On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 4:15 AM, Garrett D'Amore<gdamore at sun.com> wrote: > 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.
Without commenting on this specific case (which I've been watching as it clearly had the potential to go bad): A community will be made up of a variety of individuals with differing views. Debate and disagreement should be expected. People will occasionally overstep the line - newcomers may have a different perspective and may not be aligned to community norms. Misunderstanding is very easy. We therefore need flexibility to allow such situations to resolve themselves in the first instance. Also, there isn't really a difference between somebody in the community acting harmfully like this and someone outside doing the same thing. What's to stop someone outside the community bringing in the lawyers if they don't like what's being said? > 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. What would that policy be beyond a clarifications of sections 3.4 and 3.5 of the constitution? (There's a slight wrinkle in that my reading of the constitution doesn't quite make it clear whether it's talking about Members or Participants. I think the intent is obvious, though.) The procedure is pretty straightforward - if the individuals or communities involved feel that a situation has gone out of control, they can appeal to the OGB to act. This is slightly more complex. The opensolaris.org Terms of Use http://www.opensolaris.org/os/tou/ could well apply. Section 3 explicitly prohibits threatening behaviour. Whichever route may be taken, I don't think the OGB should jump in uninvited. The constitution says we should be invited to intervene, and one would hope that the communities within OpenSolaris are mature enough to attempt to resolve their own difficulties, and capable of asking for help when they need it. Violation of the terms of use gives Sun (presumably) much stronger rights. (My only question here would be whether communities are aware of the procedures that do exist?) > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > ogb-discuss mailing list > ogb-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/ogb-discuss > -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
