Notices by Richard Fontana (richardfontana@mastodon.social)

@amszmidt I'm not sure if that was the earliest usage but it may have been. I tried to track this down at one time.

Actually I will engage in some idle speculation here. I think FOSS culturally has struggled with tendencies on the one hand towards embrace of irreverence/juvenilia (reflecting broader historical tendencies in hacker culture) and on the other an at-times exaggerated desire to seem grown-up and super-serious (sometimes with bad results).

Speaking of the GPL and joke names, you might say that the GPL (GPLv1 and [I assume] predecessors) was innovative not just for copyleft but also for having jokes in it at all (however puerile, leaving aside the issue of offensiveness). There were antecedents like "Copyleft: All rights reversed" (RMS didn't coin the word "copyleft") but that's not quite the same thing. Interestingly, however, no non-GNU/GPL-derived FOSS license has adopted the use of jokes. Not sure what to make of that.

Just noticed that the FSF (or perhaps Richard Stallman himself?) has replaced the long-criticized joke name "Ty Coon, President of Vice" in the GPLv2 "How to Apply" section with "Moe Ghoul, President of Vice". cc: @bkuhn

@mason it's "Ty Coon", not "Ty Cobb". As defined by Merriam-Webster, meaning 2 of "coon" is "offensive —used as an insulting and contemptuous term for a Black person" @bkuhn

@mason I don't think anyone ever accused RMS of intending any racist connotation, though I think it is fair to say that he stubbornly refused to later acknowledge that the joke name was offensive @bkuhn

@bkuhn It's the name for your time and place.

gnu.org appears to be down?

@bkuhn isn't that because ſ is only lowercase? @neal @jbqueru

@bkuhn Indeed, among other things small caps has a standard use in legal scholarship journals adhering to the #problematic Bluebook format (I forget what offhand but titles of books are one example) @neal @jbqueru

@cwebber Cf.: https://spdx.org/licenses/any-OSI.html

@mattl not sure if this counts but I owned grapejuice.plus for a while

@almalinux not sure if that's implying that RHEL has a "commercial license agreement" but that's not the case (except in the sense that Alma too can be said to be commercially licensed) 🤓

@benny it's not specific to Alma, I find it frustrating when people, including unfortunately some Red Hatters, speak of "RHEL licenses" when they mean RHEL subscriptions

Speaking for myself, I actually agreed to the controversial 19-word clause but submitted an addendum providing a clarification on what I think it ought to mean (preserving a right of OSI board directors to publicly dissent on matters of public interest) @hackygolucky @bkuhn

2. @hackygolucky is quoted saying @bkuhn & I "refused to sign the board agreement Code of Conduct"; however as previously noted the board agreement isn't itself denominated a "board agreement Code of Conduct". We each submitted modified versions of the 2-page agreement in which we agreed to all but one 19-word clause which was the subject of a reform platform plank. The board agreement refers to a separate OSI Code of Conduct which we each explicitly agreed to in those modified versions.

A couple of issues with @sjvn's article on the #OSI board elections:
1. "This board agreement has existed for five years in its current form, but it is the first time that candidates decided to run while publicly communicating they would not sign it". I never communicated that I wouldn't sign the board agreement (I don't think @bkuhn did either). As I have said elsewhere, at the outset of the vote I assumed I'd sign it if invited to join the board following publication of vote results. (cont.)

Also Thierry Carrez is quoted as saying "It's the first time that we had candidates running that would not sign the board agreement". First, again at the outset of voting I considered myself likely to sign the board agreement. Second, OSI doesn't know that because OSI never required mere *candidates* to sign the board agreement before AFAIK @hackygolucky @bkuhn

Also, @sjvn I think your article missed the most important occurrence here which is that the OSI conducted a vote but is refusing to publish the full results.

@FRYTG It was understood by candidates prior to the vote that any person invited to join the board (presumably after being declared the winner of their election) would have to sign the board member agreement. Right after the vote concluded, and before announcing any election results, the OSI unexpectedly requested that all candidates sign the board member agreement within 47 hours. (2/n)