On Saturday February 19 2022 07:14, you wrote to All:
AL> For years there has been a shortage of qualified candidates for the AL> FTSC. There are several reasons for this, technical, political, and AL> personal.
AL> At this time, we can no longer afford to turn away qualified AL> candidates who have expressed a willingness to serve on AL> technicalities.
1) Changing the rules during the game is alway a no-no, no matter the intentions.
2) The requirement that FTSC members run a fully fledged fidonet node i.e. a node that can make outgoing calls AND accept incoming calls to and from other fidonet nodes is a technical requirement, not a technicality.
3) There are good reasons that these technical requirements are laid down in the rule that candidates MUST accept their nomination with a message originating from their listed node which was nodelist before the start of the elections. It serves to check that the candidate actually runs an operational node and it also serves to prevent "ghost nodes" to be created on the fly for the occasion. As is happening now...
4) Ommitting the Pvt keyword for a node that advertises no contact information is in violation of FTS-5000. The FTSC going along with such a violation of their own standards is not a technicallity.
5) In fact none of the above can be side swept as "technicalities". Waiving rules because the rule is not convenient under the circumstances at hand sets a precedent and precendents have the nasty habit of biting one in the back one day. Also, waiving technical requirements because it is not convenenient is not what one would expect of a Technical committee.
6) Calling technical requirements "technicallities" may lead Fidonet members to think that the 'T' in "FTSC" does not stand for "Technical" but for "Technicalities". Why should fidonet members and developers follow Fidonet Technical Standards if the FTSC itself does not follow them and labels them as "technicalities" because that is more convenient? And why should capable and willing people put time and energy in documenting standards that can be ignored as "technicalities when convenient? The FTSC is digging its own grave by not following its own rules.
Considering the above, I object to the candidacy of Tim Schattkowsky. It is nothing personal, but he does not qualify by the rules that we have agreed on. It would be better to follow the procedure and let him go through the learning curve of running a fully fledged node in a normal net so that next year he can be a qualified candiate. I agree with Wilfred and Maurice.
