Re: Questions around Justice and Our Current CoC procedures
Sam Hartman wrote:
> I think phrasing this in terms of justice and rights for keeping
governments accountable is likely to get a knee-jerk reaction from a
number of people who do not want to think of things that.
> It's fairly clear to a number of us that maintaining standards of a
private community is a very different problem than maintaining justice
for people who have the power to deny life and liberty.
I believe that this is a key point to this discussion. We need to
ponder carefully on which point of the scale Debian should place
itself.
On one hand, Debian isn't a government and shouldn't be subject to the
same standards of accountability and due process as someone who has
the power to deny life and liberty.
On the other hand, Debian isn't either a private house where the owner
has the right to decide who gets in and who doesn't without
explanations or with "I just don't like you" as an acceptable
explanation.
Debian is a community that strives to be open, fair and inclusive.
That means that we have made a commitment to welcome everybody and not
exclude anyone without good reasons. That means that the "we're a
private group so we choose whom we want in" argument simply does not
belong here.
So, while I'd agree that talking about the Magna Charta is probably
out of place here, I definitely believe that members of the Debian
community are entitled to a fair hearing before being subject to any
punitive actions. How that hearing should be conducted, how formal it
should be, etc., may be worked out in different ways.
Gerardo
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