LibrePlanet: About/History
Project History
The LibrePlanet project began during the 2006 FSF Associate Member Meeting to help organize ways to bring free software as a movement "into the mainstream." We started by organizing the FSF members at the 2006 meeting into groups based on geography. They then brainstormed ideas for how to organize people around issues central to the free software movement, and posted those ideas on a wiki page titled after their region. You can read those ideas on the pages linked to from the 2006 Member Meeting page.
Our prime function was to support existing groups in creating new ones. Ideally, we would like every member to start their own group. New groups are added to the group network forming group families. We recognize each group has unique needs and skills, so our goal is to provide a uniform operation framework that does not interfere with the group's unique requirements.
Our second function is to provide educational material for creating and operating a group. Research in this area is ongoing and depends on members providing insightful feedback. By gathering experience from members around the world, we expect the educational content to become increasingly informative and relevant. We also expect to solve the ever present need to localize education through member participation.
Our third function is to provide member support through guidelines in conflict resolution, crisis management, and leadership. Our overriding objective is to ensure a group remains focused on its purpose, able, and willing to achieve it. Our second objective is to ensure the issue is contained within the affected group(s). However, any member can push an issue through to us, and if the matter is still unresolved, refer it to the FSF itself for final resolution.
Our policies, guidelines, and authority is defined by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) through LibrePlanet's Project. The FSF may elect a committee, who are not members of this group, to oversee the LibrePlanet project. Their task is to review the project periodically, determine policy, report to the FSF, and resolve conflicts of interest between LibrePlanet and the FSF.
