Posted by damienmckenna on October 16, 2019 at 10:32pm
It was recently revealed that GitLab, the company that provide the new git platform that the Drupal community is moving towards, is unwilling to vet their clients for ethics problems:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/16/gitlab_employees_gagged/
Given the community's move towards a set of values and principles, I would like to request the Drupal Association push some pressure on GitLab to change their decision to be unwilling to work with or sell their software to organizations with known ethics problems. Note: I'm not talking about forbidding a group from downloading and installing the freely available software, I'm specifically talking about sales and partnerships.
Comments
Prefacing my first response
Prefacing my first response with:
We need to be careful of how we address these things. As an individual I have strong opinions here, but as a representative of the DA, within our context as a 501c3, we have certain limitations when it comes to political speech and things like lobbying activities (obviously another organization is not a governmental body, but even so we should take care).
The Register is not my favorite source of tech news at the best of times, but the actual merge request itself is pretty stark: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/b5a35716deb4f63299a2...
I'll certainly share with the rest of the team as a start.
The DA has a choice
Hey, I'm not sure if there are specific legal limitations on the Drupal Association about this. (If so, I'd like to know what they are.) But 501(c)3 nonprofits are expected to have a mission for some public benefit. To work toward that mission sometimes necessarily involves advocacy both in the private sector and in politics, such as lobbying and issue education.
So I don't understand what the legal limitation would be on speaking out or taking action on the values or business practices that very much impact the open source community and the world we live in. Unless there are some restrictions that haven't been explained, that is not a reason to take action on something if the DA otherwise feels it's the right thing to do.
More importantly, I can't see how the choice of which technical services to use would be construed as advocacy. When I pick whether to use TracFone or AT&T for my phone carrier, is that political just because I base the decision on my own values?
I am not a lawyer, so I'm
I am not a lawyer, so I'm primarily speaking out of an abundance of caution. It may be no issue at all, as we would just be a foundation in conversation with a private company, but we'd want to be certain of that interpretation before taking action.
Our counsel has advised us to be cautious about certain kinds of activities in the past, and unless and until we consult with our counsel again I wouldn't want to run away and get us in hot water with the IRS.
You're absolutely right 501c3's are intended to have a mission for the public benefit (and of course we do), but they are explicitly restricted in certain types of political action, based on type and scope of that action: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemp... (and see the sub-link on 'Political and Lobbying activities').
That said, you're also quite right that there isn't a limitation on how we choose our tools. I don't think that's what's at issue in @DamienMcKenna's proposal though, but rather - can we specifically create public or private pressure on another organization to change their policy.
Anyway, I know this kind of caution can feel slow and icky and awful, but it's really important to act with care and deliberation to protect our core mission and the budget our members and supporters have entrusted us with.
political action
The challenge in this case is that there is no inaction possible, because saying nothing will be interpreted by some as a sort of approval of the situation ("well if drupal are OK with it...")
Playing devil's advocate...
Vision and mission statement of the Drupal Association:
How does putting pressure on a vendor to change a policy decision fulfill the vision or mission statement of the Drupal Association?
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R.J. Townsend
Values
From the values and principles page:
Does the "expectation of [..] promot[ing] dignity and respect" end at the line of people having a drupal.org account? If an organization has ethics problems, e.g. kidnapping people, throwing them in gulags and letting them die, how is that promoting dignity and respect?
More values..
Also from the same Values document:
Why shouldn't we promote our partners not work against these values?
Vision and mission is where
Vision and mission is where the community is going and what it will do to get there, values are how people in the community are expected to act. I am not saying we shouldn't promote our values to vendors, I'm suggesting advocacy is outside of the scope of the DA's mission and vision.
Related, does the DA have any guidelines about vetting the value statements of vendors and what should happen if there is a conflict between a vendor's values and our own?
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R.J. Townsend