The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
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Re:"Social Contract" [anti-trust]

On Sun, 29 Jun 1997, Bruce Perens wrote:

> From: Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
> > Why not just trademark "Debian", and give everyone a free license to use
> > the trademark - explicityly reserving the right to revoke any individual
> > or company's license at any time for (tarnishing the reputation of
> > debian|other heinous crimes).
> 
> Rather than reserve the right to revoke a license, one simply
> never issues a license for certain kinds of malice-aforethought
> activity. Thus, when someone does such things, they are immediately
> in violation, rather than having to wait for their license to be
> revoked and for them to receive proper legal notice before they are in
> violation.

yeah, that's good. a GPL or similar license can apply to a trademark as
well as to software, i suppose.

(to include it in our distribution, though, we'd have to allow people
to modify the trademark's "source code" and fork derived versions like
Debeen and Debain :-)


> > Anyone that tried something evil would have their reputation
> > completely and irrevocably destroyed by hordes of debian & linux
> > enthusiasts.
>
> Evil people don't care about their reputations. It's nice to have a
> little legal force, even if you never use it.

Some do, some don't. The guy who trademarked Linux has permanently
exiled himself from the linux community, and his name is mud. that may
not matter to him, but if it does he probably regrets ever being so
stupid as to think he could get away with it.

Also, his actions tell everyone else that he is a dishonest person
with little regard for ethics. Now that doesn't matter much to most
businesses (money is more important than ethics), but it matters a lot
to some. He's destroyed his reputation in those circles too.

So, he has publicly demonstrated that he is stupid, dishonest, and
unethical. Would you do business with someone with those traits?


I think that personal reputation is going to become a lot more important
over the next few years - the net's "global village" effect is going to
ensure that. Consistently do the "wrong thing" and people will notice -
netizens can and will implement their own 'consumer watchdog' services.
e.g. how long does someone last when they try fraudulently selling goods
in usenet? Reputation will become a crucial issue for any person or
company that wants to do business on the net.

I agree with you, however. It would be nice to have a little legal force
and hope we never have to use it.


Craig

--
craig sanders
networking consultant                  Available for casual or contract
temporary autonomous zone              system administration tasks.


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