subject:"Re\: A GNU “social contract”\?"

   What would people with more experience in this matter suggest?

Neither, the GNU project won't have a code of conduct, or any such
similar texts.  This was quite explictly stated.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-09 Thread Andreas Enge

Hello,

On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 04:06:42PM -0500, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>The GNU Project wants to give everyone the opportunity of contributing to
>its efforts on any of the many tasks that require work.  It welcomes all
>contributors, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation,
>level of experience, or any other personal characteristics.  It commits to
>providing a harassment-free experience for all contributors.
> This is quite different than what we our guidelines say, it would be
> best to use that text instead:
>   The GNU Project encourages contributions from anyone who wishes to
>   advance the development of the GNU system, regardless of gender, race,
>   ethnic group, physical appearance, religion, cultural background, and
>   any other demographic characteristics, as well as personal political
>   views.

replying to your and also to Andreas R.'s posting with a similar content.
Indeed both versions are quite similar. I like the first sentence of the GSC
version, since it is a bit more general than "development of the GNU system",
so it includes all other tasks (webmastering, mailing list administration,
package submission evaluation and so on). And I like the additional last
sentence about a harassment-free environment. It is a bit more stringent
and less non-committal.

For the "regardless of" part, some of the nouns are the same, some appear
in one and not the other. I am wary about "personal political views", which
are not quite on the same level as the others, being a choice rather than
an inherent characteristic (actually, just like "level of experience"; maybe
this should be dropped). And it could be used in opposition to the others:
"Well, I am racist and homophobe, these are just my personal political views,
so I should be allowed to express them."

The "Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct" has:
"regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity,
sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience,
education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race,
religion, or sexual identity and orientation".
Maybe a bit long for us?

The Libreplanet code of conduct speaks about
"discrimination on the basis of such things as gender, race, and sexuality"
Maybe too short? "such things" is also not a nice formulation.

What would people with more experience in this matter suggest?

Andreas

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

   > A social contract is only a necessity in a community-run organization
   > because it helps prevent the organization from moving off-course.
   > (...)
   > If you believe
   > GNU should be community-run, then you'll want to see a social contract;

   I agree with this part, and this is indeed my motivation to work on it.
   What is so frightening in having GNU be community run? 

This has been explained else where, so there is little point in
bringin up it again, in short is boils down to that a community is
incapable of making moral and ethical decisions.  Which is also why
the idea, at least for now, is to have a small trusted core group that
decides on the policies of the GNU project. 

But lets please drop this subject here, there is little to pursue
unless you activley involve people who make decisions for the GNU
project, i.e. RMS.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-09 Thread Andreas Enge

Hello!

On Fri, Nov 08, 2019 at 04:36:52PM +, Brandon Invergo wrote:
> A social contract is only a necessity in a community-run organization
> because it helps prevent the organization from moving off-course.
> (...)
> If you believe
> GNU should be community-run, then you'll want to see a social contract;

I agree with this part, and this is indeed my motivation to work on it.
What is so frightening in having GNU be community run? To me this looks
like the logical implementation of a volunteer based organisation, in
particular an organisation that has as goals the freedom and self-empower-
ment of the users of a computer system. Then why should the people who
implement this not also be self-empowered?

> if you think it should be run as it currently is, then it's impossible
> to see a use for it.

With this I disagree. A social contract has a use independently of the
governance model, to define the goals of the organisation and also what
the people working towards these goals are expected to heed. Even in an
autocratic organisation this makes sense. (Now Alfred claims that main-
tainers, for instance, have a purely technical role. But even then, in
this technical function, they are expected to heed the principles that
we have been outlining in the social contract; notwithstanding that I
find it insulting to treat participants in a voluntary organisation as
dispensable workforce.)

So I would think that we could agree on the social contract independently
of what we would like as governance model for GNU. (Except that, of course,
if you do not want any change at all in the governance model, then you have
a motivation for also blocking this document.)

> That would give another
> opportunity to publicly shame rms and the GNU project as it actually is:
> "Look at this beautiful document that rms refused to implement for GNU!
> The fact that he *disagrees* with these points shows that he is not fit
> to lead GNU anymore!".

I think you are going a bit overboard here. Independently of Richard's
fitness for leading GNU (on which I will not comment right now, the goal in
this thread is not to discuss individual persons), I think a more community
run model for GNU will be beneficial.

Also I disagree that discussing GNU in public amounts to shaming. Not
everything works well, but there is no shame in admitting this in public.
GNU is a wonderful project, and we are interested in improving it and
making it work better; obviously we have different opinions on how this
can be achieved, but this is perfectly normal, and I see no problem for
an organisation working in the public interest to have such discussions in
public.

Andreas

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

   > What is the exact _goal_ of this text?

   We discussed it several times before, notably in these messages:

 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00011.html
 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00081.html

If the goal is to get all maintainers to up hold the values of the GNU
project, then you have clearly misunderstood the point of being a GNU
maintainer. 


   Apart from that, it looks good to me!  What do people think?

Have you discussed this with RMS?  No.  So by that alone, it doesn't
look good -- you're trying to force maintainers to your world view
with a total disregard for their opinions.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

You yet again refrained from answering specific questions, and instead
when off on a tangent. I think this now shows clearly what your
intention are, they aren't about having a discussion, it isn't about
trying to understand how this project works first before suggesting a
change, or trying to discuss topics with those who run the project on
level terms.
 
   So either, nothing is new; then why this resistance to having
   people commit to it? Or it is new, then why the resistance to
   writing it?

The difference is you are trying to make maintainers, who have never
agreed to anything specific other than technical aspects, to agree to
something else -- something that they have explicitly not been
required to agree with!  You've not even disucssed this with the
people running the project, who actually understand the nuances of
their own decisions.

The resistance here is not because of disagreement with what your
document says (which could serve as a short summary -- but you are
asking for far more), but how you are going about trying to force it
through, with a total disregard for everyone else involved.

   >>From what I understand, you are opposed to a self-organised GNU Project and
   instead prefer an organisation where Richard Stallman takes all decisions at
   his own discretion, without being accountable to anybody, contributors to the
   project and users alike. This is a possible position, but which is indeed
   contrary to the purpose of the social contract. So instead of claiming not
   to understand the goal of the social contract, it would be intellectually
   more honest to state that you are against the goal. After which, there is
   indeed little point in continuing the discussion.

This shows a clear misunderstanding, and I think at this point,
intentional, on how the GNU project is governed, RMS doesn't take "all
decisions at his own discretion" -- he doesn't work in a vacuum.  Each
GNU project is infact, and has always been, self governing in its own
realm of responsibilities -- namley technical.  Volunteers do
technical work at their own accord, and at their own whim.

Since I think we agree that there is little point in disucssing this
further, this document becomes automatically on the chopping block and
is I think entierly unsuitable since it totally misrepresents the GNU
project and its goals with its intent and but maybe not so much with
its wording.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

   With that said, I am fully in support of having a couple of succinct
   documents that describe the structure and mission of the GNU project.
   Richard has also expressed interest in that.  I just don't see any need
   of enacting them as the basis of a formal pledge.

Here here!

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-08 Thread Alexandre François Garreau

Le vendredi 8 novembre 2019, 19:08:02 CET Thompson, David a écrit :
> I read [last Brandon’s speculation] a few times, but I am unable to see how 
this qualifies as "kind communication."

Interesting analysis.  Could you further develop on why?  I don’t see how.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-08 Thread Thompson, David

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 11:37 AM Brandon Invergo  wrote:
>
> Given that nothing has changed in how GNU is being run, it appears that
> the cart is being placed well before the horse.  However, I would be
> shocked if they didn't already expect rms not to step down and therefore
> to reject their Social Contract out-of-hand.  Given that it is
> nevertheless still being written (in public) under conditions where it
> will be rejected with almost certainty, I wouldn't be surprised if they
> are in fact counting on this to happen.  That would give another
> opportunity to publicly shame rms and the GNU project as it actually is:
> "Look at this beautiful document that rms refused to implement for GNU!
> The fact that he *disagrees* with these points shows that he is not fit
> to lead GNU anymore!".  Nevermind that the rejection is due to its utter
> superfluousness given the structure of the GNU project and is not due to
> disagreement with the contents.

I read this a few times, but I am unable to see how this qualifies as
"kind communication."

- Dave

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-08 Thread Brandon Invergo

Alfred M. Szmidt writes:

>Of course, it is no coincidence if you have a déjà vu feeling when
>looking at the proposed GNU Social Contract. It is intended as a
>base for going forward with the GNU Project, but of course it takes
>the existing into account.
>
> I do not see how it does anything of the sort, it is a partial summary
> of the project.  It doesn't bring anything new to the table, or moves
> anything forward, so far it is a TL;DR note...

A social contract is only a necessity in a community-run organization
because it helps prevent the organization from moving off-course.  When
the moral compass of the organization is set and maintained by a leader
or group of leaders, then it is completely unnecessary.  If you believe
GNU should be community-run, then you'll want to see a social contract;
if you think it should be run as it currently is, then it's impossible
to see a use for it.

Given that nothing has changed in how GNU is being run, it appears that
the cart is being placed well before the horse.  However, I would be
shocked if they didn't already expect rms not to step down and therefore
to reject their Social Contract out-of-hand.  Given that it is
nevertheless still being written (in public) under conditions where it
will be rejected with almost certainty, I wouldn't be surprised if they
are in fact counting on this to happen.  That would give another
opportunity to publicly shame rms and the GNU project as it actually is:
"Look at this beautiful document that rms refused to implement for GNU!
The fact that he *disagrees* with these points shows that he is not fit
to lead GNU anymore!".  Nevermind that the rejection is due to its utter
superfluousness given the structure of the GNU project and is not due to
disagreement with the contents.

With that said, I am fully in support of having a couple of succinct
documents that describe the structure and mission of the GNU project.
Richard has also expressed interest in that.  I just don't see any need
of enacting them as the basis of a formal pledge.

--
-brandon

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-07 Thread Andreas Enge

On Thu, Nov 07, 2019 at 02:58:42PM -0500, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>It is
>not something you can give to people and tell them "look, this is
>our project, and these are the points you are expected to heed when
>you join us".
> That is what we did when the the project was started, that is what we
> did for many many many years after.  That is infact how I learnt what
> GNU was, does, how to get involved, and more importantly _why_
> (something your summary completely lacks).  How has that changed so
> fundamentally that the founding document of this project is now
> something you cannot give people to read?

Please do not twist my words in my mouth; I did not say we cannot give
this to people to read. I said it is not the type of document that GNU
stakeholders can pledge to, or that we can give to the public as explaining
our commitments. Let me give a few random quotes and it should be clear
why (apart from its length):

"Why I Must Write GNU" - I do not know, do GNU stakeholders need to write GNU?
Maybe they want to. Or they want to moderate a mailing list. What would this
mean as a pledge? Who is "I", actually, apart from the historical author?
"I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money."
Not something that it would be meaningful to sign as a new GNU maintainer,
right?
"So far we have an Emacs text editor with Lisp for writing editor commands,
a source level debugger, a yacc-compatible parser generator, a linker, and
around 35 utilities."
You who spent a certain time trying to take apart our text, comparing wording
of the fourth point with a similar sentence in the kind communication guide-
lines and complaining that they were not exactly the same, would certainly
frown at sending this out to new people joining, given how wrong it is now?
As I said above, it is a historical document.
Also, there is no need to mention Unix, as the manifesto (in its historical
situation) does to great lengths; since GNU/Linux is working well, all
proprietary Unices are essentially dead, since about 20 years ago I would
guess. So only we elderly people still know what a "Unix" is, and it is
not important any more.

Anyway, it is idle discussing the social contract with you, since you are
fundamentally against it, and then you advance fallacious arguments going
in circles.
First, you claim that no special commitment is required from maintainers,
which may be true currently.
I reply that to remedy this, we are working on a social contract that
maintainers are expected to commit to.
Second, you claim that nothing of this is new, since it can be scraped from
various parts of the GNU website.
Then I reply that what is new is that we are working on a (short) document
that GNU stakeholders are expected to commit to, that distills the essentials
of what GNU is about.
Third, you claim that no special commitment is required from maintainers.
(da capo ad libitum)
So either, nothing is new; then why this resistance to having people commit
to it? Or it is new, then why the resistance to writing it?

>From what I understand, you are opposed to a self-organised GNU Project and
instead prefer an organisation where Richard Stallman takes all decisions at
his own discretion, without being accountable to anybody, contributors to the
project and users alike. This is a possible position, but which is indeed
contrary to the purpose of the social contract. So instead of claiming not
to understand the goal of the social contract, it would be intellectually
more honest to state that you are against the goal. After which, there is
indeed little point in continuing the discussion.

Andreas

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-07 Thread Ludovic Courtès

Hi all,

Thanks, Andreas, for this new version!  Some comments below.

a...@gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) skribis:

> What is the exact _goal_ of this text?

We discussed it several times before, notably in these messages:

  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00011.html
  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00081.html

>Apart from rare historical exceptions, all software written by the GNU 
> Project
>is distributed under copyleft licenses, designed to ensure that developers
>cannot strip off users' freedom from GNU software.
>
> This would exclude those cases where we might want to distribute
> something under a non-copyleft license for strategical reasons.

I agree with Alfred.  For that reason, I think the other phrasing you
proposed, Andreas, would be more appropriate:

  Unless the GNU Project deems that a different choice furthers the
  advancement of free software, all software...

>* The GNU Project provides a consistent system
>
>The GNU Project develops, in the form of GNU packages, an operating system
>and a set of applications, the GNU system.  GNU package developers work
>together to ensure consistency across packages.  GNU packages should follow
>the design and development guidelines of the GNU Project.
>
> The GNU system isn't just GNU packages, […]

I agree that there’s maybe some ambiguity in the first sentence.
Perhaps something like this:

  The GNU Project develops an operating system, the “GNU System”, as
  well as a set of applications.  Each software component developed by
  the GNU Project is referred to as a “GNU package”.

?

Nitpick: for clarity, I would use quotes (or italics) for every new term
being defined (as in the example above.)

Apart from that, it looks good to me!  What do people think?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-07 Thread Dmitry Alexandrov

Andreas Enge  wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 04:06:42PM -0500, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>> What is the exact _goal_ of this text?
>
> I think it should be a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for 
> stakeholders in the GNU project to take part in its governance.

As it seems, that youʼve changed your mind at some point and no longer believe, 
that your ideological-driven ‘contract’ shall cover all GNU contributors, but 
shall be used to build some sort of elite within GNU, Iʼd like to append my 
list of concrete suggestions to make GNU more inclusive [0], drafted at you 
request, with one more important point:

* (1′) Do not openly classify volunteers basing on ideas they uphold.  Those, 
who find themselves to be legal second-class citizens of GNU because they do 
not share some RMSʼs views promoted to local credo, will not be very happy 
about that, even if they are not going to claim any leadership.

[0] <4kzgmu89.321...@gmail.com>


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-07 Thread Dmitry Alexandrov

"Kaz Kylheku (gnu-misc-discuss)" <936-846-2...@kylheku.com> wrote:
> By the way, "contract" seems like a misnomer
> A statement of promises to behave in some ways toward some group (such as a 
> "community"), who makes no reciprocal promises and isn't a party to the 
> document is rather a "pledge", or "solemn promise" or such

Given that current proposals are actually not statements of promises, but 
statements of _facts_: “GNU is a consistent operating system”, “GNU 
collaborates with the broader free software community”, “GNU welcomes 
contributions from all and everyone”, et cetera; words _“confession of faith”_ 
suit even better.

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-07 Thread Alfred M. Szmidt

   I thought I had answered this question in the other thread on
   Enlightenment, but you disagree, so I will give a few more
   explanations on my point of view here. For me, the GNU Social
   Contract is a first step towards defining a governance model for
   the GNU Project.

That governance model is already defined, in the form of RMS.  Have
you discussed how RMS wants to govern?

   It summarises the main purpose of the project, and as such, as you
   rightfully noticed, its content should not come as a surprise. I
   think it should be a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for
   stakeholders in the GNU project to take part in its governance.

You still do not answer how exactly it is different from the documents
that we already have.  You have still not annswered why you have come
up with your own paragraph for "The GNU Project welcomes contributions
from all and everyone" instead of what is already part of the
guidelines that the GNU project already has.

   The term "social contract" seems to lead to confusion. So let me
   repeat that it is not meant as a contract in the sense of civil
   law, signed by two parties; but as a moral engagement of people
   invested in GNU (maintainers, web masters and so on) in their
   relationship to each other,

As has been explained numerous times before, and is getting tiresome
by now -- maintainers and web masters only agree to a technical
position, they do not have to have a moral engagement in any shape or
form.

   but also to the outer world (for instance, users of the GNU system
   must be sure that they are getting only free software from the
   project).

How is this not already explained by the various web pages,
guidelines, philosophical texts, etc, etc, etc, that we have? What
part of them makes it unclear what the goals of this project are?  Be
it to people participating in the GNU project, or people looking from
the outside?  How is this different from the dub email that you get
when you become a maintainer?

Your summary doesn't really add anything in this regard, and the
current documents that exist explain it in better detail.
 
   When you mention the GNU manifesto, it is a much longer text,
   rather of historical interest, and also a personal account. It is
   not something you can give to people and tell them "look, this is
   our project, and these are the points you are expected to heed when
   you join us".

That is what we did when the the project was started, that is what we
did for many many many years after.  That is infact how I learnt what
GNU was, does, how to get involved, and more importantly _why_
(something your summary completely lacks).  How has that changed so
fundamentally that the founding document of this project is now
something you cannot give people to read?

That it is a personal account, is because it was a personal call, and
important to mention -- since that is the basis of the four freedoms,
they are for the user, that makes it personal.

Yet again you say that GNU contributors must heed to its philosophical
nature, this is not true.

   Of course, it is no coincidence if you have a dÃ©jÃ  vu feeling when
   looking at the proposed GNU Social Contract. It is intended as a
   base for going forward with the GNU Project, but of course it takes
   the existing into account.

I do not see how it does anything of the sort, it is a partial summary
of the project.  It doesn't bring anything new to the table, or moves
anything forward, so far it is a TL;DR note...

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-07 Thread Kaz Kylheku (gnu-misc-discuss)


By the way, "contract" seems like a misnomer, because a contract is
a signed-off agreement between two parties (or more) in which they
exchange something of value; the contract requires a contribution
from at least two parties.

A statement of promises to behave in some ways toward some
group (such as a "community"), who makes no reciprocal promises and
isn't a party to the document is rather a "pledge", or
"solemn promise" or such.

The requirement to make a pledge can be a contract clause,
of course.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-07 Thread Andreas Enge

Hello,

On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 04:06:42PM -0500, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> Is it meant as a short summary of what the GNU project does?  I could
> see how it would serve such purpose, but then it isn't a contract.  If
> it is a contract, who is agreeing to it?  The GNU project? In that
> case, those goals are already written in the GNU manifesto, no?
> What is the exact _goal_ of this text?

I thought I had answered this question in the other thread on Enlightenment,
but you disagree, so I will give a few more explanations on my point of
view here. For me, the GNU Social Contract is a first step towards defining
a governance model for the GNU Project. It summarises the main purpose of
the project, and as such, as you rightfully noticed, its content should
not come as a surprise. I think it should be a necessary (but not sufficient)
condition for stakeholders in the GNU project to take part in its governance.

The term "social contract" seems to lead to confusion. So let me repeat that
it is not meant as a contract in the sense of civil law, signed by two
parties; but as a moral engagement of people invested in GNU (maintainers,
web masters and so on) in their relationship to each other, but also to the
outer world (for instance, users of the GNU system must be sure that they
are getting only free software from the project).

When you mention the GNU manifesto, it is a much longer text, rather of
historical interest, and also a personal account. It is not something
you can give to people and tell them "look, this is our project, and these
are the points you are expected to heed when you join us".

Of course, it is no coincidence if you have a déjà vu feeling when looking
at the proposed GNU Social Contract. It is intended as a base for going
forward with the GNU Project, but of course it takes the existing into
account.

Andreas

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-07 Thread Andreas Enge

Hello,

On Thu, Nov 07, 2019 at 12:36:52AM +0300, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
> > I do not see how the aim of creating a harassment-free environment could be 
> > construed as making GNU a less welcoming place...
> In other words, the only real aim of your ‘social contract’ is to impose that 
> last paragraph about ‘harassment’ on everyone, while all the software freedom 
> stuff is just a decoration that should not be taken seriously?

sorry, this is plain nonsense. The document contains four points. You and
other question the last point. In a reply, I defend the last point. How you
can logically conclude that the first three points are "decoration" is beyond
me. You may disagree with this point, other points or even the whole idea of
the document (I understood this from another one of your messages), but please
do not derail the debate with nonsensical arguments.

Andreas

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-07 Thread Brandon Invergo



Jean Louis writes:

> "Social contract" has etymology coming from France,

Given that language evolves and contemporary connotation can differ
significantly from the original meaning, no argument can be won through
weaponized etymology.  It's more important to understand the intent of
the speaker than to try to force an archaic meaning on their words.  The
former progresses the discussion, the latter diverts it.

Anyway, you've already made exactly the same argument to exactly the
same people not too long ago, so I'm sure they remember it.

--
-brandon

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-06 Thread Ruben Safir

On 11/6/19 2:00 PM, Alexandre François Garreau wrote:
> Sorry, I have this problem of being pretty verbose :/ itâ€™s not intentional, 
> and on many places I indeed just resort to shut up (because otherwise Iâ€™m 
> not 

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with your writing style.  For
email, it is fine.  I don't see a lot of fat in the text, mostly substance.

-- 
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002

http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com

Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

Le mercredi 6 novembre 2019, 22:11:03 CET Andreas a écrit :
> On Wed, 2019-11-06 at 19:31 +0100, Andreas Enge wrote:
> > 
> >
> > Let me quote once more the paragraph that we are supposedly
> > 
> > discussing:
> > > * GNU welcomes contributions from all and everyone
> > > We want to give everyone the opportunity to contribute to our
> > > efforts
> > > on any of the many tasks that require work.  We welcome all
> > > contributors,
> > > regardless of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, level of
> > > experience, or any other personal characteristics.  We commit to
> > > providing
> > > a harassment-free experience for all our contributors.
> 
> What is wrong with:
> 
> "The GNU Project encourages contributions from anyone who wishes to
> advance the development of the GNU system, regardless of gender, race,
> ethnic group, physical appearance, religion, cultural background, and
> any other demographic characteristics, as well as personal political
> views." from the kind communications guidelines?
> 
> If you think having a social contract is a good idea, it might be more
> palatable to compose it of excerpts and paragraphs already available in
> the philosophy section of gnu.org and streamline those into one
> coherent document, indicating from which essays the various parts
> originate.
> 
> That way you end up with a consistent summary of the important ideas
> many GNU supporters already more-or-less agree on, and getting any
> adoption should prove far easier.

I like this idea.  Also you could divide that in two modules, one about 
software freedom, and another about kindness (that could be signed 
separately).  Then you would try to make people sign that to publicly show 
they support and behold GNU philosophy, so to provide a more formalized and 
explicit way of possibly untrusting specific people for newcomers, or easing 
the job of selecting discrimination among people for responsibilities, maybe 
even outside of GNU (for instance for Debian, which agrees on a lot coming 
from GNU).  But signature won’t be expected for being a GNU contributor, 
developer or project maintainer (but could be of help for formalizing a 
possibly more public process about helping/joining current teams Brandon 
listed, and advising the chief GNUisance).

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-06 Thread Dmitry Alexandrov

Andreas Enge  wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 01:56:15AM +0300, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
>> Instead of making GNU more welcoming place by lessening the burden of 
>> formalities, you in fact propose GNU to withdraw deeper into itself by 
>> inventing ideology-driven ‘contracts’.  And in order to add an insult to 
>> injury — to cover it with Western buzzwords like ‘inclusiveness’. :-\
>
> Ideology? Hm.

Ideology, doctrine, religion — call the thing, that made you think that a GNU 
developer has to be condemned for using a Macbook, whatever you find best.

Actually, ‘Church of Emacs’ suits exceptionally well, so from now on I will 
refer to it as that.

> I do not see how the aim of creating a harassment-free environment could be 
> construed as making GNU a less welcoming place...

In other words, the only real aim of your ‘social contract’ is to impose that 
last paragraph about ‘harassment’ on everyone, while all the software freedom 
stuff is just a decoration that should not be taken seriously?

> Neither how the word "inclusiveness" could be interpreted as an insult.

Indeed, next to a proposition to exclude all dissenters, it could and should be 
rather interpreted as hypocrisy.

> Nor whether we need to distinguish "Western"

Of course, you do need to distinguish it, as long as you care to keep GNU a 
universally inclusive project.

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-06 Thread Andreas

On Wed, 2019-11-06 at 19:31 +0100, Andreas Enge wrote:
> 
> 
> Let me quote once more the paragraph that we are supposedly
> discussing:
> > 
> > * GNU welcomes contributions from all and everyone
> > We want to give everyone the opportunity to contribute to our
> > efforts
> > on any of the many tasks that require work.  We welcome all
> > contributors,
> > regardless of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, level of
> > experience, or any other personal characteristics.  We commit to
> > providing
> > a harassment-free experience for all our contributors.

What is wrong with:

"The GNU Project encourages contributions from anyone who wishes to
advance the development of the GNU system, regardless of gender, race,
ethnic group, physical appearance, religion, cultural background, and
any other demographic characteristics, as well as personal political
views." from the kind communications guidelines?

If you think having a social contract is a good idea, it might be more
palatable to compose it of excerpts and paragraphs already available in
the philosophy section of gnu.org and streamline those into one
coherent document, indicating from which essays the various parts
originate.

That way you end up with a consistent summary of the important ideas
many GNU supporters already more-or-less agree on, and getting any
adoption should prove far easier.

-Andreas

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-06 Thread Brandon Invergo

Andreas Enge writes:

> Hello,
>
> I will reply once more, but it may be the last time in this thread. Please,
> Alexandre and others, if you wish to contribute, stop rambling and come to
> the point, and actually try to stick to a point that is raised and avoid
> going off on lengthy tangents that I (and probably others) have no time
> to read.

Speaking entirely as a reader and not a moderator: agreed.  Finding a
way to make your point in as few words as possible is an essential
skill, but it takes practice.  If you find that you are tending to
produce stream-of-consciousness / free-association style texts, I
encourage you to slow down, figure out the precise "killer points" you
want to make and say the minimum necessary to convey those points.  If
your email is long, don't send it yet.  Chop away at it to remove the
fat so that your real point is unmistakable.

If your text instead simply exhausts your reader, they won't know what
you are even trying to argue.  Then they'll tend to a) get progressively
more annoyed with you and / or b) start to outright ignore your
responses.

--
-brandon

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-06 Thread Alfred M. Szmidt

Is it meant as a short summary of what the GNU project does?  I could
see how it would serve such purpose, but then it isn't a contract.  If
it is a contract, who is agreeing to it?  The GNU project? In that
case, those goals are already written in the GNU manifesto, no?

What is the exact _goal_ of this text?

   Apart from rare historical exceptions, all software written by the GNU 
Project
   is distributed under copyleft licenses, designed to ensure that developers
   cannot strip off users' freedom from GNU software.

This would exclude those cases where we might want to distribute
something under a non-copyleft license for strategical reasons.  Not a
GNU project case, but a good example, when RMS argued that Ogg/Vorbis
would be better served under a permissive license than a copyleft
license, as a means to replace MP3.

   * The GNU Project provides a consistent system

   The GNU Project develops, in the form of GNU packages, an operating system
   and a set of applications, the GNU system.  GNU package developers work
   together to ensure consistency across packages.  GNU packages should follow
   the design and development guidelines of the GNU Project.

The GNU system isn't just GNU packages, there are many non-GNU
packages that also make up the GNU system, that the GNU project
doesn't develop.

   * The GNU Project welcomes contributions from all and everyone

   The GNU Project wants to give everyone the opportunity of contributing to
   its efforts on any of the many tasks that require work.  It welcomes all
   contributors, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation,
   level of experience, or any other personal characteristics.  It commits to
   providing a harassment-free experience for all contributors.

This is quite different than what we our guidelines say, it would be
best to use that text instead:

  The GNU Project encourages contributions from anyone who wishes to
  advance the development of the GNU system, regardless of gender, race,
  ethnic group, physical appearance, religion, cultural background, and
  any other demographic characteristics, as well as personal political
  views.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

Hello,

so here is a new version. Besides minor editorial changes, I did the
following:

On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 12:27:19PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> I think we should avoid “we” because it’s ambiguous.  Instead, I very
> much prefer either “the GNU Project” or maybe “members of the Project”
> where appropriate, but “members” is undefined.

- Replaced back "we" by "the GNU Project" everywhere. Indeed I remember
  complaining myself when people used a very vague "we"...

> We could define “member” as someone who signed the social contract, but
> that’s probably not enough: a group of people could make a hostile
> takeover by signing it en masse.  So there needs to be some form of
> cooptation to avoid that, as is commonly done in organizations.
> I guess that leads to a new sub-task: defining the procedure to become a
> “member” of the project.

- Dropped the paragraph about current members having agreed to the social
  contract. This ends up being a circular definition, the social contract
  defining members as people adopting the social contract... I think the
  document stands by itself, and then it can get adopted.
 
> > All software written by us is distributed under copyleft licenses, designed
> > to ensure that developers cannot strip off users' freedom from GNU software.
> Like others wrote, this should be stated as a preference:
>   The GNU Project preferably distributes software it develops under …

- For further discussion, added a more restrictive paragraph:
  "Apart from rare historical exceptions...", which would mean there will not
  be any others in the future.
  By your arguments, that is too strong (concerning GCC support libraries and
  autoconf snippets, for instance).
  On the other hand, I am a bit wary of a "should" clause - when there is no
  firm principle, where do we draw the line? If it is only "preferable", why
  not adopt llvm rather than gcc if this feels convenient? The problem here
  is to make a clear distinction between GNU and "open source".
  Another possible formulation:
  "Unless the GNU Project deems that a different choice furthers the
  advancement of free software, all software..."
  This would assume that a formal decision (by some governing board, whatever
  it will be) is required for choosing a non-copyleft license.

> Also, it may be better to avoid the term “copyleft” unless we define it.

There is a pseudo-definition following it: "designed to ensure that developers
cannot strip off users' freedom". I am fine leaving it as a technical term,
with this additional explanation.

> > * GNU provides consistent systems
> Side note: in the first version, I tried to use “GNU” to refer to the
> software, and “the GNU Project” to refer to the collective.  It might be
> worth preserving that distinction for clarity.

This was a bit confusing, I think, in your original version; so I wrote
"GNU Project" in all the headings, since I think they refer to the project
and not only the software. I also (pseudo-)defined "the GNU system".

> > We develop an operating system and a set of applications, in the form of
> > GNU packages.  GNU package developers work together to ensure consistency
> > across packages.  GNU packages follow the design and development guidelines
> > of the GNU Project.
> 
> Perhaps s/follow/should follow/ to better reflect current reality.

Done.

> > Free software has extended beyond the GNU Project, and we work with
> > companion free software projects that develop key components of our system.
> 
> s/our system/the GNU operating system/ (to make it sound less
> possessive.)

"the GNU system" as defined above.

On Sat, Nov 02, 2019 at 05:13:22PM +0100, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> > So you would drop this paragraph, or just the examples?
> Just the examples. The idea is important. I just don't know the right
> words to express it generically. "If people technically have free
> software, but cannot practically exercise the freedoms they should
> have, then we should take action." does seem too generic.

Okay. I dropped the examples (DRM etc.), and kept the other text. I think
it makes sense as a more general mission statement: The FEF (Four Essential
Freedoms, I added capitals) as the firm basics, and then whatever it needs.

On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 12:27:19PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Should we do a v2.1 based on this and feedback others gave?
> What do people think?

Here it is! Another round of feedback?

Andreas

GNU Social Contract

This document states the core commitments of the GNU Project to the
broader free software community.

The purpose of the GNU Project is to provide software and systems that
respect users' freedoms.

* The GNU Project respects users' freedoms

The GNU Project provides software that guarantees to users the Four Essential
Freedoms, without compromise:
  0. The freedom to run the program as they wish, for any purpose.
  1. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does
 their computing as

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

Le mercredi 6 novembre 2019 19:31:17 CET, vous avez écrit :
> Hello,
> 
> I will reply once more, but it may be the last time in this thread. Please,
> Alexandre and others, if you wish to contribute, stop rambling and come to
> the point, and actually try to stick to a point that is raised and avoid
> going off on lengthy tangents that I (and probably others) have no time
> to read.

Sorry, I have this problem of being pretty verbose :/ it’s not intentional, 
and on many places I indeed just resort to shut up (because otherwise I’m not 
welcome anymore).

> How on earth do you end up associating "we welcome contributors"

Not this but “harassment-free”

> with
> "censorship", "exclusion", "banning", "feminism" or "feminism-agnosticism"?

Because harassment is often associated with sexism, and a policy to be 
enforced need some action, as you state after:
> Notice that the social contract is a statement of principles. Clearly if
> we want to provide a harassment-free environment, some procedure will have
> to be decided at some point in time in case harassment occurs; but this is
> not the goal of this document.

> Of course you are free to send your stream of consciousness to this list,
> but if you wish to have an impact on the topic at hand, I would suggest to
> make concrete suggestions on wording, or paragraphs to remove or to add.

The subject contains a question mark, and I already previously spoke against 
the very concept of a “GNU social contract”.  I preferred not repeating myself 
but as this may have been done to a different sub-thread I’m coming to think 
Dora was right and with such lengthy discussions repetition unfortunately 
becomes necessary…

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

Hello,

I will reply once more, but it may be the last time in this thread. Please,
Alexandre and others, if you wish to contribute, stop rambling and come to
the point, and actually try to stick to a point that is raised and avoid
going off on lengthy tangents that I (and probably others) have no time
to read.

Let me quote once more the paragraph that we are supposedly discussing:
> * GNU welcomes contributions from all and everyone
> We want to give everyone the opportunity to contribute to our efforts
> on any of the many tasks that require work.  We welcome all contributors,
> regardless of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, level of
> experience, or any other personal characteristics.  We commit to providing
> a harassment-free experience for all our contributors.

Your contribution to this topic contains the following:
On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 07:02:53PM +0100, Alexandre François Garreau wrote:
> Doing so through censorship and exclusion could.
> (...)
> But you also could ban too much potential harassers in regard to harassed
> people and not be productive enough in this concern.
> (...)
> Look: we could even speculate that there are already so much more men than 
> women coming, that it is not worth defending the later!  How horrible, 
> saddening and pessimistic toward humankind…
> (...) 
> Personally I support it, but I don’t think exclusion or censorship is the 
> way. 
> (...)
> “GNU Project is feminist and act as such” (“westernly”) might lower the whole 
> number of contributors or supporters from some countries
> (much more than US) initially after revolution)).
> (...)
> It’s not to mean GNU Project is to declare itself “feminism-agnostic”

How on earth do you end up associating "we welcome contributors" with
"censorship", "exclusion", "banning", "feminism" or "feminism-agnosticism"?
Notice that the social contract is a statement of principles. Clearly if
we want to provide a harassment-free environment, some procedure will have
to be decided at some point in time in case harassment occurs; but this is
not the goal of this document.

Of course you are free to send your stream of consciousness to this list,
but if you wish to have an impact on the topic at hand, I would suggest to
make concrete suggestions on wording, or paragraphs to remove or to add.

Andreas

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

Le mercredi 6 novembre 2019, 09:56:20 CET Andreas Enge a écrit :
> On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 01:56:15AM +0300, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
> > Instead of making GNU more welcoming place by lessening the burden of
> > formalities, you in fact propose GNU to withdraw deeper into itself by
> > inventing ideology-driven ‘contracts’.  And in order to add an insult to
> > injury — to cover it with Western buzzwords like ‘inclusiveness’. :-\
> Ideology? Hm.

I think for the right-away following he might consider the way you held 
harassment, anti-harassment and its relationship to welcomness a whole 
ideology per se, but more about this later.

> I do not see how the aim of creating a harassment-free
> environment could be construed as making GNU a less welcoming place...

Doing so through censorship and exclusion could.  It depends from exclusion of 
(how many) who, how is this advertised, how is this temporary/definitive, etc. 
as well as how much harassment there is already and how many does that 
excludes.

If in the end there are more potential harassers than actually harassed 
people, that is strictly the case.

But you also could ban too much potential harassers in regard to harassed 
people and not be productive enough in this concern.

Or cause self-censorship or people fearing to be banned though they would not, 
and you would have to compare this (hard to judge) number to the number of 
people who leaves because of harassment (less hard to judge… but that ought to 
be measured too… though it’s hard too…).

You see, if you care only about being welcoming, anti-harassment is only a 
cold calculation… and it is actually expensive calculation (and measuring)!

Look: we could even speculate that there are already so much more men than 
women coming, that it is not worth defending the later!  How horrible, 
saddening and pessimistic toward humankind…

But maybe what you want is not a place more generally welcoming but more 
“inclusive” in the very culturally specific meaning of “inclusive 
proportionally to actual demographics in the outside world”, so you’d consider 
worth defending a few women even if that means excluding more men.

But then that’s linked to something that’s hardly not an ideology: anti-
sexism.

Personally I support it, but I don’t think exclusion or censorship is the way.  
We should just actively show our despise and counter-support for sexist 
behavior, possibly ignore it, protecting women when in legitimacy, etc. (if 
any people are pissed and/or leave because something is done by a woman, I 
think everybody is comfortable with that and keep supporting that woman in her 
role and legitimacy, rather than pretending she’s responsible, should hide, or 
leave).

> Neither how the word "inclusiveness" could be interpreted as an insult.
> Nor whether we need to distinguish "Western" from "Eastern", "Northern"
> or "Southern"; maybe we should add "regardless of origins" :-)

Different places have different cultures.  Now look out and note, there are 
places where feminism is held in really negative views (think to India, China, 
Medium Orient, etc.): people supporting it may be put in *prison*.  And yet 
women might defend their right or have support legally or popularly, but 
without using that term, or using different strategies than in our countries (I 
heard in Turkey, anarchists preferred describing themselves as “anarchist 
women” and “anti-autoritharian” because of that).

“GNU Project is feminist and act as such” (“westernly”) might lower the whole 
number of contributors or supporters from some countries where feminism is 
seen as a “western” thing due to both local nationalist propaganda and 
generally imperialist propaganda that support the view that “West” or North/
rich countries are more feminist, equalitarian or simply just invented 
feminism (by putting much accent on women’s struggle in liberal countries such 
as France and US (where the very word “feminism” comes from, as well as 
liberalism) and hiding it when it comes from poorer countries (like Irak who 
was first country to make women vote, or Russia who made so much for women 
(much more than US) initially after revolution)).

It’s not to mean GNU Project is to declare itself “feminism-agnostic” just as 
if it would officially declaim itself “climatosceptic” on the ground that it 
has 
nothing to do with free software and we should welcome climate-change 
denialists and anti-feminists, because that would worsen the case as we would 
set ourselves on lower ideological standards than mainstream though in highly-
contributing western/north/rich countries.  But we can support women and not 
exclude anybody at the same time.

It was noted that sometimes antifeminist countries have better levels of women 
employment in CS and IT than liberal countries.  Think of Saudi Arabia and 
Russia.

I came to believe than positive support and material help have commonly bigger 
impact than wording and exclusive environment (Russia is a

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-06 Thread Alfred M. Szmidt

   > In the GNU project everyone is welcome, even people who do not share
   > the goals and philosophy of the GNU project.

   I do not think this makes sense, actually. As soon as we have a bit
   of responsibility in GNU (like being a maintainer, which is the
   role I know), we are also ambassadors of GNU.  So I would expect us
   to uphold the GNU standards.

The role of a GNU maintainer has always been purley technical, and the
only responsibility that you need to exercise is to apply policies on
the project you maintain.  One neither speaks, or represents the
project just by being a GNU maintainer, those who do speak for the
project are for example listed on the speakers list
(https://www.gnu.org/people/speakers.en.html).  They are held to a
higher standard, see
https://www.gnu.org/people/speakers.html#becoming-speaker .

Maybe finding some some better representation of people who wish to
uphold the banner of the GNU project would be a nice idea, but I'm not
sure how that could be done.  Maybe https://www.gnu.org/people could
be such a start, to be listed you'd need to agree to some
fundamentals.  But that would be a different thing from what is
relevant for being a GNU maintainer.

   For instance, I would not find it acceptable that a GNU maintainer
   goes to FOSDEM to give a talk about their newest open source
   software on a Macbook, or using a Powerpoint presentation on their
   Windows machine.

That isn't a very uncommon thing, and there are plenty of such cases,
be it from not calling our system for GNU/Linux, to refering to the
GNU project as open source software, to directly going against the
Chief GNUisance.  But and even so, they are still welcome as
maintainers, since in the end it is a technical obligation not a
philosophical one.

   Or is this your case?

I personally support the goals of the GNU project, and its philosophy
-- but there are plenty of maintainers that do not, nor care for
either.  And they make the project a better place even though they
have a different view, since in the end ... they work on free
software.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

Le mercredi 6 novembre 2019, 10:18:44 CET Andreas Enge a écrit :
> Why not? The way you phrase it, it sounds as if using GNU software and
> promoting GNU standards is such a burden that it becomes infeasible on top
> of the "hard etc. work of maintaing (...) software". Quite the contrary,
> I would say. Your view above seems too narrow to me: If there is only one
> person in the world upholding the standards, as you seem to imply, we cannot
> expect a universal movement for free software to succeed. And there would
> not even be a point, actually - it is completely irrelevant how one person
> out of 9 billions lives.

TL;DR: there’s a huge difference between union of people sharing some of our
ideas (even
strongly) and intersection of it (people sharing all of them).

The example of “FSF the party and GNU the armed hand” has been given. I also
have an
extreme-left-wing analogy: south-american anarchist /especifismo/.

Here —commonly a minority— anarchist organization, instead of recruiting
massively to
protest and loosening its ideology (which only worked in part of Spain once in
history…
very too unsure about ideologies in Kurdistan and past Ukraine), will rather
try to do
everything inside “massive” non-ideological organizations (unions, neighborhood
associations, etc.) that will welcome everybody (whatever the ideology, even
(that’s
important) non-anarchist, anti-communists… christians, right-wing people… etc.
(these are
part of society too!)).

So these may already make up most of population, and the /especifista/
organization work
so that these begin to implement practices approaching libertarian
(anti-authoritarian:
direct democracy, direct action) and communist (sharing and anti-property:
“from each
according per abilities to each according per needs”) practices, without
necessarily having
to declare themselves “communists” or “anarchists” (because that’s complicated…
you
won’t believe how many people actually find normal and totally acceptable
communist and
anarchist ideas but won’t ever accept the term… and how many islamists or
christians may
declare themselves as communists or even anarchists).

That way the idea is that society change and even revolution can happen before
everybody
becomes anarchist, because anarchism is an historicized ideology putting
together many
ideas (communism, atheism, (direct) democracy, revocable imperative mandates,
rationalism, materialism, class struggle, disobedience, workers movement,
(general)
strike, etc.) then considered as consistent. Thus it is possible to expect
each of these ideas
to become widely common accross society, while considering their intersection
might not
be (so you’d get majority of communists, majority of democrats, majority of
atheists, etc.
but not majority of atheist communists etc. democrats).

We can separate ideological agreement, and practical implementation of that.
Commonly,
there are more people who will practically work in a direction (at least
because of chance!
you know: world is quite absurd, actually) than people agreeing to the original
ideology.

Yes, likely many will like free-software licenses, maybe even copyleft (fewer),
maybe even
*GPLs (even fewers) v3 (oh my), many will like the concept of collaborative
sharing and
working (note these might be different from the former), maybe might be against
DRM
(note it is *extremely common* across free software, especially when higher
economical
class are better represented, to have a classic —imho counter-productive (most
lower class
people won’t care actually so it may be a really effective and working
strategy)— “respect
the law” approach that will condemn “piracy” sharing morally (RMS and hence GNU
(maybe FSF at a time?) won’t do that, except maybe on a pure strategical (and
not moral)
ground)), and a very few will be against SaaSS (no really, look at
framacloud.org: these are
all convinced librists fans of the concept of community collaborative
development…
rejecting big companies and commercial software… and yet promoting SaaSS).
There’s
also the problem of librists who just will dislike everything coming from a
company (or any
private entity): as really clearly did put it fellow Dmitry Alexandrov, that
actually postpone
free software goals to the realization of communism. Not even talking about
libreboot and
“smartphones” (I know we are a only a few around GNU, FSF, free-software and
net-
neutrality movement not to own a phone at all).

If we want to keep the current high ideological standards of RMS… we won’t be
1-over-9-
billions, we likely will be… maybe 11 (and I guess we have a bunch of those
already in
teams described by Brandon). You know what? we might be a *lot* more, just
find the
(non-trivial way) to make a lot more people aware of *all ideas* supported on /
philosophy… And guess what? a lot would easily adhere (there are still people
without a
phone on this planet… guess what?

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-06 Thread Jean Louis

* Andreas Enge  [2019-11-06 09:57]:
> On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 01:56:15AM +0300, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
> > Instead of making GNU more welcoming place by lessening the burden of 
> > formalities, you in fact propose GNU to withdraw deeper into itself by 
> > inventing ideology-driven ‘contracts’.  And in order to add an insult to 
> > injury — to cover it with Western buzzwords like ‘inclusiveness’. :-\
> 
> Ideology? Hm. I do not see how the aim of creating a harassment-free
> environment could be construed as making GNU a less welcoming
> place...

There is no place in the world that can make it truly
harassment-free as some people may always find ways to harass others.

The aim of GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to encourage
contributions from everybody.

That would include also contributions from people who may have
different and opposing viewpoints, even type of behavior that you
would not encourage.

One practical way to create harassment free environment could be to
retract your signature on the public shaming of the GNU project, and
then transfer your thoughts, statements and signatures to the off-GNU
and non-GNU related website.

Harassment from Wordnet dictionary:

* Overview of noun harassment

The noun harassment has 2 senses (no senses from tagged texts)
1. harassment, torment -- (a feeling of intense annoyance caused by being 
tormented; "so great was his harassment that he wanted to destroy his 
tormentors")
2. harassment, molestation -- (the act of tormenting by continued persistent 
attacks and criticism)

Obviously there are people who felt intense annoyance and have
withdrawn their contribution to Guix because of that.

Various software projects have been mentioned on your statement page,
mentioning such as GNU Lilypond, GNU Mediagoblin, GNU libc, GCC, GNU
Binutils and other projects to give appearance that whole project is
taking stand to defame and harass RMS.

The effect of that public shaming is that some people who do
contribute or contributed to mentioned GNU projects are being
discouraged. I have given you clear references of few of them who
dared expressing themselves on the Guix IRC chat.

Thus contributors feel harassed too, unspoken of how RMS feels about
that. I am speaking only of contributors.

Do you know that I have personally discovered that statement at the
moment that I wanted to install Guix distribution?  I found it
extremely hateful and baseless. And I did make question and called for
facts, and none of their facts justify that public shaming.

It harasses RMS, we know that. But it also harasses contributors to
those mentioned GNU projects.

Your public shamings is totally opposite to what GNU project is made
for.

Remove it.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 04:04:03AM +0100, Alexandre François Garreau wrote:
> No you misunderstood the role, which is technical.  So ambassading outside of 
> a project mailing-list is outside of this role.  Like any GNU member comments 
> on per blog.
> 
> Ambassadors of GNU are already listed in the GNU webpage listing whose who 
> are 
> validated as speakers to give talks about software freedom (and the specific 
> subject they might talk about).

Here we disagree. GNU is not developed in a cave without connection to the
outer world, with a few officially appointed ambassadors spreading the word.
We have a public role, and whenever we go to conferences or hacker meetings,
we get an opportunity to lead by example. If we want free software (and the
GNU project) to succeed, we must use free software and speak about it. And
I definitely do not need any official validation to do that.

> Many already do that, and I even (sadly, I was as shocked as other people, 
> but 
> that’s not a reason to shut up people) observed that on some past GHMs.  
> Along 
> with promoting software that only works on proprietary OSes.

To be fair, I have seen this only once. And as you say, we were all baffled,
so it clearly was not something that people considered normal.

> There are not GNU standards.  There is GNU philosophy.  And RMS moral 
> standards (by abide almost noone lives, or they’re very few and the 
> intersection with competent people is too tiny to be interesting).
> 
> We can’t except all people contributing by doing the hard, continuous, long 
> and stable work of maintaining and coordinating development of software to 
> uphold any standard

Why not? The way you phrase it, it sounds as if using GNU software and
promoting GNU standards is such a burden that it becomes infeasible on top
of the "hard etc. work of maintaing (...) software". Quite the contrary,
I would say. Your view above seems too narrow to me: If there is only one
person in the world upholding the standards, as you seem to imply, we cannot
expect a universal movement for free software to succeed. And there would
not even be a point, actually - it is completely irrelevant how one person
out of 9 billions lives. 

Andreas

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 01:56:15AM +0300, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
> Instead of making GNU more welcoming place by lessening the burden of 
> formalities, you in fact propose GNU to withdraw deeper into itself by 
> inventing ideology-driven ‘contracts’.  And in order to add an insult to 
> injury — to cover it with Western buzzwords like ‘inclusiveness’. :-\

Ideology? Hm. I do not see how the aim of creating a harassment-free
environment could be construed as making GNU a less welcoming place...
Neither how the word "inclusiveness" could be interpreted as an insult.
Nor whether we need to distinguish "Western" from "Eastern", "Northern"
or "Southern"; maybe we should add "regardless of origins" :-)

Andreas

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

* Mark Wielaard  [2019-11-05 23:57]:
> Hi John,
> 
> On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 01:39:46PM -0800, John Wiegley wrote:
> > He’s correct, I do not share the GNU philosophy, even if I enjoy
> > supporting the technical aspects of the software they produce.
> 
> Boo! If you are not with us, then you are against us! Sorry, I don't
> actually mean that. I actually think this is great. Because this makes
> you an interesting GNU maintainer. I didn't actually expect someone to
> say that. So now I would love to hear your opinion on the draft GNU
> social contract.
> 
> So, if you were asked to agree to uphold something like the draft
> social contract in your role as GNU maintainer would you then step
> down? Would your answer change if it said something explicit about
> whether or not you were to uphold it in your own time?

I hope that our GNU Emacs Maintainer is left undisturbed, please, as
my Emacs still has some serious bugs, and it would not be nice
hindering the progress of the development.

Despite the fact that John Wiegley signed the defamatory statement for
public shaming of Dr. Richard Stallman: 
https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/ I
would not like now that John Wiegley himself gets publicly shamed for
reasons of using whatever open source terminology or using his Apple
proprietary software.

It does not matter. That is his free speech. He does good works in
maintaining Emacs and for that he shall be respected.

Please see:
https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Free-Software-and-Open-Source

16.1 Free Software and Open Source

The terms “free software” and “open source”, while describing almost
the same category of software, stand for views based on fundamentally
different values. The free software movement is idealistic, and raises
issues of freedom, ethics, principle and what makes for a good
society. The term open source, initiated in 1998, is associated with a
philosophy which studiously avoids such questions. For a detailed
explanation, see
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.

The GNU Project is aligned with the free software movement. This
doesn’t mean that all GNU contributors and maintainers have to agree;
your views on these issues are up to you, and you’re entitled to
express them when speaking for yourself.

However, due to the much greater publicity that the term “open source”
receives, the GNU Project needs to overcome a widespread mistaken
impression that GNU is and always was an “open source” activity. For
this reason, please use the term “free software”, not “open source” or
“FOSS”, in GNU software releases, GNU documentation, and announcements
and articles that you publish in your role as the maintainer of a GNU
package. A reference to the URL given above, to explain the
difference, is a useful thing to include as well.

Jean

P.S. John, I do mean so. And I also think your signature there on the
public shaming page is not serving any useful purpose, could you
consider taking it down?

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

* Dmitry Alexandrov <321...@gmail.com> [2019-11-05 23:57]:
> Andreas Enge  wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 02, 2019 at 11:13:57PM +0300, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
> >> > We want to give everyone the opportunity to contribute to our efforts on 
> >> > any of the many tasks that require work.  We welcome all contributors…
> >>
> >> Many GNU subprojects value ‘recordkeeping’ (per Prof. Moglen [2]) and 
> >> ‘protection for FSF’ (per @a...@gnu.org [3]) more than giving anyone an 
> >> opportunity to contribute.  Are you calling for change in priorities?  If 
> >> yes, I would appreciate it, if you name few concrete steps.
> >
> > No change of priorities, I think, but promoting non-discrimination and 
> > inclusiveness. The emphasis is on give *opportunity* to contribute (...)  
> > *regardless* of their gender etc. (...) *harassment-free* (...).  It does 
> > not mean that bad contributions need to be accepted, or those where the 
> > copyright assignments are not done correctly, and so on.
> 
> So thatʼs exactly what I was afraid of.
> 
> Instead of making GNU more welcoming place by lessening the burden of 
> formalities, you in fact propose GNU to withdraw deeper into itself by 
> inventing ideology-driven ‘contracts’.  And in order to add an insult to 
> injury — to cover it with Western buzzwords like ‘inclusiveness’. :-\

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_exclusion#Social_inclusion

"Social exclusion, marginalization or social marginalisation is the
social disadvantage and relegation to the fringe of society. It is a
term used widely in Europe and was first used in France."

But GNU was never discriminatory.

If anyone claims different, give me the facts.

Jean

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

*Le mardi 5 novembre 2019, 21:58:42 CET Andreas Enge a écrit :*
*> On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 11:49:03PM +0300, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:*
*> > Andreas Enge  wrote:*
*> > > For instance, I would not find it acceptable that a GNU maintainer goes*
*> > > to FOSDEM to give a talk about their newest open source software on a*
*> > > Macbook> *
*> > Why not?  In any case, GNU Emacs maintainer John Wiegley*
*> > <@jwieg...@gmail.com> did exactly that [0]. [0] $ mpv*
*> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yiJ7d5LeI*
*> *
*> I do not think so - the talk topic is about Nix, a GNU/Linux distribution.*

*What’s you’re wrong in is that Nix is not a GNU/Linux distribution, but a 
package 
manager.*

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

Le mardi 5 novembre 2019, 21:31:09 CET Andreas Enge a écrit :
> Hello,
> 
> On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 12:46:42PM -0500, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> > In the GNU project everyone is welcome, even people who do not share
> > the goals and philosophy of the GNU project.
> 
> I do not think this makes sense, actually. As soon as we have a bit of
> responsibility in GNU (like being a maintainer, which is the role I know),
> we are also ambassadors of GNU.

No you misunderstood the role, which is technical.  So ambassading outside of 
a project mailing-list is outside of this role.  Like any GNU member comments 
on per blog.

Ambassadors of GNU are already listed in the GNU webpage listing whose who are 
validated as speakers to give talks about software freedom (and the specific 
subject they might talk about).

> So I would expect us to uphold the GNU
> standards.

There are not GNU standards.  There is GNU philosophy.  And RMS moral 
standards (by abide almost noone lives, or they’re very few and the 
intersection with competent people is too tiny to be interesting).

We can’t except all people contributing by doing the hard, continuous, long 
and stable work of maintaining and coordinating development of software to 
uphold any standard, especially not to thoughpolice them, or even to police 
what they say *outside GNU* (what is side on GNU website, mailing lists and 
packages is already policed).

> For instance, I would not find it acceptable that a GNU
> maintainer goes to FOSDEM to give a talk about their newest open source
> software on a Macbook, or using a Powerpoint presentation on their Windows
> machine.

Many already do that, and I even (sadly, I was as shocked as other people, but 
that’s not a reason to shut up people) observed that on some past GHMs.  Along 
with promoting software that only works on proprietary OSes.

Actually, you have to consider that morality and competence don’t perfectly 
intersect.  That’s not a problem.  You don’t want the most moral person for 
each job if the job in the end is less well done, and on other sides it 
doesn’t make a difference.

I’ve come to know many people who don’t care about this or that (at least from 
using a cellphone and libreboot).  But that’s only a problem when their 
software is proprietary, supporting proprietary software or trapped in working 
only on proprietary software or supporting hardware.  Otherwise, they do good 
that will benefit community and help it sustain.

> And in practice, I have yet to meet a GNU maintainer who would state
> "I do not care about the four freedoms, I am just maintaining this random
> package that happens to be under the GPL, because of its cool features."

Most of time it’s not as radical of “cool features” (though this might be the 
case of emacs, often), but “because it was copylefted” or “because my company 
paid me to do so because they use it”.  And those are huge cases for 
contributing to free software and keeping it working, secure and updated while 
companies are competing.

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

Le mardi 5 novembre 2019, 18:58:04 CET Samuel Thibault a écrit :
> But you'd have to agree on the GNU goals if you are
> to take responsibilities in the GNU project, such as being maintainer
> of a package (as in: responsible for the package, and not only a
> contributor).

I disagree!  Maintainer is a *technical* role, not a social or philosophical 
one (though it is somewhat political, but that can be enforced by the Chief 
GNUisance).  What if a (sub)package (ie. Objective-C gcc frontend) is of 
crucial of at least high importance for GNU or free software, but is free only 
because of chance or copyleft? should we prevent it to exist or keep updated 
because the author is not on our side and the root software is GNU? certainly 
not! as proprietary software should just *stop existing at all*.  Any free 
software is welcome.  That’s why, for many political and historical reasons, 
there are many redundant, duplicates, (practically or almost) useless, broken 
or discontinued packages within GNU.

Think of cases where the aforesaid software is really big (a compiler!), or 
hard to maintain (very complex and known only to some people working hard and 
long on it) or not that interesting (we like C and lisp… sometimes C++… but 
not Objective-C or C# or python… yet we know some do and we want to welcome, 
support and help them: they shall have and use free software)…?

Sometimes only some persons can be able to maintain something.  That is often 
a company with full-time paid employee (and a voluntary organization cannot 
replace or compete with that), and is most of time from the userbase of it: if 
it is used and hacked on only by people who don’t care that much, but we want 
it to be free (like everything!) we can’t arbitrarily and artificially appoint 
someone that knows nothing of it, how does it work, and doesn’t even care 
about it! what if he simply doesn’t of wrongly do the job, technically? users 
will stop using the software, or worse, fork it, and then the problem is back… 
with even more risks than you wanted!

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

Le mercredi 6 novembre 2019, 00:36:29 CET Jean Louis a écrit :
> * John Wiegley  [2019-11-05 23:26]:
> > He’s correct, I do not share the GNU philosophy, even if I enjoy
> > supporting the technical aspects of the software they produce.
> 
> Yet you do allow as Emacs maintainer publishing of free software
> improvements into Emacs?
> 
> That implies you do share one big chunk of the GNU philosophy, maybe
> you wanted to say you don't share all of the GNU philosophy, but as
> Emacs maintainer you already do for good deal of it.
> 
> Am I wrong?

Yes, he’s only following a licence and accepting help.  Developing software 
collaboratively is not “big chunk of the GNU philosophy”, because that can be 
done with and within proprietary software (what is important is this being 
possible for everyone, in the specific case maybe not even collaboratively but 
individually on its own, or fighting all the day arguing, as they want).

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

* Dmitry Alexandrov <321...@gmail.com> [2019-11-06 01:35]:
> Jean Louis  wrote:
> > Yet you do allow as Emacs maintainer publishing of free software 
> > improvements into Emacs?
> > publishing … into Emacs
> > into
> 
> What?
> 
> I suppose, youʼd better rephrase that.

Tell me first what you think that I meant...

Re: A GNU “social contract”?

2019-11-05 Thread Dmitry Alexandrov

Jean Louis  wrote:
> Yet you do allow as Emacs maintainer publishing of free software improvements 
> into Emacs?
> publishing … into Emacs
> into

What?

I suppose, youʼd better rephrase that.


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: A GNU “social contract”?