Re: [Fsfe-portugal] RFC: Relatorio FSFE Portugal

[Jaime E . Villate]

On Mon, Jun 04, 2001 at 03:11:35AM +0000, Frederico S. Muñoz wrote:

> Conforme prometido aqui vai o relat?rio de actividades da FSFE
> Portugal; espero que n?o esteja totalmente mau, tentei incluir tudo o
> que fui retirando dos arquivos da lista e o que me ia lembrando numa
> ordem mais ou menos cronol?gica.

Acho que está muito bom. Só tenho duas sugestões importantes a fazer:
primeiro, concordo com Ruben em que é melhor não falarmos ainda da "FSFE
Portugal", mais de uma associação que poderá ser a base da FSFE em Portugal. A
segunda sugestão era dar mais nomes de pessoas, que não somos muitos, para
além do meu; assim ficamos também com um bom documento histórico da associação
que vamos crias. Vou sugerir onde escrever os nomes no texto mais para
baixo, mas como seguramente esqueceré alguns, espero que os interessados
corrijam (por exemplo, é preciso que João Miguel complete a lista de
traductores do site).

Também mudei algumas coisas que me dizem respeito: só há uns poucos meses é
que entrei no projecto GNU; e é melhor não antecipar a decisão de quem
escolherá o "core team" como membro da FSFE Europe; pode acontecer que não me
dei bem com o Georg Greve quando o conhecer e se houver mais alguém que quera
ser o representante da FSFE em Portugal, eu não me importava nada em ceder o
lugar :-)

> Isto vai em texto, mas posso faze-lo em Texinfo e depois exporta-lo para
> o que for necessário.
Muito bem.

Um abraço, Jaime

-- texto do relatório com algumas modificações -----

The members of the list fsfe-portugal have taken the first steps towards
the goal of forming a support association for a future Chapter of the FSFE
in Portugal.

>From the early moments when the FSFE created its public mailing lists, some
Portuguese list members have been present in the discussion (Klaus Schilling,
Frederico Muñoz); to give an example, Portuguese was the first language in
which the FSFE Press Releases were translated (F. Muñoz) - and are still being
translated and sent to the local media - apart from the 3 'official'
languages; after an initial time were inertia won, it became apparent that a
specialized list to deal with the number of Portuguese-speaking members was
necessary, since there was much interest, among many subscribers, to form a
Portuguese national Chapter of the FSFE; around April the
address@hidden mailing list was set up by Loic Dachary, who has
encouraged us to follow the good example of the French Chapter of the FSFE and
APRIL.

The list began with around 12 people, and its first objective was to allow its
members to get to know each other better; soon enough the discussion about the
legal things needed to fulfill the goal begun, with several members already
experienced in forming associations (Ruben Mendes, F. Muñoz, Hugo Nogueira)
stepping up and advising on some initial decisions that would have to be
made. Jaime Villate has served as a liaison with the FSF and the FSFE; with
several years of participation in free software in general and his recent
contributions to the GNU Project and personal acquaintance with some people in
the FSF - not to mention the deep involvement in several national GNU/Linux
websites and free software related activities - Jaime coordinates the efforts
of the Portuguese group and has been influential in bringing more people to
the project and in helping the FSFE in several ways.

One of the first tasks was to help with the creation of a new site for the
FSFE (J. Villate, Loic Dachary), in time for the public announcement of the
creation of the FSFE; soon after, the members of the fsfe-portugal list
undertook the translation of the FSFE website into
Portuguese, and that was in a sense a proving ground for our ability
to work together (João Miguel Neves coordinated the effort, with R. Mendes, H.
Nogueira, F. Muñoz). It can gladly be said that such ability is present
in a high degree, since most of the site was quickly translated into
Portuguese, with the members sharing opinions and information about the
translation of several terms, use of the XHTML scheme and Savannah,
etc. Not only that but some members are also taking up tasks in the
FSFE website.

New members are joining in a steady rate, partly due to the effort
made to get the FSFE noticed by a larger audiency by releasing several
messages and news to national websites; if the FSFE was largely
unknown in Portugal some months ago, that situation has changed - and is
changing more as time passes. There are roughly 30 people subscribed to
the list now, and an IRC channel (#fsfe-pt) on the OpenProjects
Network was created (Matti Särkisitta) to allow more real-time contact
between the members.

One important step will be made in the 9th of June, when the first meeting
will take place in Oporto; this meeting is being prepared and anticipated from
some time now and will provide a privileged occasion to discuss things in more
detail and to meet personally. On the agenda is the discussion of the legal
status and name of the organization, distribution of tasks, a general
reflection about the FSFE and our collaboration with it and a small
key-signing party.

In conclusion, the initial steps to facilitate the participation of FSFE in
Portugal have been taken, and the creation of a support association is
underway; after this first meeting more work is to be distributed and we
expect to see more members joining as we spread the
word. After someone from our group is accredited by the FSFE core team,
it is safe to assume that there will exists a real possibility of having a
FSFE Chapter Portugal in the short/medium term; among GNU members, Debian
developers, people involved in setting up some of the foremost
national free software websites, people involved in several ways with
the free software ideals for years and newcomers with a great will to
get the work done, we have a good human potential to build this reality.

The future looks bright :)