Stefano Zacchiroli writes ("Re: Claiming the "debian" account on GitHub ?"):
> (And please, do not fall into the trap "they offer the service for free,
> we should be nice"; we're experienced enough to know that those who
> offer service for free often gain something out of it. That is entirely
> normal. But we should not ignore that fact and use that ignorance as a
> reason to censor our criticism.)I think we have a responsbility to behave reasonably and fairly to everyone in our dealings with them, as well as of course our responsibility to uphold our values. In this case I don't think using Github's favour to us - giving us the Debian account name - to publicise links to Github's competitors, is behaving reasonably and fairly. It's a fairly obvious and basic violation of reciprocity. Personally I thought Charles' statement in the README on Github was excellent. But if it's not acceptable and our principles require that we would need something stronger, the only correct course is not to accept the favour from Github. Or to put it another way, the need to follow our free software principles does not relieve us of the need to be fair in our dealings and particularly not to stab someone in the back when they have done us what they think of as a favour. If the obligations (not just the explicit formal rules, but commonly understood and implied social principles) that come with a favour of this kind would require us to violate our principles, then we should not accept the favour. So I think Charles came to entirely the right conclusion. I wish we could have had longer to talk about this but I guess it's done now. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
