[FOSDEM] messages missing/changed (was: Academic Freedom vs CoC at FOSDEM)

[Daniel Pocock]

On 11/01/2022 16:49, Ewan Higgs wrote:
> WIth love and respect to all, the first message on the topic confused me:
> 
>  https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2021q4/003272.html
> 
> It sounds like a whole bunch of context is missing so I assumed my mail
> client threaded it incorrectly. 
> 
> Here are archive links...
> https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2022q1/date.html
> https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2021q4/date.html


The original is in the second link, this message:
https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2021q4/003272.html

Notice that I was deliberately vague about the case involving Prof
Anderson.  Some of our German and Israeli friends would feel offended.
It is an unlucky coincidence.  I only wanted to focus on the high level
question in the legal case: what happens when Academic Liberty clashes
with a Code of Conduct?

The details of the case are far more extreme than anything we are likely
to encounter at FOSDEM.  On the other hand, sometimes our dev-room has
too many people.  If you want a lot of people to leave quickly, the
dev-room managers could display drawings from Prof Anderson.

> It seems like I'm not missing any messages according to the archives.
> With this in mind, I think the original discussion proposal was not
> phrased clearly so most people seem to be staying quiet too many
> questions on the same topic.
> 
> My proposal for this thread:
> 1. Is the fundamental question being answered which should be archived
> for future people to be referred to? If so, what is that question?

The original message: "Is it a good moment to contemplate the
relationship between Academic Freedom and CoCs?"


> 2. If there is no fundamental question and it's an exploratory
> discussion, please try Libera chat #fosdem channel to explore the topic
> space and then move it to email when you need an archived resolution of
> the discussion.

Some free software organizations are now using the CoC as an excuse to
publicly humiliate individual volunteers and hurt families.  Somebody
buys a fake police badge on ebay.  He declares himself to be the law,
with the CoC in one hand and the fake police badge in the other hand.
He announces that another volunteer has violated some CoC.  This is not
justice, this is vigilantism.

If the CoC is having this impact then it is important to conduct
scrutiny of the phenomena.  Maybe we need a CoC for CoCs.  In other
words, the behavior around CoCs has become self-contradictory.

Regards,

Daniel

-- 
Debian Developer
https://danielpocock.com