Hi Simon,
Sorry to be very direct in my answer.
Il 14/01/22 19:14, Simon Phipps ha scritto:
Yes, I have to agree with you. Freedom, equality and solidarity used to
be the norm at TDF. Over the last couple of years that has largely ended
at the Foundation level (fortunately our community still has many parts
where this is not true). This has led to progress grinding to a halt
through mistrust. For example, both TDC and LOOL were ended just at the
point where the external conditions suggested they were going to
flourish. Little has been achieved in their place as you observe, and as
the tired bickering in this thread illustrates.
I feel exploiting a honest and community-felt thought as the one
proposed by Sophie to attack other people is unneeded and unfair. As
such, I will treat the rest of the mail.
We (the current board) spent nearly 1.5 years, and donor's money, to
fully brainstorm around the creation of a third-party entity, finding
out in the meantime that your (and other's) proposal had some issues:
* Due legal checking wasn't thoroughly done;
* Other kind of third-party entities (e.g. fully controlled ones),
achieving the same goals, were possible (and their feasibility was not
even assessed - it would have taken more time, that the current Board
decided instead to invest);
* The proposed setup was (more or less debatable) potentially causing
Conflicts of Interest;
* Being based in UK, Brexit could have impacted it (but this is simple
to see now, in hindsight);
* Last but not least, we received strong opposing from the community to
the proposal itself.
I think we should end here the quarrel, or risk more damage to TDF and
other parties in the meantime.
There are positive aspects of your proposal, though, which I can surely
recognize: it was immediately applicable and it would have impacted even
in the pandemic already; and it sparkled a lot of constructive
discussions inside of the Board, for which we are now more aware of
issues that can appear, and more ready to prevent them, and/or even
developed new and feasible ideas on how to better serve the community
and the Foundation itself.
While mistrust is a pretty heavy word, I wonder if our "mistrust" has
done more damage to TDF than "trusting" everyone and every action in the
first place.
Let me close with a different mood: TDF appreciates your input, Simon,
it is indeed great, insightful and wise, and (I have no doubts about it)
provided in the best interests of the Foundation; we will always listen
to you and thank you for your involvement in the project. We are just
humans, and sometimes we simply fail (also, it's simpler to spot
failures in hindsight); that's why we need to relate to a community that
can point out what's going wrong.
Cheers,
--
Emiliano Vavassori
[email protected]
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