Recently, the Association posted a discussion here in groups (https://groups.drupal.org/node/398548) which resulted in the Association registering Drupal.org to participate in TheDayWeFightBack (https://drupal.org/node/2188053). As we have discussed, there were technical issues we could have addressed differently (see the discussion: https://groups.drupal.org/node/407283), but we also heard from many community members who felt that Drupal.org should never be involved in any kind of political campaign at all. An in this case, I'll use "political" with a small "p" to indicate the very broadest definition - from political candidate campaigns to "political" stances.
In fact, as an example of politics with a small "p," we were recently asked to participate in the Open Innovation Network (http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/) by signing on as a supporter (though the patent work obviously does not directly affect us).
I promised to address this question specifically in a follow up post - so here it is! We want to hear from you, but we ask that you please help make the conversation as constructive as possible. These discussions get heated quickly, so here are some ground rules:
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Comments
Planet Drupal
Can someone promote Holly's post to the front page of Drupal Groups? That's probably the easiest way to get this discussion highlighted on Planet Drupal.
Done
Should be promoted to front page now.
Drupal programmer - http://poplarware.com
Drupal author - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034612.do
Drupal contributor - https://www.drupal.org/u/jhodgdon
Thanks, jhodgdon!
Thanks, jhodgdon!
My sense is that it's simply
My sense is that it's simply not a good use of the DA's time and resources for the DA to get involved with external political issues.
Individually and collectively, members of the Drupal community have a strong voice and have risen to many occasions many times. We will always do this, with or without the Drupal Association getting involved.
That's not to say that board and staff members of the DA wouldn't or shouldn't say something on their own blog to lead or get a conversation started, but I'm concerned that if the Drupal Association becomes a politically-inclined organization that the DA will frequently be requested — if not expected — to throw its weight behind one political movement or another.
This isn't what I want my Drupal Association dues to go to. On another level, there's no possibility I would run for a position with the DA if it goes down this path of becoming politically charged.
The mission statement does say the DA will support Drupal, the software and its community by "organizing and promoting worldwide events" but to me this is pretty ambiguous. Who gets to decide which events are organized or promoted? Are these events specifically Drupal-related events like Global Training Days or cockamamie events like TheDayWeFightBack.org?
Speaking as a individual and organization member of the Drupal Association, and given recent events with how the support for TheDayWeFightBack.org was railroaded through, I think this part of the mission statement should be clarified immediately.
Sorry you felt railroaded
Sorry you felt railroaded Christefano - that was not at all the intent. No one here had intentions of sneaking this through the community.
I think that in general the
I think that in general the DA should not get involved in political issues.
However I think there are exceptions and when we see exceptions we'll know them in part by the way that a post asking whether or not we should do it gets dozens of positive comments and upvotes over the course of the weeks it is open for feedback.
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Is this about front page
Is this about front page posts or the banners?
While I didn't personally think much of the SOPA/NSA banners (too US-centric, too focused on lobbying etc., banners themselves being a bit rubbish), I don't think promoting those campaigns is any more political than promoting sites like whitehouse.gov or the Prince of Wales' either.
Drupal is used for a lot of sites, so a specific website using it isn't necessarily any more relevant to the project than SOPA or NSA surveillance.
If you think those the White House and the British monarchy are innocuous and 'not really political', then I'm sure you can think of some political entities who you'd personally not want to read about on Drupal.org just because they decided to use it for their website.
That makes this about two different things - i.e. a news post on the front page (which is not necessarily written by or endorsed by the DA anyway), vs. the banners which require explicit technical intervention.
I'd have to assume this is
I'd have to assume this is about banners, since (as you say) front-page posts about any topic are not going to get that much attention.
In the discussion about the most recent campaign, Larry (Crell) agued that there was a clear connection between the principles of free software and the campaign.
I'd also point to https://association.drupal.org/about points 2 and 4 of the mission statement of the DA seem related. I.e. can I participate in the Drupal community and contribute without being blocked by censorship or fearful of being monitored?
Re: http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ and patents - I have suggested for a while that we should try to have/create a robust collection of prior art to or otherwise bolster the community's legal defenses for when someone tries to attack Drupal or Drupal users with software patents. It hasn't happened yet, but I think this is 100% within the mission of the DA in terms of item 3 of the mission statement.
So, in practical terms I think this puts me in alignment with Greg - we'll know it when we see a campaign that aligns with the community values and DA mission to the extent that the DA should work to promote it. I'd expect it would be rare (and maybe time to reexamine if we ever considered have a banner more than once a year or so).
Definitely thinking banners...
Just to clarify. Most of the examples that have cropped up in the last few years have been a discussion about whether or not not include a banner on D.O - so let's use that as the baseline.
So I think it's fine to have
So I think it's fine to have a conversation restricted to banners, however a lot of the discussion on the other issue was about any political content on drupal.org or association.drupal.org. I don't think there should be a blanket rule against either, but I'd be keen to ensure that the people who do think that know that any decision reached as a result of this discussion knows it's just about banners.
If the tool that is going to
If the tool that is going to be used to show that the Drupal community "supports" a political issue is a banner ad then I would be against.
The process seems extremely ambiguous in its present state. Granted, one of the take-aways last time was creating more awareness (i.e. Planet Drupal), but history shows that there is generally a very small sampling of passionate enthusiasts who chime in when asked. This can then get easily misconstrued as "how the entire Drupal community feels" or "most in the Drupal community share this sentiment." The reality is even an issue like NSA surveillance only generated a few dozen responses yet this was seemingly viewed as enough validation by the DA to move forward with a banner ad.
To Christefano's point, it just feels like there are a whole lot of other issues that the DA could be channeling its focus around v. politically charged debates.
Cheers,
Dave
Mediacurrent
Hardly unique
That's not unique to "political" involvement by the DA. There isn't a single Drupal.org issue that has the participation of more than 0.000000001% of "the community", and most have less than 10 people in them. That's not at all unusual. A community even a tenth our size isn't going to have broad participation in every issue. As I noted in the previous discussion, we get less than 1% voter turnout in the DA elections each year. In the online RPG club that I have been in since the dawn of time (the one that got me into Drupal) we have only about 150 members and the exact same "well only 5 people commented, so does that mean the other 145 approve or not?" debate at least once every 3 months. :-) It's simply the nature of the beast, and is not going to change. Ever.
The important part is ensuring that those who would feel strongly enough one way or another know that the discussion is happening and that they have sufficient opportunity to participate if they desire to do so. That's a separate issue which has its own thread, linked above. But if we take "didn't comment" to mean "do not want!", then nothing will ever get done by the DA or the project ever again.
If I join the Sierra Club
If I join the Sierra Club (random example), I do so under the pretense that I know what the organization's mission is and what they stand for. The same holds true for those that become involved in the Drupal community. The Sierra Club's leadership and Board does not need to constantly poll members and start forums to validate what political causes it should be supporting. They are entrusted to carry out a mission, and if they do not they get fired, voted out, or lose members who feel like their views no longer align with that of the organization.
I am not willing to accept the notion that, well the same 20 people comment on every issue and that's "just the ways its always been and how its going to be."
Again, what Holly is trying to do is commendable (listen to feedback, be more communicative, transparent, etc.), but this is a huge slippery slope. It begs questions like:
--How does the DA determine which causes to support; what is the criteria?
--What constitutes support (is it a majority, is it just a "feel" thing based on comments, etc.)?
To confirm, I am not saying the DA should not get behind political causes. I want to empower the leadership team to determine what movements the Drupal community supports. Rather my point is that there is little value in starting a forum thread since it tends to be the same small sub-set of people who actually respond.
Whether/How to "support" or "participate" (banners vs. ???)
I agree with the sentiment expressed by others (above and on the previous discussion) that there are some "political" issues and/or organizations out there that we ("we" being the Drupal project, Drupal Association, Drupal community? not sure which?) should support or participate in, because they clearly align with our core mission as a project or the core mission of the association. The previous banner campaign was (IMO) one good example; the Free Software Foundation (whose GPL we've adopted as our software license) is probably another good example. And I'm sure we can all come up with bad examples.
But:
a) As implied by pwolanin's comment above, we need to make sure that we're not just taking particular political stands because many people in the community support them, but are instead examining each association/issue in terms of how it aligns with our core mission. One of our values (I think?) is that we have a world-wide, diverse community, and it would be horrible to alienate part of that community by taking on controversial issues that are not central to our mission. On the other hand, supporting groups whose mission is central to our values/mission seems like something we ought to do.
b) I might not put it exactly that way, but I agree with the general sentiment of catch above that banners are "a bit rubbish". Can we figure out a better way to express our support for issues and organizations, which would intrude less on our day-to-day use of drupal.org (the tools that we use to fulfil our core mission, as a community, of building software)?
Ideas on (b):
- Make a "We support" page, where we link to groups/campaigns like the FSF that the community has agreed are central to our mission.
- Making this page prominently linked from drupal.org and association.d.o
- Front-page posts on d.o when particular issues/campaigns come up
- A g.d.o group for discussing these types of things
- ???
Drupal programmer - http://poplarware.com
Drupal author - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034612.do
Drupal contributor - https://www.drupal.org/u/jhodgdon
Focus on Drupal
The fact that we're distracted from the common interest we share - Drupal - speaks volumes to me.
Rick Nashleanas
www.monarchdigital.com
We need to keep things separate
Although I'm personally in favour of campaigns like the TheDayWeFightBack.org, the more I think about this issue seriously, the more I realize Drupal.org isn't the right place for it.
Drupal is software and Drupal.org is about that software. Drupal was not created out of political activism, is not a political activist organization, and will never be a political activist organization, or have a political agenda.
We need to keep things separate. If people in the Drupal community, like me, who want to rally our fellow Drupalers to be aware of important issues outside of the Drupal software itself, but may harm the Drupal community, we need to create a separate space dedicated to that agenda.
It's not right and not fair to use Drupal.org to do our political bidding.
The Drupal software community does not need to spend its time and energy trying to determine which political problems to fight against, and which ones not to - even if we all agree that certain issues are truly noble. That's an important point to understand. We need to keep things separate. Being an activist for certain issues is all well and good, but Drupal.org is not the right place for it at all, and never will be.
This is controversial and hard to find consensus because of one main reason - Drupal.org was not created with the intention to engage in political activism.
We are all here for the Drupal software. As Rick Nashleanas said, this is our real common interest.
I propose that we create a sister, not-for-profit organization that becomes the political arm for all those in the Drupal community, like me, who wish to participate in political issues outside of the Drupal software itself. It's sole purpose will be abundantly clear in its charter - to raise awareness and rally for any political issues that may harm the Drupal community.
I also propose that, when obtaining/renewing your D.A. membership, people be given the option to choose how much of their membership fee be used for this sister, not-for-profit organization. The scale should range from 0% to X%, and not have a default value.
Alternatively, people could simply be given a link to the sister organization's website where they can obtain a separate membership to the sister organization, and the entire membership fee for the sister organization will be used for the sister organization alone.
Once this clear separation is in place, we should create a policy on Drupal.org that these political discussions not occur on Drupal.org, but instead be moved to the sister organization's website. Banners like the TheDayWeFightBack could be displayed on the sister organization's website, but never Drupal.org.
To help raise awareness of the sister organization, Drupal.org members should be given the option to subscribe to the sister organization's newsletter under the "My newsletters" profile tab (https://drupal.org/user/your-drupal-id/edit/newsletter).
Narrow focus
Not surprisingly, I agree with Peter and Jen above.
By and large, I agree that Drupal shouldn't become a political project and the DA shouldn't become a political organization. Drupal is used by an incredibly eclectic set of users: The Whitehouse, the Mitt Romney campaign, Occupy Wall St., and neo-Nazi organzations, just to name a few in the political realm. The principles and ethics of Free Software, and the license of the GPL, explicitly say that's OK. We should focus on building tools and that's that.
However, the DA's mission statement explicitly says that it "supports the Drupal software project, the community, and its growth", and does so by
That means more than just hiring lawyers and suing/getting sued. (Ideally it never involves that!) When legal/political issues come up that would directly harm Drupal or the community, it is entirely "in scope" for the DA, and by extension Drupal.org, to take a position on it. That's a very narrow field, I entirely agree, but it does exist.
If there was a movement to ban the use of open source software in government (for whatever reason), for example, that would be very directly and actively harmful to Drupal and the Drupal community as well as dozens or hundreds of other projects. Should we do nothing? Should Drupal.org do nothing? I'd say it's entirely reasonable to participate in the inevitable broad-based objection to such a plan. To not do so would be to not do exactly what the mission statement says the DA should do.
I am certainly sympathetic to the "Drupal.org was not created with the intention to engage in political activism" position. It is true, it wasn't. But neither were Tumblr, Mozilla, Automattic, DuckDuckGo, or O'Reilly, to name just a few of the other participants in TheDayWeFightBack. Neither was Wikipedia, which was the largest partipant in the SOPA protests a while back.
For those issues that directly relate to the DA's mission statement and the defense of Free Software, and where there's a broad action that we can participate in (rather than going it alone), I can only come back to this statement:
— Edmund Burke
For me, there's a difference
For me, there's a difference between the question, "Should the D.A. participate in political issues" vs. "Should Drupal.org participate in political issues."
The Drupal.org website is, and should always remain, about the Drupal software itself. If the D.A. - or even better, a sister organization as I proposed earlier - wants to get involved with political activism, it can and should do so on another website.
I also agree with the "we must do something" position. I completely agree we should not stand idle, but using the Drupal.org website is not the right way to go. That's why I propose creating a separate sister organization with separate funding so that people who came for the software are not forced to deal with political issues that are not directly related to the software itself.
A minor point: Automattic, DuckDuckGo, O'Reilly, and Tumblr are companies. They have a different decision making / command structure, such that, if the CEO, or someone with enough authority decides to participate in political issues such as TheDayWeFightBack, they can make and enforce that decision alone, or by consulting the opinion of a small number of senior staff members. Hence, we're more comparable to Mozilla and Wikipedia. That said, I have no idea what the decision making process actually looks like for Mozilla and Wikipedia. I'm assuming its somewhat similar to ours, but that could be completely wrong.
I also thought about this and struggled with it. All I can really say is that, if I was involved in those communities (Mozilla, Wikipedia, etc) as I am with the Drupal community, my position would be the same. Also, it's ok to take a different approach than our peers. To me it shows that we think for ourselves - we are not followers - and this should be commended.
Regarding the notion that not using the Drupal.org website to participate in political issues amounts to not doing anything:
Again I propose that we definitely do something - just not on Drupal.org.
The Drupal.org website is, and should always remain, about the software itself.
Great discussion - and thanks
Great discussion - and thanks so much for the perspective. To help me clarify a little bit, I think I am hearing you say that a banner or announcement on Drupal.org is a distraction and you do not want to see that happen in the future. However, if there were an issue, as Larry points out, you would not have a problem with the Association encouraging individual actors through some other mechanism?
Banner vs. post
My view is that a banner is a distraction.
However, I don't think an announcement that is posted to the front page of d.o and therefore goes out in Planet and other RSS feeds is a distraction -- there's lots of other stuff in there that is way more distracting than bringing my attention to an important issue that affects the Drupal community. I think a short d.o front page post is appropriate way to bring my attention to things like this, as long as they are narrowly deemed to be important to our mission.
And in this case, if there was a spot on assoc.d.o where we listed such issues and organizations that we "support", the front page post could be a short sentence saying "New org/issue added to this page" with a link to the page where you could find more info. Minimal distraction to those not interested. :)
Just a thought...
Drupal programmer - http://poplarware.com
Drupal author - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034612.do
Drupal contributor - https://www.drupal.org/u/jhodgdon
Thanks Holly. A political
Thanks Holly. A political message of any form (banner, post, etc) that is not directly related to the Drupal software itself is completely inappropriate for the Drupal.org website.
I suppose posting to the News section could be seen as a compromise, but if the post is about politics that is not directly related to the Drupal software itself, that would be inappropriate for the Drupal.org website.
The Planet Drupal (https://drupal.org/planet) is a better compromise. It's a more fair place to post about politics that is not directly related to the Drupal software itself, because everyone has equal access to that page. For example, if someone within the Drupal community had an alternative view on TheDayWeFightBack, they could simply publish their blog post to Planet Drupal.
I think most, if not all, of us support political activism, but we need to keep things separate. Drupal.org is, and should remain, about the Drupal software itself.
Less impact
The value of participating in DWFB, the SOPA protests, or whatever the next event is comes because Drupal.org is a major site. We get a crapton of traffic, so advocacy messaging on Drupal.org reaches a big audience.
No DrupalAdvocacy.org website (or similar) is going to attract a hundredth of the traffic that Drupal.org does; that makes it not a hundredth as valuable or strong a statement as putting such messages on Drupal.org. Honestly, at that point it's not even worth bothering.
I completely agree that such in-your-face advocacy should be very rare. It loses its value otherwise, and diminishes the value of Drupal.org. But I am not comfortable saying never-ever, in part because it pretends that we don't have political opinions when we very clearly already do. (See my comment below in reply to catch.)
I 100% agree that publishing
I 100% agree that publishing a political activist message, eg. TDWFB banner, would draw more attention if it were on Drupal.org, than, say, a new domain. No question about it.
But that still doesn't make it right.
It's not right and not fair to use Drupal.org to do our political bidding.
We have to take the challenge to build another space for political activism not directly related to the Drupal software itself (advocacy.drupal.org, DrupalAdvocacy.org, etc). If the D.A. needs volunteers, I'm up for it.
Drupal is a political act
Drupal and its release under the GPL is a political act. While it shouldn't be a primary task of the sites, I feel that some political actions like the SOPA and TDWFB ones should be supported by drupal.org and the suggestion of putting all activists into a ghetto organisation borders on offensive.
I wasn't going to write this because I feel others have already expressed it better, but someone on another page suggested that the burden of comments in this thread demonstrated a consensus against political campaigns. So I stand up and encourage other activists to do the same.
Protecting the GPL source
And how did participation in the TDWFB slacktivisim campaign promote those things? Drupal can thrive just fine on a spied-upon internet (not that I want that). If it were some law that had some direct effect on Drupal or OSS somehow, I'd get it, but just as a whole, Drupal should not be political, and I find it insane that we even need to have a discussion on that matter.
The Boise Drupal Guy!
I think there is a difference
I think there is a difference between political issues, and global internet issues. While The Day We Fight Back may be "political" in context, it is largely a global internet concern, in which Drupal should fight for.
It's really hard to say, and I don't think you'll ever find it go one way or another. But things that greatly affect Drupal and the Drupal Organization (things which affect the internet), should be brought to the attention of Drupal users.
Free as in Freedom
When communities in which we thrive choose to politicize issues, those communities will potentially face divisions and differences they wouldn't otherwise. Communities like Drupal.org exist because of a common sphere that is Drupal software -- but our involvement in this particular sphere does not mean that we will all have the same haircuts, own the same cars or computers, or feel the same way about political and economic issues in the world at large.
This lack of politicization makes Drupal a richer, more vibrant place where we will meet, work with, and interact with people of diverse cultures and backgrounds, and that Drupal software will empower voices across the political spectrum, from http://www.newrepublic.com/ to http://www.weeklystandard.com/ to http://www.libertarianism.org/.
Though some political causes may seem well-suited for Drupal.org to support, others may not be as clear cut (e.g. net neutrality), and establishing what seems an innocuous precedent today is potentially less so in the future. Both past events and recent events have shown our community has enough trouble establishing focus, cohesiveness, and agreement within the sphere we already share and love. #CatHerd
The annotated Open Source Definition states:
In this spirit of maximizing benefit and contribution, it follows that the practices of the community shouldn't implicitly create divisions via political ideas, no matter how well-suited toward the community those political ideas may appear to some. Which brings us back to the Mission Statement of the Drupal Association:
Growth of an organic, voluntary community requires inclusiveness, openness, and freedom. And by growing this community we'll build the tools to empower all voices.
In this spirit of maximizing
That only works if political ideas don't themselves lead to "Discrimination Against Persons or Groups". If someone's behavior is discriminatory, then the fact that's based on political ideas does not excuse that behaviour. If you don't make that distinction then you end up in a situation where that person has a 'right' to discriminate against others due to their own beliefs.
This is different from the project adopting a particular position, but you can't remove (small p) political/economic issues from human interaction, it's always there even if suppressed.
While it doesn't come up that often, politics affects the actual software as well, not just Drupal.org. Particularly around privacy/security/accessibility/localisation where you are dealing both with social/political issues and various national legislation. Whether to use NIST standards for hashing, which countries should be in the default country list, which accessibility framework(s) to be compliant with and by how much etc.
Similarly in order to have an inclusive project, it follows that for that to mean anything, the project needs to be aware of and take action in regard to external pressures which reduce the ability for different groups to participate.
So the idea that Drupal has nothing to do with politics isn't a real starting point - technology is not neutral, it is both defined by, and defines myriad socio-political interactions.
@catch Sure, I agree with all
@catch Sure, I agree with all your points here. With regard to discriminatory behavior, this would violate the DCOC, itself a set of core values we share necessary for our community to thrive.
In the passage you quoted, by "political ideas," I mean those ideas or causes outside of the Drupal sphere. Arguably, support of TDWFB doesn't serve development of Drupal software ipso facto, despite arguable correlation. I didn't content "Drupal has nothing to do with politics" insofar as, yes, political discourse will certainly enter our daily and long-term interactions necessary to build Drupal and Drupal.org; this is different than banner ads, etc.
Prior art
It should be noted that Drupal.org has taken political positions before, albeit not as vocally or in-your-face as banner networks.
Recall the issue that changed the "Gender" field from Male/Female to Male/Female/Trans/Other. That is taking a very strong political stance, and support for that was not universal. Legal attitudes toward that question vary widely around the world, from recognizing a 3rd gender legally to outlawing non-hetero M/F behavior and everything in between. Whether you agree or disagree with the position Drupal.org / the community took on that issue, it was absolutely a political stance, and going either direction would have angered people who were engaged in that thread.
Recall that Drupal's front page lists "230 countries", which is more than the internationally recognized number of countries. As that link states, the Drupal.org webmasters (with not even a tenth as much discussion as we are having now) decided that we should list every country possible, even those whose existence as countries is up for debate. For instance, we list both Israel and Palestine as countries, despite the former being not recognized by large swaths of the Middle East and the latter not being recognized by most of the rest of the world. There's no way to not interpret that as a political stance; again, whether you agree with the decision or not it's a political stance.
So the question isn't "should Drupal.org take political stances"; we already do, and it's impossible for us not to. The question is on what guidelines should we determine what stances to take, and how vocally.
@Crell Regarding your last
@Crell Regarding your last paragraph:
From how I understand the context of Holly's original text and the examples she mentions frames "political issues" as those that are external to the sphere of Drupal.org, not simply any political stance however necessary for the Drupal.org community to function at all.
Both of your examples are within the sphere of Drupal.org and are aligned with the Mission Statement of the DA and what I cited in the OSD; they maximize participation and inclusion of building OSS and an OSS community. Having 230 countries vs 10 countries maximizes potential participation in the community (and the field is optional). Having 4 genders vs 1 gender maximizes potential participation in the community (and the field is optional). These examples are explicitly within the sphere of Drupal.org, and provide individuals in the community better tools to participate whereas Drupal.org's support of TDWFB (being simply criticism of a US government agency) is not explicitly within the sphere of the Drupal.org community nor does it follow that it provides any measurable improvement to the Drupal.org community per se.
So, I think indeed the question of "Should Drupal.org participate in political issues external to the sphere of Drupal.org" is how I read Holly's original text and examples, and this is what drives my response. (Holly, please clarify if I am mistaken).
Certainly there will be some general political discourse necessary for a community to operate. Whether Drupal.org has 230 countries or 4 genders are decisions that apply to the function of Drupal.org itself (for statistics and identification purposes I surmise?) and while the outcomes of these decisions may not please everyone in the community, the decisions made are toward inclusion and openness, in accordance with the DCOC, and presumably necessary to allow Drupal.org to function as an open, online community. In a sense, these are decisions the community arguably had to make, rather than those they chose to make.
My original point is simply with increased politicization comes increased potential to divide a community, and with less politicization comes increased potential for participation. Tradeoffs will exist, in varying degrees of necessity to the Drupal.org community per se, but I contend that voluntary participation in external political issues/campaigns/petitions/gov't initiatives are outside the Drupal.org community sphere and instead exist in the sphere of one's own personal values and actions or the values and actions of a private company.
I think that's a good
I think that's a good distinction. Really the original post comes down to whether the DA/Drupal.org gets involved in campaigns or not, as opposed to political issues as such. But it's an important distinction - since 'not getting involved in political issues' is often used as an excuse to allow existing political imbalances to go unchallenged.
@c4rl: Your last paragraph is
@c4rl: Your last paragraph is spot on.
Let the focus of Drupal.org be Drupal. For all other outside concerns, I am sure there are appropriate activist groups to participate in.
expectations
Other comments of mentioned dividing communities and having an understanding of the organization the are members of support. I think as long as expectations are clear and that here are no surprises DA can support outside initiatives that are consistent with DA's mission.
I think we are fooling ourselves to say Drupal is not political. Drupal (and other similarly significant Open Source products and community) has far to much impact and influence in public affairs of our respective countries. For example, Drupal the software, relies on U.S. Copyright code (there are many that have disagreements with the GPL and even U.S. Copyright laws. D.O. only allows GPL licensed code.
Another misconception is that there is neutral ground in "not getting involved". I would contend that standing in the wayside on issues of copyright and Internet freedoms would not be helping Drupal flourish.
DrupalCon, Inc has 501(c)3 tax exemption form the U.S. IRS - another political issue. So whatever political (lower case p) activity DrupalCon, Inc is involved with would presumably need to be educational?
The only way for Drupal Association to be apolitical (lower case p) would to be insignificant.
Politics Are Broken and Create Divide - STAY AWAY!
@holly,
When I saw the banner I wasn't too happy about it as I have different opinions. So then I felt a little conflicted. Politics IMHO are broken and create an unnecessary divide among the public.
As many people have already stated, why waste the DA's time with this and more importantly lets not create another Backdrop / Drupal Divide by starting with Politics :)
I think you already have your answers :)
Kaleem S. Clarkson
www.kaleemclarkson.com
I don't think you are making the point you are trying to make.
The contributors to backdrop are active in the development of d8.
Further more backdrop is essentially the next logical step after the spark profile.
There is no backdrop divide, and the majority of complaints that I have seen have been about ui issues.
The spying has caused one major resource for the open source community with regards to patent and trademark law to stop adding content. (Groklaw)
So, my take is, in the future, test the code before taking it live, and think mobile first.
Which is not what you intended to convince me of. But, is a reasonable conclusion.
Some good points have been
Some good points have been made here.
I totally get the necessity of certain "political stances" on d.o. such as choices of gender, or measures to uphold the DCOC.
I think @c4rl put it well in differentiating out external campaigns / petitions, etc. My personal reaction on seeing the day we fight back banner was that it was totally inappropriate for Drupal.org to be taking a political stance in this way.
Don't get me wrong, there are many worthy campaigns and stances to take, but unless it's a direct matter for Drupal or the Drupal community, Drupal.org doesn't feel to me to be the place for it. However, a statement from the D.A. in the association news feed to inform people of issues which could be of general interest to the community (such as TDWFB or net neutrality) might be appropriate.
My View
It's good to fight for good cause in society.But,politics is quite different profession & I don't think Drupal can participate in all political issues as some might be very tough that only experts can solve.Drupal is an important part of open source community & not aware of how politics works.Might I am wrong,but its just my view as an developer.
Regards,
Trader
PHP Decoder
Political Issues Should Not Be Featured
I'd like to advocate for never allowing a political issue to "take over" or become dominant on the D.org home page. Communication about important issues that may have an impact on the community at large or specifically on Drupal would be welcome in the Drupal Planet or a News section.
Regardless of how important the board feels it is, regardless of how close we believe we are to 100% agreement about such an issue; it is not the primary mission of the organization.
The time and energy spent determining IF an issue is appropriate and HOW to communicate it; as well as the technical resources to implement it, actually have a net negative impact on the organization's primary goal.
Community projects sometimes require standing up for communities
While I don't think the DA and d.o should get involved in electoral politics, there are situations which represent a fundamental threat to open-source communities.
I agree, as Greg and others have said, that this would be a rare -- but nonzero -- occurrence.
It seems to me that being able to separate things into "political" and "not political" in an open-source community takes some amount of privilege in knowing that one's own community is not being spied upon. This wasn't a "political" issue until certain governments (including my own) decided to start violating some basic human rights. As Tom Davidson said upthread, not getting involved would also be taking a stance.
If the DA is involved in "protecting the Drupal project and community through legal work and advocacy" -- and I think that's a critical part of the mission -- then we have to be willing to stand up when large portions of our community are under existential threat.
Institutionalized surveillance and censorship mean that only parts of our community can participate, as Peter pointed out. To me that's something worth fighting against, and entirely consistent with the DA's mission. And indeed, as the Drupal community has thrived based in large part on its international and diverse history, as Jen and Crell noted, I think it's consistent with the nature of our project at a pretty fundamental level.
So when a "political issue" is one that threatens the nature of open-source development, as surveillance and censorship do, I think it's appropriate that the DA and d.o take direction from our communities, follow the lead of other open-source projects like Wikipedia, and participate in significant ways.
Establishing precedent: At what cost?
Yes. Supporting external political campaigns/issues will incur costs and also overhead. By establishing a precedent of supporting external political campaigns/issues, the cost of these actions to the Drupal.org commuity is non-zero regardless of the merit of the campaign/issue, or whether the campaign/issue is actually implemented.
By establishing a precedent that gives power to Drupal.org to support external political campaigns/issues, it follows that external groups will seek that power to support their campaigns/issues. Imagine for example there comes along some group called "Every Child A Coder" (ECAC) that supports teaching children how to write software, and they approach the DA to promote some banner ad; but also suppose that ECAC also accepts donations from a pro-life non-profit (which contends "with more births there would be more coders" or whatever).
The mission of ECAC may very well be posed to counter factors that "threaten the nature of open-source development" per se, and could echo the DA's mission very closely, and ECAC may get more young people involved in the Drupal.org community; but, without doubt, there are individuals in the existing Drupal.org community who would oppose support of the ECAC for alignments in other spheres (e.g. the anti-abortion movement), and this debate would not only divide parts of the Drupal.org community on political grounds not explicitly related to Drupal, but this debate also entails a non-zero effort regardless of the outcome (i.e. whether Drupal.org shows the banner ad or not).
And suppose debates like these happen 10x per year with various groups and so the cost of attending Drupalcon rises 10% because the DA has to hire a publicist or something, or costs are shifted from supporting existing Drupal.org infrastructure or events. So is this indeed best for the Drupal.org community? I say no. Merit as metric alone presupposes non-zero costs of involvement.
We need to be able to get involved in political issues
I do really like @Crell's leadership in this area. I like @rootwork's perspective here too.
There are lots of political discussions out there that come up in more or less overt ways. Certainly the banner on the front page was pretty overt.
However, when there are decisions that affect the viability of our industry, then I do think we need to take a stance.
This isn't going to happen too often I hope. There are lots of ways that it could occur too, including posts to the News block on the home page that are much less noticeable than what we did earlier this year.
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
I say no. We as individuals
I say no. We as individuals should be political and make statements, not the DA for the reasons that c4rl states. Thank you for asking Holly.
Bob Kepford
TheWeeklyDrop.com
BobKepford.com
I have to say - I have really
I have to say - I have really appreciated this conversation. It is definitely hard to argue with the great points that everyone is making, no matter the side they take. The amount of divergent and strong opinions alone is an indication to me that we should at the very least only tackle these issue in very extreme circumstances. However, I want to come back to one main point that rootwork reiterated:
I think it's really important that we note that INACTION is a political statement too. So I'm not sure it's as easy as saying "We should not divide the community by getting involved." Not getting involved can also be divisive as parts of our community will believe that we SHOULD make a choice.
So while I can't really argue with the idea that these discussions can divert good energy and good will from out main focus - DRUPAL - and I agree that none of us want that, I also don't think it's actually avoidable.
Exactly
We're a large enough community, and the world we live in volatile enough, that there WILL be another issue. There were plenty of people that wanted us to "not take a stance" on recognizing non-countries as countries, which is the same as saying "we should take a stance that those aren't countries". There is no "stay out of it" answer. Ibid on the gender field.
As others have noted above, we should not go out of our way to find political positions to take, certainly. Active involvement in efforts like DWFB, the SOPA protests, or whatever comes next should be rare. But they should be non-zero. Silence in the face of challenges to the ability of the Free Software community to produce and share Free Software, world wide, is accepting our own doom.
— Edmund Burke
"good men" !== "non-profits and interest groups"
In my previous comment I distinguished the country/non-country issue and the gender issue as being both (1) explicitly applicable to Drupal.org as a community and (2) decisions that Drupal.org arguably had to make rather than optionally chose to make. I explained these are different than than things such as TDWFB, the participation in which as Drupal.org isn't explicitly necessary to establish the Drupal.org community nor prevent the "doom" of the Drupal.org community; If it were "The Day We Fight Back Against The NSA Shutting Down Drupal.org Forever," I might be convinced otherwise.
Your Burke quote refers to "good men," i.e. individuals, not to collective groups. Drupal software exists because Drupal software empowers individuals with the freedom to participate and the freedom contribute. Moreover, individuals in the Drupal community very much have the freedom to place whatever banner they choose their own Drupal websites to state their own views in external political campaigns and protests no matter who they are. For these purposes, let Drupal.org and the Drupal Association empower individuals to wave their own flags rather than choose which flags they should wave.
I'd much prefer you didn't do that again.
If this site promotes a cause, though, it is speaking for its members, and its members don't agree on anything but Drupal - and they don't always agree on that!
As a government employee, I am very cautious about the causes I publicly identify myself with. I don't want to be closely affiliated with any group with a public policy agenda, no matter how noble, unless I choose to join as an individual.
Plus, doing too many of these promotions may actually hinder the adoption of Drupal or joining d.o. in some organizations. Open Source is still viewed with suspicion in a lot of organizations, and identifying it with a cause, no matter how innocuous, can be a deal-killer.
Draft policy
Hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes, but I figured it might be easier to try consolidating many of the points here and draft a policy and then allow iteration on it.
Anyways, here is my first go - https://groups.drupal.org/node/413768 - please feel free to change/improve
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
Great discussion
Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts on this issue. Like Holly, I really appreciate getting a sense of where people stand on this. I heard a lot of different things about the banner campaign, for and against - so it's clearly not an easy case to answer.
One thing I'll say generally about politics though...
The Personal is Political.
I honestly believe everything we do is touched by politics. I honestly believe that we're all engaged in a very human endeavour creating software as a community, for communities all over the world. Every one of those communities has its own politics, and every person is touched by the political decision making that goes on around us. Choosing apathy is still a political choice.
The politics of global surveillance affects us all, and as creators of web software we're part of the machinery of surveillance - so this political action was very much related to who we are and what we do.
Whether or not we should participate in campaigns like this as directly as we did is a good question. There was a lot of complaints that we did this time. There were also a lot of complaints that we didn't for the SOPA blackout. Wikipedia going dark for that was widely applauded as a key mechanism of bringing broader attention to the issue.
I'm just speaking from my own perspective here too... I really do welcome the debate.
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
Great points Donna!
Totally agree.
+1 Yes
Yes. It needs to be related to Drupal (and thereby the Internet as a whole), as any entity has to look out for its own welfare.
So,
+1 Yes
Drupal Managed Hosting includes Quarterly Updates, Data Migration, ...
Agreement with c4rl
There are good points raised by all. And this is a healthy, open discussion with smart, passionate, caring people who have a range of opinions and feedback.
I strongly agree with C4rl's comments and point-of-view. If this is coming down to votes (is it?), I vote with c4rl.
No political entanglement,
No political entanglement, even if it's something that the majority of the group agrees is a pressing issue. D.O. or the DA "standing" with an issue is not as powerful as all passionate DA / D.O. members taking that same stand. I think we will generate endless, needless discussion about Cause A being worth taking a stand with where as Cause B wasn't. It's best to be completely Apolitical in my mind; even in cases that directly affect our industry. Allow the individuals be the voice, don't speak for them all no matter the cause.
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
No Political Movements / Involvements / But..
I think that for a technical entity such as Drupal (or the Drupal Association), particularly one that is considered "open source", it does not make sense to get entangled with any political sides. Mainly because there are going to be some who feel one way or another.
However, if those political issues could directly affect the usage of Drupal, then perhaps that would be an exception. So, in regards to Open Innovation Network, I could see it at least being something worth considering, since it seems to directly go hand-in-hand with the very design and premise of Drupal.
But if it ever delves into moral ideas or political parties in any nation, etc, then that would be best left outside of Drupal altogether. It is after all a technical tool - a means to an end, not a nation or political party in and of itself.
Ixnay on the Olitics-pay
I've seen technical communities explode when people assume
that everyone in the group shares compatible politics.
Technical communities are like Thanksgiving dinners - politics are best avoided.