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Response to ICFOSS Director, Sabarish K's requests to community.

KVM Kannan V M Public Seen by 115

On July 15th evening 7pm, the new ICFOSS director Sabarish K had a discussion on the concerns about ICFOSS presented by Free Software communities. The responses by ICFOSS Director are collected by Akshay and are given here.

Concluding the discussion, director has requested us the following

1.) Volunteers for framing a guideline and criteria for funding
2.) Proposals from member groups for developing 2 Open fonts not fontforged variants
3.) Contribution of case studies for impact of Libre software in Kerala
4.) List of Communities and their Nomanclature
5.) List of Captains representatives for inclusion in the board for project/event selection and fellow selection.
6.) Wholehearted support

He has given us one week to respond to it.

In order to respond to his requests, lets have a meeting this Sunday at 3pm on https://meet.fsci.in/ICFOSSResponseMeet


Summary of the meetup and response

As per the request from Director of ICFOSS to draft a guideline and criteria for funding from ICFOSS for various FOSS communities, a meeting was conducted via meet.jit.si on 19/07/2020 around 3:15 PM.

Meeting participants are Suman (Rovonozoro), Pirate Praveen, Kannan V M, Akhil, Kiran (hacksk), Athul R T, Akshai M, Sooraj K, Hari, Syam, Sruthi Chandran, Kelvin, Abhijith, Abraham Raji, Ranjith Siji, Naveen PF, Manoj Karingamadathil , Rajeev R R, Sabarish K and Abhinav (abbyck) representing various communities such as FSCI, FSUG-TVM, OSM, SMC, Wikimedians of Kerala and OSHW community. Akhil moderated the meeting.

The main agenda for the meeting was as follows:  

1.) Volunteers for framing a guideline and criteria for funding

2.) Proposals from member groups for developing 2 Open fonts not fontforged variants

3.) Contribution of case studies for impact of Libre software in Kerala

4.) List of Communities and their Nomenclature

5.) List of Captains, representatives for inclusion in the board for project/event selection and fellow selection.

Regarding discussion point 1 in Agenda:   

  • The discussion started with Praveen introducing the example of Wikimedia Foundation as an acceptable infrastructure to follow in designing a funding guideline. He also expressed ICFOSS should be able to provide funding to non-registered communities and individuals, if that is difficult an organization like SMC should be able to stand as a medium for fund distribution.

  • The existing issues related to audits were discussed. Sooraj suggested organization bylaw should be amended to solve the current issues with funding and auditing.

  • Kiran brought up the need for transparency and documentation and how it can solve the issues related to auditing.

  • Akshai added that transparency won't be enough to make the reports credible to an auditing authority. He suggested how a selection committee can add to the credibility of reports and need for a selection criteria based on a merit system for such a committee.

  • Suman suggested upstream contribution to be a part of the selection criteria.

  • Recommendation letter from community also came in the discussion as another condition for merit.

  • Ranjith Siji shared working of Wikimedia Foundation funding request in detail.

      OUTCOME

We need a have a transparent process of applying for funding and following progress with public and transparent reporting of the work. The outcome of it will be validated by a group of volunteers representing various Free Software communities. We will need to know the budget available in advance and allocate the amount under various broad categories. These can be decided in a fixed time frame, once in 3 months or once in 6 months where the schedule to apply, discuss and decide will be announced in advance.

Suggestions were put forward by others about the people present in the call as a start. The  tentatiive names that came were suggested: Manoj Karingamadathil, Naveen P F, Ranjith Siji, Sruthi Chandran. More members are to be suggested or decided up on by respective communities.

We need a clear understanding of how the committee is going to function (how frequent the committee will meet) once the suggestion is accepted.
The group of people from community who becomes part of the committee are expected to be serving for a set duration ie not permanent. Duration is to finalized. A period of 1 year came up.

Regarding discussion point 2 in Agenda:

  • Ranjith shared the information that several research scholars from reputed Universities in Kerala showed interest in developing fonts but were in need of mentors.

     OUTCOME
Since only few Free Software Community members were present who could decide on applying for such proposals or mentoring scholars, decision was made to reach out to them for proposals and suggestions. (Manoj Karingamadathil who worked with SMC in the past was present but could not be reached for comment during discussion due to technical issues). Decided that the offer of funding should be shared with wider community and invite people to apply and found it would be best if ICFOSS can post this on their website which can be shared widely.

Regarding discussion point 3 in Agenda:

Sooraj, Kannan, Ranjith, Naveen and Athul mentioned about case studies and presentations conducted by individuals and communities in the past.

  1. Studies by Girija Krishnaswami

  2. Case study about success story in electronics4you of adopting full FOSS stack in Janayugom for newspaper publishing undertaken by a company of community members.

  3. Presentation at Akademy (KDE community conference) by Aiswarya KK related to Free Software adoption in education sector.

  4. Presentation at OSM online event SOTM by Asish Abraham Joseph showing impact of mapping in public sector of Kerala.

      OUTCOME
      The above were agreed up on to be shared and more can be added to if found.
       

Regarding discussion point 4 in Agenda:

  • Sruthi mentioned about a list already prepared at ICFOSS for inviting FOSS community members to last public meeting and building on it.

  • Rajeev mentioned about the same list of several communities that ICFOSS have internally which Suman agreed to enquire and share.

      OUTCOME
     
Decided on creating an initial list based on the above and get community to add any missing communities. Those represent communities can add to this list.

https://cryptpad.fr/sheet/#/2/sheet/edit/+zWN1gGdkhzEAWeGHMNRdA5H/

Regarding discussion point 5 in Agenda:

  • Praveen suggested that this group can have same representatives from the funding guideline and criteria framing commitee until an evaluated decision is taken to have separate group.

      OUTCOME      It was generally agreed on.

Meeting officially concluded at 05:10PM.

Apart from the meeting agenda, a frequent discussion topic was the need for official FOSS communication platforms to be hosted by ICFOSS. To get the status and updates of the ongoing projects, publishing the monthly report shared to the government by ICFOSS was also found ideal. Athul suggested a matrix server to be hosted by ICFOSS for real time communication. Loomio was suggested by Akhil as a forum for discussion with community and news posts from ICFOSS.

There were many concerns raised by College FOSSCELL representatives, Abhinav C K and Abraham Raji, regarding need of a proper bi-directional communication channel, accounts setup for fund receival. Rajeev (without the ICFOSS hat) tried to answer the questions to the best of his ability. The bidirectional communication was agreed to be lacking a bit now and was in need for a mechanism for improvement. Rajeev gave input that accounts requirement was changed to address it for future foss cells.

Sabarish, current director of ICFOSS, after conclusion of official meeting and asked community to work together and agreed to provide support from ICFOSS.

Appendix 1:

Points from meeting with previous ICFOSS director last year which were not addressed by the current Director to in the telegram/matrix group discussion:

We are not expecting all the suggestions will be accepted, but we expect a reply even if the suggestion is not accepted.

- The brainstorming session highlighted the need for focusing on Free Software contribution instead of academic profile as ICFOSS fellows selection criteria.
- Kannan emphasized the need to develop Free Software Developers instead of just Software Developers and involvement of community in trainings is essential for that.
- Sebin proposed Google Summer of Code or Outreachy like mentoring programs where community manages the program and ICFOSS provide funding.
- Ramesh from KSEB suggested ICFOSS should spearhead more Free Software adoption campaigns in targeted areas like library management, 12th standard syllabus, DTP centers...
- ICFOSS servers will be accessible for free software projects as soon as the current server maintenance is over

Appendix 2:

New questions raised in the telegram/matrix discussion and jitsi meeting.

Points raised by Anivar Aravind,

1. ICFOSS need to be a facilitator for both foss projects and foss requirements of government. It is should not be a big fat research only org/ funding platform/ ownership holder foss community produced work.

2. Major gap I see in this process is empowering room for free software choices and suggestions in government. I know it is not easy, but it is a continuous battle. This need policy briefs within government, documenting best practices and more story telling based on foss projects and their adoptions .

3. Initiate and build institutional support for voluntary initiatives and help them to be sustainable communities . Eg. Building a Kerala rescue based preparedness stack (I heard some good initiatives happening)

4. Research Partnership with foss orgs and communities in Kerala and outside. Facilitiate value for foss projects via this associations , more contributors, mentors , cross community expertise curation etc This will avoid indian foss projects searching for FOSSASIA type orgs abroad to provide org home

5. Not all foss projects  are not in a position to build campus presence . Use campus presence for ICFOSS for joint/partnered event organizing help. Communities can easily provide expertise while organizing efforts can be done by icfoss's campus representatives.

6. Build and maintain a  High priority projects as per the governance + local needs . Priorities  contributions to this  via a task based / bounty based support structure

7. Decouple startup /product / event/ certificate focused campus club structure to contribution based model. contribution  shouldn't be code alone.

8. Use Open organization structure to maximum extend , use issue trackers and build transparancy around programs, planning and participation. Invest efforts in addressing issues . This will avoid a lot of conflicts even though it may be a bit difficult in start.

Appendix 3:

Point 1: We will follow up after two weeks unless ICFOSS provides a rough estimate of how much time it will take in their reply.

Point 2: We will follow up after a week if ICFOSS does not publish the offer on their website.

Point 3: We expect ICFOSS to share their plan for publishing existing case studies and undertaking more case studies. We will follow up after two weeks.

Point 4: We expect ICFOSS to maintain this list on their website with procedure to update the list. Alternatively FSCI can also maintain this list. We will follow up after a week.

Point 5: We expect ICFOSS to provide a plan for including community representatives in their selection committees. We will follow up after two weeks.

Point 6: We have taken an open approach to the new director even when previous experiences were not good. Our support will depend on how ICFOSS respond to community concerns.

Appendix 4:

We'd like to know the the status of your promise during the telegram/matrix interaction earlier "to issue circular on allowing 20% of work time on Free Software projects".


NB: Those who would like to volunteer in framing funding guidelines comment below.

AP

Abhijith PA Sat 29 Aug 2020 9:00AM

If they haven't responded yet. Should we ping them again ? @Abraham Raji

AR

Abraham Raji Tue 1 Dec 2020 2:47AM

A Message posted by Akshai M (An ICFOSS employee) in the Unofficial ICFOSS Telegram Group.

Dr. Sabarish K relieved from ICFOSS !! His extension request since July was rejected by the Government. ICFOSS had two different directors in less than 2 years. Not sure where this is headed.

1. Government wants ICFOSS to stand on its own yet they don't allow anyone to serve a proper duration. No one knows how long will the new director be, since that again is an additional charge. Turns out to be a parking ground !!!

2. Community wants ICFOSS to work with them while the Government structure allows little or zero hope. Autonomy is only on paper. The past director tried but the current Govt does not encourage community representation in ICFOSS.

These days I have heard that an even a project apprentice appointment has to done by high level committee consisting of some IAS officers.

As a member of the the community I had volunteered to follow up with the Director regarding his reply to community's response mail to his request and I had contacted him twice in the period of 3 months. First:

On Tue, Aug 25, 2020:

Hey,

My name is Abraham Raji who is a member of the Free Software Community of India, we along with other FOSS communities in Kerala had sent the ICFOSS Director a letter as a response as per his request detailing ways in which we can improve the state of the foss community in Kerala. We have not yet received a reply for the same. The community would like to know why.

I have documented the conversation between ICFOSS and the community so far here:

https://avron.gitlab.io/icfoss-and-community/

Sincerely,

Abraham Raji

--

Mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat.

To which Mr.Sabarish. K's (then Director) reply was:

August 26 2020:

Dear Abraham,

Please don't make this email public, I am busy with the Finance inspection team who is doing a detailed inspection of the documents right from the scratch, this is based on the baeless news paper reports.

Before committing anything I need buyin and approval from the Government,  as you all know within a span of 2 months 3 Secretaries have occupied the seat and I educated one, who was replaced.  It is good that we now have a new IT savvy secretary.  I had a discussion with him regarding 3 things 1 dedicating 20% of time for common activities, already a circular has been issued for utilising 10%

2 Jitsi instance for the use of community and 3 Server space for communities to set up test beds etc - these things have been discussed with our Internal Team heads and they have agreed to spare a server for the same (if I commit that has to work so)

So Jitsi and Servers will be made available .

I will formally give a reply Today busy in the AN 

Regards

Sabarish

For better or for worse I decided to give him a chance and didn't make this email public. I do regret that now. Anyway I ended up replying:

August 27 2020:

Respected Sir,

Will keep the mail to myself. I'm glad to know that you're trying to make a difference. I and I'm pretty sure the community too, will support you in any way we can for the social cause that is Free Software. Hope everything goes well with the Finance Inspection Team, best wishes for the same.

Looking forward to turning new leaves,

Abraham Raji

--

Mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat.

(I must have been having a really good day because I'm not usually this nice. Maybe I thought something good would happen this time and a little positive feedback would be good.)

But I was wrong. No reply.

So I sent another mail:

November 1 2020:

Hey Sir,

The free software communities in Kerala had sent you a letter detailing their expectations from ICFOSS, how together both parties can build a better FOSS ecosystem in Kerala, upon your request. We have yet to receive an official reply for the letter from you. This is an email to inquire about the status of the official reply, why is it getting delayed and when we can expect it.

Sincerely,

Abraham Raji

--

Mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat.

No reply for a month and now he is no longer the Director. And here we are.

We do we go from here?

PP

Pirate Praveen Tue 1 Dec 2020 5:49AM

@Abraham Raji thanks! I think we just have to publicly document this history of our interaction and probably declare ICFOSS has ended up as just another govt white elephant eating public money. We can say Free Software communities has no role or influence in how ICFOSS runs. Also state that we don't expect any support or contribution from ICFOSS to Free Software communities.

AR

Abraham Raji Tue 1 Dec 2020 4:48PM

It seems to be the case. I'll add this to the documentation I'm maintaining regarding this. Maybe we should release an official statement regarding this on our website.

AP

Abhijith PA Tue 1 Dec 2020 4:37AM

@Abraham Raji , Thanks for following upon this. I don't know where to go from here either.

AR

Abraham Raji Tue 1 Dec 2020 4:57PM

Always happy to help. It's a sad situation how one of the only if not the only institution in our state for free and open source software is in this state. ICFOSS did help a lot of the FOSS clubs in colleges. If it was truly effective and worked together with the community we could've bought a lot of change.

A

Akhil Tue 22 Dec 2020 12:19PM

ICFOSS Jitsi was not something we demanded to communicate but if what he said about arranging server space for community to test things was true, it was a first step.
Since it's all in disarray now we can wait to see if it clears and some positive development happening or see it becoming an research organization with no actual ties to free software community.
If the latter happens then we can add a declaration stating the same.

AP

Abhijith PA Tue 22 Dec 2020 1:35PM

I think we can start preparing a declaration.

PP

Pirate Praveen Tue 13 Jul 2021 2:54PM

Since we published our statement, we should talk to other communities and ask them to endorse it. I already posted on smc mailing list.

AP

Poll Created Fri 5 Mar 2021 3:55PM

Release a statement about our stance on ICFOSS Closed Fri 12 Mar 2021 2:00PM

Outcome
by Pirate Praveen Tue 13 Jul 2021 2:52PM

Statement published on the blog https://fsci.in/blog/we-do-not-support-icfoss/

If you read the thread so far, you can understand our interaction with ICFOSS was unfruitful and waste of time. I am sure several other communities have same experience. Every now and then they ask for community response and this cycle goes on. Release a statement about our stance and why we don't like to be bothered again.

Results

Results Option % of points Voters
Agree 100.0% 4  
Abstain 0.0% 0  
Disagree 0.0% 0  
Block 0.0% 0  
Undecided 0% 432  

4 of 436 people have participated (0%)

AR

Abraham Raji Sat 13 Mar 2021 5:14PM

I'm sorry I got busy with my exams. I agree with this proposal.

SS

Subin Siby Fri 16 Jul 2021 12:43PM

Hi, just want to give in a quick suggestion here. The statement uses "Hence, It’s better to stay away from this toxic organization". I think it'd be better to expand the statement to provide more reasons why the organization itself is toxic. The word "toxic" is a big word to use. For someone new to reading the statement, it's unclear on what all reasons were used to attribute the organization "toxic". The paragraphs above the sentence has little information. Providing more context in a short way as bullet points would be better. Provide context for the reader to formulate whether it qualifies as "toxic". Otherwise it looks like just plain name calling.

AP

Abhijith PA Fri 16 Jul 2021 3:24PM

Hey,

I (and people prepared statement) didn't stretched incompetency
part in the statement as some are mentioned along with the Appendixes
on response email which published in the FSCI blog before. Also I
thought the codema link of that discussion might give a walk through
of the situation. If its unclear, I guess we should mention the
points. May be we can start by adding such points here as comment and
later add to the statement :)

PP

Pirate Praveen Thu 19 Aug 2021 5:29PM

@Akshai M "TBH. The statement from FSCI does not address the core issue; what does GoK want with ICFOSS ? ICFOSS has turned out to be a parking ground for people in power. If at all FSCI is looking at making a change, this should be addressed to the Government."

I got the same feedback from some other people involved in ICFOSS as well. Does anyone want to write a letter to IT secretary? I personally don't believe it will have any impact, but no harm in trying. At least people won't have this excuse to defend ICFOSS.

AP

Abhijith PA Fri 20 Aug 2021 9:09AM

We can do that, but with in our pace and preparing collectively with
other FOSS communities instead of just FSCI.

AP

Abhijith PA Fri 8 Apr 2022 8:12AM

What will be our next step. Should we ask other FOSS communities about their interaction/experience with ICFOSS.

PP

Pirate Praveen Fri 8 Apr 2022 10:19AM

May be we can setup a meeting and invite other communities.

AP

Abhijith PA Thu 19 May 2022 3:58PM

Email or any other async mode of discussion will be much better. To start with do we have compiled list of other FOSS communities other than https://fsug.in/