[okfn-discuss] new brand, new website: coming up next week

Tue Apr 15 09:29:26 UTC 2014

howdy,

please excuse my brevity i have other pressing things to handle:

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 11:07:42AM +0100, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> outside view. We also had to live with constraints of time and resource
> whilst moving forward something that a large amount of feedback over last
> couple of years had told us was an issue :-)
---end quoted text---

i think much of the feedback was regarding ethical issues and based on the
fact that the OKFN grew up into a bubble attracting lot's of newcomers to this
field who are not educated about the ethical and moral issues (open data
hipsters). we had lots of discussion free vs open, evgeny morozov has been
invoked a couple times. the tools used in the consultation in autumn were
contra-selective imposing barriers to contributors who are more conscious
about their privacy and the lack of trust in various US companies. looking at
the currently listed sponsors of the OKFN the question arises how much do they
influence the policy shift in the OKFN, is there self-censorship regarding
certain issues (like privacy for example) would a certain attitude towards
ethics and morals negatively affect the donors generosity? The mydata group
signals another shift from ethics to business interests, hiring google alumnis
and other silicon valley "talents" further dillutes fundamental values in the
OKFN, and this cannot be simply fixed by having a new brand, i find the
discussion around the tagline totally misses the point.

there needs to be a lot more reflection on consequences for society, ethics,
morals, privacy, Stallman, Morozov, etc if the OKFN wants to restore the
respect it totally deserved a few years ago.

some urls for your convenience: 
http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520426/the-real-privacy-problem/
http://evgenymorozov.tumblr.com/post/71228557738/my-ft-oped

with dwindling respect,
s

-- 
otr fp: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/otr.txt