hbr/BACKGROUND.md
2015-01-01 20:52:32 -08:00

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Background
==========
The impetus to create the Harvey Birdman Rule stemmed from three formative
experiences: the quasi-public phase of the GPLv3 drafting process
(January 2006--June 2007); the Project Harmony deliberations
(ca. 2010-2011); and the ongoing activities of the European Legal
Network run by Free Software Foundation Europe (ca 2007--present).
HBR is a critique of the Chatham House Rule, which governed Project
Harmony for most of its life and has officially governed the
activities of ELN since 2008, if not inception.
The name "Harvey Birdman Rule" was coined by Richard Fontana in an IRC
channel conversation with Bradley Kuhn and others in (IIRC) 2012. The
name is a reference to *Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law*. At least two
post-hoc explanations for the naming have been given, but the real
reason is a quasi-inside joke between Fontana and Kuhn, which Kuhn has
probably forgotten and which wasn't really all that funny to begin
with.