Proposal: Adopt Harvey Birdman Rule

[Richard Fontana]

Hi copyleft.org project,

Since someone has to post the first message to this list, I thought I
might as well do so. :)

I am not sure if it is necessary but, given that copyleft.org is sort
of a 'collaborative FLOSS legal endeavor' (see below), I'd like to
propose that the copyleft.org project adopt the Harvey Birdman Rule,
or a suitably modified version thereof, to govern its activities. See:
https://gitorious.org/copyleft-next/copyleft-next/source/3baab310f662811ba48d8a86bfe7f9ef7ef612dc:CONTRIBUTING.md

I'll copy it over in this message:

Harvey Birdman Rule

A nontrivial number of interesting collaborative FLOSS legal endeavors
have been operated in a relatively nontransparent and methodologically
suboptimal manner. This project aims to be different, and this
therefore necessitates the following norms of participation, which
shall be known informally as the 'Harvey Birdman Rule':

    1. Contributions in the form of word-processing documents (even if in
    a free/open standard format), "redlined" or otherwise, are
    unacceptable and will be deleted immediately.

    2. No private mailing lists (including but not limited to those
    governed by the so-called Chatham House Rule) will be used by this
    project. Public archiving of mailing lists used by this project is
    strongly encouraged; however, archives are not mandatory and
    partial archiving is permitted.

    3. Except in extraordinary cases, private telephone calls, private
    teleconferences, private in-person meetings, and private email
    communications shall not be used to discuss substantive
    development of this project. Should such private communications
    nevertheless occur, participants in such communications are
    expected to publish summaries of any relevant discussions in a
    manner or medium accessible to the general net public.

    4. Contributing by informal suggestions or proposals made in a
    posting to the project mailing list is welcome. However, any such
    suggestions or proposals that are made in the form of top-posted
    replies to quoted earlier mailing list postings by others are
    unacceptable and therefore shall be ignored.

    5. Criticisms of, or proposed changes to, the Harvey Birdman Rule are
    welcome, though such criticisms or proposals must themselves
    comply with the Harvey Birdman Rule as it exists at the time the
    criticism or proposal is made.


Point 1 is unlikely to be more than academic, as is point 2. It's more
conceivable that point 3 could be implicated. I think it was the
rather harsh point 4 that Karen Sandler said was potentially
exclusionary on the Free-as-in-Freedom oggcast that contained and
discussed the FOSDEM 2013 talk I gave on copyleft-next. Point 5 seems
uncontroversial.

Richard