On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 6:17 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net wrote:
huh. hmmm, if it's ok with you i might run that by dr stallman, see what he thinks.
ok, so i spoke to dr stallman, it took me a while to get across the idea, and after clarifying it he said, *in effect*, "please could you write up some developer best practices as long as every GNU Project would automatically conform to them". he didn't exactly say that, so please do not quote me on it.
the starting point should be to take this "list of project *SERVICES* offered to the GNU project" https://www.gnu.org/software/devel.en.html
and turn it into a list of *GENERAL* project *RECOMMENDATIONS*, using the GNU server services as... like... the "Gold Standard".
the one thing that is missing from this list is a "Charter" - like how the Apache Software Foundation has a Charter. i am not entirely sure what to advise / do on that. over the past 20+ years i have witnessed many high-profile projects treat good people in some pretty horrible ways - not once and not on just the one project but many many times.
the Apache Software Foundation on the other hand, whilst they have had problems, their Charter has allowed them to (formally) keep things "civil", including being able to remove a project leader who clearly did not understand the harm he was causing to the project, through his actions.
also worthwhile considering is adding the recommendation for developers to take the "Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers".
http://farmerandfarmer.org/medicine/printable.html
the nice thing about that oath is that it can just be added simply to make people aware of it... *without* actually requiring that they take it.
anyway i have started a page here in order to coordinate ideas and the actual proposal:
http://rhombus-tech.net/proposed_best_practices/
l.