Re: Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Theodore Y. Ts'o]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 02:36:45PM +0200, Christoph Conrads wrote:
> The CoC is a political document:
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180924234027/https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1041465346656530432
     ...
> Here is the author's post-meritocracy manifesto:
> https://postmeritocracy.org/

There have been those who have characterized the GPL as being more
than just a license, but also a political statement.  And yet, many
projects, include Linus, use the GPL without necessarily subscribing
to all of Richard Stallman's positions, political or otherwise.

As an example: while some Linux users and developers believe with
Stallman that the name Linux should not be used, but LiGNUx and
GNU/Linux instead, others think Linux/BSD/GNU/X/Perl/Python would be
more accurate, and still others thought Stallman's naming proposal was
just plain silly.  Most distributions, including Red Hat, SuSE, Arch,
Gentoo, and Ubuntu don't use GNU/Linux, with Debian being an
exception.

The Linux community is perfectly capable of forming its own political
beliefs, interpretations, and usage of the GPLv2 (including
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL), without Richard Stallman dictating his positions
and beliefs to us.  We don't use the GPLv3 for the Kernel, despite
Stallman's clearly stated preference that we do so.

The use of GPLv2 does not magically brainwash all of users of that
document to blindly follow its author.  The same is true of the CoC.

						- Ted