A "Moral License"/"Fairness Pledge" for Perl - what does one look like?

[perlfan]

Poul-Henning Kamp is probably more well know to you people for his "bikeshed" analogy, a term many love to invoke often (for good reason). But I ran into this recently, and it was interesting. Here's a blag entry from 2019, referring to the VML he proposed in 2010: A patently good idea.

It may be interesting to you for reasons other than the one that it's interesting to me; but here's what struck me:

Nothing can rip apart an Open Source project faster than competing
commercial interests playing dirty, and since Varnish has started
to cause serious amounts of money to shift around, it is time to
take this issue a bit more seriously.

Further on is this, which I really liked:

Fairness pledge:
- ----------------

As the de-facto leader of the Varnish community, I believe that
the success or failure of open source rises and falls with the
community which backs it up.

In general, there is a tacit assumption, that you take something
from the pot and you try put something back in the pot, each to his
own means and abilities.

And the pot has plenty that needs filling:  From answers to newbies
questions, bug-reports, patches, documentation, advocacy, VML funding,
hosting VUG meetings, writing articles for magazines, HOW-TO's for
blogs and so on, so this is no onerous demand for anybody.

But the BSD license allows you to not participate in or contribute
to the community, and there are special times and circumstances
where that is the right thing, or even the only thing you can do,
and I recognize that.

Therefore:

 I will treat everybody, who do not contribute negatively to
 the Varnish community, equally and fairly, and try to foster
 cooperation and justly resolve conflicts to the best of my
 abilities.

I have no idea if perl can benefit from such a license or pledge (certainly doesn't apply to the scourge of "cancel culture"). And it doesn't find immediate application to the bazaar (and non-BSD) style development, but it's a good read, nonetheless.

Ultimately, what this means to me - and I think to anyone reading this - is that Perl is in desperate need of strong, fair, and righteous leadership. Until this exists, it will continue to be an absolute shitshow and continue to degenerate from within. Those who have been stepping up, thank you. Be fair, just, good, and kind. But most of all, be courageous. You will get the support you need if you decide to exhibit the courageous leadership Perl/perl needs.

The following was also interesting to me:

Today (20190517) Arturs Fastly, company went public on the New York Stock Exchange, and went up from $16 to $24 in a matter of hours. So-called “financial analysts” write that as a consequence Fastly is now worth 2+ Billion Dollars. I can say with 100% certainty and honesty that there is no way I could ever have done that, that is entirely Arturs doing and I know and admire how hard he worked to make it happen. Congratulations to Artur and the Fastly Crew! But I will steal some of Arturs thunder, and point to Fastlys IPO as proof that at least once in my career, I had a unique idea worth a billion dollars :-)

[haj]

Ultimately, what this means to me - and I think to anyone reading this - is that Perl is in desperate need of strong, fair, and righteous leadership. Until this exists, it will continue to be an absolute shitshow and continue to degenerate from within.

It doesn't mean this for me, not at all.

As far as the language Perl is concerned, I'd say that the Perl Steering Committee (PSC) is doing an very good job as leaders. Any shitshow is just that: A show, a bad one. I don't see it as PSC's fault that people want to watch a bad show, or even to play a role in a bad show. It's the era of social media, after all.

[Anonymous Monk]

It starts with courtesy?

Ultimately, what this means to me - and I think to anyone reading this - is that Perl is in desperate need of strong, fair, and righteous leadership. Until this exists, it will continue to be an absolute shitshow and continue to degenerate from within.

I do not appreciate your words