FSF leadership

[Christian Loosli]

Hi all, 

I mostly agree with Agustin and Jens: 

I think that people should be elected into positions based on their 
suitability for that position, which means that things like sex, gender, race, 
cultural background, sexual orientation etc. pp. should neither be an 
advantage nor a disadvantage. Otherwise people with backward mindsets thinking 
that "$xy can't do $z" will go  "Oh, you only got into position $z due to 
being $xy", which doesn't help. Also worst case, but exaggerated, if indeed 
people are picked not based on suitability, you could e.g. pick someone for a 
communicative job that is rather introvert or someone for a finance job that 
doesn't like numbers, then people with the above mentioned mindset would feel 
that their odd views are even more confirmed, that $xy can't do $z. 

>From a personal point of view, I e.g. do not think that someone from the 
LGBTQ+ spectrum would represent me any better on a board. What is important to 
me is that I feel welcome and an not harassed  / discriminated due to that. 

And that is what we need to achieve: our community needs to be inclusive and 
welcoming, so we shall not tolerate discrimination based on sex, gender, 
cultural heritage etc. pp. 
When we have a diverse base, chances are obviously high that people elected 
into positions have all kind of different backgrounds. 

And that is what I think we need to recommend to other communities, so that 
FOSS as a whole is a place where everybody feels welcome and nobody suffers 
from discrimination based on who they are.  On the other hand, I do not feel 
that we are in the position to make strong pushs or even build up public 
pressure when it comes to elections and choices of other organizations. 
I don't know how FSF elections internally work, but if we map it to KDE, I'd 
see it as very awkward if an external organization would interfere with our 
board elections and say  "You should pick candidate $x or you must add 
candidates $y and $z". 

tl;dr: I think we need to ensure that both we and FOSS has a diverse, broad 
base and work on issues preventing that, not interfering with other 
organizations elections and processes. 

Kind regards, 

Christian

Am Donnerstag, 19. September 2019, 04:59:09 CEST schrieb Valorie Zimmerman:
> As many of you know, Richard Stallman has stepped down from the FSF.
> However, his supporters on the FSF Board remain. The FSF is on our Advisory
> Board, according to https://ev.kde.org/advisoryboard.php
> 
> Accordingly, I would like us (the KDE Community) to advise them to
> diversify their Board, as RedHat has done here:
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/open-letter-free-software-foundation-board-di
> rectors. If we cannot do this as a community, I would like to ask the Board
> to do this on our behalf.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Valorie