[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: Digression

[Georg C. F. Greve]

 || On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:33:19 -0500
 || Taran Rampersad <cnd at knowprose.com> wrote: 

 tr> (1) To my knowledge, the people who speak for the Free Software
 tr> Movement/GNU are listed here (I had spoken to David Sugar at one
 tr> point about becoming a speaker):

 tr> English: http://www.gnu.org/people/speakers.html
 tr> Portugese: http://www.gnu.org/people/speakers.pt.html
 tr> Spanish: http://www.gnu.org/people/speakers.es.html

These are speakers for the GNU Project, yes.


 tr> Would it be safe to assume that these same people are the ones
 tr> who speak for the Free Software Foundation?

Not entirely. The GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation are,
while obviously closely related, not identical. 

The FSF originally started as a caretaker for legal and organisational
issues of the GNU Project in 1985 and -- while it still handles this
task -- has also grown beyond that relatively early.

People listed on the pages above can speak for the GNU Project.


 tr> Obviously, yourself and RMS are two, but who else is there?

Although a final answer would have to be given by Richard here, I can
tell you that in the United States there are people like the executive
director Bradley Kuhn, its employees and board members like Prof. Eben
Moglen and Prof. Lawrence Lessig who can to some extent speak for the
Free Software Foundation.

In Europe, the most conclusive list is probably

  http://fsfeurope.org/about/team.en.html

but this is not complete. There are also people who work in our of our
regional and content-based teams who occasionally represent Free
Software Foundation Europe.

Also, FSFE has a couple of lawyers who occasionally speak in its name,
for instance in the European Court case where we are one of the few
remaining parties supporting the European Commission against
Microsoft.


 tr> (2) The FSF is formally listed to be of the United States
 tr> (http://www.fsf.org ), Europe (http://www.fsfeurope.org/ ) and India
 tr> (http://fsf.org.in/ ) off of the main FSF website.

Yes. The process of growing the Free Software Foundation network has
begun in 2001 with the creation of the Free Software Foundation Europe
and is not yet complete.


 tr> 2 years ago I emailed the FSF about whether there were plans to
 tr> start a 'chapter' in the Caribbean/Latin American region, and I
 tr> [...]
 tr> quite difficult to say if an allied organization's views of Free
 tr> Software are that of the Free Software Foundation.

That was true 2 years ago, yes.

Right now, discussions about FSF Latin America are ongoing and first
steps should become visible this year.

Until then, there are organisations like Fundacion Via Libre in
Argentina, which is associate organisation of the Free Software
Foundation Europe and thereby has strong connections.

Creating some Free Software organisation in the Caribbean region would
still seem like a useful endeavour, though.


 tr> Further, the FSF's representation does not cover the part of the
 tr> world that I live in, and I have yet to find a Free Software
 tr> group in the region I would ally with.

Please note that we do not claim representativity for anyone or
anything but ourselves and our work. If you read the self-conception
of Free Software Foundation Europe, that should become clear, I hope:
http://fsfeurope.org/about/self-conception.en.html

We do however work on making sure that your part of the world will
have its Free Software Foundation for you to become active in and
participate, so it will also be able to bring the specific Latin
American perspective into the discussion.


 tr> I am certain I am not alone in the world with such a problem, [...]

No, certainly not.

That is also why we have been working in the past years with people
east of India to foster activities there -- the fact that the Free
Software Initiative Japan (FSIJ) is associate organisation of the Free
Software Foundation Europe is a visible expression of this.

Building a solid network of competent people dedicated to the long
term perspective is not an easy task, however, and the FSFs are
usually operating with a fraction of the resources that other
organisations can spend.

So please be patient. If you feel the work is not happening fast
enough, please feel encouraged to become active yourself or support
the activities.


 tr> and while the FSF has made much of Free Software concrete, it
 tr> certainly has not done it all by itself.

Absolutely not. We never claimed to.

It is however true that the FSF -- and Richard as a person and its
founder -- has been the first organisation to really crystallize the
thoughts on the issue and bring them into a scientific form. It is the
oldest organisation to really deal with "digital freedom" and time is
only now starting to catch up with Richards thinking back then.

Of course, having grown out of the principle that it is not enough to
only advocate digital freedom, you also have to make it possible for
people to gain it, the FSF has initially written much of the GNU
Project, which is the fundament of GNU/Linux.

Anyone on this list has been getting the benefit of that work since
this list is indeed run on GNU Mailman. Also, many of the internets
servers are running the software that Richard and others wrote in the
early days.


These days, there are many people writing Free Software -- including
many companies -- and the FSFs could not make much difference with
software development.

Which is why we have now focussed on the issues that noone else is
truly dealing with, in particular keeping the very long-term
perspective of Free Software in mind and studying the interactions and
scientific impact of Free Software on different areas.

FSFE for instance -- among other things -- has a pretty strong
knowledge base on commercial Free Software project management and also
on issues of legal maintainability or Free Software impact on
corporate philosophy.


 tr> The community, whether as members of the FSF or not, has helped
 tr> considerably and it's arguable that the community has done more,

In pure quantity of code, there has certainly been more code written
outside the FSF than inside -- although many of the developers outside
the FSF have later made the FSF the fiduciary of their work.


 tr> The community outside of the FSF does deserve credit.

Absolutely. 

The FSFs don't want to do all tasks and can't do all tasks. But they
are respected and trusted for the work they have done and are doing,
which does form a critical part of the "Free Software Universe."


 tr> Thank you in advance for clarification.

I hope this helped you -- and maybe others -- clarifying matters a
bit. Thanks for asking in a constructive way.

Regards,
Georg

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
GNU Business Network                        (http://mailman.gnubiz.org)
Brave GNU World	                           (http://brave-gnu-world.org)
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