On 6. May 2019, at 12:37, Paul Boddie <paul@boddie.org.uk> wrote:

On Saturday 4. May 2019 13.42.51 Nikos Roussos wrote:
On 03/05/2019 19:00, Paul Boddie wrote:
So, in the case of the Copyright Directive, where much fuss was made about
keeping code sharing platforms free of copyright filters, it seemed that
the FSFE was acting to defend GitHub and various proprietary services on
the basis that they help people share Free Software.

That doesn't sound like a logical conclusion. Sure Github is one of the
affected platforms, but code sharing platforms also include Free
Software initiatives (eg. sourcehut) or even self-hosted instances of
Gitlab, Gitea, etc.

Of course. But what I object to is a prominent position being given to a
centralising, proprietary service provider in a campaign about how copyright
legislation will affect Free Software. I would much rather the FSFE supported
and promoted genuinely open code-sharing platforms and let the proprietary
service providers do their own lobbying.

there is a simpler, less flattering explanation. More likely to be correct under Occam’s razor: Most of the ground work on this issue was done by Openforum Europe. Github is one of their member companies. FSFE piggy-backed on their work. Which means the interests of the free software community where much less present in the process than is commonly assumed here. This also explains the dopey wording on the Twitter message that exploded.