Le 07/08/2013 12:03, Tom Farrow a écrit :
I find that the idea would be beneficial to the community since currently, a
lot of activity is done based on trust and while having trust in Mozilla is
important, there should be some way to reinforce that trust legally.
I'd like to clarify on this point. In no way does signing a (legal)
document ever "reinforces" trust. It may even make people feel
suspicious: "why do I have to sign a legal document if we trust one
another?"
Legal documents exist to make easier the time when you go to court
*after* things went wrong. That's pretty much the only thing they're
useful for and is largely unrelated to trust. It has become a de facto
standard in the corporate world where the default attitude is to not
trust the other party (sometimes for very good reasons, but that's not
the topic at hand).
At my previous job, we had signed contracts saying our employer had to
pay us wages every month. At some point, he stopped paying (company ran
out of money, he hadn't told us). What was our legal document good for
then? Well, we got our salaries eventually several months later, but
meanwhile the trust had been betrayed and the financial situation of
some of us wasn't easy for quite some time.
Trust is important. Legal documents only when things go wrong (and
admittedly are an incentive to avoid having things go wrong) and one can
wonder whether they are really of any use. Specifically for IT and the
immense level of responsibility and authority people are provided. If
someone poisons 500M Firefox install by sending a malicious update, you
can sue the person afterwards, ask billions, send that person to jail
for a century, it won't make up for Firefox reputation.
Gervase Markham wrote:
The Committer's Agreement is a reminder of and a pledge of good
behaviour on the part of someone gaining commit access. Is that how you
would characterise the IT agreement?
That sounds more useful than a legal document in Mozilla's context.
David
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