Richard Stallman Announces GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
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huge fan of this comment from rms:
"There is a kind of diversity that would benefit many free software projects: diversity of users in regard to skill levels and kinds of usage. However, that is not what people usually mean by 'diversity'."
its a geniune shame that the guidelines are under a no-derivs license this time. this is a minor improvement from code of conduct, and people should be able to re-use it with the ability to adapt it to their community. the heavy-handed use (and promotion) of noderivs over something that is more useful to a free culture is the main reason i withdrew from my funding of the fsf (until they get this right.) they could just leave free culture alone, but instead they promote this almost worthless alternative and turn so much useful stuff into verbatim copying. this is the biggest example i can think of thats recent.
this is a nice idea:
"If other participants complain about the way you express your ideas, please make an effort to cater to them. You can find ways to express the same points while making others more comfortable. You are more likely to persuade others if you don't arouse ire about secondary things."
i dont blame the people who will think this is impractical, the words "make an effort" are reasonable. in other words, try. putting this in a code of conduct would be asking a lot, having it as a guideline (or even a suggestion) makes it a lot easier to think about. and i really wanted to say something against it, but in that context its pretty innocuous.
"Please don't argue unceasingly for your preferred course of action when a decision for some other course has already been made. That tends to block the activity's progress."
right, if you find yourself doing this it might be time to fork? (im not entirely serious but then again, i am a bit.)
"be kind when pointing out to other contributors that they should stop using certain nonfree software. For their own sake, they ought to free themselves, but we welcome their contributions to our software packages even if they don't do that. So these reminders should be gentle and not too frequent—don't nag."
absolutely brilliant. its been a long time since i think this was a problem, though considering this is official-- nice.
"It is helpful to show contributors that being imperfect is normal, so we don't hold it against them, and that we appreciate their imperfect contributions though we hope they follow through by fixing any problems in them."
great policy. i use this when teaching. the only exceptions i would make are for mistakes that are extremely dangerous, not actual mistakes, and/or come with an arrogant attitude as a defense. in other words, the worst mistakes of the past 3 or 4 years. but that exception doesnt apply to 99% of instances and this is great advice.
"Go out of your way to show that you are criticizing a statement, not a person."
great stuff.
like i said, this is a huge improvement over a code of conduct. some of it is obvious, but stating common sense isnt a crime. it is a bit tragic that they slapped the good old noderivs on this, as it is tragic that it is their go-to license when it offers society so little, and when free software itself has inspired much nicer licenses. cc by or by-sa would be perfect for this.
feel free to point out that i didnt heavily follow the guidelines when commenting on the license. the icing on the cake would be to explicitly point out that the part about mistakes also applies (not as deeply) to community participation itself, though perhaps this entire slightly-new direction implies that. i suppose its almost explicit right here actually:
"This discouragement particularly affects members of disprivileged demographics, but it is not limited to them. Therefore, we ask all contributors to make a conscious effort, in GNU Project discussions, to communicate in ways that avoid that outcome"
whoever wrote the first two paragraphs did so with great thoughtfulness. first, address the people who feel or even have the greatest need to be addressed. then in paragraph 2, make certain no one else is left out either.
i dont think thats done too often anymore. paragraph 2 is actually the opposite of what ive come to expect, and every project ought to ideally include its own version of that.
not everyone is going to be excited about this or think its significant, im surprised i dont feel more cynical about it-- except it is well done. for anyone else thats excited about it, i highly recommend meredith l pattersons "when nerds collide."
shes a security researcher who has articulated a lot of ideas about community that take into account the fact that most of its members are already happy-- and basically saying that their input doesnt cease to be relevant amidst all the fixing.
no single group is ever going to make the world whole, nor should any single group ever be in charge of that department.
> it is a bit tragic that they slapped the good old noderivs on this, as it is tragic that it is their go-to license when it offers society so little, and when free software itself has inspired much nicer licenses. cc by or by-sa would be perfect for this.
RMS seems to believe that freedoms 0 and 2 are sufficient for non-practical works and that freedoms 1 and 3 are only important for practical works that "do a job." My disagreement is with the distinction between practical and non-practical works. Things like entertaining, expressing, and arguing *are* jobs in my view, so entertainment, art, and political statements warrant the same freedoms as software and documentation.
Still, not *that* much is lost by disallowing derivatives of the GNU manifesto.[1] The GNU Kind Communications Guidelines are different though. The guidelines are a tool for improving communication and cooperation, and it is very likely that some modifications could help adapt this tool for different projects and contexts. Not having freedoms 1 and 3 could be a real practical disadvantage here.
[1] I can think of at least possible valid reason to modify it, though. RMS has added some footnotes clarifying things he felt were unclear in the original. This is fine when reading it in text form, but if I were to read the GNU manifesto to someone out loud I would have to awkwardly interrupt the manifesto to read each footnote and then return to the manifesto, backing up a sentence or two to remind the listener where we left off. It would be more natural to slightly rewrite the unclear sentences to address the issues in the footnotes and read the revised version. Maybe my changes would fail to accurately represent RMS's views (just as my changes to a piece of software might introduce a bug or a feature that the original developer does not approve of), but an attribution license like CC-BY-SA would require me to disclose that I had made modifications so that any such errors are not falsely attributed to RMS. A ND clause shouldn't be necessary.
an attribution license like CC-BY-SA would require me to disclose that I had made modifications so that any such errors are not falsely attributed to RMS.
while this is true, regardless of license choice theres nothing that really allows you to deliberately misquote people or misattribute things to people that copyright enforcement would be better suited for than any other mechanism.
leaning on copyright to "protect" against such things reinforces the mythology that copyright exists for that purpose-- a mythology stallman has fought personally for years. he doesnt say it "protects" though. it is hard to avoid the implication, except to lean on the idea that theres no "need" for a right to remix other works.
what i dislike about that saying that theres no need is commented on very nicely by nina paley, who says:
"""to claim to understand the limits of "utility" of cultural works betrays an irrational bias toward software and against all other creative work. it is anti-art, valuing software above the rest of culture. it says coders alone are entitled to freedom, but everyone else can suck it."""
as someone who writes code, i understand the (narrow) distinction between instructions for a machine and a song telling people to stop pollution.
i also understand that for most of the existence of copyright, until the middle of the 20th century at the very earliest, citizens and artists were far more free to express themselves beyond the insufficient (and sometimes expensive) allowances of fair use. and sampling music was fair use from at least 1976 to 1995, showing how fair use as a haven of sorts can get even more limited over time.
most creative works of every type were not restricted at all until the early years of stallmans own lifetime. at one point, software was not even copyrightable.
free culture is an effort to dial back some of the extreme scope and duration that affects all copyrighted works, but with "works of opinion" stallman creates a special case where one does not really need to exist. this isnt what copyright is for-- copyright in its modern form exists mostly to benefit monopolies.
for non-software, monopolies are still bad. the "works of opinion" rhetoric the fsf promotes stifle progress for the free culture movement-- while the fsf has the right to stifle the progress of another movement, the movement has the right to say "their justification for doing so is unfortunate at best and pointless at worst."
should the fsf ever reverse this fight against free culture (on nearly every fsf/gnu webpage, even the hyperbola forum which says "we are free culture-- EXCEPT!") i will go back to giving them money. until then, i just grew tired of this anti-free-culture rhetoric plastered everywhere. and i withdrew my fsf membership over it.
i care passionately about software freedom, but i also care about the rest of the cultural ecosystem that modern, historically recent, extreme copyright limits every day-- preventing the public domain from ever flourishing again, until we do something about it. theres no real reason to keep works of opinion more limited than any other work-- none. the guidelines arent even a work of opinion, if theyre not a "practical" work then throw them out and keep trying.
https://freemedia.neocities.org/nc-and-nd-arent-that-great.html
this is definitely a side issue to the thread, which im inclined to apologise for. but at the same time, this is exactly whats wrong with another fsf policy. id be more than happy to make a separate thread about that. it just happens to be more relevant than usual on this particular day-- because of this.
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