Dear comrades/fellow workers/FLOSS critic-enthusiasts,
It’s now been two months since we published the Open Letter to the
European Commission <https://pad.public.cat/lettre-NCP-NGI?view> for
which we first wish to thank you for your signature.
We didn’t expect the wide outreach it got as this initiative was pretty
spontaneously proposed on the fediverse by a friendly hackerspace,
accordingly to our common grassroot approach of Free Software. It then
spread out very quickly around the globe: in a few weeks, more than 150
signatures were added (now 187 in total), including those of volunteer
communities, worldwide NGOs, small companies maintaining major FLOSS,
independent workers… This reflects well the variety of our network and
underlines perfectly the involvment of the actors along the whole
“supply chain” of FLOSS that the European Commission (EC) needs to keep
in mind.
We’ve had some very positive feedback from some insiders who reported
their satisfaction to feel such a horizontal dynamic upholding their
work. We’ve also heard and read some critics and discussions that the
letter triggered here and there, among organisations or on community
platforms <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41214860>. We also took
some time to further discuss it within some NGI consortiums and with
partners involved besides the Horizon Europe funding programme to see
how to step up. And we guess you all anyhow did as well and we wish to
pursue this discussion with you: the Reply-To address of this email is a
redirection to the group dedicated to this open letter follow-up.
In the context of the recent nomination of a new council at the head of
the EC, from which we can hardly feel confident about a spontaneous
support of FLOSS, we must pursue our mobilisation further on. As we
founded petites singularités in this very aim to address all political
issues around FLOSS (decentralisation, funding, community organisation,
privacy, sovereign infrastructure and so on), we think we are all
collectively reponsible for the evolution of Free Software policies.
In that perspective, we’re inviting you to OFFDEM 0x05
<https://oxygen.offdem.net/pub/call-for-presence> in Brussels from
February 1st to 2nd. We opened a Call for Presence to pave the way for
expressing the needs, means and blockers of our whole communities (from
the devs to the users). We wish to determine the best ways to
consolidate our software and communities fairly around the world through
strategic public funding *as a syndicate*[1] should. Because reclaiming
funds without thinking the underlying politics would be yet another a
trap for the most marginalized of us, as Florynce Rae Kennedy
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florynce_Kennedy> used to say: “don’t
agonize, organize!”
In solidarity with the people suffering war,
petites singularités
---
[1] With @spacekookie, we use the word /syndicate/ in place of /union/
to make reference to her proposal published in Synware (syn-001) /Free
Software Syndicates/ <https://synware.zoethical.org/>. ↩︎
<https://pad.public.cat/k2AO4D_2S2Odg90mgLXThw#fnref1>
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