Hi all,

I find these topics difficult to discuss or act on, because through my lack of experience, well-intended remarks often turn out to be naïve or even upsetting. Still, I think this is an important discussion to have, so here goes.

It is quite clear to me that Schimon strongly objects to the term "civil society", although I am not entirely sure whether this is mainly about the term itself or about differing interpretations of what it implies. That said, I do think there is a broad consensus between Daniel, Dave and Schimon on the core message: making XSF standards more inclusive and more user-focused.

I would certainly support revisiting the questions we ask during Last Calls. If we can improve those questions in a way that leads to better engagement, and ultimately to standards that serve the needs of more people, that would be a very good outcome. As such, this feels like a pragmatic and low-risk first step.

At the same time, if our goal is greater inclusivity and user focus, concentrating solely on Last Call questions does feel a bit narrowly scoped. I do appreciate the pragmatism here - and by all means, I'm not suggesting we don't do this - but I wonder whether, in parallel, we could also look for other improvements in our processes, organisation, or outreach efforts that might address the same goals more broadly.

Thanks for starting this discussion; I'm glad we're having it.

Kind regards,

  Guus

On Thu, Jan 8, 2026 at 7:40 PM Schimon Jehudah <sch@fedora.email> wrote:
Good evening.

I would want to increase the extent of this concern, and focus more on
people and less on developers and other "technical" people.

I am more inclined to advocate for more accessibility and freedom.


Bad influence
-------------

I am against condescending terms such as "civil society"; as such terms
are designed to influlence people to silently legitimize concerns that
otherwise would not be legitimized by them.

One is said to be of a group of "civil society", and that term
influences him to have some effortless pride, by supposedly being of
"civil society".

If someone from Afghanistan or Antartica, or China has a good idea,
then I would listen to him; and I care not whether he is red, white,
black, yellow, blond, or redhead.

I, for instance, am a jew of an "enlightened" (whatever that should
mean) and "democratic" society in the middle east; even though the
population registry has over a million of non-existing people (for
election purposes); even though it has no constitution and individual
rights have no protection; even though it denies damages by presenting
itself as a victim and thereby stifles any discussion; even though it
commits a well documented genocide of half a century against the
Palestinian people.

The society of which I am a part of, for over twenty years, is anything
but that which it describes itself, and many of my friends think so too.

Hence, I sense, that unnecessary regulations would only harm and
confuse us.

Stating that the damage be *significant* be an understatement, and the
damages would certainly be immense and difficult to measure.


Regulation
----------

Regulation is something good, only when it is necessary; and, is
almost always bad when it is unnecessary.


Censorship
----------

Useless regulations are often made to have concealed censorship
mechanisms that are masqueraded as helpful procedures.

During the last year of 2025, that organization which you mentioned
(starting with "W") and organization which is related to it, have
censored, in the name of their "benevolent" (useless) regulations, many
comments and criticism against the removal of XSLT.

That regulation was abused to censor; or, I should state, that they
were used as they were meant to be used, to censor.

Censorship masqueraded by friendliness.


Access
------

I recall, over a decade ago, a friend who was a participant of a
group chat called "yaypew", who discussed several times about a"lobby"
group chat which is forked into several group chats; and interestingly
XEP-0503 is reminiscing his description. XMPP could have been there
before everyone else, if the access was easier, to more kinds of people.

The problem, and trouble, of the XMPP people is the lack of access of
more kinds of people, who may be even literature teachers, lawyers,
gardeners, farmers, and even bureaucrats.

Increasing of accessibility would consequently increase the
participation and helpful ideas.

However, all mailing-lists were closed, and now there is only a
mailing-list of "standards" which does not even fit to me, an XMPP
software developer.

Interestingly, the mailing-list of "jdev" was closed for inactivity,
even though the activity increased, and, ironically, the recent
discussions were about increasing accessibility.


Conclusion
----------

I advise to refrain from regulations, and contrived terms; and to
increase access to the public.

Otherwise, XMPP would be left behind, instead of leading the internet
as I deem that it should.

Once we allow to the public to guide us, the better we would serve the
pubblic and XMPP.

I am a lawyer; yet, today, I develop XMPP software full-time, and that
is because I allowed to my clients, especialy my first ones, to guide
my efforts, instead of myself being authoritative against them.


Post script
-----------

The recent fake event, which was amazing to tell, about sabotaging a
whites-only internet site, which I deem to be a fake event, was
probably a campaign to incite hatred intsead of discussion and
dialogue, and also to legitimize criminal and offensive behaviour
against white.

I deem that even as a fake event, because I, as a lawyer of over a
decade, am well aware that one would be subjected to severe lawsuits
for committing such offences.

So, other than this event being fake, it has another consequence to
encourage hatred, and therefore I deem that mentioned organization
(starting with "C") as untrustworthy.


Of note
-------

I repeat, the things that we need are accessible and open dialogues and
discussions, and to extend them to more people, beyond you and me.

I write this message out of respect and care; and if someone is
inconvenient about anuy of my statements, that are mostly about my own
life and society, I request to refer to me in a polite manner;
otherwise, I will ignore your comments.


Thank you,
Schimon


On Tue, 6 Jan 2026 16:22:31 +0100
Daniel Gultsch <daniel@gultsch.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I saw a talk by Sophia Longwe, who I believe works at Wikimedia
> Germany, at 39C3 (Chaos Communication Congress). I saw the talk in
> person, but there is a recording of it here:
> https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-who-runs-the-www-wsis20-and-the-future-of-internet
>
> The talk is a rudimentary overview of how the different bodies that
> "steer" the internet work t ranging from UN committees and ICANN down
> to mere mortals such as us. The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) was
> not called out specifically, but our colleagues at the IETF and W3C
> were mentioned.
>
> In her talk, she criticized the lack of participation from "civil
> society" in standardization work. She attributed this partially to
> high barriers to entry at IETF events (high costs, fancy hotels) and
> said (I’m paraphrasing) that it’s basically just rich FAANG employees.
> Some of that doesn’t exactly match my own experience at the IETF, but
> I don’t think any of what she said was in bad faith. I hope to meet
> her in Vienna (IETF126) to discuss some of these things in person. And
> who knows, maybe she is right.
>
> Anyway, long story short, this got me thinking about our processes
> here at the XSF (which, again, she didn’t mention at all):
>
> I think the XMPP Standards Foundation is in a unique position where
> many of our members can be described as "civil society" - people who
> might describe themselves as activists or promoters of XMPP rather
> than developers. (And/or people who do software development for a
> living, but whose jobs are unrelated to XMPP and who joined the XSF
> more in the capacity of a user.)
>
> At the same time, I’m observing that a lot of our Last Calls (and
> standards work in general) have few participants, at least relative to
> our overall membership numbers. Furthermore, I've heard criticism that
> the XSF doesn’t take the concerns of some minority groups seriously
> enough. (Which may or may not be true; I don’t want to take sides on
> that at this point.)
>
> This leads me to a question: Can we kill two or three birds with one
> stone here? Can we either rephrase some of the questions in the Last
> Call or add new ones that explicitly invite feedback from "civil
> society" (for lack of a better word)?
>
> I just want to get the discussion started, so I don’t have a final
> list, but the questions could go in a direction like this:
>
> * Would you use this feature if it were implemented in the XMPP client
> you currently use?
> * Do you think an implementation of this feature could negatively
> impact your community?
> * Does this improve (make easier) the work you do in your community?
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel
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