On 03/09/2014 1:22 pm, "Steve Langasek" <vorlon@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The code of conduct for DebConf is here:
> http://debconf.org/codeofconduct.shtml
Couple of comments.
"The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.
No matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we welcome
you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact
constructively with our community.
While much of the work for our project is technical in nature, we value and
encourage contributions from those with expertise in other areas, and
welcome them into our community"
I really like this part of the code of conduct, and think it provides an
excellent justification for inviting Linus (and the FSF, and the SteamOS
folks and Lennart etc) to debconf, not just despite their conflicting views
but /because/ of them.
I'm concerned that many people (Linus not among them) would find the
audience fairly harshly challenging their closely held views as especially
unwelcoming - if you had a female technologist in front of the crowd and
had someone come up and ask "how can we get you to stop being a feminist?"
to applause from the crowd, I'd consider that a fairly hostile reception,
for instance.
I wonder if it wouldn't be beneficial to add some caveats to the "respect
everyone" stuff - I think challenging Linus about his views on the GPLv3
was valuable and informative; to a lesser extent so was challenging the
SteamOS about various ways in which they're proprietary. Is there any good
advice as to how to have a respectful debate between folds on a subject
where folks hold deeply held but opposing views that could be shared?
I wonder of as far as the debconf code of conduct is concerned, maybe
"courtesy" might be a more accurate word than "respect".
Cheers,
aj
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