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Message-ID: <1539791355.3769.35.camel@HansenPartnership.com>
Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [PATCH] code-of-conduct: Remove explicit list
 of discrimination factors
From:   James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>
To:     Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>,
        Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
Cc:     Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org, tomi.valkeinen@iki.fi
Date:   Wed, 17 Oct 2018 08:49:15 -0700
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On Wed, 2018-10-17 at 08:21 -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
> People in underrepresented and commonly marginalized groups,
> especially those more commonly overlooked, don't always know if a
> given group has taken their particular group into account or given
> any thought to it. Explicit inclusion helps, and this is a standard
> guideline often cited for good codes of conduct.

Actually, that's not a good thing to do in a vacuum: you have to be
really careful about how you do this from a legal point of view.  The
argument over whether enumerating specific rights or classes disparages
others has been going on for centuries.  To give you an example of how
far back it goes: it's the reason for the ninth amendment to the US
constitution.

The commonly accepted legal way of doing this today is the statement

"examples of X include but are not limited to: ..."

which is thought to work in most jurisdictions and is what you'll find
in all US corporate codes of conduct or ethics.

James