[Fsfe-uk] Fw: Raffle update (FSFE's Fellowship Raffle)

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

From: "Georg C. F. Greve" <address@hidden>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 17:01:14 +0100
Subject: Raffle update (was: Re: 3rd Fellowship Raffle to attract more
        Fellows)
To: address@hidden

Dear Fellows,

we have decided to take the following items out of the raffle

   * 1 Qtopia Greenphone by Trolltech

   * 3 Developer Discount codes for Nokia N800 Internet Tablets, by Nokia

   * 2 Free Software based routers KWGR614, by NETGEAR

and will pass them to developers for full liberation at a later stage.

FSFE sees its Fellows as a part of itself, as people with very strong
committment to freedom and strong ethics, who would always do the
right thing. We always assume honesty and strong principles.

This perception has been part of the Fellowship idea from the start
and is reflected in many details, like the -- from a minimum -- freely
chosen Fellowship contribution, which has never been checked.

Unfortunately this perception has clouded our vision to the potential
negative interpretation of putting these items into the raffle. We
were sure that if we pass these along to Fellows they would do the
right thing and work on liberating the devices with more freedom as
the logical consequence. But it seems that some people got the
impression we were simply distributing them as prizes. This would
amount to distribution of the devices with proprietary software for
usage, not liberation, and would be against our principles.

We have to admit that the communication allowed that conclusion, which
at the time seemed so remote to people in FSFE that we failed to
consider this interpretation enough. For this we apologise.

We obviously will not continue what we now see as a mistake, and
therefore we have decided to take these items out of the fellowship
raffle. They will be replaced by 15 copies of "Free Software, Free
Society" and the remaining items in the raffle will be raffled as
planned.

After the raffle is over, we will have a dedicated call to liberate
these devices where people can apply for them and they will be given
the devices under certain conditions. In setting this up we will pay
attention to the Fellows who have already applied to be allowed to
work on liberating the devices.

We hope that you will understand and support this decision, and that
you will continue to be a part of our work in the future.

With best regards,
Georg Greve
FSFE, President

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-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \  GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \   Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org