Author: Roger D Davis
Date: 19:13:41 11/27/03
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> >Roger my position won't change a damn thing and you know it, you are arguing for >the sake of arguement, that's not logical. > >The ICGA will not change it's position, no matter what we say here. >The letter explained it well enough in my opinion. > >He breached the rules, and that lead to his expulsion. Whether it's a clone >isn't relavant. > >If you think it is, contact David Levy, for crying out loud! > >You have my position and answer, now act upon it if you think it will do any >good.... I guess I just think that it's through discussion that points of view are made and modified. The rules written by the committee are open to interpretation. The rules don't say whether circumstantial evidence alone is sufficient to ask a programmer to produce his source, don't say when experts should be consulted, and don't state any similarity metric which determines originality. When rules are ambiguous, you don't just through up your hands, you have to appeal to other frames of reference. The committee chose an authoritarian frame of reference, in which the committee chose to assert its authority and the author could choose to conform, or not. If the committee always makes the rules at any point, then necessarily the committee is always right. The problem with an authoritarian frame of reference is that it fails to respect the rights of all the parties involved. Hence the need for due process. In my judgment, that process would have involved asking the accuser for stronger evidence, then asking experts outside the committee whether this evidence rose to a level necessary to justify asking for the source code. And if these experts agreed, and if the source was requested and denied, then the author should have been banned. One of those experts could have been Bob Hyatt. My position is that this course of action is not only consistent with the charter, but also that it embodies the spirit of the charter by expressing the principle of Good Faith, the foundation of all rewarding human relations. Roger
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