What would actually help, and what it commits you to
Take part
Stage
Nothing has been filed and no signature is being collected anywhere. Nobody is being asked to commit to anything today.
Where this actually stands
Nothing is being collected. No signature, no pledge, no address, no money. No version of this draft has been filed with the European Commission and none has been registered, which you can check for yourself on the versions page rather than taking it from this one.
What the project needs at this stage is not supporters. It is arguments, and it is people willing to be named. A citizens' initiative is filed by a group of at least seven people resident in at least seven different Member States, and their names are published by the Commission. Seven such people do not exist yet. Until they do, this is a draft with one editor, and the honest description of its position is that it has not been tested by anyone who disagrees with it in public.
Three things that help, in order of how much
Argue with the text. This is worth more than agreement and there is no close second. The draft has been attacked by adversarial review at every gate and by exactly one human, who wrote it. Every objection on this site was written by the project against itself, which is a method with an obvious ceiling. If you can find the hole, the answer this file needs is the hole. Open an issue or pull request and the argument is public from the first sentence, where it can be read by everyone the draft concerns.
Be one of the seven. If you are a citizen of the Union, of the age to vote in European Parliament elections, and you would consider putting your name to a filing, say so. You are not agreeing to anything today, for the reason set out below.
Connect it to an organisation. A union body, an academic institute, a foundation, an NGO with standing on automation, tax or capital ownership. An introduction is worth more than an endorsement, and a hostile reading from a serious institution is worth more than either.
What being an organiser means, stated plainly
The rules are the Commission's, not this project's, and the authoritative version is at europa.eu, not here. In outline: a group of organisers is at least seven natural persons, each resident in a different Member State, each old enough to vote in European Parliament elections. The group names a representative and a substitute. The names of the organisers are published in the Commission's public register. Members of the European Parliament do not count towards the seven.
What it does not mean, at least not yet:
- It is not a commitment. This project has published gates with kill criteria. Nobody is asked to be an organiser until the registrability question is answered, and if the answer is bad the file is published as a model law and the initiative stops. Saying you would consider it costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.
- It is not an endorsement of every article. An organiser files a text; an organiser does not have to have written it or to like all of it. If you would file it only with changes, that is a more useful message than agreement, and it belongs in the open where the changes can be argued.
- It is not fundraising. There is nothing to give to. The funding position is on the about page and it is that there is no organisation, no account and no donations.
How to say so
Two routes, and the public one is better.
In the open, which is preferred because the answer is then readable by everyone else weighing the same question: open an issue on the repository and say which Member State you are in, what you would bring, and whether you would consider being named.
By email, if the question is genuinely personal or you would rather not be public before you have decided: write to hello@ownthemachine.eu. It helps to say the same three things.
Either way, the most useful message anyone can send is the one that begins "this will not work, because".
What happens to what you send
An issue is public, permanently, and written by you, so it contains exactly what you chose to put in it.
An email reaches the editor and nothing else. It is not added to a list, because there is no list. It is not forwarded, not published, and not used to send you anything you did not ask for. If a group of organisers is ever constituted, whoever is in it will have said so themselves, in writing, at that point and not before. The controller and your rights are described on the about page.