Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org

[Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>]

The issue at hand is what to say to the public.

Which is a policy issue... GNOME are responsible for establishing its policies and GNOME has not seen fit to establish any concrete policy on this (for whatever reason). Not establishing concrete policy and guidance to cover these sorts of relevant themes creates avoidable conflicts like this one, it only ever seems to serve to waste time and resources by forcing people to reinvent the wheel and it also provides a breeding ground for discriminatory practices and unethical conduct (I could go on...)

But anyway moving swiftly on, let's break the problems down since we all seem to be talking at cross purposes:

Problem 1. Not promoting the indiGoGo at this stage will essentially make it more likely that Christian may not be able to meet his target and would have to forfeit 9% of the funding he raises instead of 4% in 24 days time. https://go.indiegogo.com/pricing-fees  

Problem 2. There is no clear agreed policy or guidance on promoting and fundraising GNOME project work and concerns have been raised about whether or not to be seen to be endorsing sites which use dodgy _javascript_ as a general rule (like indiGoGo) from GNOME's servers.

It is clear you (Richard) are really passionate about solving problem 2 and to be fair, you do absolutely raise some very important points, but here's the thing: a lot of people here seem to be more concerned about problem 1 at this immediate moment in time and that's not necessarily because they would disagree with the principle of what you are saying but just that under these circumstances whatever way we look at it, this wasn't flagged early on enough and the "damage" of this cannot be undone (for at least 24 days, it can't anyway), we would not want to harm the builder indigogo campaign at this stage over something that essentially, we are collectively responsible for.

With all things considered, an ideal situation is one were where we [the community] are all willing and able to solve problems 1 and 2 respectively on a policy level not only to ensure our actions to date are not detrimental to builder but also to allow objective discussion to flourish regarding the concerns you have raised. Ultimately, it serves everyone if we can figure out how to ensure that this sort of conflict does not have to go on to become a recurring one for the future and so that the agreed principles can easily be applied in a consistent way in all potential use cases so that things are fair.

Magdalen