Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [PATCH] code-of-conduct: Remove explicit list of discrimination factors

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 08:49:15AM -0700, James Bottomley wrote:
> 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.

Which is a much better proposal than removing the list entirely.