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Re: Why the "social contract" should not be endorsed


From: Federico Leva (Nemo)
Subject: Re: Why the "social contract" should not be endorsed
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2020 10:57:01 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.4.1

Taylan Kammer, 25/02/20 21:30:
At face value I 99% agree with the proposed "GNU Social Contract" and
even the CoC you're talking about here, yet I find myself agreeing with
what you're saying.

I've yet to see a CoC which isn't a tool for centralisation of power. They tend to create some autocratic body with ultimate and non-appealable decision-making powers over all aspects of a project. (Software projects are made by people, so if you can decide who's in and who's out, or what can be said and what can't, you potentially get to decide everything.)

If your project is completely hierarchical (e.g. fully controlled by a listed for-profit corporation), this may not be a problem. If it is fully democratic and structured (e.g. fully controlled by an association with very clear bylaws, within a jurisdiction which makes the legal limits clear), it might also work, but then you cannot override the ultimate decision maker (usually the assembly of members). The number of successful projects falling in either category is close to nil though.

Federico



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