Behavioral standards in the free software community vs law

Behavioral standards in the free software community vs law

Posted Jun 8, 2006 21:24 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Behavioral standards in the free software community by ortalo
Parent article: Behavioral standards in the free software community

I don't know what countries you're thinking of, but I know in the US, laws don't come anywhere close to the rules being talked about here.

It is not a crime to defame someone. Defaming someone can make one legally liable for the damage it causes, but even then it has to have a clear negative impact on the person's business or profession; the insults on OSS mailing lists probably wouldn't qualify.

It is not a crime to reject someone's code because of his race or gender. There are about half a dozen ways you cannot discriminate based on race (employment, housing, etc.), but merging code isn't one of them.

It is sometimes a crime to do indecent things such as use offensive words, but since it's always based on community standards, I don't think it would apply to OSS mailing lists, especially if said list does not have a code of conduct.

If there are other jurisdictions in the world where common decency is codified into police law, that might be a good start as opposed to generating a code of conduct for an OSS project from scratch; someone already suggested approximately the same thing by mentioning the ACM's code.

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