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Widdershin / programmers-oath

An oath for programmers, comparable to the Hippocratic Oath
Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal
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Add tenant 11 about giving back to the community. #146

Closed KartikSoneji closed 3 years ago

KartikSoneji commented 4 years ago

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Credits to @abbynormative for the wording.

Closes #99

Widdershin commented 4 years ago

Thanks for making this PR!

I'm generally supportive of the notion, but I have some qualms about the first line.

I will give back to the community by volunteering my time and expertise to open source projects and by offering help to those who need it, without expecting or demanding anything in return.

I think there are a lot of people who quite reasonably don't have the time, energy or inclination to contribute to open source projects. There are also a lot of people who object to the idea that open source contribution is morally good due to viewing corporate use of OSS without adequate compensation as exploitation.

Additionally, some people are under contractual obligations that prevent this.

With that in mind, how would you feel if I only included the second line in the tenet? I think the be kind to fellow programmers and offer help to the best of my ability sums up a lot of what the first line talks about without getting overly specific.

KartikSoneji commented 4 years ago

Hi Widdershin,

There are also a lot of people who object to the idea that open source contribution is morally good due to viewing corporate use of OSS without adequate compensation as exploitation.

I do not see how contributing to OSS can be viewed as something bad, since corporations are the ones responsible for the exploitation. That is like saying donating to animal shelters is immoral since it encourages stray animals

With that in mind, how would you feel if I only included the second line in the tenet?

I would prefer mentioning contributing to OSS, since almost all modern software depends on it in some way, but a lot of projects struggle to find contributors.

Additionally, some people are under contractual obligations that prevent this.

Hmm, I was not aware of that.

But a lot of professional oaths have a similar clause:

When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given, without reservation, for the public good.

- Obligation of an Engineer

How about these changes: (Original) I will give back to the community by ... I will try to give back to the community by ... I will give back to the community to the best of my abilities by ...

samuei commented 4 years ago

If we're going to discuss ethics with regards to the Open Source community, why not bring up the Free Software community, which the Open Source community split off from specifically because OSS wanted to avoid ethical considerations?