For brevity, we will refer to the FOSS United Foundation as the Foundation, the broader FOSS United Community as the Community, and the FOSS United Bengaluru as BLR.
This post is our effort to clarify what happened on 22 August, 2024 on the public FOSS United Telegram group. The BLR volunteers planned a meetup on 24 August, 2024, in collaboration with “Bengaluru Systems” and “Rust Bangalore” communities. As part of the event schedule, a session on “Prevention of metabolic disorders according to Ayurveda” was scheduled and announced via Social Media channels and on the Telegram group. Immediately after the announcement, members of the Community (including people from the Foundation) started asking the BLR volunteers how the session was relevant at a FOSS United meetup (or a FOSS meetup). The BLR volunteers clarified that the session was a “refreshing session”, meant to break the ice for the participants at a meetup. "refreshing session"s were part of the BLR meetups and usually undertaken by one of the volunteers e.g. yoga and other physical activities. In this specific instance, the BLR volunteers believed that because this “refreshing session” was undertaken by a Professional Doctor (Gynaecology, Ayurveda), it should be included and communicated in the official schedule. Along with members of the Community, representatives from the “Bengaluru Systems” and the “Rust Bangalore” communities responded via Telegram that they got to know about the session via Social Media announcements and that they would not have opted for collaboration if this session was going to be a part of the agenda/meetup.
After seeing the Social Media announcement of the session, members from other tech communities in Bengaluru and around the country also started reaching out to people within the Community and the Foundation, asking us how FOSS United could endorse a non-FOSS talk at a FOSS United meetup.
We (@rahulporuri & @wisharya ), made the call to cancel the scheduled August Bengaluru meetup. We also asked @Aakansha_Doshi to step down and announced to the Community on Telegram that the “Foundation will be looking for a new team to lead the Bengaluru chapter”. We further wrote that “the Foundation and the BLR City chapter (actually just the leadership) have been having conversations about a change in the leadership for many months now (3+), based on conflicting feedback that the city chapter and the Foundation have been getting from the community” and that “This is a problem with the system and not the individuals within the system. If the BLR city chapter system/processes allowed this to happen and believed that this adhered with the FOSS United community guidelines, we need a system solution.”
The conversation got out of hand at this point on Telegram so I would like to stop here. Please feel free to read the entire conversation on Telegram - Telegram: Contact @fossunited. You might want to consider reading the BLR volunteers official response here - /a/10NlncMyjix/signing-off-from-foss-united | Keybu
I would like to take a step back to bring a broader perspective to what transpired.
The Foundation is made up of eight full-time employees, including myself, who work to support the Community. The BLR city chapter is the oldest city chapter but it is part of the broader Community. The Community includes other active (and inactive) City Chapters e.g. Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, etc. The Community also includes the members of Student Clubs, the people who attend the IndiaFOSS conference, participated in the FOSS Hack hackathon, and other events not specific to a City Chapter. The Community even extends to people who follow us via our Social Media accounts and are part of the numerous public FOSS United Telegram groups. Overall, more than 7500 people are a part of the Community, and that might be a lower limit. At the end of the day, anyone who thinks that they are a part of the FOSS United Community are a part of the FOSS United Community.
The Foundation is, at the moment, ultimately responsible for the reputation and trust that “FOSS United” stands for. What is “reputation and trust” you ask? It is the tangible name “FOSS United”, the FOSS United logo, and other branding that is immediately recognizable to members of the Community as FOSS United and the intangible trust between members of the Community. The Foundation is responsible for ensuring that the FOSS United reputation is upheld at all FOSS United-recognized events and that the trust that the members of the Community have with one another isn’t eroded. For example, we regularly reject applications for event sponsorship and partnership because the events include Blockchain-related content because it isn’t aligned with what the Community stands for. The reputation was painstakingly built over four years by people at the Foundation and Volunteers who helped to get the Community up and running. The trust that the Community has in one another is built on Volunteers from across the country working together towards the common goals of the Community. The Foundation and the Community are in a symbiotic relationship i.e. activities organized by the Community maintain and improve our reputation and the Foundation is able to use the reputation to expand the Community, creating a positive feedback loop. This includes activities such as meetups at City chapters.
Earlier, I said at the moment because the Community does not have elected representatives who can advise on matters of reputation, which is something we are actively working to solve (Electing a FOSSUnited Governing Board).
As such, scheduling and announcing a session on “Prevention of metabolic disorders according to Ayurveda” at a FOSS United meetup is fundamentally misaligned with what the Foundation (and the broader Community) stands for. Trust and Reputation takes a long time to build but it can be immediately lost. The Foundation and the Community have carefully worked to ensure that the events are FOSS-specific, at the very least Tech/Software-specific. Given this, a non-FOSS, non-Tech session promoted using the FOSS United reputation is completely unacceptable. The situation is worsened further by the fact that the event was organized in collaboration with other communities.
Why do trust and reputation matter, you ask?
Because the Foundation, and the Community, are working hard to support and strengthen the broader FOSS movement in India. There are a number of organizations and communities that support the FOSS movement in India and FOSS United is a relative newcomer in this regard. However, the Community has been able to create an outsized impact on the FOSS movement in India, thanks to a bit of luck, a lot of hard work from the Community spread across the Country, and the Foundation. The trust and reputation that the FOSS United Community has built are opening doors that enable us to continue supporting and strengthening the FOSS movement in India. For example, we are able to organize Student Clubs to promote FOSS usage and adoption in Colleges, we are able to organize larger events and spread the FOSS message further than ever before, we are able to bring much-needed diversity into the FOSS and the broader Software community, and, believe it or not, we are able to talk to organizations that are still hesitant to adopt FOSS.
Allowing sessions such as “Prevention of metabolic disorders according to Ayurveda” to happen would have caused harm to the FOSS United reputation and hurt the trust we have amongst one another. It is unacceptable to retain the systems, structures, and processes that approved such a session to be included in a FOSS United event. The Foundation is unable to continue relying on and supporting the team that built the systems and processes that exist in the BLR city chapter. This is why we asked the BLR volunteers to cancel the event entirely, instead of simply removing the session, and stated that the Foundation will be looking for a new team to lead the BLR chapter. There are numerous examples of organizations and communities that supported the FOSS movements around the world that have ceased to exist or ceased to be effective because of singular instances of reputation harm. The financial mismanagement at the GNOME Foundation and the OpenOffice/LibreOffice split are two such instances that come to mind. In an abundance of caution, we have made the above decisions.
How could we have prevented this?
Mutual trust has been at the center of how the Foundation and City Chapter volunteers operate. The Foundation trusts the Volunteers to act in the best interest of the Community, and the Volunteers trust that the Foundation will act in the best interest of the City Chapter, which includes the Volunteers. Given the size of the Foundation, we are only able to occasionally look into the decision-making processes within a City chapter, therefore needing to rely on trust.
The Foundation should have been explicit with the City Chapter Volunteers by stating the boundaries that cannot be crossed. And we should have regularly reminded the City Chapter Volunteers of the same. For example, the Foundation publicly documented our position on Blockchain and we regularly share a link to the post with the Community ([DRAFT] A note on blockchain). Maybe naively, we did not think that we needed to explicitly state that the scope of sessions at FOSS United events is FOSS. You don’t expect a Linux User Group to have sessions on how to use Windows, do you?
Where do we go from here?
As we mentioned earlier, the Foundation will be looking for a new team to lead the BLR chapter. The Foundation will also have conversations with all of the other City Chapter volunteers to explicitly communicate that any activities that harm the reputation of the Community and erode the trust within the Community are unacceptable at FOSS United events. Such instances will lead to the Foundation taking appropriate actions, including potentially changing the leadership. Organizing non-FOSS/non-software sessions and repeatedly ignoring CoC violations are two examples of activities that will not be tolerated.
In addition, the Foundation will dedicate efforts to improve the transparency of decision-making by all City Chapters, primarily related to how sessions at FOSS United events are selected. Finally, we will have open-ended discussions with the members of the Community on preventing the reoccurrence of such instances in the future.
We wish to once again express our sincere thanks for the service of @Aakansha_Doshi and the outgoing BLR volunteers team. As I mentioned earlier, their hard work played a role in establishing the reputation of the Community and we are forever indebted to their efforts. Me, @wisharya (Program Director), @ansh (Community Manager), and the Founders of FOSS United have expressed our gratitude for their work on the public Telegram channel (Telegram: Contact @fossunited). We sincerely hope that they continue to be a part of the Community.
@rahulporuri , CEO and @wisharya , Program Director,
FOSS United Foundation.
A note about the Foundation
We would like to take this opportunity to provide additional information about the Foundation. At the moment, the Foundation has eight full-time staff - @rahulporuri , @wisharya , @mriya11, @ansh, @Harsh_Tandiya, @mangesh_x0 , @Ruchika , and @JESWIN_JOSE . The Foundation is a registered Section 8 company in India i.e. a not-for-profit company. The Foundation primarily relies on donations to fund the various activities organized in the Community. All of us are paid significantly below-market-value salaries (up to 50% less) and all of us work 50-60 hours a week to support the various activities within the Community. And because the Foundation is a not-for-profit, no one is getting paid in equity either, to make up for the low pay, unlike in the startup ecosystem. Everyone except me at the Foundation has eschewed traditional career paths in the Software industry right out of college to work at the Foundation and to support the FOSS movement in India. I sincerely request that you keep in mind the sacrifices that the team is making to support the Community and the broader FOSS movement in India. The Foundation is not a Goliath that is taking advantage of Volunteers or the Community and comments alluding to this are misleading at best and deeply hurtful at worst.