Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Trying to become a Gentoo Developer again spanning 8 years...

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 9:08 PM, Daniel Campbell <zlg@g.o> wrote:
> The series of events makes sense if the Council has the
> power to compel Comrel for information or audit.

When Comrel decisions are appealed the Council gets access to all
information Comrel had at their disposal.  The person doing the appeal
can present whatever information they wish.  Really it would be
counterproductive for Comrel to not provide the full record because
the "defense" isn't going to be pulling its punches.  If Comrel
doesn't present enough evidence of wrongdoing then the Council isn't
going to be likely to uphold the appeal.

And ultimately I think both groups need to be concerned with whether
attitudes have changed/etc than on the past events themselves (unless
they're very drastic).  The issue wasn't whether something bad
happened so much as whether everybody involved recognizes what
mistakes they've made and is committed to not making them again, and
that they're demonstrating their ability to stick to this.  When
somebody appeals to the Council saying that they haven't done anything
wrong in situation XYZ, and then the Council looks at situation XYZ
and sees them doing something very wrong, and Comrel communications
show this has been pointed out to the appellant, then there clearly is
an unwillingness to follow the norms of the community.  If you think
that Comrel is off base then the solution is to stop doing the
questionable behavior and appeal the matter THEN, not to continue the
bad behavior and dare Comrel to do something about it.  Nobody wants
to pull out the ban hammer because somebody disagrees with the rules
(I've pointed out a rule or two I disagree with in this thread), it is
only for failing to follow them.

>
> Sexual harassment is a legal matter, to be frank. We can take measures
> to reduce its occurrence, but I'm sure we both know that technical
> solutions for social problems don't really work. We can ban and remove,
> but a persistent harasser will make new nicks, new e-mail addresses, may
> publicly harass and/or stalk someone, etc. Past a certain point, the
> victim may need to press charges or seek other avenues of power, e.g.
> talk to Freenode about IRC harassment, report to the attacker's e-mail
> provider, etc.

While victims may have other avenues, that doesn't free us from doing
our part.  The Trustees should have a part in defining these kinds of
standards, but the fact that bans can be evaded isn't a reason not to
have them.

If somebody commits a crime in a Walmart, Walmart might tell them
they're banned from entering their stores, and that if they violate
the ban they're trespassing.  Now, six months later it would be pretty
easy for this person to sneak into some other Walmart on the other
side of the country, but if a victim of a future crime sued Walmart
they could still point to the ban, and the victim would probably have
to demonstrate that Walmart knowingly failed to enforce it.

Also, when the term "sexual harassment" tends to get used in FOSS
communities it is often not activity that actually meets a legal
standard of harassment, which often requires some kind of power
relationship.  In any case we can still have community standards such
as not allowing unwanted sexual attention and other forms of
"harassment" even if they don't fit the legal standard, and we ought
to have these kinds of standards because it makes Gentoo into the sort
of community where decent contributors are going to want to set down
their roots.

-- 
Rich