Yesterday the 20th of March, 2021 we held the inaugural meeting for the FAF Association to be registered in Denmark.

The statutes as they were agreed can be found here.

I was picked for president of the board and will perform these administrative tasks during the term, and ideally near future:

• Register the FAF Association with the Danish authorities
• Setup bank accounts and coordinate with the elected Treasurer to setup continuous, transparent accounting.
• Facilitate the migration of our servers to a new account registered under the association and paid directly by its accounts.
• Facilitate the formal transfer of the IP to the association.

With this in place the structural framework for FAF as an organisation should be in place in a manner that is future-proof.

/Sheeo

Per the last update on the association as well as by request from community members to make this list public; here is the list of the current board members of the association:

• Brutus5000
• Swkoll
• furyritchie
• Nostalgic Futurist
• IceDreamer
• Giebmasse
• Rowey
• Dragun101
• Sheeo

Brutus5000 is the elected treasurer.

As the elected president I represent the board and any questions, issues or other concerns should be directed at me.

If the concerns are regarding myself or otherwise warrants asking another board member; please with priority ask Brutus5000 and avoid directly contacting other board members.

Hey everyone, since the last update here a few things have happened regarding the association.

On the 30th of May we had a board meeting where we started out by making ground rules for how the board itself can function efficiently, while still respecting the time constraints of the voluntary members.

Practically this means the board can always make a decision within at most 2 weeks, without requiring a call.

On request from multiple community members, we also decided to publish the list of board members.

I updated the board internally on the status of our funding and new bank setup. The treasurer and a few volunteer board members are working on a budget proposal for 2021. More to come on this as soon as that's ready.

When the association was formed, it was the intention that the Council of Setons would keep functioning as it has been throughout and changing the structure of it was not a part of the plan.

We did however decide to dissolve the position of the Administrative Councilor, given that the Board now oversees these responsibilities.

A further rethink of the rest of the Council is in progress, and we would like to hear thoughts from the community about it.

As for the recent resignation of the promotional councilor, we're sad to see him go and I'd like to extend a huge thank you to Nine2 for all his contributions and work on FAF.

@furyritchie will undertake the responsibilities in the meantime while a long term solution is worked out.

If you haven't already joined the association and would like to know more about it, here's the post summarizing the general assembly.

Anyone sympathetic to the objectives of FAF can join and we encourage you to do so if you have an interest in the future of FAF. There's a channel on our discord where you can ask for the required approval.

A few people have requested an update of me even though our next board meeting isn't until Thursday, so I thought I'd take some time to give a quick summary:

Since last update the following has happened:

• Our bank accounts are fully up and running
• We have paid out the on-hold funds from Patreon and are starting to use them
• Brutus is working on accounting and a way to make them transparent
• Swkoll has prepared a first draft of the budget
• Rowey is working on updating the patreon and setting up tiers to let supporters pick where their money goes
• The new code of conduct was finalized and approved.
• Due to the recent server issues we are considering moving to a more expensive Hetzner server; this is being discussed as I write this update and Brutus will post about it when we do

And finally some less positive news:

IceDreamer has resigned as a board member due to time constraints.

Not only was he board member however, he was also assistant auditor. So we are seeking a replacement auditor to be picked as a special agenda item at the next general election, who can assist Ceneraii our normal auditor with review of the accounts.

We do not expect any difference in the capacity of the board to function through the term due to this event.

On a personal note I would like to remind everyone that you do not need to be on the board or even in the association to contribute to FAF. Nor is being a member any kind of reward; it's simply more work. It's important work, however, and someone has to do it. So if you want to help out please do not hesitate to apply for the association

It is a group of people who have the community's best interest at heart and wish to see it thrive and grow, which is why we adopted the new code of conduct. It is important that everyone on FAF strives to follow the ideals it presents, but even more so, it is important that contributors hold it in high regard and try to follow it.

Sheeo,
On behalf of the board

Hey everyone,

It's the end of 2021 and so I'll take a moment to update you all about the status of the association.

Rowey resigned from the board due to time constraints. We thank him for all his contributions and he remains in the association and is continuing to make general contributions to FAF.

As per the 19th of December, the full rights to FAF have been transferred to the association. This means the transition of FAF to be a fully democratized and user-owned organization is formally complete. I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to Visionik for his commitment to FAF throughout the years.

As we're nearing the next General Meeting, and since I will not be running for President in 2022, we've been trying to find the best candidates for the position. We hope to include them in the process early on in order to have a recommendation for the General Meeting and a smooth transition overall. If you're interested, please do not hesitate to contact me.

An invitation to the General Meeting will be sent out soon detailing the date and procedure.

Thank you all for 2021 and happy new year

Sheeo,
On behalf of the board

To be frank this is just unacceptable way of managing an organization.

I also entirely agree with this point. I've not acted strongly enough in time and instead tried avoiding dealing properly with this for too long, which has left us here.

@thomashiatt no it's not pretty clear that what FAF is doing is against the law, otherwise I would not be a representative of this organization.

GPG encouraged modding and FAF when it shut down. They helped build this community.

So long as we don't break the spirit of that covenant and start encouraging piracy, or go against the original intentions -- say by cross-modding and taking SupCom 2 content and putting it into FAF, I'm fine with representing FAF in official capacity, talking with Square Enix/THQ Nordic should they send a C&D and defending our case in court should it be needed.

But only so long as we verify ownership of the game and actually do operate with good intentions.

Anyone who wants steam link gone and argues that it's OK should also be ready to sign up for the board and put their personal name on the paperwork behind the organization that runs FAF.

We've had a few intermittent server issues recently, last one 3 days ago and one today.

Technically one of the RAID drives appears to have become unresponsive, causing a lockup of our system.

We're looking into the issue and we may have to order a replacement drive which could cause some planned downtime in the near future.

Thank you for your understanding

@ftxcommando said in Council of Setons EXPOSED - Part 1:

Sheeo was driven out of the council chat because:

A) He says his role is obsolete and so he has no reason to be there, Admin Councillor = President of the Board for all intended purposes.

B) There were rules made for a code of conduct in the Council chat. It said Sheeo could remove anyone that breaks the rules. These rules included things like making disparaging remarks and lying. Sheeo did both and I don't mind having the conversation about how he did both.

So I said I would accept the code so long as we have a way to also apply it to Sheeo. But since Sheeo said he was leaving the Council chambers it was fine. Then he said I crossed the "intentionally trolling" part of the code as far as he was concerned by he didn't take action and isntead just left.

This is so incredibly misleading. Let's get the facts straight here.

There's no point in the admin councillor position any more indeed; that doesn't mean the board shouldn't have representation or be present in the council chat. But you have, almost single-handedly, made that impossible with your constant toxicity throughout the year.

I introduced those rules more or less only because of your behavior. What you're doing right now is very much the same; misrepresenting facts and lying to make your perspective seem better; and constantly disparaging and attacking others personally.

The very moment you were added back in the council chat you immediately continued your behavior and broke the rules. Instead of enforcing them unilaterally I left it up to the rest of the councillors.

I also do agree with Thomas - I highly doubt FTX’s periodic bouts of toxicity has much if any relevancy when it comes to player retention for newbs. The game’s steep learning curve and the lack of friendliness to newbs getting games and just getting kicked from lobbies are a much bigger issue for newbs, both of which there are initiatives to address.

I'm inclined to agree with this; I don't think players are scared off from playing the game because of toxicity.

The people who go on to contribute, and spend their time discussing with others, making content, writing code etc.; they are driven away. It's a lot to task of people to voluntarily help out with a project; it's an even taller order to expect them to keep on going while they're being treated like shit for helping out.

Some of the best people we've had around in this community left because of toxicity in the past.

The time has come for the association to have its next General Meeting, which will be held on the 6th of March, 2022 at 20:00 CET.

I'd like to encourage those who want to have influence on the future of FAF to attend and participate, by first joining the association.

You can find the invitation here which has a more detailed description of the meeting.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out to me, or to ask on the forums, in discord or IRC

Regards,
Sheeo, on behalf of the board

@thomashiatt your comment detailing the exploit publicly was removed.

I'll encourage the dev team to look into fixing the particular exploit; which I wasn't aware of until you posted it here.

@ftxcommando other exe changes were made including ones to support shared armies.

There is no "narrative" here. Before the association, Visionik was personally responsible for the operation of FAF, and he made the choice to introduce steam link for these reasons.

Now it's the association that's responsible for future choices.

If you so vehemently want to remove steam link and not otherwise prove that we are still intending for FAF players to own the game; then you know what to do.

Lobby the board so they are all willing to be responsible for the action because they will be.

I advise you bring a lawyer and get a statement from them if you want to be convincing.

But even with that, it's going to be without me unless there's sufficient alternative to prove that we are still operating with the intention of making sure our players own the game.

@ftxcommando I don't believe it did break that covenant.

But if we right now removed steamlink with no alternative verification mechanism, I believe it would be a breach of that covenant and I will not be a part of it.

@thomashiatt no it's not pretty clear that what FAF is doing is against the law, otherwise I would not be a representative of this organization.

GPG encouraged modding and FAF when it shut down. They helped build this community.

So long as we don't break the spirit of that covenant and start encouraging piracy, or go against the original intentions -- say by cross-modding and taking SupCom 2 content and putting it into FAF, I'm fine with representing FAF in official capacity, talking with Square Enix/THQ Nordic should they send a C&D and defending our case in court should it be needed.

But only so long as we verify ownership of the game and actually do operate with good intentions.

Anyone who wants steam link gone and argues that it's OK should also be ready to sign up for the board and put their personal name on the paperwork behind the organization that runs FAF.

If you want steamlink gone you can lobby the board to undertake the associated responsibility.

It's not something I'm going to support without another mechanism of verifying ownership of the game. I'll resign from the association if we start supporting/encouraging piracy.

@martin_pl given the huge amount of features and various mods this game has, it would require a triple-A studio to maintain it in a way where there are little or no issues on releases and updates. Even such a large studio would have issues keeping the game completely bug free.

Given the fact that we are a voluntary organization with people choosing to donate their time to work on the game, we can't act as a triple-A game studio would.

Instead we have two choices:

1. Release updates which may break things and do our best to fix them as we become aware of them. Of course doing our best not to break things in the first place.

Or,

2. Release no updates at all and leave everything as is.

I'm fairly confident it's in everyone's interest that we stay with option one and it's a part of our core mission to keep expanding on and improving the game.

@jip thank you for the work you're doing.

The coop missions were worked on quite extensively a few years ago and perhaps it's worthwhile reaching out to those contributors for help?

Hey everyone,

It's the end of 2021 and so I'll take a moment to update you all about the status of the association.

Rowey resigned from the board due to time constraints. We thank him for all his contributions and he remains in the association and is continuing to make general contributions to FAF.

As per the 19th of December, the full rights to FAF have been transferred to the association. This means the transition of FAF to be a fully democratized and user-owned organization is formally complete. I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to Visionik for his commitment to FAF throughout the years.

As we're nearing the next General Meeting, and since I will not be running for President in 2022, we've been trying to find the best candidates for the position. We hope to include them in the process early on in order to have a recommendation for the General Meeting and a smooth transition overall. If you're interested, please do not hesitate to contact me.

An invitation to the General Meeting will be sent out soon detailing the date and procedure.

Thank you all for 2021 and happy new year

Sheeo,
On behalf of the board

@katharsas that's like using a spade to dig a tunnel under the atlantic. I like the novelty of the idea but you're probably not going to get a very good metric out of it

@jip yes with most modern machines equipped with NVMe SSDs that should be less of a concern though