OSE Code of Conduct

These are OSE guidelines for basic conduct, based on slight modification of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct:

Be considerate

Your work will be used by other people, and you in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision you make will affect users and colleagues, and we expect you to take those consequences into account when making decisions. Consider how your behavior will affect the well being of others around you.

Be respectful

The OSE community and its members treat one another with respect. Everyone can make a valuable contribution to OSE. We may not always agree, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It’s important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. We expect members of the OSE community to be respectful when dealing with other contributors as well as with people outside the OSE project, and with users of OSE.

Be collaborative

OSE is about collaboration and working together. Collaboration reduces redundancy of work done in the Open Hardware world, and improves the quality of the hardware produced. You should aim to collaborate with other OSE maintainers, as well as with the upstream community that is interested in the work you do. Your work should be done transparently and updates from OSE should be given back to the community when they are made, not just when the distribution releases. If you wish to work on new ideas for existing upstream projects, at least keep those projects informed of your ideas and progress. It may not be possible to get consensus from upstream or even from your colleagues about the correct implementation of an idea, so don’t feel obliged to have that agreement before you begin, but at least keep the outside world informed of your work, and publish your work in a way that allows outsiders to test, discuss, and contribute to your efforts.

When you disagree, consult others

Disagreements, both political and technical, happen all the time, and the OSE community is no exception. The important goal is not to avoid disagreements or differing views but to resolve them constructively. You should turn to the community and to the community process to seek advice and to resolve disagreements. If you really want to go a different way, then we encourage you to document and publish your work, so that the community can try out your changes and ideas for itself and contribute to the discussion.

When you are unsure, ask for help

Nobody knows everything, and nobody is expected to be perfect in the OSE community. Asking questions avoids many problems down the road, and so questions are encouraged. Those who are asked should be responsive and helpful. However, when asking a question, care must be taken to do so in an appropriate forum. Off-topic questions, such as requests for help on an entirely unrelated project, detract from productive discussion.

Step down considerately

Developers on every project come and go, and OSE is no different. When you leave or disengage from the project, in whole or in part, we ask that you do so in a way that minimizes disruption to the project. This means you should tell people you are leaving and take the proper steps to ensure that others can pick up where you leave off.

Discussion

We have found that the Product Ecology aspect of OSE's work is perhaps the largest block to coordinated technical development. Because following a Construction Set Approach that results in integrated product ecologies is much harder than just designing dedicated machines or products - it is common for people to propose dedicated solutions (non-Construction Set Approach, not consistent with product ecologies such as Universal Axis, Universal Rotor, Universal Controller, Power Cube, among the most notable). Dedicated solutions are easier to implement in the short term (1 year), but do not provide as much impact as the trillion-dollar economic potential of an integrated set. Part of this has to do with coordinating large numbers of people. When tech development choices are non-Degenerate, we end up with a fragmented effort in a surplus number of directions. The result would be a technosphere that is hard to manage because of the 'reinventing the wheel' aspect of too many options for doing the same thing.

The choice here goes down to the existential qualities of society. We have a choice. Do we spend excess energy focusing on material existence (products, consumer goods, survival wares) - or do we agree that the pursuit of autonomy, mastery, and purpose is most important? A society that focuses on the latter would need to remove material existence from taking too much of a preoccupation in one's life - as a formula for attaining true freedom. This is indeed trivial to accomplish using today's advanced technology. Thus, there is now a real option for evolving to freedom. This is the viewpoint that OSE takes. OSE is currently (until 2028) focusing on material security (completion of the Global Village Construction Set and related enterprise) - and from 2028 onwards - will be focusing on the transformation of society towards self-determination.