First question: Yes
Second question: Yes if there is a candidate?

First question : No. Actually, I'd like to have some motivation to stay in the PPI (if we are still member, as we didn't pay any fee). For me, PPI never demonstrated its purpose and its uselfulness. As a reminder, we had this kind of debate a long time ago (see https://wiki.pirateparty.be/Pirate_Assembly_Spring_2015/Feedback_FollowUp#Pirate_Party_International for instance), and when we talked about PPEU last year the topic showed up again : https://www.loomio.org/d/B9G1WsfK/european-pirate-party

Does the PPBE still want to be a member of the PPI ? : No.

• Because we still don't know what PPI is useful for, and it will cost us time/energy/money.
• Also, Pirates from Sweden, Iceland, UK, Australia are not even part of PPI or left it some years ago and didn't rejoin.
• Finally, the structure itself of PPI is a complete turn-off (why have delegates and only Pirate Parties as members instead of individuals? It means every PP has to take a decision that will then be delegated?).

And same as @hgo as we are in a limbo state (are we member or are we not), I'd like to see a motivation behind the "Yes" answers.

Hmm, seems we are to late. (see below)
* Nevertheless I'd like to keep the debate opened. From a tactical and relational standpoint it's not wise not to be present.
* Pirates make other Pirate Parties more influencual, whatever the ship. Parallel power-structures should be at least kept close.
* There are certain advantages to a membership that are important in more international coöperative oriented politics. We can learn from each other and not just as a marketing tool but as more profound way to spread our common message and solutions.
* The platform is bigger and it's an opportunity to break out of nationalistic boundaries.
* If the structure of the PPI is unpleasing to our eyes, it should at least be clearly communicated. It could be the first point on our agenda to the PPI. But as I mentioned before, it's too late for this round, unless we appoint a independent perhaps to formally reintroduce the PPBE and apply for membership under restrictions for example. In this frame the basics of cooperation can be maintained and indivduality for the PPBE is granted, while our criticism is officially logged. We can even make news out of it. In that way we also learn?

(3) Requests for Membership shall be submitted in writing to the Board at least four weeks before the meeting of the General Assembly. They shall include contact information and a statement on the adoption of the statutes and internal regulations of the Pirate Parties International, in addition to a copy of the statutes and by-laws and the political program of the applicant and information on the background and organization of said applicant. The Board will transmit the application to all Members at least two weeks before the meeting of the General Assembly.

This cooperation can also come from individual countries talking to each other. The delegation part is problematic as it is recreating the problems we want to avoid. I would like to know e.g. from the Prague pp what is their view on this representation.

-First question: yes. Eendracht maakt macht; L’union fait la force; Einigkeit macht stark. It seems normal to me that it doesn’t work perfectly, certainly considering the fact that as it is a young organization.
-Second question: for that question, I have no comment.

ATM I'll stand by the remarks and concerns of @hgo @vanecx and @josse

For al the reasons that membership would/could be a good thing, Im' not convinced that PPI has the correct structure to do that. To me it feels to much like a top-down structure. (They set the rules, you have to apply, you need a delegate...) This could all improve yes, but that doesn't mean we need to be part of it now.

I agree that we could communicate our concerns clearly, however, we do not need to be members to do that.
The way I see it is; Either we make a text togheter (which I'm not sure a lot of people will be interested in doing) and submit that as PPBE, or someone (not me) can take the objections and remarks that are already given and submit those to PPI under their own name (and feel free to link them to the relevant threads). Both would be fine by me.
If we see that those remarks are bein taken into account, then maybe we can reach consensus about our relationship towards PPI.

Extra note: I've asked on fedi how PPNL's stand is towards PPI, the person who answered me seems positive[1]. They've also relayed my questions.

[1] https://mastodon.pirateparty.be/@Ilja/101003635070820690

I think the blocker for me is mostly the fact that you need a delegate (at least as I understand from the other comments). It seems like that person represents PPBE as a whole. I really don't like that idea.
An aproach I'd be much more comfortable with is if PPI is an entity on it's own who allow an induvidual to be member (as already proposed above).
That person can then, in name of PPI, contact local (or better, national) parties (and will probably be part of that party). This keeps sovereignty in the hand of the local (or, well, national) parties, without being in conflict with the mission of PPI (to help establish, to support and promote, and to maintain communication and co-operation between pirate parties around the world.[1]).
This would also be more bottom up since everyone keep their sovereignty (including PPI). In this sheme PPI would only act as an intermediaire from the side (as wiewed from the local, or national, parties).

In that senario we wouldn't even have to decide on becoming a member!
BAM, another conflict resolved :laughing:

Extra note: I should mention that it is possible now for individuals to become members, but they don't have full rights, so not really what's been proposed here, but maybe a step in the right direction?

[1] https://pp-international.net/about-ppi/statutes-of-ppi/
[2] https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=Become_an_Individual_Member_of_PPI

I agree with everything @iljabaert just said :)

The GA happened this weekend, and I watched almost everything, the 2 whole days. And it was painful to watch, to be sincere.

There are delegates in the room + delegates online, so they attempted to setup something to make every delegate able to participate. But the concrete result was that about 1/3 of the GA was "we're taking a break to solve technical issues", "sorry for being so late", "did the online delegate from Country X vote or does he abstain?".

Another third of the time was procedural discussion. Just as an example, today at 14:20 they started discussing about the fact there would not be enough time to do all the agenda. It lasted almost a whole hour just to decide to do the rest of the GA next weekend...

Not only were the discussions very procedural, but also the motions. On saturday, it was the motions about the statutes (4 motions, 1 was removed by the author just before for some reason, 2 were rejected, 1 was approved). Today, there were 3 or 4 motions (not discussed, because they were moved to later, as said above). 1 about creating a commission to change the statutes, 1 to change the membership fee, 1 to adopt an online voting tool.

These motions don't seem to have been discussed beforehand between Pirates. The voting procedures don't seem to have been much prepared either.

Between that, there were some speeches yesterday (1 advocate for whistleblowing, 1 from Czech Pirates explaining what they did to achieve their electoral success). Interesting, but it seems PPI did not record them...

So, as much as I also agree on the principle and the importance of international collaboration between Pirates, I do not see how gathering about 30 Pirates for a whole weekend and produce basically nothing is helping us achieve that goal (except the fact it makes these Pirates meet in person).

Did you take note of the Czech pirates speech?

No, there are some notes taken by PPI here : https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2018_11_03#Speech_by_Marketa_Gregorova_-_Success_in_Czechia

Thanks!

Thank you for the clarification, the funded criticism and constructive solutions. These are valid points not te enter the organisation now and they shed a new light.
It raises another question:
* Is a public communiqué - with these standpoints - to the PPI now in place? Because it's important for other parties/countries/pirates to know why we (the PPBE) don't participate and what then the exact conditions would be at a later time.

* Secondly it gives a chance to the PPI to reflect and internal restructuring. And this is necessary because they do carry our name and we can't allow structures who are inherently undemocratic in nature, to develop further under a Pirate-flag.
The platform of the Pirate Times could be used for this.
Thank you for your thoughts.

I'm a strong advocate for keeping our international connections.
Of course PPI is about statutes, formalities &c.
And yes, PPBE is not active (It officially exists, but the Pirates in Belgium seem to be the school example of decentralised)
So, I don't think we need an immediate representative, but anybody who wishes to be one: go ahead. If someone thinks we do need to discuss things first: organise a GA or discuss it here or on a lab or whatnot.

If there are fees or obligations: can be discussed.

And if PPI wants to do things top down: there is absolutely no reason to comply if the proposed things are not reasonable.

TL;DR :
If there is someone who wishes to be a delegate: Please do!

What the Czech pirates say is quite interesting: centralized does not work, but bring experts together because just leaflets won't work.

As Christophe Cop is mentioning: Let's work on the preparation for a GA?

FYI there is General Assembly of PPI on December 7th & 8th, and it happens exclusively online.

Info here => https://pp-international.net/2019/11/join-the-ppi-ga-now-all-you-need-to-know/

The agenda is here : https://ga.pp-international.net/t/proposed-agenda/155 (from what I gathered, the agenda will be finalized during the first day, it's as usual about their own Statutes, formalities etc... and the motions for the second day that could be about real content are apparently not yet available/known...).

I gave up trying to understand what they're doing but I'm just sharing the information, in case there are still pirates interested in that?

Does anyone know what we are even doing 😬 At the very least I'm glad some people are trying to get something going internationally. We're all just figuring this out as we go anyhow

Found on PPI website : https://pp-international.net/2020/01/invitation-to-the-first-meeting-of-the-pirate-parties-international-standing-committee-on-universal-liaison-on-party-labor-scull/


Invitation to the first Meeting of the Pirate Parties International Standing Committee on Universal Liaison on Party Labor (SCULL)

We like to invite you to the first meeting of PPI‘s SCULL to be conducted online, Monday Januar 20 2020 20:00 – 22:00 CET in Zoom – Meeting ID 322 832 033 Password: 082251
https://zoom.us/j/322832033?pwd=Z1JXaUVpYVkzZ0VXOE5TeVZEeVJKUT09

who should attend: International Coordinators, IT officers.

We initiate the SCULL meetings this year with the goal to foster cooperation among PPI’s members. This Standing Committee aims to extend the direct communications not only between the international coordinators of the Pirate Parties, but also among those, who is helping to run them – the IT, the Graphics and Design teams, those who handle the Membership registers, and so on. The SCULL is meant as an ongoing initiative that will touch all different areas of work of a Pirate Party, but for its first meeting we like to start with the Information Technology (IT), as this is something absolutely all of our members have, regardless of their size or maturity level. For the next meetings I have penciled in the topics of “How is a Pirate Party organized – structures, workgroups, volunteers)”, “Graphic teams and design”, “tools for democracy”.

For the first meeting of the PPI SCULL on January 20 I suggest the following agenda:

• Introduction of Delegates

• Introduction of the PPI’s IT infrastructure

• Services that are provided for PPI’s Members
  (Mailing Lists, Nextcloud, Mumble, Etherpads, other… )

• IT services from PPI Members

• Chat Infrastructure for Pirates

• Other topics

• next meeting and structure for collaboration

We kindly ask the Pirate Parties to prepare to share details on their IT Best Practices and if they have IT Services that could be provided to other PPI Members.

Please contact the PPI Board if you have suggestion for the upcoming SCULL meeting agenda.

The meeting is publicly open to everybody. However, following the decision of the PPI GA from March 2015 every PPI member is entitled to one vote. Hower, we encourage you to invite as many subject matter experts as you like. The Committee Meeting will be recorded.

Please be aware, that other Standing Committees of PPI are also in the process of launching, the invites will be sent our in the coming days and weeks – we are preparing a SC for the exchange of our financial experts – on budgets, finance and fund raising, and another one on press, election campaigning, social media. We already have started with our Standing Committee on the relationship with the UN and other international bodies, that had its first Meeting in December, its next meeting will be in March.

So this means that ppbe can attend as well?

If yes, @HgO I think we should do this and I can probably make time for this. They ask to prepare some things. I don't thing we have something explicit yet on the things they ask, but I started something on https://pad.parley.be/p/it-squad Can you see if you agree with the points I make and add where you think is relevant?

So this means that ppbe can attend as well?

Well, I have no idea to be honest, that's all the info I have. They always talk about delegates because formalities, but I guess they won't be mad if you participate :D

Unless they have sent us an email to some old email account we don't use anymore, they haven't contacted us in the last months (except for the request for an official address), but I guess we're still officially member? No idea - they probably don't know either :D

Anyway, thanks for looking at it, maybe it will be very positive, I can imagine IT-people collaborating more would be a good thing.

... I tried both Firefox and Chromium and neither work for me :/ It looks like it's stuck...

It asks me to open `xdg-open`. As far as I can tell, the only thing this does is open a preferred application for a link... There is also a download button to install some (proprietary?) app on my machine.

So a far as I can tell, they want to use some proprietary service that forces you to download their proprietary app on your own machine before you can even START communicating!

Maybe we should write that text telling them what we think of all this *grmbl* *grmbl* (or maybe I'm just wrong and too tired to figure it out 😴 )

The software is Zoom? They used it for last GA, yes proprietary stuff. I've seen mentions of a Jitsi room for "informal chat", don't know why they don't use that instead.

Apparently there will be a report available soon, I'll share it here as soon as I see it.

Here is the report

Same invitation, but for treasurers this time : https://pp-international.net/2020/02/1214/

Invitation to the first Meeting of the Pirate Parties International Standing Committee on Usual Requisitions of Various Yields (SCURVY)

We initiate the SCURVY meetings this year with the goal to foster cooperation among PPI’s members. This standing committee aims to extend direct communications not only between international coordinators of Pirate Parties, but also between actual subject matter experts. The upcoming SCURVY session will focus primarily on finance topics: membership fees, fund raising, party subsidies, controlling (evaluating based on standards and regulations), budgets, accounting, etc. 

Hello, Pirate Party Austria just installed an instance of Mattermost for international Pirates : https://mattermost.globalpirates.net/globalpirates/channels/globalpirates

About Mattermost : it's the open-source version of Slack and is good for organising, as one can create teams, channels, private and direct messaging channels, also you can share files and is comes with some integrations like jitsi-video calls. It's helpful if you try to organise a workgroup or taksforce or maybe also a small PP.

FYI for everyone interested, me and @Renaud Van Eeckhout have already joined

For your information, there was a board meeting of PPI today (they meet once or twice a month).

If you're interested, the minutes of that meeting and the previous ones can be found on the wiki of PPI : https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board/Board_Meetings

@Jelle Debusscher