Re: Debian contributor Register of Interests
"Dr. Bas Wijnen" <wijnen@debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, May 09, 2017 at 11:51:23PM +0000, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>> I think it's a horrible idea. One of the major draws of Debian is that
>> we are all here for our own reasons. I don't judge your motivations
>> and you don't judge nine.
> It's voluntary, so you decide what you want to share. If you don't want to
> share anything, that's fine.
How is this meaningful if it's strictly voluntary and no conclusions
should ever be drawn from it?
I'm personally reasonably comfortable with declaring conflicts, but then
mine are pretty simple and pose no complex ethical concerns. I understand
Scott's concern: I see no way in which this would stay strictly voluntary
and meaningless if it were widely used. One can say anything one likes on
the page about not drawing conclusions from the data, but if no one is
supposed to draw any conclusions, why are we collecting the data?
In practice, if lots of people fill this out, people *will* draw
conclusions about people who are missing, will exert social pressure for
people to fill this out in various situations, and will draw conclusions
from the data that's disclosed. This is just human nature, and is only
logical.
If we don't want that to happen, we shouldn't collect the data in the
first place.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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