Waiting for a response from ICFOSS Director and Following up on it
The community patiently awaited the then Director Sabarish K to address the community's response officially. A few weeks later the [Free Software Community of India] on their online discussions and decision making platform codema.in requested a community member to volunteer to follow up with the Director regarding the same. I volunteered for the task in the Matrix Room of FSCI and the same was updated on Codema as well.
Hence on Tue, Aug 25, 2020 I sent the director the mail below inquiring about the status of his response.
Hey,
My name is Abraham Raji who is a member of the Free Software Community of India, we along with other FOSS communities in Kerala had sent the ICFOSS Director a letter as a response as per his request detailing ways in which we can improve the state of the foss community in Kerala. We have not yet received a reply for the same. The community would like to know why.
I have documented the conversation between ICFOSS and the community so far here :
https://avron.gitlab.io/icfoss-and-community/
Sincerely,
Abraham Raji
--
Mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat.
To which he replied:
Dear Abraham, Please don't make this email public, I am busy with the Finance inspection team who is doing a detailed inspection of the documents right from the scratch, this is based on the baeless news paper reports.
Before committing anything I need buyin and approval from the Government, as you all know within a span of 2 months 3 Secretaries have occupied the seat and I educated one, who was replaced. It is good that we now have a new IT savvy secretary. I had a discussion with him regarding 3 things 1 dedicating 20% of time for common activities, already a circular has been issued for utilising 10%
2 Jitsi instance for the use of community and 3 Server space for communities to set up test beds etc - these things have been discussed with our Internal Team heads and they have agreed to spare a server for the same (if I commit that has to work so)
So Jitsi and Servers will be made available .
I will formally give a reply Today busy in the AN
Regards Sabarish
For better or for worse I decided to give him a chance and didn't make this email public. I do regret that now. Anyway I ended up replying:
August 27 2020:
Respected Sir, Will keep the mail to myself. I'm glad to know that you're trying to make a difference. I and I'm pretty sure the community too, will support you in any way we can for the social cause that is Free Software. Hope everything goes well with the Finance Inspection Team, best wishes for the same. Looking forward to turning new leaves,
Abraham Raji
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Mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat.
(I must have been having a really good day because I'm not usually this nice. Maybe I thought something good would happen this time and a little positive feedback would be good.)
But I was wrong. No reply.
So I sent another mail:
November 1 2020:
Hey Sir,
The free software communities in Kerala had sent you a letter detailing their expectations from ICFOSS, how together both parties can build a better FOSS ecosystem in Kerala, upon your request. We have yet to receive an official reply for the letter from you. This is an email to inquire about the status of the official reply, why is it getting delayed and when we can expect it.
Sincerely,
Abraham Raji
--
Mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat.