Re: Censorship protest relevance (was: Re: Continuation of my previous mail)

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Il 13/05/21 04:32, Jacob Bachmeyer ha scritto:
Since GNU is based in USA, is this particular protest obsolete, as any 
such censorship applied to us would be clearly unconstitutional, or are 
there still possible risks here?


In short, is this protest still accurate or can we now confidently say 
that that change will never happen?


It sounds extremely unlikely that the issue has been resolved or 
reduced. Relevant First Amendment doctrine is a continuously evolving 
target.



Federico

Re: The anti-GNU defamatory group of Ludovic Courtès - Re: assessment of the GNU Assembly project

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Il 28/04/21 18:27, Andreas Enge ha scritto:

This cannot be qualified but as personal harrassment.


What exactly? Naming a person 4 times while commenting their actions? Do 
you propose to apply such a standard universally, e.g. to an email 
criticising actions by an FSF or GNU office holder? (I might have missed 
something in Jean Louis' message, I admit I've only read it quickly.)


As a reminder, we have the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html

Jean Louis, please consider whether certain expressions, for instance 
"like children", may sound like personal attacks. Andreas, please 
consider whether expressions like "hate email", which seem to attribute 
intent, may be needlessly harsh and inflammatory and therefore fall 
short of the standards proposed by the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines.


Best regards,
Federico

Re: Pentagon linked to shaming attack on RMS

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

I agree it's unlikely that someone at the Pentagon would have interest 
in arranging any of this, but we've seen weirder things happen, e.g. at 
the Open Technology Fund. USDS has hired many hackers and has been loud 
about it.

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-biden-digital-service-idINKBN29Q08Q

I believe a former president explained in a recent book of theirs what 
the idea was. Cf.

https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/7409/2220

Il 03/04/21 05:17, Jacob Bachmeyer ha scritto:
I do not know how familiar you are with ongoing political controversies 
in the USA, but there has been considerable controversy over claims of 
politicizing the civil service


For this reason, while it's probably unwise to ask any USA federal 
authority whether they know about certain actions by one of their 
employees/whatever ostensibly conducted in their private time, it might 
be fair game to file FOIA requests to find out whether there was any 
unseemly coordination or use of government resources. I don't know about 
precedents in USA but we regularly have to do this in the EU because the 
European Commission constantly conspires with copyright industry lobbies:

https://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/article_the_copyright_directive
https://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/eeas_letter_to_the_office_of_the

Ideally evidence would be collected *before* launching accusations 
against people. Also, MIT was also largely funded by the Pentagon for a 
long while, so if we start a tally of how many GNU or Debian 
contributors lived under Pentagon-paid roofs the exercise might get 
tedious fast.


Federico

Re: feeling intimidated for endorsing the GNU social contract

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Mark Wielaard, 27/02/20 15:59:

I am very sorry for this. And I apologize because I was one of the
people who suggested people discuss things on this list. And I was one
of the original moderators of this list till Mike and Brandon decided
they wanted to do moderation on their own without my and Carlos help
[*]. In hindsight suggesting this list was a terrible recommendation


I hope you realise that this sounds like "I thought this list was a good 
space when I believed I could steer the conversation the way I wanted 
thanks to my moderator powers".


Federico

Re: Why the "social contract" should not be endorsed

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Taylan Kammer, 25/02/20 21:30:

At face value I 99% agree with the proposed "GNU Social Contract" and
even the CoC you're talking about here, yet I find myself agreeing with
what you're saying.


I've yet to see a CoC which isn't a tool for centralisation of power. 
They tend to create some autocratic body with ultimate and 
non-appealable decision-making powers over all aspects of a project. 
(Software projects are made by people, so if you can decide who's in and 
who's out, or what can be said and what can't, you potentially get to 
decide everything.)


If your project is completely hierarchical (e.g. fully controlled by a 
listed for-profit corporation), this may not be a problem. If it is 
fully democratic and structured (e.g. fully controlled by an association 
with very clear bylaws, within a jurisdiction which makes the legal 
limits clear), it might also work, but then you cannot override the 
ultimate decision maker (usually the assembly of members). The number of 
successful projects falling in either category is close to nil though.


Federico

Re: praising our moderators

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Alexandre François Garreau, 25/02/20 21:04:

It should be possible to watch this without proprietary s/w on your own
computer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDAl7lGGtSo


afaik no.  Do you know a software that does it?


Not really, but you can listen to a sample on the Internet Archive:


I believe their JavaScript is free software and I have DRM disabled, but 
you can also download the mp3 directly:



It's also at 
.


(A few years ago at an event in Google's San Francisco office I got to 
ask to the VP of something why they block downloads even for CC-BY 
videos... he had no answer other than downloading is often "nefarious".)


Federico

Re: Harrassment on this list

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Andreas Enge, 23/02/20 20:50:

So far, I have not got the impression that asking aggressive people to
communicate kindly has had any effect (while I think I have mostly succeeded
in communicating kindly myself)


For what it's worth, I believe you have failed to be kind in several 
occasions; from a quick sample of three of your messages I found one 
which was dubious and one definitely less than kind ("bickering", "you 
are simply wrong").


Maybe nobody told you because they know that nobody is perfect.

Federico

Re: Why the "social contract" should not be endorsed

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Jean Louis, 22/02/20 23:52:

Now imagine the freedom for North Korean leaders to run the GNU
software to launch nuclear rockets towards Boston, USA. Would you be
in agreement on it?


Let's use a more concrete example (because it's actionable, unlike 
fictional lawsuits in North Korea): are General Atomics or Lockheed 
Martin free to use GNU software within their weapons? Are we in 
agreement with it, even if they're used to conduct extrajudicial 
killings abroad or to kill civilians?


And the answer is: yes of course I agree they can use GNU software, 
especially if they publish all the software used on their drones and war 
planes under GPL. Is this an embarrassing ethical conclusion? Not at 
all: if the software were under GPL, it would be more transparent about 
what kind of ethical decisions it makes. That would empower democratic 
processes to decide whether such weapons should be used or not. (It's 
not democratic for the GNU hackers to decide whether a state should wage 
war on another, even if it's tempting.)


Federico

Re: Why the "social contract" should not be endorsed

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Andreas Enge, 22/02/20 21:48:

If anything, this message shows how much a code of conduct is needed.


Or maybe it shows there's a language barrier. Let's not rush to judge 
non-native English speakers, especially after having admitted that the 
meaning of their message is unclear.


I think their contribution can be rephrased as: what kind of message do 
you think a document focused on matters like "Enforcement", "Ban", 
"Correction", "Warning" gives? Is it the intended message? If not, what 
could be done?


Federico

Re: [r...@gnu.org: What's GNU -- and what's not]

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

I'd like to stress a passage which made me think quite a bit:


We have never
pressed contributors to endorse the GNU Project philosophy, or any
other philosophical views, because people are welcome to contribute to
GNU regardless of their views.

To change that -- to impose such requirements -- would be radical,
gratuitous, and divisive,


What holds the project together is indeed something else. One can debate 
what qualifies as "views" and whether radical changes are necessary, but 
personally I appreciate being reminded to be careful about this point.


I've tried to think of analogues outside the usual communities we 
usually have in mind. In my home town there is a refectory run by 
Franciscans: I may be mistaken, but if you volunteer there you're not 
even asked whether you're a Catholic, let alone asked to join functions 
if you don't want. I understand one may consider that a more menial 
task, less likely to be influenced by philosophical thoughts than what 
one might code in their software, but it's just a comparison, not a model.


Federico

Re: Setting up a wiki for GNU Project volunteers?

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Carlos O'Donell, 10/12/19 20:25:

Selection criteria for a wiki?


It must support multilingualism and have the best-in-class support for 
i18n, which is currently a GNU high priority.



Federico

Re: GNU Kind Communication Guidelines versus "social contract" or Codes of Conduct

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Andreas Enge, 06/11/19 11:33:

If you start by equating two unrelated concepts, nothing useful can come
out of a discussion.


I don't know about equating, but there is a clear connection. When you 
establish some rules with some sanctions, and a process to enforce them, 
this process needs to be depend on somebody or something. If this 
something is not held accountable to the same values and methods that 
the project normally operates on, it's easy to have a conflict.


A common example is a self-appointed enforcer attached to an entity 
accountable only to itself (as many USA foundations are). If you add it 
on top of a project whose community is a do-ocracy or democracy, based 
on some values, there is no way to make sure the enforcer respects the 
community's values.


(Forgive the following analogy.) Many software projects have a 
"constitution" but said constitution has no teeth. If you add a 
"criminal law" and there is no way to hold the respective 
executive/judicial power in check, whatever values the "constitution" 
proclaims are no longer worth the paper they're printed on.


The traditional GNU structure at least is coherent because there is a 
single source of legitimacy. In Debian, as far as I understand, 
everything is under the project leader, who is however elected. In 
Wikimedia there's a self-appointed legal entity with its own bureaucracy 
(Wikimedia Foundation) and a separate community with its own values and 
processes. These things are not easy to get right.


Federico

Re: Support for RMS and criticism of the "bottom-up"/"social contract" power grab attempt.

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Alexandre François Garreau, 01/11/19 18:30:

Though women participate in GNU,
are any of them fortunately software package maintainer? Unfortunately, I’m
not sure about this :/


You can find some from  
(although the page is not complete). Some have spoken in public on the 
matter, for instance:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2019-09/msg00087.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2019-09/msg7.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2019-10/msg00015.html

Besides, please be careful when describing the gender gap in GNU or 
other projects. Despite the best intentions, results can be the opposite 
of what one expects. See: "Does advertising the gender gap help or hurt 
Wikipedia?" 
.


Federico

Re: Women and GNU and RMS (was Re: something else)

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Sandra Loosemore, 31/10/19 01:22:
For those of you who don't already know me, let me introduce myself: I'm 
Sandra Loosemore, I am female, and I've been involved with the GNU 
project since 1991, when RMS hired me to write the GLIBC manual as a FSF 
employee.  Nowadays I am a maintainer for GCC and Binutils and an 
occasional contributor to GDB.


Nice to hear from you! Can you please ask to be added to 
? I think several names from the 
early 1990s are missing but FSF told me they prefer to add only people 
who ask themselves.


I'll just comment on a couple things:

If the CEO of a corporation made such controversial and 
offensive statements, the board would likely demand his immediate 
resignation as part of damage control. 
[...]  So I think it is probably ultimately the FSF's 
responsibility to protect their brand and decide who they want to put in 
charge of overseeing it.


It's fine to think of analogies, but corporations are hardly a model to 
follow blindly. Their only aim is to maximise short-term profits and 
stock value; people and ideas are disposable cogs. If you like Chomsky 
(Brooklyn is all over the place in this conversation!), you'd say that 
corporation are totalitarian structures.


Same with the brand, or any other asset: it's supposed to be a tool for 
a purpose, not a purpose in itself. I've often seen in Wikimedia that, 
whenever the board and staff proclaim they're acting on their "fiduciary 
duty", ultimately it means they're just letting themselves be cogs in 
the quest for maximum dollar values in the bottom line and balance 
sheet. Disaster invariably ensued.


Federico