copyleft-next April 2019

copyleft-next@lists.fedorahosted.org

6 participants
2 discussions

HBR cure: Code of Conduct for copyleft-next
by Richard Fontana 25 Apr '19

25 Apr '19

Hindering Backchannels Rule[tm] cure: Yesterday I spoke with Bradley Kuhn. We noted that copyleft-next never adopted a code of conduct -- as I put it (paraphrasing), "copyleft-next is so *old* that it largely predates the contemporary FOSS concern regarding adoption of codes of conduct". Leaving aside the fact that copyleft-next has been a bit dormant for quite some time (something which I am hoping may change in the near future), I believe copyleft-next ought to adopt a Code of Conduct. As I think Bradley said in the conversation yesterday, it may be that the Hindering Backchannels Rule properly belongs within a Code of Conduct. Incorporating HBR in a Code of Conduct may address concerns about enforceability. Richard

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HBR cure: Renaming and revising HBR, and some background on the history of HBR
by Richard Fontana 14 Apr '19

14 Apr '19

Last week I had a few conversations with Bradley Kuhn about copyleft-next and the Harvey Birdman Rule [0]. I understand Bradley planned to make one or more HBR cures based on those conversations. I am here pre-empting him solely as to the HBR conversation, just because it's fairly simple for me to explain. We were talking about HBR and I pointed out that the name Harvey Birdman Rule is kind of obsolete or increasingly obscure. Some background: Harvey Birdman Rule is a reference to the cartoon series Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law [1] which ended in 2007. In the past (once on a Free as in Freedom episode, and I believe once on this mailing list) Bradley provided explanations of the choice of the name for the governance rule that originated in connection with the copyleft-next project. These explanations were, as I recall, ingeniously creative but had the character of ex post justifications. In terms of its naming, at least, HBR was meant to be a reference to and parody of the Chatham House Rule, which experienced a brief period of popularity in certain free software-related circles around 2009-2010 or so. I think the original choice of Harvey Birdman may have mostly had something to do with the fact that there was a memorable lawyer involved in the GPLv3 process named Jim Harvey [2], but if so the connection was really only as loose as this: that Jim Harvey was (way before the launch of copyleft-next) a representative member of the open source lawyer establishment -- he was co-chair of one of the four GPLv3 discussion committees -- and that coincidentally his surname matched the forename of the memorable cartoon character Harvey Birdman. Anyway, whatever the situation was in ~2012, today Harvey Birdman is, probably, more obscure as a cultural reference. I am also not sure that the humor in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law has itself stood the test of time. So Bradley and I discussed the desirability of renaming the Rule. The best approach is to fit a new expansion into the existing HBR acronym. The auditory similarity of the expansion to Chatham House Rule -- the original element of the joke -- ought to be retained; that is, the expansion should be of the form [word1] [word2] Rule. The best Bradley could come up with was Hindering Backchannels Rule. I couldn't come up with anything better. I think this is better than Harvey Birdman Rule. Bradley also suggested that HBR should be revised to eliminate the attempt to disincentivize top-posting of mailing list replies (see HBR 4). It's now clear that if only for reasons of generational cultural change, the battle against top-posting which I suppose began in the early days of the Eternal September is now completely lost. Recall that HBR had already been revised to soften the prohibition on top-posting. [3] So anyway I support Bradley's suggestion that (a) Harvey Birdman Rule be renamed Hindering Backchannels Rule, and (b) HBR 4 be deleted. Richard [0] https://github.com/richardfontana/hbr/HBR.md [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Birdman,_Attorney_at_Law [2] Now at Alston & Bird. See https://www.alston.com/en/professionals/h/harvey-james-a [3] https://github.com/richardfontana/hbr/commit/1fa933b2953cc70d76a28e74d889f3…

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copyleft-next April 2019