Re: [libreplanet-discuss] review respect of code of conduct on Manchester FAQ

[Bob Ham]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2012 at 10:59:21AM -0500, Quiliro Ordóñez wrote:
> The Manchester FAQ page

Hi all,

I've just joined this list.  You should know that Michael Dorrington,
who chairs Manchester Free Software (MFS) and who reverted your edits
to the MFS wiki pages back in 2011, was in a car accident recently and
will be out of action for a while.  He won't be able to respond to
this discussion immediately.

However, I myself would note that, according to your view there seems
to be an oversight in the Code of Conduct.  The document only states
that users of LibrePlanet should "foreground freedom" by "encouraging
people to try distributions that are fully committed to freedom".
This is a positive statement about what people *should* do rather than
a negative statement about what people should *not* do.

It is open for debate as to whether referring to Debian is contrary to
the idea of "foregrounding freedom"; the Code of Conduct cannot be
unambiguously applied.  It seems to me that the Manchester FAQ's
discussion of Debian's status and the FSF's position is quite in line
with "foregrounding freedom" because the issue of freedom is central
within the FAQ's discussion.

The actual issue at the heart of the matter is not whether the MFS
pages disregard freedom; they clearly do not.  The actual issue is
that MFS disagrees with the FSF on how users' freedoms are best
preserved and promoted.  This is a whole different issue.

If it is the case that LibrePlanet users should not refer to
distributions unless they are recommended by the FSF then the Code of
Conduct should state that explicitly.  At present it doesn't.
Similarly, if it's deemed that users should not contradict the FSF's
position then the Code of Conduct should state that as well.  However,
judging by the content of this thread, it seems the LibrePlanet
community does not have a consensus on either of these points.

Kind regards,

Bob Ham

-- 
Bob Ham <rah@settrans.net>

for (;;) { ++pancakes; }