Re: [Fsfe-uk] AFFS

[Adam Bower]

On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 03:15:01PM +0000, John¹ wrote:

> This raises two questions,
> a) Who is it who is "currently involved with the AFFS", and is this person 
> a paid up member?

I assume you are involved with AFFS as you keep telling us you are a
member maybe you could answer the question? Anyhow, I am "involved" 
with the AFFS as such a time comes that someone wants to revitalise 
the organisation. All I am doing is overseeing that the server is 
secure and operable and that the information on it is also secure. 
I am also in a position of making my time available to answer questions
about the organisation and where the assets of the organisation are and
who has access over them as best I can.

> b) If no decision has been undertaken by anybody who was "formerly or 
> currently involved with the AFFS to terminate the membership of any member 
> of the AFFS", why have their, [sic, the members], subscriptions been 
> returned and by whom? Someone must have taken a decision at some point to 
> return the subscriptions, who was it and why did they make that decision?  

I'm not aware that any subscriptions have been returned, if you can tell
me of any specific subs that have been returned then I will do my best 
to answer your question. Unfortunately I am not in a position to advise
about any details of the membership list and/or processing as I don't 
believe that I have ever had access to it.

> Mine are being processed, they are paid into the Co-operative bank account 
> of the AFFS, therefore the first part of the above statement is 
> inaccurate. It must be that the bank itself is carrying out the role of 
> membership processing.  If "the AFFS no longer has anybody in who is 
> carrying out the role of membership processing", who was it that was 
> carrying out that role previously, and why did they cease to do it. 
> without informing the members? Or for that matter being replaced?

In that case I'd ask the co-op bank for a copy of the members list, in
as much as they have no idea if any payment is for a subscription to 
join or just a donation I don't think you will receive much help from
them about if they holding an up to date membership database unless
they have taken steps to compile a new one, in which case I would think
you would know more than me as your details would be on said list. 

You can try and read into what has been written as much as you want but
if you truely believe that the co-op are the people processing the 
membership renewals then I don't believe (though I could very well be
wrong) that they are reading this mailing list so you should take the 
question directly to them.

I don't recall who was carrying out membership processing, my position 
on the commitee of the AFFS would have been terminated when my 
membership lapsed. The reasons for the lack of answers to your 
questions would be because the organisation has lapsed into a broken
state (hence I thought why we were having these conversations), the 
commitee has all lapsed into non-membership as far as I am aware and 
most of the members have had their memberships lapse. 

I'm afraid that even though you can ask these questions until the heat 
death of the universe but you will find that many of them will remain 
unanswerable and at this point it would be better to try and work out 
a way for the remainder of the AFFS to be able to kick start itself 
again to either dissolve or carry on. Asking these questions about the 
past are not going to give you the answers you want and even if they 
were answered I would doubt that the answers would prove to be very 
useful in rebuilding the association. I would suggest you do something
more productive with your time such as advise the people who are 
willing to help you revitalise the AFFS on what steps we should take 
to get it into new custodianship.

If this means we should ask people to join up again and then do
something then fine, let us know your intentions. All I am reading at 
the moment from you is lots of questions about the past which is not 
helpful when we really need to be looking towards the future.

At this point I would be very happy to see the AFFS either relaunch or
be wound up as it would at least give some finality over the state it 
is currently in.

Thanks
Adam 
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