Question for TLUGgers: How can Canada take a leading role in FOSS?

[Evan Leibovitch]

Christopher Browne wrote:

>>Waiting for the Green Party to make it into office is a fool's game: I
>>like them as well as anyone but in Canada we're in for a long wait.
>>    
>>
>
>Actually, the governance challenges they have apparently been facing,
>of late, are very similar to what a "Canadian FSF" would have to
>address...
>
Not necessarily. In the FSF the leader *is* the organization; there's
transparency but no governance per se. If you "join" the FSF you don't
have voting rights; you've bought into the vision and have no say in its
direction.

CLUE is taking a different direction, moving to be a completely
democratic body in pursuit of similar vision but different strategies.

Open source doesn't need another Stallman or Raymond or Perens or
Maddog. It needs organizations, not personalities, groups with
articulate leadership who are more debaters and organizers than
philosophers and visionaries.

In a properly democratic org the vision and goals are more important
than the people who execute them. Figureheads are necessary only so far
as the media needs them, but that's all. A perfect example of this is
Linux Australia, a group that nicely passes the baton between leaders
without losing purpose or competence. It prevents burnout and creates
multiple qualified leaders rather than depending on a single point of
failure. If natural leaders emerge, that's a nice bonus but not required.

>Who is it that decides on the course of action?  Who decides which "wannabe-FSF" organization winds up being The One???
>  
>
How many are there?

In Canada there are only two organizations that are not focused on
meetings, and have open source advocacy as their primary goals: CLUE and
FACIL. They work in tandem with others such as EFF and Creative Commons
-- it doesn't all have to be under one roof.

>Richard Stallman leads the FSF quite compellingly out of the fact that he is very much a "prophetic figure."  The near-joke is that he's the
>"Pope" of Free Software, and the excruciating care with which he tends to speak fits with the "ex-cathedra" notion of the authoritativeness of papal statements.
>  
>
That the FSF represents the orthodoxy within a diverse and
far-more-secular movement known as open source is fairly well
established. On the other hand we have the "pragmatists", the many who
share in much of the vision but not all of it (and certainly not the
tactics or the leadership of the orthodoxy). One _can_ advocate open
source while hating the GPL; Perl and BSD folks do it all the time.

>An attempt to found a Canadian FSF would founder almost certainly as there isn't anyone with a comparable level of monomania that would be the clear authority.
>
Fine, since the movement already has enough icons and doesn't need more.
It needs organization in which authority comes from the collective
rather than being imposed on it.

>Regionalism would further fragment this, as there is no satisfactory place to found the organization.  Why
>shouldn't someone in Calgary start another foundation that represents them?  Ditto for Montreal.
>  
>
Actually, this has already happened. There are, at last count. more than
100 user groups in Canada. Most of them have specific focus and purpose
and do that well. If the intent is to serve a more regional or national
purpose, that's OK too. Another nice thing about not depending on icons
is that it's easier to spread the work around.

>The trouble is that politics is HARD...
>  
>
Yes, but the consequences of inaction are harder.

CLUE is taking what we consider to be a reasonable shot at a national
lobbying/advocacy effort. It is designed to be inclusive of the
community, focusing on shared values rather than those that separate us.
There are sufficient common values, IMO, that allow die-hard GNU/Linux
congregants to have common ground with the pragmatists, and that unite
people across the country.

Will CLUE succeed? Don't know; I think it has a good shot, with
endorsements and support from folks like Micheal Geist, Bob Young and
Dick Hardt (founder of ActiveState).

In any case, it is far better to try and fail than not to try.

- Evan

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml