[CAVO] Open Source for use in public elections

Wed Apr 15 16:37:43 UTC 2015

David is correct below. Proper etiquette on such online lists is sometimes a difficult skill learned over time. I fail at it too often, sometimes by being too brusque or critical in front of too many people at once. 

The formal rule I personally like everyone to follow is at http://www.chathamhouse.org/about/chatham-house-rule. 

Apache projects have both public lists (like cavo@) and smaller private lists where only some folks ("members") can participate. It is a continual battle to force Apache project teams to stop using private lists for anything other than management-related, contractual or legal issues. Even Apache open source project team elections are held on public lists. :-) All lists are archived.

Thanks again to opensource.org for making this resource available to CAVO. We will slowly convert our CAVO participants to use it comfortably and politely.

/Larry

From: David RR Webber (XML) [mailto:david at drrw.info] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 9:07 AM
To: CAVO
Subject: Re: [CAVO] Open Source for use in public elections

Larry,

Understood.  However - private email is that - unless the person so indicates that you may distribute their correspondence.

I certainly take affront when someone sends me an obviously targeted email and then Cc:'s a public mailing list - or the reverse - what was clearly a private note for someone's personal edification - then being forwarded publicly.

Everyone can use their judgement as to what is appropriate.

Having said that - I get the overall point - this is a collaboration service - and the more we share information - the better in terms of facilitating the overall work and achieving the broader objectives.

David

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [CAVO] Open Source for use in public elections
From: "Lawrence Rosen" <lrosen at rosenlaw.com <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> >
Date: Wed, April 15, 2015 11:46 am
To: <cavo at opensource.org <mailto:cavo at opensource.org> >

[I'm moving this email to cavo@]

David Webber wrote:
> Clearly when dealing with external entities - it is certainly not good business practice to Cc: a mailing list!

Not so clearly.... Several states including California have open meetings laws relating to public government-related activities. Elections and voting systems are certainly that!

I'm sensitive to "political sensitivity" only in the context of open source software development. And quite frankly, having listened to some of these CAVO discussions over the past several months, it was the private parts that burned me up the most as being unnecessarily confidential and thus useless to the rest of us!

Let's learn to be open! Or at least, let's talk to each other openly about what it really means to be open source. That's why I'm here. What are you here for?

/Larry

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