Thank you SJ, for your e-mail, it states exactly how I feel. I have been greatly disturbed with the way we (?) appear to be dealing with formal things nowadays. I have always felt that the Foundation was a very open organisation, and people were trusted just because of that openness. The last few weeks several people (that is, board and staff members of the Foundation) have stated that the Foundation can't be that open and transparent anymore, because we are growing up as an organisation. If the secretiveness that has been displayed the last few weeks (months?) really is a necessary part of growing up, I'd rather that we did not... However, I don't think that growing up has anything to do with getting less transparant. Rather the opposite: I believe that a professional organisation can be more succesfull when it's transparant, because then it appears (and is?) more trustworthy.

-Fruggo

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SJ Klein wrote:

A fairly long reply to Florence and Sebastian.

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007, Florence Devouard wrote:

Being leaving you, I would like to share with you part of an article (which you may find in a rather famous encyclopedia). I invite all of you to read it carefully.

Thank you for sharing.

Some organizations and networks, for example, Wikipedia, the GNU/Linux community and Indymedia, insist that not only the ordinary information of interest to the community is made freely available, but that all (or nearly all) meta-levels of organizing and decision-making are themselves also published. This is known as radical transparency.

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I think the last paragraph is interesting. Indeed, what some of you are asking is radical transparency at the organization level. And radical transparency is not really suitable for us

I regret that you feel this way. Are you deeply resolved that this is right? You who always stood up for the rights of the unwanted on the projects? The power of such transparency is being greatly undervalued -- indeed, even in this email on transparency, you do not once mention the value of transparency explicitly. When did we start doubting this basic truth?

I have always had the utmost faith in you as a board member, and then as Chair, precisely because you have such a strong sense of openness and propriety. So it disturbs me to read such muted overtones in this letter of yours.

-knip-