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...