Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Fellowship's Future Relationship With FSFE

Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship

Below is an email that has been distributed to the FSFE community today. FSFE aims to be an open organization and people are welcome to discuss it through the main discussion group (thread) whether you are a member or not.



fsfellowship image






Dear FSFE Community,

I'm writing to you today as one of your elected fellowship representatives rather than to convey my own views, which you may have already encountered in my blog or mailing list discussions.



The recent meeting of the General Assembly (GA) decided that the annual elections will be abolished but this change has not yet been ratified in the constitution.



Personally, I support an overhaul of FSFE's democratic processes and the bulk of the reasons for this change are quite valid. One of the reasons proposed for the change, the suggestion that the election was a popularity contest, is an argument I don't agree with: the same argument could be used to abolish elections anywhere.



One point that came up in discussions about the elections is that people don't need to wait for the elections to be considered for GA membership. Matthias Kirschner, our president, has emphasized this to me personally as well, he looks at each new request with an open mind and forwards it to all of the GA for discussion. According to our constitution, anybody can write to the president at any time and request to join the GA. In practice, the president and the existing GA members will probably need to have seen some of your activities in one of the FSFE teams or local groups before accepting you as a member. I want to encourage people to become familiar with the GA membership process and discuss it within their teams and local groups and think about whether you or anybody you know may be a good candidate.



According to the minutes of the last GA meeting, several new members were already accepted this way in the last year. It is particularly important for the organization to increase diversity in the GA at this time.



The response rate for the last fellowship election was lower than in previous years and there is also concern that emails don't reach everybody thanks to spam filters or the Google Promotions tab (if you use gmail). If you had problems receiving emails about the last election, please consider sharing that feedback on the discussion list.



Understanding where the organization will go beyond the extinction of the fellowship representative is critical. The Identity review process, is actively looking at these questions. Please contact FSFE if you wish to participate and look out for updates about this process in emails and Planet FSFE. FSFE will be at FOSDEM this weekend if you want to speak to them personally.



I'll be at FOSDEM this weekend and would welcome the opportunity to meet with you personally. I will be visiting many different parts of FOSDEM at different times, including the FSFE booth, the Debian booth, the real-time lounge (K-building) and the Real-Time Communications (RTC) dev-room on Sunday, where I'm giving a talk. Many other members of the FSFE community will also be present, if you don't know where to start, simply come to the FSFE booth. The next European event I visit after FOSDEM will potentially be OSCAL in Tirana, it is in May and I would highly recommend this event for anybody who doesn't regularly travel to events outside their own region.



Changing the world begins with the change we make ourselves. If you only do one thing for free software this year and you are not sure what it is going to be, then I would recommend this: visit an event that you never visited before, in a city or country you never visited before. It doesn't necessarily have to be a free software or IT event. In 2017 I attended OSCAL in Tirana and the Digital-Born Media Carnival in Kotor for the first time. You can ask FSFE to send you some free stickers and posters to give to the new friends you meet on your travels. Change starts with each of us doing something new or different and I hope our paths may cross in one of these places.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Drug Addiction is a Real Problem, It Destroys Families
a rather sensitive matter
 
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year
Links 08/06/2025: Security Lapses, CISA Cuts, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: Mime Types and Geminisphere Introduction
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: Slop Companies Retain All Private Data, More Books Banned in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" and "Wireless Earbuds"
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: More Rumours of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's XBox Division, New COVID Variant
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IV: Political Scrutiny and Errors/Inconsistencies in Official Documents
When such organisations receive scrutiny they start focusing on cover-up and muzzling of facts (or crushing people who say the truth)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 06, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 06, 2025
Slopwatch: LinuxTechLab, Planet Ubuntu, Anti-Linux FUD, and Microsoft SPAM
It's not easy to altogether avoid take articles these days
Gemini Links 06/06/2025: "MBA Tear" and Slop ('AI') as Plagiarism
Links for the day
Links 06/06/2025: "Convicted Felon and MElon Trade Insults" and Europe Snubbed by US Again
Links for the day
Links 06/06/2025: Microsoft XBox Bracing For More Mass Layoffs, Climate Disaster, Fake 'Money' Tokens From US President
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/06/2025: Vanishing Cultures and MElon Implosion
Links for the day
Extortion is a Crime, Even If You're Based in Another Continent and Work for Microsoft
reported to British authorities
We're in 6/6 Now, Almost Halfway in 2025
2025 was probably the best year for us
South Americans Are Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
We're hardly even "Cherry-Picking" or conveniently singling out one South American nation
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part III: Data Protection Failures, Just Like at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Just less than a decade ago we showed that the EPO had illegally shared staff data with third parties
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 05, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 05, 2025