[FOSDEM] Google, FSFE, safety of women and volunteers

[J. R. Haigh]

Hi Daniel,

At 2020-12-21Mon19:11:09+01, Daniel Pocock sent:
> […] For those who don't know, FSFE receives significant[1] funding from Google, a model that has been compared to tobacco industry sock puppets[2].
> 1. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html

Wow, I was completely unware of Google being a “Gold” sponsor of the FSFE, confirmed on their own website, and I'm very disappointed and unhappy to discover this. I'm unhappy with Mozilla, FOSDEM, you say Debian too, for accepting sponsorship from Google who is repeatedly and increasingly making my daily life difficult, and now I learn that FSFE is influenced by Google too. The problem is that Google splashes so much money around that it's almost impossible to avoid their influence. I don't really know where to go from here, other than expressing my concerns publicly, which I've now done.

> 2. https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/11/what-big-tech-and-big-tobacco-research-funding-have-in-common/

That's a very interesting read indeed!

> […]

I don't have any means to verify such claims, and others have offered plausible counterexplanations. I can neither verify the claims nor the counterexplanations, and so I do not wish to comment on details that I cannot verify.

> I first met FSFE at FOSDEM.  I would hate to see any other visitor or volunteer suffer what Galia and other people, especially women, have described.

Me too, and the good news is that harmless preventative measures can be taken even without being able to verify the claims that call for them.

> During my time as fellowship representative, I frequently heard from people who didn't just quit FSFE, they quit free software altogether because their experience with FSFE was so bad.

How do you suppose this can be prevented in future in a way that doesn't risk blaming people who may actually be innocent? Can we find prevention strategies that do not rely on the confirmation or denial of plausible deniabilities?

> It is the duty of any elected representative to report that.

Indeed. But don't forget to report the other arguments that you represent too.

> […]

(skipping details that I cannot reliably verify)

> and be publicly shamed and excluded at every opportunity?

I don't think that this is healthy, for multiple reasons:
• Firstly, you should be very sure about your convictions before attempting to make someone else's life a misery, and with so much misinformation flying around these days, I urge you to think carefully about how you verify such allegations, else you could be doing someone else's dirty work for them.
• Secondly, even if you can be absolutely certain that shaming is due, it most likely distracts from constructive agenda intentions at the public opportunity, and makes third parties feel bad about the public event for no fault of their own. Be aware of the side-effects to Free Software due to collateral damage of your shaming at an event about Free Software, especially to new attendees.
• Thirdly, I propose that prevention strategies often do not even need to take a side – they merely need to acknowledge the dispute and act as if either side were truthful, finding ways to verifiably expose any future misbehaviour. I'm not seeking to justify past misbehaviours on the basis of being old, but I suggest that seeking to corner future lies may well expose systemic misbehaviours, and exposing those systemic misbehaviours has perhaps greater potential to warrant further investigation into older disputes in ways that are more likely to verify them than insufficiently-evidenced rumouring. I'm not a detective. Their are practical limits to my ability to verify, and so I have to try to find a strategy that is immune to lies from any party in a dispute. Kind of like how you don't need to know every detail to solve ‘knights & knaves’ puzzles, but rather construct your solution to be immune to the inevitable presence of lying somewhere in the problem.

Best regards,
James.
-- 
Wealth doesn't bring happiness, but poverty brings sadness.
https://wiki.FSFE.org/Fellows/JRHaigh
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