It seems that there are some individuals who like to shut down
reasonable communication by threatening litigation when even reasonable
comments are made by community members.
The question of the validity of the arguments remains, and the lawyers
will have to sort it out.
What I would like to put on the OGB's radar is the concept of how to
handle individuals who come into our community in a mode that is counter
productive to the community and its members -- obviously the community
can not function if its members are busy exchanging threats of
defamation suits.
IMO, the IESG set a reasonable precedent in a similar community by
simply revoking the posting rights of the individual in question. I
believe that making public threats of litigation (or any other "threat")
should be considered destructive behavior in the community, and mailing
list moderators should have the reasonable right to institute a block on
the individuals in question. I think the OGB should consider a policy
to handle this.
It might also be necessary to somehow couch the content of the mailing
lists as being in a context and not necessarily representing the opinion
of the OpenSolaris project nor of Sun. But again, that's a question for
the lawyers.
Note that all of these above statements are made as an individual
contributor to the OpenSolaris project, and not in any official role as
a Sun employee nor as any official representative of the OpenSolaris
project.
Thank you.
- Garrett
