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Sumana Harihareswara [on Mastodon] at
New post: http://crookedtimber.org/2015/04/10/codes-of-conduct-and-kinds-of-copyleft/ on #opensource/#FLOSS, codes of conduct, and attitudes towards contracts and governance
Charles Stanhope, Christopher Allan Webber, Mike Linksvayer likes this.
Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠), Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠), Christopher Allan Webber, Mike Linksvayer shared this.
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My awaiting moderation comment:
No matter what FLOSS license a project chooses, copyleft or permissive, the project is restricting the freedom of contributors -- they can't incorporate code into the project under an incompatible license. In this way a permissive license is more restrictive than a copyleft license, and public domain more restrictive yet.
So the suggested first step (which I like) of getting communities to consider restrictions they already accept when thinking about things like codes of conduct should be workable regardless of license.
Copyleft attempts to regulate what entities do with code outside of the community producing the code. The post mentions that codes of conduct are usually bounded to particular community spaces. It seems to me that a copyleft equivalent code of conduct would make requirements of participant behavior outside of community spaces.
Mike Linksvayer at 2015-04-11T00:31:53Z
lnxwalt@microca.st, Sumana Harihareswara [on Mastodon] likes this.
@mlinksva@identi.ca You mean because a copyleft project can accept permissively-licensed contributions, while a permissively licensed project can't accept copyleft contributions and stay permissive? Interesting angle! OOP analogy something something covariance vs contravariance.
Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠) at 2015-04-12T10:01:26Z
X11R5, Mike Linksvayer likes this.
@clacke@microca.st exactly, but I wish it were obvious rather than interesting. I chalk up the interestingness to copyright being mindrot. I hadn't thought of contra/covariance analogy before though. I guess you could think of a permissively licensed project as a contravariant function, taking in only permissively licensed material, and emitting material under any/no license, copyleft project as covariant function, taking in any freely licensed material, emitting only copylefted material. (Leaving compatibility for particular licenses to the side.)
Interestingness due to law being code and therefore math, which I guess produces a certain strain of mind rot. :-)