I think the problem is also that a lot of committees are too detached from some of the groups they deal with. I once was invited, as a member of a European dru

I think the problem is also that a lot of committees are too detached from some of the groups they deal with. I once was invited, as a member of a European drug policy group, to a FSF conference in London with the aim to get more grassroots organisations to use FOSS - flights and hotels paid for by the FSF. When there, we were informed that we could later send our receipts for hotels and flights to the chair of FSF Europe to get reimbursed just a few weeks later. If not for some very generous attendants who lived in London, a lot of people would not have had a place to sleep; I personally paid for a few return flights so people were not stranded in the UK. First: grassroot activists usually don't have any sponsors or disposable income. Second: the takeaway message "use Linux, use Firefox" could have been sent instead of the invitations and people could have learned the same, spent that time on working for their cause and finally have saved themselves from a precarious situation. Third: The guy in charge spent much more gossipping about RMS at the paid for meals than on the announced content of the conference. Bad style, especially since some attendants just had spent much more productive time with RMS a few weeks before (and probably still tried hard to get the images of him clipping his toe nails during the meetup out of their head - at least I did).