[KLUG Advocacy] Re: Decency Standards for Open Source

[Kevin Wixson]

If anyone missed what this is all about, I posted the Digg.com link to 
my article in the members list, and Bruce wanted to move it over here. 
Please be sure to click the "Dig it " link at digg.com for my article so 
I can get the article promoted to the front page. I think I'll need 
around 50 or so digs to get it up there.

http://digg.com/technology/Decency_Standards_for_Open_Source



Bruce:

Thank you for your feedback and I have to say that in everything you 
said I agree with you. Yet I am still convinced that in the case of 
OCAL, at least, an open submission policy would sink the ship.

It is a difficult question to deal with. In this age of globalization 
the problem is especially vexing. But as I suggested in the article, 
there is a way to deal with fanatics, which is to ignore them -- a 
solution you have (IMO, rightfully) employed with Devil Linux up to now 
and which the restaurant likely failed to do by caving into what was 
probably a very small but vocal minority.

Community is hard to define, and believe me I know how difficult it is 
to ever reach a decision in committee. I have tried it with working on 
boards of community organizations, and I can safely say I'm cured. It 
was without bringing my personal prejudice into it that I included 
"community" in making such decisions. What I really think is that all 
open source projects should have top-down management just like 
commercial ones, and that the small group of managers making the 
decisions should set the standard. Let them decide what "fanatic" means, 
and what their vision of the project should be. If they get it wrong, 
then a competing project will eventually win out.

The "blanding" of our culture is a serious problem. It bugs me too, and 
I have an even better example for you. Schools. Tests and textbooks, in 
particular. The standard has become such a high bar there that kids 
can't stand to study because there's nothing interesting about the 
material, and nothing the kids can relate to. This is a place in our 
culture where the small and vocal minorities, the fanatics, have had too 
much say. But the reasons why the "blanding" of texts is wrong, isn't 
just that they're boring. There are two major reasons.

1.) What I call the business reason. The books are so bland that kids 
are having a hard time learning. The purpose of the product is being 
adversely affected by the high level of censorship.

2.) Small centralized authority with control over a broad domain of 
expression. I touched on this in the article.

Trying to keep this short(er) so let me just wrap up by saying...

I hope my article conveyed the idea that what I'm recommending is a 
Taoist, middle road, approach to dealing with decency. It's okay to 
offend the fringes, as their needs are still attended to, and the price 
of their fanaticism is extra work and expense in finding what they need. 
What I'm aiming at is just to move people towards a consensus that some 
censorship is necessary and good, and excessive censorship is bad and to 
be avoided. If we can agree on that, then we've made progress.

-Kevin

Bruce Smith wrote:

>>>>http://digg.com/technology/Decency_Standards_for_Open_Source
>>>>        
>>>>
>
>Nice article!
>
>I will say that the term "community" that decides where draw the line 
>is rather hard to define in this day of the _world_ wide web.
>
>I'm starting to come to the conclusion that in this day and age 
>that it's impossible to do anything that doesn't offend someone.  
>This leads to more and more "politically correctness", which in 
>turn leads to a more dull and bland world.  (IMO)
>
>Here's some more examples:  I'm a developer on the Devil-Linux
>distribution, and every few months someone emails us saying they are
>offended by the word "Devil".  They claim that the name is holding us
>back because of all the people who won't use it just because of the
>name.  And of course they try to get us to change the name.
>
>I always ask them if they are also offended by Devil's Food Cake and
>Dirt-Devil vacuum cleaners.  (but I've never got an answer to that)
>
>I also point out that there are other definitions for "Devil" that are
>not related to Satan.   i.e.:
>4 : a person of notable energy, recklessness, and dashing spirit; also :
>one who is mischievous <those kids are little devils today>
>http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=devil&x=15&y=21
>
>But with fanatics, it's a waste of time to argue with them.  They have
>their mind made up and closed.
>
>Someone else pointed out that the word "Devil" means even worse things
>in part of Africa (not sure exactly what).  Which leads me to believe
>that even choosing the most bland name possible for something, it'll
>probably be translated to something offensive in some other language.
>
>So far we've resisted all attempts to change the name of Devil-Linux,
>but it is very annoying every time this comes up.
>
>
>I've also read stories about people being refused service in stores and
>restaurants because they had a FreeBSD T-shirt on.  After all, those
>guys must be Satan worshipers since they have a devil on their shirt!
>
>
>Another story:  I ate at a very popular, out of the way, restaurant last
>weekend.  Great food and a really cool place.  It's a half+ hour drive
>from Kalamazoo and we usually make it there a couple times a year.
>
>Until recently, they had some really nice poster sized pictures in the
>rest room (the men's room anyway, not sure about the other).  These
>posters were all of really sweet classic cars.  They also had a nice
>looking bikini clad woman in the pictures, but noting explicit.  The
>last couple times we went there, these pictures are gone, replaced by
>the empty wall.  I don't know this for a fact, but I'd be willing to bet
>that the reason the posters were removed is because someone complained.
>That just pisses me off!  If I was the restaurant owner, I would have
>had some choice words for the person who complained, the pictures would
>have stayed, and I would have lost a customer.   (probably a good thing
>I don't own a business catering to the general public! :)
>
>The last example has nothing to do with open-source, but it still has me
>fuming that some people are so intolerant and "politically correct"
>these days, and I just wanted to vent.  :-)
>
> - BS
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Advocacy mailing list
>Advocacy at kalamazoolinux.org
>
>
>
>  
>