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We prepared a white paper for the #EuropeanCommission containing recommendations about #OpenHardware as encouraged last November:

wiki.f-si.org/index.php/White_

Please discuss it or endorse it by replying to this thread.
The paper will be delivered on January 31.

A first draft was shared in December with:

* april.org @aprilorg
* fsfe.org @fsfe
* fsf.org @fsf
* Aral Balkan @aral
* waag.org @waag
* sfconservancy.org @conservancy
* gpl-violations.org
* commonsnetwork.eu

@fsi This is an important, timely, and well phrased report and the framing of temporarily-open licenses vs forever-open licenses is brilliant.

PS. @conservancy@mastodon.technology is funded by Google (sfconservancy.org/sponsors/) and I protest at my name being included in a list that includes them. If you’re happy taking money from surveillance capitalists like Google, we have nothing in common.

sfconservancy.orgSponsors - Software Freedom ConservancyThe Software Freedom Conservancy provides a non-profit home and services to Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects.

@aral

We were not aware that @conservancy is financed by Google. Thanks for pointing this out!

The choice of including the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) in the paper was inspired by the role of Bradley M. Kuhn in the creation of the Affero GPL (sfconservancy.org/blog/?author).

Since an involvement of Google conflicts with our standards (as stated in our statute wiki.f-si.org/index.php/F-Si_S), we have removed the SFC from the white paper. Anyhow, they have not provided any feedback to it.

sfconservancy.orgConservancy Blog - Software Freedom ConservancyThe Software Freedom Conservancy provides a non-profit home and services to Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects.

@fsi @conservancy@mastodon.technology Thank you. It’s important to send a message to organisations that purport to champion freedom that they cannot do so while being funded by surveillance capitalists.

💕

Aral Balkan

@fsi @conservancy@mastodon.technology Update #2: Looks like @fsfe – Free Software Foundation Europe – is also funded by Google (fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus-2018)

The Free Silicon Foundation has now removed them from the whitepaper also.

I don’t even know what to say anymore. Disappointed doesn’t even begin to cover it.

fsfe.orgOur Donors 2018 – FSFEWe would like to thank everyone who supports our work. Your contributions as volunteer, Fellow or sponsor make our work possible. Distributed support secur...

@aral @fsi @conservancy @fsfe don’t let it get you down. You can only take one step at a time. Well done for noting and pointing out where funding issues are a conflict of interest. Others may now consider there own initial sources of funding going forward if they wish to be in theses spaces/ debates of privacy and free software.

@aral @xerz

We did not suspect that Google is since 2013 not only **a** sponsor, but **the main** sponsor, of the Free Software Foundation Europe @fsfe :
fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus-2013 . Thanks for the hint!

This is like if ExxonMobil was financing Greenpeace.

Just like for the SFC @conservancy above, we removed the #FSFE from the white paper.

#GAFAM
#SurveillanceCapitalism

fsfe.orgOur Donors 2013 – FSFEWe would like to thank everyone who supports our work. Your contributions as volunteer, Fellow or sponsor make our work possible. Distributed support secur...

@fsi @aral

I don't think "main" is quite accurate: rather "the biggest", many years in a row.

@fsfe : for more transparency and the concerns raised here, how about publicly stating a precise percentage for any donator above 10%?

I do see that in 2017: fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus-2017 and 2018: fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus-2018
Google's donations to FSFE covered no more than 10% of the budget.

This suggests that there are statistical fluctuations of the Google contribution to FSFE oscillating around 10%.

fsfe.orgOur Donors 2017 – FSFEWe would like to thank everyone who supports our work. Your contributions as volunteer, Fellow or sponsor make our work possible. Distributed support secur...

@fsi @aral @xerz @fsfe @conservancy Like that Privacy Conference at the University of Amsterdam some time ago. Main sponsors were Google and Palantir.