Re: [Hangout - NYLXS] Cause for bans

[Alexandre François Garreau]

Le jeudi 6 février 2020, 10:51:24 CET Ludovic Courtès a écrit :
> John Darrington <jmd@gnu.org> skribis:
>>
> The draft of the Social Contract at
> <https://wiki.gnu.tools/gnu:social-contract> does not mention how people
> should be “expelled” if they “disagree”.  On the contrary: it’s about
> building a shared understanding of what some (hopefully most!) of us
> commit to as members of the Project.

a “contract” is something you sign, agree upon, or accept.  To be useful, 
either you’re gonna make it mandatory (for anything), like becoming a 
maintainer (so then it would be actually maybe “less worse” (in some 
sense) but inconsistant: old maintainers there before it was “accepted” 
(it won’t) could stay, and new one couldn’t join), either to discriminate 
people in any way according their views.

Discriminating, is, imho, something that can be productive and useful.  
But in a political or so organization (like FSF for instance: it could be 
meaningful to ask FSF members, when they join, to assess they’re in favor 
of free-software movement’s ideals). Not in a technical project like GNU.  
In the humanist (and you don’t need to be) sense, anyone should be able to 
contribute because it is mere work of the mind, worked upon 
internationally.

> > I think that banning such people would make us guilty of the same
> > crimes that they have committed.
> 
> Please do not misrepresent this initiative.  It’s about making GNU
> stronger; you may disagree with the approach, but that doesn’t make it a
> “crime” in any sense of the word.

“crime” is a legal and hard word, its broader, common and metaphorical 
sense is better encompassed by “bad” (the substantive, like in “their 
bads”) or anything alike (but it doesn’t sound like really high language).

However, calling for people to be expelled (as it has been for rms) is 
encompassed by what he says “seeking to expell people” as one document of 
yours did, as well by one or several likely goal for a such “contract”.  

Then the “crime” wouldn’t be the act, but the promotion of that act 
(though that last act could also be considered as such)… you can interpret 
that in two ways: either expelling is the crime we ought not to reproduce, 
but nobody was (yet) expelled, so we just mean we won’t promote crimes we 
accuse you of calling for.  Either the crime is directly to call for such 
expulsion.  And then the crime has already been committed by both the 
authors and the people criticizing them, then it would be more like 
“you’re doing the same crime, we won’t do as well [please apologize]”.

> I would like us to move forward: what do you think GNU will lose or gain
> as a project if its members endorse a document stating its core values?

Members.

Because currently they’re “volunteers” first and foremost, and “members” 
only as a state of fact resulting of it.  Several of them already 
publictly claimed they weren’t free-software supported, and even used and 
enjoyed proprietary software.

So two possibilites: first, they don’t sign it, so what you say either 
don’t realize (its members didn’t sign it), either they’re not members 
anymore (and we’ve lost volunteers) ; second, they do, so they lie, your 
document becomes a lie, and a tool of deception or at least of dishonesty, 
like it is already common in pretty much all political organizations (and 
GNU, thankfully, is not one).  I think this is a fair amount of why some 
people aggressively reacts to it :/ they feel the potential of dishonesty 
that could come from a such thing.

> What would you add or remove to the values currently listed in the
> draft?

Either remove everything, either add everything, and make that an FSF 
thing, not a GNU one.

> What other initiatives would you propose to improve cohesion?

Stop requiring stuff from maintainers.  Maybe, if you’re so eager to do 
democracy, inclusion, feedback, etc. you should just join a GLUG or a FFDN 
ISP (if you don’t already), and go vote and do politics there and within 
FSF, propose votes, make polls, possibly about technical stuff, and get 
back to GNU, at least for information.  That’d be more relevant.