First RMS' report -- Fwd: Merging the FSF jobs page and GNU Herds

[Davi Leal]

Hi all,

We invite you to subscribe to the 'gnuherds-app-dev' mailing list at
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnuherds-app-dev

The GNU Herds proposal is 1.0

http://gnuherds.org temporally redirected to http://gnuherds.leals.com/


P.S.: Maybe the natural way will be to do the project a GNU project.

Best regards,
Davi



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Davi Leal <address@hidden>
Date: 12-sep-2006 12:19
Subject: Re: Merging the FSF jobs page and GNU Herds
To: address@hidden
Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, Martin Mielke <address@hidden>


Richard Stallman <address@hidden>:
> I got back to Cambridge and took a look at www.gnuherds.org.  The main
> problem that I see is that there's nothing in the proposed system to
> ensure that proprietary software jobs are not advertised.

We will revice all the proposal. See annotated batch of proposed solutions:

Anyway, though all the information keep in the webapp be right, after
getting in contact with the applicants the employer could talk with
then about non-free-software.  The only thing we can do about it, is
to promote that applicants report it so as to the association can
block the employer accounts.  We have not the resources to create a FS
police, however we can:
 A. add all the automatic check we can,
 B. applicant guidelines: make it easier to applicants report wrong
conducts so that the association can block accounts identified by its
unique IDs: email, name+address, landline, mobile phone, VoIP id, etc.
Define the protocol.
 C. sign the agreement to the Terms of Use and Online Privacy Policy.
 D. Access Control List.


> For instance, the FAQ says that anyone can post a job listing.

We can update the FAQ to say only offers which comply with the Free
Software Jobs Submission Guidelines [1] will be published.
    [1] http://www.fsf.org/jobs/guidelines.html

> What prevents people from posting job listings for jobs to develop
> non-free software?  I don't see any obstacle.  They might do say this
> explicitly with an announcement like "We want to hire the best
> programmers with Linux [sic] experience to develop a proprietary DRM
> platform that would run on Linux [sic]".

The job offers form has only two free fields: the Vacancy title and
the job Description [2]. Others field will have one of the fixed combo
box values. We can add automatic checks to these two free fields to:
     A.I. strip words as: DRM, etc.,
     A.II. marks as "checks not passed" and do not publish it,
     A.III. warn to the employer about the fact that her offer has
been blocked. She will have to fix it to allow it to be published.

  [2] https://gnuherds.leals.com/Job_Offer.php
      To access this page it is needed to log in. You can use the
"address@hidden" with password "a", or just create a new account.

> Or they might leave this unstated, as in "We want to hire
> the best programmers Linux [sic] experience to develop
> our program".

This case is more difficult to block, however:
    See the point B. above.
    B.I. FS contributors which are registered can report such
activities when they get it contact with such employers so as to the
accounts they use to post her offers can be blocked by the
association.

Employers could use spam techniques, but I do not think the
association members like to work with such employers.  Anyway, our
checks can try to filter them. For example, an account can not post an
offer up to one month after its registration.

> Any free software job site that really wants to limit itself to free
> software jobs needs to develop a system to verify that and prevent
> such abuses.

We will try to develop it:
   A.IV. Filters to apply to joboffers before allowing it to be
visible to the site users.
   A.V. Filters to apply to entity qualifications (person, company or
non-profit organization) before allowing it to make visible its
qualifications filing card.
   B. make it easier to applicants report wrong conducts so as to the
association can block accounts.


> With the site's present structure, however, a proprietary software
> developer would not even have to misuse this site in order to get a
> proprietary software job listed.  The site has links to "FS job
> sites", but it looks like many of those sites do not intend to limit
> themselves to "free software jobs".  It looks like many of them will
> advertise any sort of job that relates in any way to free software --
> perhaps only because the job involves using some of it.  For instance,
> the HotLinuxJobs site appears to be willing to list any kind of job
> that involves use of GNU/Linux even for developing proprietary
> software.
>
> (That many of these sites call the GNU/Linux system "Linux" is another
> reason to object to them.)

The the soft option to this issue is remove such section.


> The site also offers to list people who want jobs.  That kind of
> activity poses another problem: developers of non-free software could
> use the listings too; there is nothing to stop them.

Only registered entities (persons, companies or non-profit
organizations) can access to the contact information of an entity.

We can additionally allow only to  certified FS contributors  to
access such contact information.

To be sure that the entities are certified FS contributors, we links
to online references, which are now optional. However we could do such
qualifications fields required.

If you look for qualifications using the [3] form, you can see that
the qualifications of some persons has its "Contributions to FS
projects" field filled with a link to online information that proves
it. For example the [4] link: linux kernel, drivers.

There is support to the "FS contributor" and "GNU Business Network"
certifications. We can add an Access Control List with all this
information as input.

 [3] https://gnuherds.leals.com/FS_Qualifications_search.php
     You can use the address@hidden account with password 'a' to login.

 [4] 
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-2.6.17.y.git;a=commit;h=6bd6b5c7d81c365b53ff40f9c049e19aa104f6ac


> This is why we don't list possible workers on gnu.org.  Instead we
> list service providers.  To prevent abuses, everyone who wants to be
> listed has to list specific free software services, and has to promise
> not to propose non-free projects to customers that have met him
> through our list.  This isn't a perfect system for preventing abuses
> but makes them harder.

The system used right now at gnuherds.org can be seen as services
providers, with the additional tags as: name, contact medias, years of
experience, profiles (set of kind of services which could be carried
out by this entity), etc. See the qualifications filing card at [3].

When a person, company or non-profit organization fill its
qualifications form they are exposing the services which they could
realize.

Some companies like to look for people instead of services.


> These problems are not trivial, but it is vital to solve them.

We will keep sending you proposals which will try to fix the reported
problems. Let us know what you think about it, and we will develop it
to update the proposal.


P.S.: Due to the domain where gnuherds.org is now hosted will go down
on september final, we are looking for another host with static IP. It
could be good to host it at its final location.

Regards,
Davi