Fellowship and FSFE was: Re: [Fsfe-uk] Should the FSFE (or related communities) get involved in a TV VoD system?

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

"Jon Grant" <address@hidden> writes:
> Perhaps FSFE could team up with the OpenSourceConsortium on this
> issue? http://opensourceconsortium.org/

Perhaps.  We've coordinated with them on the iPlayer issue.  I'll ask them
about this issue.

> I'm an FSFE member. This would be one issue I would prefer FSFE to support
> over other other issues.  Why not have a vote of members on what issues
> we'd like to be the focus for the next 6 months?

This is actually something we're looking into, but the implementation isn't
straightforward.

For example, last time I checked, about 9% of the Fellows were from the UK,
so if you want FSFE to be given a mandate to work on this BBC issue, a vote
of Fellowship members will not do that (or, at least, it won't be ranked in
the top 3 priorities, maybe not even top 10).

Another implementation issue that then comes up is how to coordinate with
the Fellows and how to communicate about what specifically is needed and
what is being done.  This may require the Fellows to elect representatives.
We hadn't yet considered creating per-region representatives, but if you
want mandates for regional issues, maybe this will be necessary.

Maybe the solution would be for Fellows to propose to work on issues, and
for whichever issues get the most support, the Fellows working on that issue
would be assisted by someone from FSFE.  This would solve the coordination
issue, it might motivate some people to do something they wouldn't have
otherwise, and it would help knowledge/skills sharing between FSFE and the
Fellow.  I don't know, but this is something I'm thinking about.

Maybe the key issue is that we need an annual Fellowship conference
somewhere central which is announced many months in advance.  Fellows could
make presentations to the other Fellows about what they think is worth
working on.  (and the voting on what FSFE should work on could be linked
into this).  Again, just thinking out loud.

FSFE's current priority for the Fellowship is to improve the fsfe.org
portal.  I expect this to remain the priority at least until January 2008.
(One feature I'm looking forward to is a wiki.)  So that gives us some time
to think about Fellowship<->FSFE interaction and involvement, so I'd love to
hear what suggestions you have.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ Support Free Software and GNU/Linux
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \     Join FSFE's Fellowship:
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \      http://www.fsfe.org