# Passionate people, bad blood, yet United by FOSS **URL:** \ **Category:** Organisation\ **Created:** [3 September 2024 17:07 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/passionate-people-bad-blood-yet-united-by-foss/3990 "2024-09-03T17:07:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ganeshaaa](https://forum.fossunited.org/user_avatar/forum.fossunited.org/ganeshaaa/32/1599_2.png) [@Ganeshaaa](https://forum.fossunited.org/u/Ganeshaaa)\ **Post date:** [3 September 2024 17:07 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/passionate-people-bad-blood-yet-united-by-foss/3990/1 "2024-09-03T17:07:41Z")
# Passionate people, bad blood, yet United by FOSS? On Aug 22, FOSS United’s Bengaluru chapter advertised a 10 min-session titled “ **Prevention of metabolic disorders according to Ayurveda”** as a part of its August Monthly meetup. Promptly after this announcement, a good section of community members got upset for various reasons - primarily for the disconnect in bringing Ayurveda to a systems meetup. - There were accusations of Ayurveda being a pseudoscience - Member representatives were shocked because they were not informed about this - Clarifications around a 10 min ‘refreshing session’ being promoted as an OFFICIAL talk. * * * Upto this point, the key infraction was associating the FOSS brand with something majority of the community does not want to associate with . In my opinion Aakansha was not swift enough to respond to this, and mis-read the trust that was at stake by making this announcement. Active volunteers were requesting for a clarification on the selection criteria for this session These were not adequately answered by the BLR team. * * * This further snowballed when @knadh asked for cancelling/ postponing the meetup, understanding root cause and requesting a [leadership change](https://t.me/fossunited/35248/77490) - citing breach of trust and failure of processes. Very shortly after - @rahulporuri Informs us that the meetup is cancelled and the foundation is looking for new leadership for the BLR chapter. Sai also apologized to community partners. > What irks me here is the speed, sequence of decisions post his message - which resembles an authoritarian decision. I strongly felt Kailash’s message was taken as an order and changes immediately made to pacify him. Why did @rushabh have to acknowledge the [Aakansha’s contributions](https://t.me/fossunited/35248/77499) first ? To me, the speed and tone of Aakansha’s removal eroded more trust than the first incident. It meant to me that FOSS united would dump you un-ceremoniously in a high-stakes situation. * * * I sensed there might be more friction behind the scenes, and requested an explanation, both parties kindly obliged. - [Aakansha 's view](https://keybu.com/a/10NlncMyjix/signing-off-from-foss-united) Akanksha’s version shows her earnestly trying to work with broken processes, and communication gaps. It does show a important miss in-terms of black-box processes. This is in-compatible with a org whose core identity is based around FOSS. - [Sai’s response](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/the-foundation-the-city-and-the-community/3966) Sai’s version highlights the resource constraints they have to tackle with as a non-profit. It also calls out the stakes involved, and the way forward. * * * After reading both, and having the luxury of perspective, I’m gravely disappointed in Sai for one aspect, his real-time handling of this event: - Why couldn’t you as the CEO just cancel the august event and ask the community for more time to get to the root cause ? - Why did you immediately ask Aakansha to step down after Kailash’s message? And why phrase it in such a blunt manner? - Was any attempt made to communicate the difficulties faced by the community around [CFP Reviews](https://t.me/fossunited/35248/77633) beforehand? # _—_ I also have to acknowledge Sai’s contributions: The monthly calls, orderly documentation of processes and the upcoming public review system for future conferences are all positive efforts. They are also a significant step up from any of the volunteer or full time contributions to the org so far. * * * Its truly unfortunate the current chapter had to end like this, but the foundation has explicitly stated they are not banned. I hope they are not discouraged from participating in future FOSS United events due to this incident. I hope to see the FOSS United team learn from this, and re-instate the Bengaluru chapter after collecting feedback from active members. Fingers crossed and hopefully we remain, **United by FOSS**. * * * \*Multiple edits for brevity, or grammar, no changes to core message. #Changed this point to be very specific. Getting used to discourse’s editor 🙂\*