Hi there,

Jona here, Fedora Ambassador from Albania. I saw it fit to write to the mailing list after being looped in one of the meetings FAmSCo had yesterday on 9th March. 

I try to regularly check the logs of the meetings which feel important to me, so the last FAmSCo meeting was no exception here. Somewhere down the line in the meeting, around 15:43 in the log [1] a discussion around the definition of "community" in Albania and Greece sparked, specifically initiated by Robert Scheck, which on behalf of the community I represent, we find troubling:    
    
  • "Sorry, but you can not treat Albania as a real community so far. We had the same "community" in Greece some years ago - and after 2 years, most of them went away...to Mozilla."
  • "a community is something that exists for really a lot of years and is healthy"

Although initially a surprising statement, I went on to read further clarification, however there was no resolution found, with the suggestion coming up that this should be taken to the mailing list, which I am doing so hereby. 

So, since there has been a discussion taking place where Albania's contributions (and so also my contributions) have been mentioned without me being present, I would hate to keep silent about this. As someone who led grassroots efforts to start up the Fedora  community in Albania, dedicating more time to the Fedora project than anything else in my free time, seeing comments like these from a fellow Fedora Ambassador (let alone mentor) is insulting to the hundreds of hours of work put in by fellow community members in Albania, including myself. Seeing myself in this position, I also doubt that any contributor from Greece feels comfortable in a similar fashion with these comments.

I didn't want this topic to sink in the meeting logs, so I brought it up here in the mailing list to gather your general feedback and thoughts on this matter (and to avoid this in the future ideally). 

I am deeply concerned with comments like this out of nowhere, and think that there are others sharing my concerns.

On behalf of the Albanian Fedora community.
Jona Azizaj

[1] https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-2/2016-03-09/famsco.2016-03-09-14.02.html