Self criticism: an open letter to Egyptian FOSS community

[Ahmed Mekkawy]

Hi everybody,

I was thinking about the evolving of the FOSS movement in Egypt and my contribution to it. Not that I was thinking about how good I did, but about what wrong did I do. It then stroke me lots of mistakes that seemed small then, but combining them showed me that I was actually deviating the direction I should have followed. My only good thing that I was doing this not for my personal benefit, but with the intention of speeding it up in rough times in Egypt. Anyway this still doesn't seem to be a fair deal for the idea, or for the FOSS communities and believers. In this email I will try to show it up, for the sake of the things I violated.

FOSS is about collaboration, transparency, and equal opportunity. These are the real values that derives the four freedoms and the open source definition. These are what ensures users freedom through many implementation techniques in the models I am aware of, free software and open source software.

I will start when I became one of the three admins in EGLUG, the LUG was pretty much dying then - and still is -. Though it had great legacy and even greater charter, but the effort needed for bringing it up was huge. I was more or less the main player then, everyone else was either busy or exhausted from the previous years. I was actually suggesting, modifying, and executing the activities and sometimes even the discussions. True that the LUG did some good activities at that time, but the outcome wasn't a sustainable entity. Symptoms were showing pretty obvious back then: all activities were in Alex were I lived, and I was in the heart of all of them. Tried to create a second line LUGgers, but I failed.

What did I miss there? That was my first mistake, losing collaboration. That was something that the original creators of EGLUG focused on, and I failed to sustain. This didn't show up much cause the LUG was dying anyway and I gave it a last minute life kiss, and it worked for few years. So everyone was thankful and I didn't have enough criticism to stop me from what I was doing.

My next encounter was creating my private company, where I made mistakes as well but let's keep this email focused about community work for now.

Then it was the revolution, and the first meeting for me with the late Dr. Ali Shaath and the immediate support by Dr. Naglaa Rizk. That was when we decided to create the Egyptian Open Source Forum (EOSF) as suggested by Ali. Again he was seeing clearly it's about collaboration. Then the name changed, and it became OpenEgypt. At first few meetings, a governmental entity tried to claim credit for unifying the FOSS community in a public speech, two other NGOs tried to make OpenEgypt a subsidiary (I'm not questioning their intentions though). And we were expecting to be penetrated by all kind of entities soon, which partially happened later.

After few meetings, it was clear that formulating a strategy in such big circle and trying to involve everyone including the ones who don't have strategic vision is more of a waste of time. We needed a small circle to draft, and the big crowd to feedback and evaluate. So it was decided to have a small number that play both roles, to work on the strategy and be the founders of the NGO. The idea of the NGO is to have an official entity that can address the government, deal with other Egyptian or international entities. It was chosen to be in the most opened legal form available, and planned for the founders to lose control quickly: half of them to be normal members after 3 years, and the rest after another 3 years. This is the quickest way in the Egyptian law. All of this planning was good IMHO, especially that there was a call for founders on the public mailing list.

Anyway the mistakes started from then, the criteria of founders selection wasn't public, the names of the chosen founders were not declared in public. While the founders were trying to address ministries and other entities for FOSS directions, the community which we claim to work for its benefit didn't know anything about it.

Another more major setback in transparency was forming MCIT's strategy group. MCIT called for a group to draft a strategy towards FOSS. Though it's logical that such choice is to be behind closed doors due to the government's nature - though we didn't make a better job in choosing OpenEgypt's founders -, but it wasn't logical not to tell the community about the forming of such consultancy group. The community knew after the protest of Micro$oft's deal with the Egyptian government. Moreover, we succeeded in convincing MCIT to involve the community, but such involvement kept with few who we knew personally and the leaders of the FOSS groups. Such failure in keeping effective horizontal flow of information was setting back our potential, if not worse.

Even when we chose someone from the community to play the role of full time coordinator, we failed to communicate that clearly to the community as well.

Though I was encouraging the community involvement in few situations, but I didn't do enough effort to make sure it happens.

Such problems doesn't usually stay as is, either it grows exponentially or it fades away. Unfortunately the first one happened till it reached within the founders team. Let me quote some phrases from emails I got:

- So I was out without even knowing?

- I can't comment on something I haven't seen yet.

- We'd better call this "Closed Egypt".

- This isn't the professional - not even the ethical - way to do it.

- Is OpenEgypt still alive? I thought it's dead already.

I personally hold responsibility of the majority of this, as I'm the only one from the early founders who is still heavily involved with the FOSS communities. I should have known better how to do it the FOSS way. I was thrilled to work on strategies and big scale that I almost forgot how to do it right.

The phrase that did actually hit me, was when I was talking with another respectable founder about creating a non-technical group (something not relevant to OpenEgypt) and I told him we need someone visionary who can drive this, his reply was "I thought you'd want to do it the FOSS way, by building bottom up". What hit me isn't the phrase, but it was that I actually believed that it shouldn't fly that way.

Why I'm saying this? Cause I believe that sharing such criticism openly is a good thing to do. At least it can help someone not to make these mistakes. I do see that I was violating the concept for the sake of large scale implementation. This means that my compass is pointing the wrong way.

So here's the deal: I will continue working on what I'm currently on, while committing to two things. First I will increase my verbosity level, mainly on the official OpenEgypt communication methods. Second is that I will try to delegate as much as I can to everyone, and what I can't delegate I will involve others. I'm not sure I can do this in 100% of what I do, but I'll try it to be the majority. What I'm asking in return is that you get involved, feedback me, criticize me, call me publicly to step back. I will be thankful for all that even if I don't show it.

If anyone got feedback or suggestion, please tell me. If not just wish me luck and discard this email.

Sorry for the extra long email.

----
Ahmed Mekkawy
CTO | Founder
Spirula Systems
www.spirulasystems.com

[Rayna]

Hi Ahmed and al,

Thank you for the email, Ahmed. Many of us have been there, very few have been brave enough to face the situation.

Since it's going on the opening up way, why not sharing all these things you say have remained behind closed doors? :)

Rayna

2013/12/30 Ahmed Mekkawy <ahmed....@spirulasystems.com>

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--
"Change l'ordre du monde plutôt que tes désirs."

[Ahmed Soliman]

+1

P.S: I really thought that OpenEgypt was dead!

-- 
Ahmed Soliman
Sent with Airmail

[Ahmed Mekkawy]

@Rayna sure, I just have some commitments today, I will start writing about that tomorrow.

@soliman you aren't alone in this, I'm sure most of people on this mailing list are.

---
Please execuse my brevity/typos. Sent from my mobile device.
---
Ahmed Mekkawy
CEO | Founder
www.SpirulaSystems.com

[Eslam Farid]

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته،

شكرا جزيلا يا احمد على هذه المصارحة ، وأرجوا بداية أن يكون النقاش باللغة العربية إن أمكن،، او على الأقل سأكتب أنا بالعربية :)

بداية يا أحمد، الطرح الذي قمت به يلمس بعض جوانب المشكلة بالفعل، ولكني أختلف معك في النتائج التي توصلت لها،

واقتراحي بإيجاز شديد أنه إذا كنا نريد إدارة جمعية او مجتمع لدعم المصادر الحرة والمفتوحة المصدر في مصر، فعلينا أن نتبع إحدى القواعد الأساسية لمبادئ البرمجيات الحرة والمفتوحة المصدر،

وهي ألا نعيد اختراع العجلة !

هناك بالفعل في أغلب دول العالم جمعيات او مجتمعات تسعى لنفس الأهداف التي نسعى لها، وأعتقد أنه علينا أن ننظر الى الأمثلة الناجحة منها ونحاول الاستفادة من خبراتهم وتجاربهم،

وأولى هذه الأمور من وجهة نظري هو التعامل مع الجمعية على أنها ملك للمجتمع، وأن لها قواعد إدارية وتنظيمات تسمح بدرجة عالية من الشفافية وتنقل حقيقة الإحساس بأنها ملك للمجتمع،

وهذا لا يعني أنك أو أحد المشاركين يعتبرها ملكية خاصة، ولكني أقصد بالكلام إحساس المجتمع بهذه النقطة،

لو شعر أغلب أفراد المجتمع بالانتماء الى الجمعية وقدرته على المشاركة والانضمام بل وحتى القيادة لها بحسب القواعد والقوانين المنظمة للأمر فأحسب أن الأمور ستختلف كثيرا.

خطوات العمل،

أولا، أن نقوم بعمل حصر لبعض الأمثلة الموجودة في دول أخرى أو حتى تخاطب العالم، ونقتبس من أنظمتها الإدارية والتنظيمية ثم نسعى لنشر ذلك بطريقة تسويقية جيدة

ثانيا، نقوم بعمل تصويت عام هنا يكون مفتوحا لبضعة أيام لاختيار آليات التنظيم والطرق الأكثر مناسبة لإدارة الجمعية بما يضمن احساس الإنتماء لدى المجتمع والشعور أنها ملكه وأنه يستطيع التاثير فيها.

ثالثا، يتم تسجيل ما يتم الاتفاق عليه من لوائح وطرق إدارية وتنظيمية في الأوراق الرسمية للجمعية،

رابعا، حملة تسويقية للجمعية في ثوبها الجديد والتركيز على أنها ملك للمجتمع وأن كل فرد من المجتمع مطالب بأن يشارك فيها ويضيف اليها.

وجزاكم الله خيرا..

[Rayna]

Hi Eslam and al,

I was looking forward Mekkawy's details first, tbh. Actually, it is important to really see what the status is before getting to talk how to proceed.Let me explain further:

We are (nearly) in 2014. Communities have been existing for 30 years, and each and any of us has been through some community experience so far. At least some of us here have been somehow involved in community building. Yes, it is vain to reinvent the wheel, but I also believe it is vain to try to copycat a governance model. Even though it shares characteristics with others, each community is unique. I have voiced concerns and offerred help; these were refused. I decided to not engage into flamewars (although this is a preferred sport in FLOSS communities :) ) and to let go. People evolve, communities self-regulate or die out.

Bas it is time to move forward. I support Mekkawy's desire to open out flat an endeavour that started to smell stuffy. A friendly warning though: the desire to make things transparently is a respectable one, but requires a lot of rigour and solid principles. The community has to agree upon basic principles prior to engaging into anything as such. Eslam, here's your bit of feedback from other communities: I have been sitting in various boards and representing civil society orgs in diverse govtal commissions and stuff. Officials don't like it when summaries of meetings are published on the web and they have done their best to prevent wider communication. It is just because they like it when stuff remains "between us", behind closed doors. In such cases, it is necessary to have ethics and principles to oppose as they are the community's decision. Which also means that in case of incongruency, the community can and will call you out publicly.

Here comes the tough part: how easy is it for everyone to leave aside his/her ego, work -- even for free -- to promote and defend values, recognize conflict of interests and step back to leave some room for other people? Mekkawy's email tells exactly this: how tough it is to not just bootstrap a community but also to foster and nurture its diversity and the equality of its members.

IMHO, what is needed here is to evaluate the status of initiatives and commitments, then see what the aims and priorities of each of the people keen to revive the community are. You cannot have a community around vague ideas and alleged ideals. A community is not a number of Facebook 'Likes', it is a group of people committed to fulfill given goals within a given ethical framework. Thus far, I am not seeing anything such. So, before saying who the bosses are, what we need is to know what the status is.

My 2 cents,

Rayna

2013/12/31 Eslam Farid <es...@vision-as.com>

http://de.linkedin.com/in/raynas 

[Ahmed Araby]

"A community is not a number of Facebook 'Likes', it is a group of people committed to fulfill given goals within a given ethical framework "

Thanks a lot for this , I've been discussing this point with people I know , framework

We -I mean communities- do not have frameworks , every initiative and community start with very same start and almost I can see most of them just stop at some points

there's no goals , just as Rayna said , vague ideas 

and this bring us back to the idea of The Cathedral and the Bazaar

with very a small problem , we are still at same point , experience of the older folks and problems they faced has not been placed in a framework, so that new commers can learn and avoid reinventing the wheel

 

Ahmed M. Araby

[Ahmed Mekkawy]

@Eslam

أتفق مع راينا فى أغلب ردها عليك، انا باقول ان فيه حاجات كتير ماتقالتش للكوميونيتى وانت بتقترح خطوات عمل من غير ما تسمع ايه اللى انا عايز أقوله. انا باحترم اقتراحاتك لكن من الأفضل انك تاخد منى معلومات اكتر وبعد كده نقترح ونتناقش.

@Rayna

I second what you are saying, especially about government officials openness. I will try to see everything that matters that happened with them, but I'm not expecting that I can be able to be crystal clear for all details till the strategy comes out, which is expected within few weeks anyway.

I also agree about the need of having clear goals and having the ethical framework. We never clearly defined that, with the exception of the dead lug's charter back in 2004.

I have sent some info about the NGO in another email for now. more to come tomorrow.

----
Ahmed Mekkawy
CTO | Founder
Spirula Systems
www.spirulasystems.com

[Ahmed Faisal]

على جانب آخر، وفي إطار السِلف كريتيسزم برضه، اندهشت وأسفت ان أوبن إيجبت التي تحولت إلى جروب لمشاركة أخبار المصادر المفتوحة لم يذكر فيها خبر وفاة مؤسسها الذي لم أعلمه إلا صدفة..!

رحم الله العظيم علي شعث..

Ahmed Faissl
<http://facebook.com/faissl> <https://plus.google.com/113729684348889983101>
  <http://about.me/faissl>  <fai...@aldarweesh.org> <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=55099327>
  <http://twitter.com/faissl>  <http://blog.aldarweesh.org/>
Goes without saying..

[Ahmed Koraiem]

لم يذكر فيها ازاي يا فيصل احنا كلنا عرفنا من الجروب :(