Call for Volunteers: F-Droid Community Council

[downey]

Dear F-Droid contributors,

Greetings from your inaugural Board of Directors. Hopefully you read our announcement earlier this year about the establishment of a legal home for F-Droid and our role working to support all the good work you and others do to help make F-Droid the best place to find apps for the Android ecosystem. We’re happy that several of you have attended our meetings as observers and provided your feedback on priorities as we start our journey of service.

After listening to feedback, it’s become clear to the board that one way we can work to improve the capacity and enjoyment of our community is to further share leadership roles within F-Droid. One way we’d like to start is by forming a “Community Council” to be formed in the coming quarter. The foremost goal of this group is to ensure our community is welcoming to everyone, upholds our shared values, and remains respectful, energetic, and creative. As such, its first essential responsibility is working to ensure the F-Droid Code of Conduct is written in such a way that allows everyone participating in our community to feel safe and trusted, and to ensure we have the right processes and responses in place to make sure we consistently maintain such an environment.

While the Council will have ongoing Board representation to help unblock issues and find resources during its work, it’s important to us for this group to be driven by active contributors. Of course, we always encourage newcomers to our community, but given the important tasks for this group, we believe it’s important to limit participation to people who have been contributing for a while. (This means you should have at least “Reporter” status in F-Droid’s GitLab organization.)

So … we’re looking for people who would be interested in volunteering to serve in this group. Is that you? If you think you could positively contribute to the Council, please send an email to us at comco {at} fdroid {dot} net this week, no later than the end of Sunday 13 August AOE (UTC-12). A quick note with who you are, why you think this new Council would be valuable to F-Droid, and a quick summary of any relevant past experience you might have and/or unique background or skills you might bring to the group.

Because community feedback is essential to this group’s success, we will ensure the everyone involved has an opportunity to provide confidential feedback on the group members before it is formally chartered. (Depending on the number of volunteers, this may take the form of a small community election.) We’ll provide another update later next week with details on next steps.

Get in touch and spread the word to your fellow F-Droid contributors. We hope to hear from many of you in the coming week!

With thanks,
Michael Downey
on behalf of the F-Droid Board of Directors
PGP signed message

[downey]

Today we learned that due to an unforeseen technical issue with GitLab, some messages to us regarding participation on the new Community Council were not received. The Board apologizes for the difficulties.

To accommodate those whose messages we may not have received, we want to provide another window to receive any further expressions of interest. Therefore we are extending the deadline to contact us to no later than Sunday, 27 August AOE (UTC-12).

If you previously sent in a note in and you did NOT receive an automatic confirmation reply message, please copy your previous email and send a new one.

As described above, interested volunteers should write to comco {at} fdroid {dot} net (which should now be fully functional). Please let us know you are, why you think this new Council would be valuable to F-Droid, and a quick summary of any relevant past experience you might have and/or unique background or skills you might bring to the group. In the event you do not receive an automatic e-mail confirmation within 10 minutes, you may instead the backup direct address of contact-project+downeym-comco-eoi-48290223-issue-@incoming {dot} gitlab {dot} com which goes to the same confidential queue.

Finally, a reminder that volunteering does not obligate you to any fixed term. If you change your mind for any reason, find that the work is not for you, or if you have other conflicts, volunteers may step down at any time. We appreciate everyone’s contributions and look forward to working with the new Council soon.

With thanks,
Michael Downey
on behalf of the F-Droid Board of Directors
PGP signed message

[downey]

Thank you to those community volunteers who have submitted their interest in serving as the first cohort of Council members.

Currently, and as described above, the Board of Directors are in a scheduled window to review the candidacies, which will end later this week. We have then planned a one-week window for all community members to similarly share any confidential feedback on Council members before we officially establish the Council.

This thread will be updated after the Board’s review window with further details.

[downey]

Hello again, F-Droid community! As mentioned in my previous message, your Board of Directors has reviewed the candidates for the first cohort of volunteers on our new Community Council.

The Board is recommending the following initial members:

• @TheLastProject
• @Izzy
• @obfusk
• @mlemweb (Board liaison)

Per the announced schedule, we are now in a one-week window where community members can send any confidential feedback regarding the candidates. Please send any thoughts, feedback, or concerns you may have to our private GitLab issue tracker using the same email addresses as above: comco {at} fdroid {dot} net or alternatively contact-project+downeym-comco-eoi-48290223-issue-@incoming {dot} gitlab {dot} com.

As mentioned previously, during the past few weeks, we have noticed that some people have experienced deliverability problems when sending email to our GitLab issue tracker, likely due to GitLab’s underlying email provider. If you do not receive an automatic reply to your message, you may also contact me directly with your confidential feedback via a personal message on the F-Droid forum, or via email to downey {at} floss {dot} social. (The Board will soon be looking into more reliable ways to accept confidential reports.)

At the end of this feedback window, the Board will then proceed with the initial chartering of the new Community Council. We’ll be in touch with you again next week with more information.

Thank you for your contributions to F-Droid and for being a valuable part of our community!