On Thursday, February 6, 2025 7:12:09 PM MST G. Branden Robinson wrote: > Hi Soren, > > Thank you for the serious follow-up. > > At 2025-02-06T17:57:39-0700, Soren Stoutner wrote: > > On Thursday, February 6, 2025 4:50:50 PM MST G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > > My advice--not that I expect anyone to take it--is that if you work for > > > Google, don't talk about it _and_ don't participate in any community > > > decision making process involving the company in any way. These are the > > > ethical things to do if you're involved with Debian. If the thought of > > > this frustrates you, try to salve your feelings by reviewing your latest > > > pay stub. And if even that doesn't work, maybe you're not working at > > > the right place. > > > > I respectfully disagree with the above statement. > > > > 1. It is contrary to the principles for with Debian stands to exclude > > someone from participating in Debian solely because of who employs > > them. > > I agree. To be clear, I neither said or implied otherwise. > > > This includes participating in discussions about Debian policies that > > involve their employer. > > Here I must disagree. I think your statement is equivalent to claiming > that "there is no such thing as a conflict of interest", an ethical > stance with a poor track record of producing socially desirable > outcomes.[1]
That is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that when it comes to discussions in Debian, they are evaluated on the merits of the claims. If someone makes a bad argument, it will be refuted by others based on its bad merits. If someone makes a good argument, it will be accepted by the project based on its good merits. Whatever conflict of interest exists by a Google employee participating in the discussion is adequately handled by their announcing their status as an employee, which alerts me to read over their argument carefully looking for anything that would unfairly benefit Google. After I have made that careful review, if they have made a good argument, then it should receive the same consideration as any argument presented by any other member of the Debian community. Debian’s democratic decision making processes are strong enough to resist any hidden infiltration by conflicts of interest with Google. Of that I have no doubt. So, I don’t need to fear being exposed to the best arguments anyone can make in Google’s favor. -- Soren Stoutner so...@debian.org
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