20150914 meeting summary
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Andrew Kane
Sep 17, 2015, 6:00:57 PM9/17/15
to freegeek...@googlegroups.com, William Hale
The monthly Free Geek Seattle meeting occurred on September 14 2015. I
was present with Dan, Jeremy, Al and Kris.
We discussed planning to secure legal non-profit status for the group.
The "Free Geek Seattle" could be claimed as infringing on Mothership's
trademark.
FGSEA is currently using it without permission according to this page [1].
Free Geek is aware of FGSEA and to date has made no move to stop us
using the name. We can't depend on this to continue forever.
In order to avoid trouble and contain the damage if trouble occurs I
propose to add a level of abstraction.
Those of us who are interested can start a new nonprofit corporation to
support geeks and freedom and the combination thereof.
The Free Geek Seattle name can be relegated to a DBA name for a subgroup
of this larger group, which can provide it with services and legal status.
At the same time this larger group can provide similar services to
groups like GSLUG, ta3m, libreplanet-seattle et al. to the extent that
such groups support freedom of geekery.
This implies 'starting over' with the application &c and abandoning my
efforts to resuscitate FGSEA as-is, which AFAICT has no downside and
several nice side-effects.
I don't particularly care about building / refurbishing PC hardware. It
is good to keep old PCs out of the waste stream; other organizations in
Seattle do this.
It's good to help individuals and organizations obtain and use Free
software and hardware. I'm not convinced that refurbishing PC hardware
is the best way to do this any more.
Increasingly, PC hardware is compromised by the vendor in such a way as
to make it difficult or impossible to include it in a Free system. For
example, no modern Intel hardware can run libreboot due to Intel's FSP
blob. There are plenty of other examples. No one of them is a
deal-breaker to a determined hacker, but I view such contests of will
and cleverness as time better spent otherwise.
It's arguably more cost-effective upfront and cheaper over time to
provide a non-PC alternative such as that which maddog proposes in this
video[2].
It has the salutary side-effect of supporting vendors which do support
Free hardware, and of increasing the user base of Debian-ARM.
Such a change would potentially not be supported as part of the mission
of a Free Geek, but that doesn't matter if those interested can simply
spin off a new sub-organization with a name reflecting their aim.
In my mind the only reason to retain the Free Geek Seattle name at all
is the amount of time, money and energy that has already gone into
promoting it. We have a bunch of swag with that name and logo and I
don't want to see the effort and expense wasted.
I feel that the Seattle area needs a flexible and responsive
organization to provide legal and fiduciary services to various Freedom
(software, hardware, or otherware) oriented groups.
The few of us left over from Free Geek Seattle who still meet and
communicate aren't enough on our own. I know that there is some interest
in these things among the GSLUG membership, and I invite anyone who is
interested to drop by #freegeek-sea and discuss with us.
I have a lot more to say on this subject but my arm hurts and I need to
stop typing for now. I hope to hear from any interested folk soon. In
the meantime, have fun :^)
[1]http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php?title=How_to_Start_a_Free_Geek
[2]http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2015/debconf15/Two_contests_no_waiting.webm
was present with Dan, Jeremy, Al and Kris.
We discussed planning to secure legal non-profit status for the group.
The "Free Geek Seattle" could be claimed as infringing on Mothership's
trademark.
FGSEA is currently using it without permission according to this page [1].
Free Geek is aware of FGSEA and to date has made no move to stop us
using the name. We can't depend on this to continue forever.
In order to avoid trouble and contain the damage if trouble occurs I
propose to add a level of abstraction.
Those of us who are interested can start a new nonprofit corporation to
support geeks and freedom and the combination thereof.
The Free Geek Seattle name can be relegated to a DBA name for a subgroup
of this larger group, which can provide it with services and legal status.
At the same time this larger group can provide similar services to
groups like GSLUG, ta3m, libreplanet-seattle et al. to the extent that
such groups support freedom of geekery.
This implies 'starting over' with the application &c and abandoning my
efforts to resuscitate FGSEA as-is, which AFAICT has no downside and
several nice side-effects.
I don't particularly care about building / refurbishing PC hardware. It
is good to keep old PCs out of the waste stream; other organizations in
Seattle do this.
It's good to help individuals and organizations obtain and use Free
software and hardware. I'm not convinced that refurbishing PC hardware
is the best way to do this any more.
Increasingly, PC hardware is compromised by the vendor in such a way as
to make it difficult or impossible to include it in a Free system. For
example, no modern Intel hardware can run libreboot due to Intel's FSP
blob. There are plenty of other examples. No one of them is a
deal-breaker to a determined hacker, but I view such contests of will
and cleverness as time better spent otherwise.
It's arguably more cost-effective upfront and cheaper over time to
provide a non-PC alternative such as that which maddog proposes in this
video[2].
It has the salutary side-effect of supporting vendors which do support
Free hardware, and of increasing the user base of Debian-ARM.
Such a change would potentially not be supported as part of the mission
of a Free Geek, but that doesn't matter if those interested can simply
spin off a new sub-organization with a name reflecting their aim.
In my mind the only reason to retain the Free Geek Seattle name at all
is the amount of time, money and energy that has already gone into
promoting it. We have a bunch of swag with that name and logo and I
don't want to see the effort and expense wasted.
I feel that the Seattle area needs a flexible and responsive
organization to provide legal and fiduciary services to various Freedom
(software, hardware, or otherware) oriented groups.
The few of us left over from Free Geek Seattle who still meet and
communicate aren't enough on our own. I know that there is some interest
in these things among the GSLUG membership, and I invite anyone who is
interested to drop by #freegeek-sea and discuss with us.
I have a lot more to say on this subject but my arm hurts and I need to
stop typing for now. I hope to hear from any interested folk soon. In
the meantime, have fun :^)
[1]http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php?title=How_to_Start_a_Free_Geek
[2]http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2015/debconf15/Two_contests_no_waiting.webm
Jon @ freegeek-sea
Sep 18, 2015, 12:45:52 AM9/18/15
to freegeek...@googlegroups.com
Change is good.
Geeks, count me in for full support. This ride isn't over...
Jon@FGSEA
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