--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 8:29 AM, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de wrote:
On 09/17/2016 04:08 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 9:06 PM, Sam Pablo Kuper sampablokuper@posteo.net wrote:
Does anyone else here think it would be, on balance, a good idea to adopt a Code of Conduct, perhaps based on the Contributor Covenant[0], for some combination of: this mailing list; the Rhombus Tech wiki?
ok. first thing that needs to be said: the wiki and the mailing list are there as resources (run by me) whose sole purpose is to support the goals of the EOMA initiative, for which (as the "Guardian of the EOMA Standards") i and i alone am currently directly responsible. "being nice" or "being inclusive" or "making people happy" is not a direct target, or a direct or indirect measure of success, in any way, as part of the responsibility of protecting the EOMA standards.
A code of conduct is only useful if there are multiple administrators who may disagree and decisions based on policy are needed. We have to trust Lkcl anyway.
true *for now*... in the future there will be more people involved.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918 and http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122
i would be interested in an evaluation as to whether anyone feels that esr's comments are compatible with the Bill of Ethics. my feeling is that they are, and that the "Contributor Covenant" most certainly is not.
l.
They seem to be constructive (bill of ethics 3.10), but the first one may also be a deliberate misunderstanding to convince others that sexism/racism/… is OK
only if you choose to *make* such a deliberate misunderstanding.
(limiting the contributions and thus creativity of affected people, see bill of rights 3.03).
if there were any mention of the words "creed" or "colour" or any other deliberately exclusionary terms, you would be absolutely correct. however there is not a single term or phrase in the entire document which may be construed as being *remotely* of the type that you fear.
thus we can conclude that the perceived possibility of a misunderstanding is merely that, and is not related to this document in any way.
remember: this document is designed to be applicable right down to the smallest social club all the way up to Sovereign Nations. acting in self-defense in an *ethical* way is a really really vital part of it.
Accepting contributions regardless of gender/race/… does not mean accepting contributions regardless of quality.
correct. one of the things that i love about free software is that most people are completely anonymous behind a wall of plain text. we don't give a fuck about people's gender, or race, or age, or size, or any other fuckwit politically bullshit-orientated delusionary attitudes. if you have the self belief to step forward onto a public mailing list and can speak with a rational and clear voice, chances are that you'll do okay.
if however you fear being victimised (for irrational or subconscious traumatic childhood reasons or many other reasons too numerous to list) that have absolutely nothing to do with the goal that everyone else is focussing on, *or* if your background is sufficiently technically lacking that you're unable to contribute usefully, chances are high that it's not going to go well for you unless you're prepared to overcome those fears or lack of technical knowledge in pursuit of the goal.
Criticism of meritocracy is mostly about meritocracies not being real meritocracies, e.g. by favoring the loudest over the silent, judging not on real merit but stereotypes, etc. (see [1]).
bob's team's 20-year-long study shows that compared to *all* other forms of decision-making, unanimous small groups 50-50 men and women of between 7 and 9 people total is by far and above the most effective means to achieve goals. this is not a new discovery: it's a rediscovery of something that's been shown to be highly effective throughout human history, the more recent descriptions include the book "The Mythical Man-Month" as well as "Agile Programming".
anyway: you can probably tell that i don't think highly of meritocracies. this was one of the mistakes made by the Apache Software Foundation with the introduction of their Charter, which solely and exclusively required consideration of contributions based on "technical merit". back in 1998 or so i proposed that they consider adding "strategic merit" to the Charter but this was not taken up.
I don’t think creativity is the perfect basis for ethics though.
i do. i instinctively get it, from my background in physics as well as other training including some that's related to daoism, some in christianity, and some related to the kaballah. really long story dating back over the last 28 years and counting.
the clue is in the mention of the word "entropy". bear in mind also that bob's father was a famous theoretical physicist, and that bob himself met paul dirac, years ago. so like many physicists, bob is aware that a vacuum is literally seething with unbelievable potential energy to create absolutely any particle.
if we wish to maintain a particular "state", we have to be aware of ourselves and also aware of that state, otherwise it is impossible (like the million monkeys typing shakespeare and then one of them eating it) to achieve. entropy being what it is, it requires *effort* to both reach and then maintain a chosen "state".
if the connection between ethics and creativity isn't clear, re-read the definitions. bob uses the terms "truth, love, awareness and creativity" as synonyms for the same underlying concept, on the basis that if you reduce any one of them, you reduce all the others as well.
the bill of ethics is just the tip of the iceberg: a result of 30 years of work by some extraordinary people. i've been investigating their work for the past few months and am only beginning to scratch the surface.
l.