA at one point or another.  The fact that I was invited
to the GA for the very reason that I disagree, perhaps shows you that
the conflict here was never about raising issues and wanting to reform;
it was about the manner in which it is done.  I won't say anything about
Daniel's style here because I don't want to heat up the debate again.


> where the responses from FSFE was not different than the way he
> behaved. Actually exceeded. Or should l say there was no proper
> response?

I disagree.  Bernhard spent a lot of time explaining things and he sent
one message in the end where perhaps his frustration came through a
bit.  But he did something that many of us had given up on at that
point: Responding to hostile messages with explanations.

I am also not sure who you want a proper response from exactly.  As you
said, the FSFE is not the staffers, we are an organization largely of
volunteers.  Bernhard is part of the GA, the highest body of the FSFE
and he responded to many questions.  I am sure we can ask Matthias as
president for a statement, but personally, I think it is best to do that
once things have been calm for a few days.


> Now, l have no political ambitions nor a specific reason to react in this
> manner but, would you mind to think twice why a quiet supporter (member or
> fellow whatever you'd like to call) like myself all of sudden came out with
> certain tone?

Actually yes, we do, and we do take it seriously.  But once a debate
heats up too much, it is very hard to have a serious discussion via
email.  It is incredibly difficult to deescalate via email so that is
why we wanted a cool-down first.  But I feel strongly about coming back
afterwards and looking at what can be suggestions and discussing them.


> What l am trying to say here is, by simply moderating or calming down
> situations like this you are not going to change the facts where FSFE is at
> the brink of 2 choices, a fork:
>
> 1. Do act wisely and go for changes or
>
> 2. Keep going the usual way ignoring the facts

I agree that we should constantly review processes and structures and
reform them where necessary.  And we constantly do that.  And once
things have been calm for a bit here, we will come back and look at
suggestions that we can find.


> Now, l met you personally and had a very quick chat with you and l think
> you are smarter than many people thinks and l talk with respect here.
> Therefore l invite you to reflect and meditate on what l just
> wrote/said.

I will, of course.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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temporary moderation of this list

[Florian Snow]

Dear list subscribers,

Many mails in the recent discussions do not add new arguments, but
rather fuel a heated meta-discussion about who said what with which
intention. Over the course of just one day, the CARE team was alerted to
several issues and more and more people, both on the list and in private
messages, raised their voices asking to avoid what they see as a debate
that is unproductive and unsuited for a mailing list.

To hopefully help calm down the situation, the list moderation team
decided to set this list on moderation from now until next Tuesday.

Every message that is on-topic, written in an appropriate tone, and in
line with our CoC will be delivered to the list, no matter the opinion.

We apologize for any potential delays in message delivery due to
moderation. Thank you very much and looking forward to many fruitful and
friendly discussions.

Happy hacking!
Florian for the moderators
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Re: using abuse to avoid serious issues on discussion@ (Re: what makes a good president and chairperson?)

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> A private message sent to the GA list just yesterday contradicts what
> you said.

I am sorry, but I have no idea what you are trying to say.


> Would you like to republish all the GA mails in public or
> would you prefer to simply acknowledge you were wrong and withdraw
> everything you said?

I am sorry, but still no clue.  Either way, I know at least some of
Bernhard's comments to be true, so if one were wrong, why would he
withdraw everything said?  By the way, you repeatedly make statements
here that you must at least by now know are not true, so please apply
the same standard to yourself.


> Matthias was linking your concerns about "identity abuse" to the FSF /
> FSFE question.  It is extraordinary to see how far people will go to
> avoid questions about that, you went into this horrible and unjustified
> tirade against me, makes me feel like I took a bullet for RMS.

The FSF and the FSFE are sister organizations and I see no actual
identity abuse there.  I am not sure which question people are avoiding
there and I have no idea which figurative bullet you are taking about.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: transparency about the fellowship

[Florian Snow]

Hi everyone!

Am 10. Juli 2018 09:19:27 MESZ schrieb Michael Kesper :
>If you make your last will with a (for you, at least) substantial
>amount of money I bet you know who you want to support EXACTLY.

I would like to add something here: I take the "you" in this sentence as an 
impersonal "you". That means I understand it as " If somebody makes their last 
will with a (for that person, at least) substantial amount of money I bet they 
know who they want to support EXACTLY." The impersonal use of "you" is very 
common in English.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Rmll event on Sunday evening

[Florian Snow]

Hi Cryptie,


Cryptie  writes:
> The RMLL[0] have a traditional "meal of the libre" every year, which
> will take place on Sunday evening.

I booked the liberty meal a while ago and I am very much looking forward
to seeing many of you there.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Public Money Public Code: a good policy for FSFE and other non-profits?

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


I think the inventory you propose can be interesting.  If we do it, we
might want to include what Free Software people use so we can say to
others:  "Here are tools that have proven useful to us in our work as a
non-profit organization."  That might be useful to others.


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> If the motion is revised to focus on something like "staff computers"
> and people reply that only the firmware is non-free but they don't
> tell us they are using non-free apps on their personal mobile phones
> to do FSFE stuff then they are not respecting the intention of the
> motion

I am sorry, but I cannot see any way in which we could regulate what
people do privately.  What people do as part of their job for a Free
Software organization, yes, but there has to be a limit when it comes to
personal space.  We do not want to run the FSFE like a police state that
checks people's every move.


> The motion should also apply to firmware.  Think about some of the
> following:
>
> - printer firmware: many modern network printers are automatically
> phoning home to their manufacturer to report about usage and download
> updates.
>
> - IP phones on your desk: how do you know the microphone can't be
> switched on remotely if it runs non-free firmware?  In fact, such
> exploits are well known

Ok, that is a good point.  What about (potentially malicious) circuitry?
Should we include that as well?


> Some organizations even generate these reports (or the skeleton of the
> report) automatically, extracting a list of all known MAC addresses from
> their switches and access points, installing management agents on every
> host with a function to detect all installed binaries and also observing
> all network connections and correlating them back to the respective
> binaries.  Such data could be cross referenced with checksums of trusted
> binaries and the data could be annotated on a wiki page.

That sounds like a great way to not spend staff time on this.  So I see
a path here to gather more support because spending limited staff time
on such an inventory is really a blocker.  It looks like you are
familiar with some of those tools for generating reports and you would
certainly be qualified to do annotations or possibly write software to
automate the annotation process.  Would you be willing to work on this?

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Public Money Public Code: a good policy for FSFE and other non-profits?

[Florian Snow]

Hi Paul,


Paul Boddie  writes:
> Many of us commit to using Free Software exclusively where the right
> to exercise this control has been given to us. Actively using and
> developing such software is just as important as promoting it,
> arguably more so. If I were to use proprietary software to advocate
> Free Software usage, it might be said that I would merely be indulging
> in a hobby, that I do not lead by example, and so on.

I am such a person that is very strict about using only Free Software
when it comes to my computing.  There are areas where I feel it can be
benefitial for an organization to be present on social media, even if
that means using non-free Javascript for example.  I think Richard
Stallman as the founder of our movement recognizes that reaching people
can be very important.  For example, in the Rapid Responders team of the
FSF, he sent links to sites that required non-free Javascript to post
comments.  When we pointed that problem out to him (he may not have been
aware of the requirement), he said he would
never ask anyone to run non-free software, but if there was someone in
the group that did not mind, then posting a comment would be helpful to
our movement.  So I would say when it comes to communicating to people
we would not otherwise reach, we have to carefully analyze the situation
and make a decision.  So there may be cases that are not quite clear
cut.


That being said, I would support an inventory of software we use under
the right circumstances.  If we were to do that, we would need a clear
scope and volunteer time to actually maintain the inventory.  Staff time
is very limited and precious and I would not want it spent on an
inventory that may not be all that interesting.  From what I have seen
personally, the FSFE staff uses Free Software exclusively, but there are
probably devices that require non-free firmware.  When it comes to
printers and networking devices, there is probably more non-free
software on those devices, but I am not sure how much of it could be
updated.  If it cannot be changed, it could be considered hardware.  But
that brings up the question of scope again.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Discussion Digest, Vol 186, Issue 5

[Florian Snow]

Hi Mat,


Mat Witts  writes:
> accusations of personal insults I think requires a much higher
> standard of evidence and in absence of that ought to be discounted.

The evidence is the quote I provided.  I later stated expressly that I
am not against the questions Daniel is asking, but that it is offensive
to claim he was the last man standing for democracy in the FSFE when it
is clearly not true.  If he had said "some people do not stand for
democracy", I would have disagreed with the statement, but I would not
have considered it a personal attack.  When Daniel portrays everyone in
a group that I am a part of as being a certain way that at least some
people are very clearly not, then I don't know what this is but a
personal attack.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: the questions you really want FSFE to answer

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:

> On 14/06/18 21:58, Florian Snow wrote:
>> Daniel Pocock  writes:
>>> As the last[1] man standing for democracy in FSFE
>> 
>> Perhaps this is meant as a joke, but you usually do not make that clear
>> in your writing, so I am assuming it is serious.  This is an incredibly
>> insulting statement to many people within the FSFE.  You are supposed to
>> also represent FSFE Supporters like me and others who you insult on a
>> regular basis.  I appreciate how seriously you take your responsibility
>> as a representative, but with your current communication style I have to
>> say you do not represent me because I stand for civil communication, not
>> for insults and attacks.
>
> For me, active representatives asking difficult questions are an
> essential part of a democracy.

I agree with that statement.  Please re-read my comment; I did not
complain about your questions.  I don't like your insults, especially in
this case when they are also untruthful.  You know I made several
suggestions to improve community involvement and influence in the GA, so
I will not stand for your personal attacks.

You are very much _not_ the last man standing for democracy in the FSFE.
Democracy is not about who can yell the most or who can yell the
loudest.  Your current actions are often disruptive and drown out other
people's ideas and voices in the GA.  And when you ask questions, you
often fail to do so and follow up in any sort of structured way, and you
draw conclusions from details that often do not represent what the
majority in the GA actually think.  Also, the last time you asked for
community feedback in person, you afterwards failed to answer any
questions about comparing your stated goal with the outcome and you
report stayed anecdotal.  Please be more constructive; I want to work
with you, not against you.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: the questions you really want FSFE to answer

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> While some people don't care about elections or proper membership,

Disagreement with a specific implementation of an idea does not mean not
caring about that idea.


> other people do care about it so much that they stopped contributing

Perhaps I missed that and then I apologize, but did you bring that up to
the GA with specific examples?


> The constructive thing to do is get more people involved in the
> discussion about what comes next rather than using a reference to the
> CoC to censor how people discuss it.

A call to order is also a normal part of democracy because it keeps the
discussion civil.  No one censured you; we are simply asking you to
refrain from attacks and insults.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: the questions you really want FSFE to answer

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> As the last[1] man standing for democracy in FSFE

Perhaps this is meant as a joke, but you usually do not make that clear
in your writing, so I am assuming it is serious.  This is an incredibly
insulting statement to many people within the FSFE.  You are supposed to
also represent FSFE Supporters like me and others who you insult on a
regular basis.  I appreciate how seriously you take your responsibility
as a representative, but with your current communication style I have to
say you do not represent me because I stand for civil communication, not
for insults and attacks.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Mozilla: "We’re taking a break from Facebook"

[Florian Snow]

Hi Jonke,

I can't help but feel this is a PR stunt from Mozilla.  Facebook
recently had a privacy scandal, but Facebook is the same it has always
been.  Asking them to reform their business is pointless because they
make money tracking users, so they can't stop tracking them.  Also, at
the end of the message, Mozilla asks people to use Twitter instead and
while Twitter does not ask for photos of users and names and such, it is
still able to track users through the web.  So in my opinion, Mozilla is
not all that serious here.

On a sidenote, I think Facebook is a symptom of a privacy issue we as a
society have, but one that is currently starting to fail.  Not because
people realized it tracks them, but because they are choosing to be
tracked by someone else.  A lot of young people do not use Facebook
anymore, they use Snapchat and the likes and that is why Facebook had to
buy Whatsapp - to stay relevant.

Regarding your implied question of whether the FSFE should have a
Facebook account, my answer is still yes, under certain conditions.
First of all, the FSFE is an organization, not a person (and no,
corporations are also not people!), so being tracked has completely
different implications.  The FSFE as a legal entity is not entitled to
privacy or any other human rights so our information is mostly public
anyway (and should be).  What we should not do is tell other people to
sign up for Facebook.  That is why it is important for us to always
clearly state (on Facebook or whichever privacy-troubled platform) that
we do not support the platform and that people should not sign up for
it.  That way, we make clear that our presence on the platform is not a
stamp of approval.  We also need to make sure there is never any content
from us on those platforms before it is also on other platforms so
people always have a privacy respecting source available.

If we meet those conditions, I think we can gain from being on platforms
like Facebook because we can reach people that we would not reach
otherwise and hopefully, in the process, they will become more aware of
Facebook's privacy issues.  I think we should have a voice of dissent on
a platform we find problematic instead of leaving it to voices of
approval.  Or to put it another way:  If you want to warn people about
the dangers of X, you need to talk to people who use X (and X can be
anything: non-free software, drugs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

I didn't arrive at this position lightly:  I want the FSFE to be a
beacon of freedom and privacy.  I want the FSFE to always bahave in
accordance with its principles.  For a long time, that made me think we
should not be on platforms like Facebook, but then I realized the
different implications if we as an organization are on Facebook or we as
a community:  I think the former can be done in accordance with our
principles, but not the latter.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: subdomains for testing things

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,

You are mingling several different ideas here, so let me try to separate
them to keep this discussion productive:
1) Should tools not ready for production live under a (sub-) domain
   separate from fsfe.org?
2) How do we switch teams over?
3) Is Discourse a suitable replacement for E-Mail?

Your original question was 1) and now you are starting to bring up 2)
and 3).


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> Git is designed from the ground up as a distributed tool so that is
> vastly different.
> Each project that uses Git can do so without impacting other projects.
> Communication tools (Mailman, Discourse, XMPP) are a special case though
> because everybody needs to use them.

I guess this refers to 2) above.  Yes Git is distributed, but everyone
in a team that uses Git, needs to use Git.  This is the same for a
platform such as Discourse.  That is why we have team coordinators that
can ask the team.


> But it is not that simple.  If you start using it for a campaign, you
> are either
> a) forcing everybody who interacts the campaign to use it too, or
> b) isolating the campaign from the rest of the community.
>
> Neither is ideal.
>
> Consider the impact by Metcalfe's Law, imagine we have 200 volunteers
> using a single communication tool for all campaigns:
>
> Value = 200^2 = 40,000
>
> Now imagine if you have 150 volunteers using email and 50 using Discourse:
>
> Value = 150^2 + 50^2 = 25,000
>
> What Metcalfe's Law is telling us is that an organization committed to a
> single platform is stronger than an organization that spreads itself
> over different platforms.  It works either way: even if 150 volunteers
> switch to Discourse and only 50 remain on email, the organization is
> still weaker.

By this logic, we would need to decide for either email or phone or XMPP
communication.  That is not what this is about.  Different teams might
want different tools and that is fine.  There have been no decisions
about anything yet.  This is a test and we will see how the community
feels.  If there is an influx of new interested people because they are
more attracted by Discourse then by Mailman, then great, if it is not
the case, we will also know.  At least until then, the two two tools can
coexist.


> It is also worth remembering that FSFE needs to communicate with people
> beyond the community: once again the global email network has a value
> with Metcalfe's Law, but each forum instance is like a little island.

This refers to 3) and I tend to agree.  However, that says nothing about
your original question, 1).

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: subdomains for testing things

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> How does using a domain with the word "test" in it somewhere create more
> work?

At some point, a service is at least supposed to go into production, so
at that point, configuration files need to change, DNS records need to
change, and links to the old subdomain break unless you set up
forwarding in the server.  That may not sound like a lot, but it is
additional work.


> What about the possibility that people using the service by mistake
> creates more work too?

That is a good point.  There is a simpler solution to this, though.  We
can either add a "test" to the logo of the page or add a description
that describes the test nature or perhaps both.

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

[Florian Snow]

Hi everyone,


Daniel Pocock  writes:
> As I am not an ordinary member of the GA, rather, I am a fellowship
> representative, I try to consider the views of all fellows, supporters
> and volunteers and not just my own views when communicating with the
> GA.

Just to clarify this a bit:  I am not a Fellowship representative, but I
also try to consider multiple views, especially of people who are not
part of the GA.  I have the impression this is also true for other GA
members.  I am sure Daniel did not mean to imply otherwise; I just
wanted to clarify here in case anyone misunderstood.

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

[Florian Snow]

Hi Mat,

Thank you for your feedback!  Information like that is helpful in making
the FSFE a better organization for everyone.  Of course, your feedback
will not be the only thing to consider, but I find it especially
important to hear feedback from someone like you who stopped
contributing financially, but is still interested enough in the
community to stay on the mailing list.  That is definitely an important
data point, even if it is just one.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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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: [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

[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: 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: who is a member?

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,

As far as I remember, the form said "Join the Fellowship" and explained that 
this was a financial contribution.

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

[Florian Snow]

Hi,


hellekin  writes:
> Hmmm, no there is not, only a broken page.

Good point and a good reminder for me to check one last time before I
send links around.  :-)

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

[Florian Snow]

Hi Werner,


Werner Koch  writes:
> I personally see a lot of problems that employees of the FSFE are also
> members _and_ that they make up a large part of the membership.

Would you care to elaborate a little bit on this point?  I am curious
about it.

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

[Florian Snow]

Hi Mat,


Mat Witts  writes:
>> I also cannot comprehend it
> It' easy - one example is some groups object to liberal notions of
> education on the pretext of religious belief.

I used comprehend here differently.  I would argue people have the right
to give up their freedoms, but I don't know why they would from a
theoretical perspective.  From a practical perspective, I understand
that people will give reasons, but I cannot help but feel that those
reasons are misguided.


>> a decision for non-free software can be reversed at any point
> Yes, but if software is 'copyleft', then bringing it back into
> proprietary control is complex.

I don't understand how the two are related.  I was talking about how
someone migh decide for themselves that they want to use proprietary
software X, but they can decide differently at any later point.  I was
not talking about turning Free Software into proprietary software.  I
would not want anyone to do that.


> 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?


> I don't like FB, but I do like the rights people have to connect to
> that platform, as misguided as I am sure we agree it is?

I agree, people have and should have the right to connect to services we
deem problematic.  But the original suggestion was not to prevent people
from connecting in any case.  The idea was to write a plugin that people
can voluntarily install and then it would warn them of potentially
harmful practices.  So someone who wants to support the Free Software
movement, but does not know the details yet could use such a plugin to
become more aware of some issues and avoid sending links that other
people might object to.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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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

[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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Re: "Joining" vs "becoming a supporter"

[Florian Snow]

Hi everyone,

I agree with everything you wrote, Johannes.  I wanted to write the same
thing but you saved me some time.  :-)

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: "Joining" vs "becoming a supporter"

[Florian Snow]

Hi Carmen,


Carmen Bianca Bakker  writes:
> However, I would be in _full_ support of reinstating the usage of
> "fellow" for volunteers who contribute time and effort.  But then,
> maybe "volunteer" also cuts it?

We discussed this choice of terminology many times.  Some people really
like it, some people, like me dislike it because "Fellowship" makes
people at best think of Lord of the Rings and at worst makes them think
of some sort of religious group which we very much don't want to be.  I
think it was a good idea to make the switch and also a good idea to not
differentiate between people who donate money to us and people who
donate their time.  Both are valuable contributions that help us fulfill
our mission.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: CPU as a service // MINIX in Intel ME

[Florian Snow]

Hi,


Timothy Pearson  writes:
> Giving up privacy and control to waste time in front of a *game*.

I agree with you that freedom is more important than games.  But in the
long run, we need to find other solutions than telling people not to use
things.  Phones are bad because they all come with proprietary blobs, so
don't use them.  New technology:  Often bad, better wait till it's old
and better understood.  Online services that you don't host yourself: Bad,
dont' use them.  Games: Usually bad, don't use them.  I understand that
freedom is important but to most people, giving up games they really
enjoy is also giving up some of their freedom and people who use
services other people host also feel increased freedom because they can
spend their time doing something other than managing a server.  So what
I'm saying is that we need to be careful not to tell people we want them
to lead a live of deprivation.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: ERRATA: psychotic disorders of (few) web market operators and privacy less valued than pizza

[Florian Snow]

Hi Guivanni,

Thank you very much for clarifying this so nicely and for apologizing!

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Introduction to software developer profession for teens

[Florian Snow]

Hi,


Carmen Bianca Bakker  writes:
> - You do not need to be good at maths to be a decent software
>   engineer.

Thank you for pointing that out.  I completely forgot about that.  I
always play this little game with students where I ask them which
subject they think is the most important to become a programmer and they
usually think it is math.  They are often very surprised when I tell
them it is English and a little bit of logic.


> The first should hopefully scare off gamers who would have a miserable
> time doing software engineering.

I am always very carful in scaring people.  I completely understand what
you mean and I don't disagree with your general idea, but there are
plenty of people who got into coding because of games and have a lot of
fun.  But on a similar note:  No matter which profession people are
interested in, I usually recommend doing multiple internships to find
out what suits you best.  Even if it takes a whole year of doing nothing
but different internships, it is worthwhile because starting something
and then realizing halfway through it is not the right thing, takes much
more time than some internships.

I sometimes even go so far as to tell them that if an intern leaves
after an internship and knows they never want to touch a computer again,
I see that as a success (unless it is because my mentoring was so
terrible) because it means someone knows one field they are _not_
interested in.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Job at European Commission for FOSSA 2 in Brussels

[Florian Snow]

Hi Jonas,


Jonas Oberg  writes:
> But if we look a bit broader; the Document Foundation, Apache Foundation,
> Eclipse Foundation, Linux Foundation and so on, these all have budgets in
> the million-USD category, some more than others. So I think someone from
> some of the bigger foundations might well fit the bill.

I completely agree.  That's why I hope someone in one of those places is
interested in a new job.  It would be great to have a really good
candidate and not just someone who can do the job.  :-)

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Job at European Commission for FOSSA 2 in Brussels

[Florian Snow]

Hi,

After looking at the listing on fossjobs.net[0] (I was unable to even
see the page on Linkedin), I hope they will be able to find someone, but
I think it will be difficult.  They ask for someone who knows about Free
Software, but also has managed multiple projects with a budget exceeding
500,000 Euros.  I am fully aware that Free Software is not about price,
but those kinds of projects are also not all that common and I hope
there is someone who does manage those kinds of projects at some Free
Software company and wants a new job.

Perhaps people who do not fully meet the requirements should apply too.

Happy hacking!
Florian


[0] 
https://www.fossjobs.net/job/9085/senior-project-manager-for-european-commission-at-adeptis-group/
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Re: Is lack of software freedom a valid reason for refusal?

[Florian Snow]

Hi Jonas,


Jonas Oberg  writes:
> No one should be able to fault someone else for not following the same
> moral compass as someone else.

You are talking about this specific issue though, aren't you?

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Fellowship elections participation

[Florian Snow]

Hi Daniel,

I appreciate your effort here, but I would advise to perhaps not re-open
this topic again already.  The change away from Fellow to some other
term has been decided twice already to my knowledge.  The first time,
the decision was communicated but afterwards pretty much ingored which
lead to a lot of inconsistensies in written texts.  The second time
around, there was a longer list and while my personal preference
("associate member" which is the term the FSF uses) was not directly on
the list (only by proxy within the term "Member"), I am glad there was a
decision.

I am not generally against re-evaluating previous decisions, but in my
opinion, we need to set up a process to make such decisions first.  Part
of the reason why I ran for a GA seat was because I was frustrated with
how oftentimes, when we needed to make a decision, we would debate for a
very long time, not really reach a concensus, but also have no clear
path to resolve such a situation.  So often, nothing happened which is
also a decision of sorts, but always for the status quo.  So in a way,
we have a super-filibuster here and I think that is not a good
situation.  (I am not trying to imply people tried to filibuster
decisions here on purpose.)

So we need to improve governance here and set a clear policy who gets a
say in what kinds of decisions.  I think the Debian project could serve
as a model here in some respects.  Not everyone needs to be involved in
every decision, but there needs to be a path and a structure to pass on
a decision to a wider community outside of the GA and then actually get
a result back from that wider community.  Right now, legally, the GA has
all the power, so this structure needs to be implemented from within the
GA, but we need a good mechanism to resolve disagreement so we will
still be able to make decisions at all.

Without a clear path to decisions, we will just ask the same questions
over and over again.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: Fellowship elections participation

[Florian Snow]

Hi Erik,

Thank you for trying to find the reasons for the low turnout.  I already
responded on fsfe-de, but I would like to sum up my thoughts here for
everyone who does not speak German.

I think it is unclear what the GA does and this makes it hard for people
to make a decision.  Even among us candidates, I think it is unclear
what the GA does.   The statements about what each of us wants to do as
part of the GA are so different, not just a different direction or
approach, they feel like they are about completely different tasks.  I
take this as another hint of the role of a Fellowship Representative and
the GA in general being unclear.

I also think many voters don't know us candiates.  Now there have been
many steps to introduce us, but looking at all the 7s in the votes, I
get the impression that many people knew one or two of the candidates
and put everyone else on rank 7.  That is a good choice if you want to
make sure that the candidates you know are ranked higher overall and
that is the approach I would take.  However, I think if more of the
candiates were known to the voters, the votes would use more of the
ranks.  This does not mean I think voting the way people have is a
problem, but I think it shows us that we should do more to show people
who the candidates are and what they stand for.

All in all, I think these two issues lead to voter turnout being left to
chance.  If the vote doesn't seem very important or it takes a
significant amount of time to find out more about the candidates, then
people will push off the vote and in the end, they may simply forget.  I
almost forgot multiple times in the past and I hardly ever knew who to
vote for.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: FSFE General Assembly Fellowship Representative Election

[Florian Snow]

Hi Paul,

I am happy to discuss things here with you, and I am sure other
candidates will respond as well.

As to the specific point about bringing in more participating and making
it efficient, I have to say that in my opinion, the General Assembly
(GA) has a limited effect on that.  From my experience with non-profits
under German law (e.V.) in general, as well as with the FSFE in
particular, many decisions affecting volunteer work are made outside of
GAs.

In my opinion, the most important issue in that regard is that the GA
needs to take a vote on how to make decisions within the larger FSFE
community.  Right now, a lot of decisions get stuck in discussions.  I
think discussions are important, but we need to find a clear path to
actually make a decision in the end and not just stall.  Having clear
guidelines and a clear path for volunteers to make suggestions and
reaching a decision is a very important task that the GA can take on.

Another big influence on volunteer work I see is making the GA
transparent to volunteers.  Right now, I have the impression some
volunteers do not know what happens inside the GA and feel like they do
not get very much input.  So I see my role as a communicator between the
GA and volunteers.  I want to talk to people on mailing lists, in online
chats, and in person.  That way, I can explain what goes on in the GA
and bring suggestions from volunteers to the GA.

Feel free to ask any other questions here and I will try to answer them
as soon as possible.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Florian Snow]

Hi,

I think you may just need to add additional permissions to the the GPL
which it specifically allows for.  However, you need to contact a lawyer
to figure out the details because I cannot give you legal advice and I
am not even sure that your assumptions about the requirement of the LGPL
apply in your case because I don't know the details.  In any case, there
are plenty of licenses out there and since you can always grant
additional permissions, you can have any degree of copyleft/other
conditions that you could possibly want and that way, you don't
sacrifice license compatibility.

>From a more general perspective, I can tell you this: What you might
want to consider is setting up a CLA that gives you the right to sell
exceptions as long as all the money from those sales goes to some
defined Free Software organization.  That way, you don't need to set up
your own organization, contributors have a guarantee that you won't do
random other stuff with their contributions and if you do, you lose
their contributions.  Perhaps you can specify a fallback license so
people can still use the project as a whole under the free license in
that case.  Again, you will need a lawyer to help you draft such a CLA.
This CLA will make some people not want to contribute, but with your
plan, that is something you need to live with.  As variant of that model
would be to have all developers agree on a case by case basis.  There
may not even be that many contributors to make that difficult.  The
alternative is just a plain Free Software license where the inbound
license equals the outbound license which is pretty much a community
consensus for many projects according to Fontana.

I think you are trying to support Free Software here with a business
model that is really just on the border of being ok.  I'm not even sure
that it is an acceptable business model.  The FSF does not even have any
member projects that they sell exceptions for, so I am not surprised
about them not being able to help you.  The FSFE also does not do any
business of that kind because the FSFE is not about writing software,
but about educating the public about Free Software.  Perhaps you can
contact one of the umbrella organizations for Free Software projects and
see if they are interested.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Florian Snow]

Hi,


Carsten Agger  writes:
> But maybe Agner might consider using the Mozilla Public License 2.0?
> It differs from the GPL and LGPL in that
> * it is a strong copyleft

I would argue that the MPL is weak copyleft because of its file-based
nature.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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