[Arm-netbook] Standards Organization as a Potentially Universal Free/Libre Software Developement Sustenance Model

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 6:17 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
<lkcl at lkcl.net> wrote:
> huh.  hmmm, if it's ok with you i might run that by dr stallman, see
> what he thinks.

 ok, so i spoke to dr stallman, it took me a while to get across the
idea, and after clarifying it he said, *in effect*, "please could you
write up some developer best practices as long as every GNU Project
would automatically conform to them".  he didn't exactly say that, so
please do not quote me on it.

 the starting point should be to take this "list of project *SERVICES*
offered to the GNU project"
https://www.gnu.org/software/devel.en.html

 and turn it into a list of *GENERAL* project *RECOMMENDATIONS*, using
the GNU server services as... like... the "Gold Standard".

 the one thing that is missing from this list is a "Charter" - like
how the Apache Software Foundation has a Charter.  i am not entirely
sure what to advise / do on that.  over the past 20+ years i have
witnessed many high-profile projects treat good people in some pretty
horrible ways - not once and not on just the one project but many many
times.

the Apache Software Foundation on the other hand, whilst they have had
problems, their Charter has allowed them to (formally) keep things
"civil", including being able to remove a project leader who clearly
did not understand the harm he was causing to the project, through his
actions.

also worthwhile considering is adding the recommendation for
developers to take the "Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers".

http://farmerandfarmer.org/medicine/printable.html

the nice thing about that oath is that it can just be added simply to
make people aware of it... *without* actually requiring that they take
it.

anyway i have started a page here in order to coordinate ideas and the
actual proposal:

http://rhombus-tech.net/proposed_best_practices/

l.