Sun's blogging policy, also known as Sun Guidelines on Public Discourse, is a masterpiece, in my opinion. It was originally written four years ago when our blog site was first deployed. It's spirit and intent was spot-on then and has served us so well over the years that we revised it to make it less blogging-centric so it can scale across our other community site.
The revision was a collaborative effort between Sun representatives from HR, Legal, Export, Privacy, Trademark, IP, Tim Bray, and myself.
To be honest, I went into the revision effort expecting to defend the document as tho' it were The Constitution, but I'm happy to report that the spirit of the document was eagerly preserved by everyone involved.
Here is a full summary of the revisions:
1. The title includes the term Guidelines instead of Policy (links to related Sun policies are provided in the document)
2. The content is no longer blogging-centric since the meaning scales nicely to cover other community sites (Forums, Wikis, Mediacast, Planets, etc.)
3. It includes additional guidelines that cover:
The revision was a collaborative effort between Sun representatives from HR, Legal, Export, Privacy, Trademark, IP, Tim Bray, and myself.
To be honest, I went into the revision effort expecting to defend the document as tho' it were The Constitution, but I'm happy to report that the spirit of the document was eagerly preserved by everyone involved.
Here is a full summary of the revisions:
1. The title includes the term Guidelines instead of Policy (links to related Sun policies are provided in the document)
2. The content is no longer blogging-centric since the meaning scales nicely to cover other community sites (Forums, Wikis, Mediacast, Planets, etc.)
3. It includes additional guidelines that cover:
- Not commenting on Sun legal matters
- Links to related Sun policies for easy reference
- Professional behavior as a Sun representative in virtual worlds
- Disclosing your Sun relationship when writing about Sun related topics
- Community moderation
- Proper use of other people's information
Very nice policy. I hope we on OpenSolaris can do something like this. :)
Posted by Jim Grisanzio on May 11, 2008 at 05:33 AM MDT #
I like the new version a great deal - congratulations to everyone involved. My only real issue is that you've used the expression "intellectual property". While the phrase is in common use, it is a known irritant to a certain segment of our stakeholder community and it would be better to refer to "copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets" if that's what we mean.
Posted by Simon Phipps on May 12, 2008 at 10:00 PM MDT #
Jim,
Feel free to re-use any of the wording as you see fit.
Simon,
Thanks for the input. I've fwded to the team, who helped with the revision, for evaluation/action.
Posted by Skrocki on May 13, 2008 at 11:49 AM MDT #
OK, I got here from WonderWebby on "Collaboration Guidelines" - See how it works? No, really, I know I'm on the 'path' when 2 of my fav tech dogs (IBM and Sun) are pushing guidelines for creativity and collaboration, in addition to a 'most restrictive' default admin policy for blade servers..lol.
So I am using my comments on your blog post to officially announce "Farnham's Global Collaboration Guidelines" as a tweet: "Work Hard, Keep Your Day Job, Be Adult, Have Fun, Hug the Dog, Save the World." (with 17 characters left...ha!)
Really, thanks for this post. What the dog's name? Barry/Farnham
Posted by Barry Everett on May 17, 2008 at 07:52 AM MDT #