Last week I had a few conversations with Bradley Kuhn about copyleft-next and the Harvey Birdman Rule [0]. I understand Bradley planned to make one or more HBR cures based on those conversations. I am here pre-empting him solely as to the HBR conversation, just because it's fairly simple for me to explain.
We were talking about HBR and I pointed out that the name Harvey Birdman Rule is kind of obsolete or increasingly obscure.
Some background: Harvey Birdman Rule is a reference to the cartoon series Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law [1] which ended in 2007. In the past (once on a Free as in Freedom episode, and I believe once on this mailing list) Bradley provided explanations of the choice of the name for the governance rule that originated in connection with the copyleft-next project. These explanations were, as I recall, ingeniously creative but had the character of ex post justifications. In terms of its naming, at least, HBR was meant to be a reference to and parody of the Chatham House Rule, which experienced a brief period of popularity in certain free software-related circles around 2009-2010 or so. I think the original choice of Harvey Birdman may have mostly had something to do with the fact that there was a memorable lawyer involved in the GPLv3 process named Jim Harvey [2], but if so the connection was really only as loose as this: that Jim Harvey was (way before the launch of copyleft-next) a representative member of the open source lawyer establishment -- he was co-chair of one of the four GPLv3 discussion committees -- and that coincidentally his surname matched the forename of the memorable cartoon character Harvey Birdman.
Anyway, whatever the situation was in ~2012, today Harvey Birdman is, probably, more obscure as a cultural reference. I am also not sure that the humor in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law has itself stood the test of time.
So Bradley and I discussed the desirability of renaming the Rule. The best approach is to fit a new expansion into the existing HBR acronym. The auditory similarity of the expansion to Chatham House Rule -- the original element of the joke -- ought to be retained; that is, the expansion should be of the form [word1] [word2] Rule.
The best Bradley could come up with was Hindering Backchannels Rule. I couldn't come up with anything better. I think this is better than Harvey Birdman Rule.
Bradley also suggested that HBR should be revised to eliminate the attempt to disincentivize top-posting of mailing list replies (see HBR 4). It's now clear that if only for reasons of generational cultural change, the battle against top-posting which I suppose began in the early days of the Eternal September is now completely lost. Recall that HBR had already been revised to soften the prohibition on top-posting. [3]
So anyway I support Bradley's suggestion that (a) Harvey Birdman Rule be renamed Hindering Backchannels Rule, and (b) HBR 4 be deleted.
Richard
[0] https://github.com/richardfontana/hbr/HBR.md [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Birdman,_Attorney_at_Law [2] Now at Alston & Bird. See https://www.alston.com/en/professionals/h/harvey-james-a [3] https://github.com/richardfontana/hbr/commit/1fa933b2953cc70d76a28e74d889f35...
To be honest I find more annoying HBR 3 than HBR 4.
At least HBR 4 is enforceable, HBR 3 is not. So I suggest to remove HBR 3 instead (or maybe remove both 3 and 4, if you prefer).
Indeed HBR 3 does not make the government of a project any more transparent. It just grant to leaders the control on the project's narrative.
Giacomo
On 14/04/2019, Richard Fontana fontana@sharpeleven.org wrote:
Last week I had a few conversations with Bradley Kuhn about copyleft-next and the Harvey Birdman Rule [0]. I understand Bradley planned to make one or more HBR cures based on those conversations. I am here pre-empting him solely as to the HBR conversation, just because it's fairly simple for me to explain.
We were talking about HBR and I pointed out that the name Harvey Birdman Rule is kind of obsolete or increasingly obscure.
Some background: Harvey Birdman Rule is a reference to the cartoon series Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law [1] which ended in 2007. In the past (once on a Free as in Freedom episode, and I believe once on this mailing list) Bradley provided explanations of the choice of the name for the governance rule that originated in connection with the copyleft-next project. These explanations were, as I recall, ingeniously creative but had the character of ex post justifications. In terms of its naming, at least, HBR was meant to be a reference to and parody of the Chatham House Rule, which experienced a brief period of popularity in certain free software-related circles around 2009-2010 or so. I think the original choice of Harvey Birdman may have mostly had something to do with the fact that there was a memorable lawyer involved in the GPLv3 process named Jim Harvey [2], but if so the connection was really only as loose as this: that Jim Harvey was (way before the launch of copyleft-next) a representative member of the open source lawyer establishment -- he was co-chair of one of the four GPLv3 discussion committees -- and that coincidentally his surname matched the forename of the memorable cartoon character Harvey Birdman.
Anyway, whatever the situation was in ~2012, today Harvey Birdman is, probably, more obscure as a cultural reference. I am also not sure that the humor in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law has itself stood the test of time.
So Bradley and I discussed the desirability of renaming the Rule. The best approach is to fit a new expansion into the existing HBR acronym. The auditory similarity of the expansion to Chatham House Rule -- the original element of the joke -- ought to be retained; that is, the expansion should be of the form [word1] [word2] Rule.
The best Bradley could come up with was Hindering Backchannels Rule. I couldn't come up with anything better. I think this is better than Harvey Birdman Rule.
Bradley also suggested that HBR should be revised to eliminate the attempt to disincentivize top-posting of mailing list replies (see HBR 4). It's now clear that if only for reasons of generational cultural change, the battle against top-posting which I suppose began in the early days of the Eternal September is now completely lost. Recall that HBR had already been revised to soften the prohibition on top-posting. [3]
So anyway I support Bradley's suggestion that (a) Harvey Birdman Rule be renamed Hindering Backchannels Rule, and (b) HBR 4 be deleted.
Richard
[0] https://github.com/richardfontana/hbr/HBR.md [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Birdman,_Attorney_at_Law [2] Now at Alston & Bird. See https://www.alston.com/en/professionals/h/harvey-james-a [3] https://github.com/richardfontana/hbr/commit/1fa933b2953cc70d76a28e74d889f35... _______________________________________________ copyleft-next mailing list -- copyleft-next@lists.fedorahosted.org To unsubscribe send an email to copyleft-next-leave@lists.fedorahosted.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedorahosted.org/archives/list/copyleft-next@lists.fedorahoste...
I like Hindering Backchannels Rule. Thank you for ceasing to pay homage to a non-free culture production. I suggest only keeping rules 2 and 3. The others are persnickety and do not HB.
On the whether 3 is "enforceable": the only invocations of HBR I've ever seen have been Fontana and (mostly) Kuhn complying voluntarily. Perhaps change Rule to Norm.
As to whether 3 grants leaders control of a project's narrative, perhaps it does, but if you want to view ironically, I'd say HB "cures" give participants the opportunity to tout their self-importance and insider status. Selecting for this sort of insider seems preferable to selecting for backroom dealing, but perhaps that is an old fashioned (pre-2016?) evaluation.
I was curious whether GPLv3 makes the cut in Harvey's firm bio. It does, under "credentials" rather than "experience".
Mike
On April 15, 2019 12:26:13 AM UTC, Mike Linksvayer ml@gondwanaland.com wrote:
On the whether 3 is "enforceable": the only invocations of HBR I've ever seen have been Fontana and (mostly) Kuhn complying voluntarily. [...]
As to whether 3 grants leaders control of a project's narrative, perhaps it does, but if you want to view ironically, I'd say HB "cures" give participants the opportunity to tout their self-importance and insider status. Selecting for this sort of insider seems preferable to selecting for backroom dealing, but perhaps that is an old fashioned (pre-2016?) evaluation.
You are assuming that the HBR prevents backroom dealing.
Obviously this would be nice and all but unfortunately it's just an illusion: since there is literally no way of knowing if a backroom dealing of sort occurred, there is no incemtive to avoid them. Also "cures" might be partial!
I think that documenting the reasoning behind a decision can be useful in the long term, and an open government for copyleft-next is nice if that's what Fomtana want.
But as I said before I prefer to discuss and debate artifacts (be them softwares or licenses) not good looking intentions.
This is how Science and Philosophy evolved for centuries after all!
Open committees can be manipulated. Good artifacts are much harder to beat.
So I prefer a competition of licenses (and of softwares) instead of a popularity contest on how THE ONE LICENSE should be written.
Giacomo.
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