Greetings,
<quote> * *
*9. Are the members of the Director Board of FSF India elected? *
<snip> As mentioned in the answer to an earlier question, FSF India is not a mass movement and is not a democratic organisation. The purpose of FSF India, as of FSF, is to provide guidance to the Free Software movement. This purpose could be easily defeated if it is made into an elected body.
</quote> India is considered one of the biggest democracies in the world and the Free Software Movement is for the democratisation of technology and knowledge. However, the namesake of FSF in India ie., FSF-India, whose role is to lead the Free Software Movement has clearly defined itself as undemocratic.
Let us take things objectively to analyse, debate and come to some sort of an understanding.
Democracy, transparency and openness are considered the pillars of the free software movement. We talk about free(or open) standards, free knowledge, etc.. and then we hear "Democracy? That is only for theory." How can one ensure democratisation of knowledge if one is undemocratic?
The Board of FSF-I may have to (re)read the works of Eben Moglen and actually implement it in their functioning. I think the following quote of Eben Moglen is important in this context. From http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_The_System_Of_Ownership_Of_Ideas
"Haven't you heard," we say, "The era of presidents for life is over. We are holding elections, here. Here, we made this, its called democracy. Would you like some? Take it, its free."
In solidarity with the Free Software Movement, Vikram Vincent
On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Vikram Vincent vincentvikram@gmail.comwrote:
Dont know this information is relevant but i felt this might be a useful information
Quoting from RMS's Essays : Chapter 20: Free Software : Freedom and Cooperation paragraph 3: ( please understand the context in which this assay was written and then this paragraph will be clear) In this respect, free software is a new mechanism for democracy to operate. Pro- fessor Lessig, now at Stanford, noted that code functions as a kind of law. Whoever gets to write the code that just about everybody uses for all intents and purposes is writing the laws that run people's lives. With free software, these laws get written in a democratic way. Not the classical form of democracy–we don't have a big election and say, "Everybody vote which way should this feature be done." [audience laughs] Instead we say, basically, those of you who want to work on implementing the feature this way, do it. And if you want to work on implementing the feature that way, do it. And, it gets done one way or the other, you know? And so, if a lot of people want it this way, it'll get done this way. In this way, everybody contributes to the social decision by simply taking steps in the direction that he wants to go. And you're free to take as many steps, personally, as you want to take. A business is free to commission as many steps as they find useful to take. And after you add all these things up, that says which direction the software goes.
Chapter 15 Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism - page 93
Every decision a person makes stems from the person's values and goals. People can have many different goals and values; fame, profit, love, survival, fun, and freedom, are just some of the goals that a good person might have. When the goal is to help others as well as oneself, we call that idealism. My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better. That's the basic reason why the GNU General Public License is written the way it is—as a copyleft.
2008/11/29 renuka prasad renukaprasadb@gmail.com
One reason why I promote Debian is because of its politics. It is democratic in its own way. There is an eligibility criteria to be met before being given developer status. Then the corresponding elections for position of Debian leader. Fixed period of functioning. Distribution of responsibilities. Procedure to recall a leader if the majority feel that that functionary is not fit.
Now in the FSF-I we have people who claim to be my leader.
2008/11/29 Vikram Vincent vincentvikram@gmail.com:
"The FSF has a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users."
Cheers Praveen
On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Vikram Vincent vincentvikram@gmail.com wrote:
Free Software Movement itself doesn't seem to be a democratic movement. It is a highly biased movement with a strong political statement on freedom of computing in particular and freedom of knowledge in general.
Free SOftware Movement is not a monolithic entity based on any democratic principles. Rather, it is a diverse group of organisations and indivuduals with widely varying philosophy but sharing some common thoughts and FSF India, FSF or any other related orgs does not represent or can claim to represent all the "Free Software Movement".
I think FSF India follows the similar structure as that of FSF of which Eben was a board member for a long time.
Since FSF itself is an undemocratic organization and RMS being its head a dictator, it'll be proper for a die hard freedom fighter like you to boycott all his programmes and instead conduct some awareness programmes to enlighten people about the damage he is doing to the cause of democracy and freedom.
On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 4:07 PM, sandeep sr sandeep.sr78@gmail.com wrote:
Chapter 20 ; Page 176 ; para 3 Regarding calling GNU system as linux system
They still wouldn't have to agree with us. But at least they'd see a reason to take it seriously, to think about it carefully, to give it a chance. They would see how it relates to their lives. If they realized, "I'm using the GNU system. Here's the GNU philosophy. This philosophy is why this system that I like very much exists," they'd at least consider it with a much more open mind. It doesn't mean that everybody will agree. People think different things. That's okay–people should make up their own minds. But I want this philosophy to get the benefit of the credit for the results it has achieved.
2008/11/29 sandeep sr sandeep.sr78@gmail.com
Since we cannot do anything about FSF I choose not to comment about it. We can contribute something to the development of FSF-India and hence we are.
On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Vikram Vincent vincentvikram@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think we disagree with you on the need for democracy, or transparency.
For administering the country we need democracy. For administering any social group, small or big we need democracy. FSF India does not administer any group. We protect and promote software freedom.
Why select and not elect? If it is not a represented body, how can it represent on behalf of the free software community?
Let us take the election issue first: For an election to happen we need an electoral college. What constitutes an electoral college is difficult to determine in our case, at least in the current state of FSF India. Should we take all the members of the mailing list as those who can elect? Should we take all the people who pays the fellowship dues as those who can elect? Should we take all those who come for the general body meeting as those who can elect?
Or should we take all the members of the board of directors as the electoral college? Or do you want elections for who should be in the board of directors?
Currently, what we are doing is as follows: The person who takes the key role depends on a person's long term commitment to the manifesto of FS. How will we come to know who will take the key role? We will come to know of such people from their work in the community. If they are active, they will be speaking in events, they will be writing, taking FS agenda seriously as a part of their life, doing several activities that spreads awareness of free software, contributes to free software development etc. When we know the person, FSFI will write to the person and send them an invitation to join as a working group member. So far this is what we are doing.
The current electoral college of FSFI is only five members. That does not mean that there are only five people in such a big country. There are many activists who fit to be on the board. Many of them whom we invited to be on the board did not oblige, for they had thier own excuses and other committments. Some of them resigned after being in the board for some time due to practical reasons, and some due to ideological reasons. Some of them were asked to resign when the board came to know that they are not working in the interest of free software.
So, with only five members in the board, we almost always had consensus. None of the board members ever expressed any discent. Another issue is the designations that Arun and myself have. These are requirements of any legal entity. Within the board, as well as within the community we respect p2p culture. These labels are for those who are outside the free software community. Within the community, all of us are peers working in the FSM.
So, the method followed is select from the community and then elect some of them for key roles. This is what the constitution of FSFI permits now: Selection followed by election. Any change of this requires an amendment.
Do you think we need any amendment here? Or do you know about some people who you think should be on board/working group?
Few other points we need to keep in mind:
1. The objective of FSFI is not to create a power or an empire or a body that wishes to rule the society. This way this organization is not like a political party. We do not want to do this even among the restricted group of free software developers.
2. Since we do not enjoy or want to enjoy power, or since we do not govern any one, we do not have to be elected, but selected. This does not have any implications to general claims about how society should be.
3. Whenever we deal with matters like GPLv3 or the next version of it, we may take the initiative or respond to the community demand and take the feedback, since it effects every one. You may recall that FSF did that recently. This is an example to show when should we involve everyone.
4. This kind of organization has responsibility without enjoying any power. The responsibility is to protect software freedom.
Now, the other question is: Can FSFI claim as a representative of free software community in India?
It depends on what the community feels. If anyone else wants to represent free software community, we do not come in their way. We are trying our best to protect software freedom in the country, and we will continue to do so.
We are not absolving the responsibility to represent the community. At the same time we do not want to do it alone. We will support your activities if they are about software freedom. We have joined hand with several other organizations when we faught against software patents, open standards, school ICT education, policy issues etc.
Regarding transparency: I admit we need to be more transparent. We are not deliberately suppressing any matter. We did not report several events on the website or in the mailing list, for no other intention but for want of time. All of us are working as volunteers, and the members of the board are not eligible to take any revenue from FSF India. But you will see lot of improvement in future.
Please donate your time. If you do not have time, donate money so that we can buy someone else's time. Should all the people in the working group take up tasks by managing them by using a project management application? So that the community knows who is doing what? Which tasks are completed, what tasks are remaining etc.
We are now a week or so away from the FSFS.in conference, and soon you have several big events in Karnataka, and other parts of India. let us try to make all these events successful and create as much awareness as possible.
Nagarjuna
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Nagarjuna G. -
Praveen A -
renuka prasad -
sandeep sr -
Vikram Vincent