[wilhelmtux-discussion] erklaerung for Markus

Dietrich Feist dietrich.feist at mw.iap.unibe.ch
Don Dez 12 13:44:44 CET 2002


Dear Anne,

thanks for your comments on the declaration ("Erklärung"). To avoid
present and future misunderstanding: these are not the statutes of
Wilhelm Tux that we have been talking about. The statutes ("Satzung")
are at

	http://www.guillaumetux.ch/de/verein.phtml

It looks like there is still no french version even though somebody
promised to do that several weeks ago. Sorry, I have to investigate on
this.

The declaration is actually older than the statutes. It was drafted
before Wilhelm Tux was founded in any legal way. In fact, the
declaration is - at least legally - simply a document on our web server
that people have signed to show their support. It is not legally binding
in any way. However, as it has been signed by so many people (>650),
major changes would become difficult.

The statutes, on the other hand, are the constitution of the association
Wilhelm Tux. This is a legal document that is binding for members of the
association. They contain procdures for voting, functions of the
executive board, financial issues etc. At the moment, the statutes only
talk about free software in a single paragraph. However, some people
from PLLA asked to put more political statements into it, for example in
the form of a preamble. That is possible but only the general assembly
has the power to change the statutes.

That said, I can try to respond to your remarks on the declaration:

> Preliminary remark is that the quoted page already takes away part of 
> my freedom as, if I reduce the size of the window, I can't see a full 
> line at  once.

I think we should concentrate on content instead of form. We know this
problem but our webmaster is bound up with the new CMS-based web site.
Therefore, it is probably not worth making (style) changes to the old
web pages any more.

> I realize that the erklaerug changed since my first 
> post on August 21st. A version number would help to realise that the 
> text changed and probably a date too

It is possible that the translated version changed to correct some
errors. The original german version has never been changed.

About the other points (monopolies, rentability, Matlab, security): we
had most of this dicussion before on August 21/22 and I don't want to
repeat myself. Here is the link in the wt-discussion archive:

http://wilhelmtux.ch/mailman/private/wilhelmtux-discussion/2002-August/000510.html

If somebody has trouble accessing this link, please let me know. The
list archive is only open for subscribers of wilhelmtux-discussion to
protect the email addresses from spambots.

> What is "un état libéral"? Do we want Swtzerland to be a liberal 
> state?

This is certainly a bad translation that could be corrected. It does not
say "liberal" in the original version but "freiheitlich geordnet" which
means something like "ordered by principles based on freedom".

> Déclaration de protection de données:
> I hope that you are 100% sure of the software behind all that so that 
> there is absolutely no chance that some cracker could access these 
> data.

I don't.We can be 100% sure for some of this data because we are not
even asking the majority of people to leave their address. If somebody
just signs the declaration he/she is never asked for more than his name
and city of residence. This information appears on the supporter list
and other information is not stored. Only someone who wants to join as a
member have to provide more than this.

Besides, we don't promise to keep this information absolutely safe, we
just promise not to give it away to a third party. Breaking in and
stealing it is a crime that we cannot be held responsible for. We are
taking reasonable provisions to protect the data but we don't store any
especially sensitive data. Therefore, we are not legally required to
provide additional protection mechanisms. In other words, we don't have
any data (not even about our members) that could be used to cause
damage.

> All these remarks are the reasons why I am unable to sign the "Liste 
> de soutien".

I am sorry to hear that. However, no one is required to sign this, not
even members of Wilhelm Tux.

Kind regards,

Dietrich