I support the Lavender letter authors and message. I also support the response here by Stack Exchange.

That said...

It's hard to please everyone, and the original wording clearly didn't strike the correct balance. That's fine. Finding a balance is difficult, especially when it comes across as dictating community behavior.

However, waiting a year to address it is problematic. A very large issue here is not the changing of terms or guidance, but of trust. If the community had more trust, then they would trust the company to fix their mistake.

Mistakes are fine, but they must be corrected immediately and without doubling down on their faults. The pitfall that I continuously see from the company is either not immediately correcting, or doubling down when wrong. Look at this post, look at all the censorship. There are deletions all over the place, if you wanted to have a message with no responses, then take it to the blog.

Letting issues like this languish causes problems. Going forward, there needs to be much more attention paid to issues, with immediate responses, when it effects the entire community. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs a best effort response. If that fails, acknowledge it, and make adjustments. If legal complains, replace them; their track record is horrendous.

The team now running the show here inherited a mountain of trust from the community, and while a lot of it remains, it has been severely diminished. That trust was not built from quarterly statements, or roadmaps. It was built by a group who always responded, and who did so with an air of humility and respect. They were a part of the community, not above it.

I would love to see some humility return to the group of leadership at this company. This post is at least moving in that direction, and it would behoove the rest of the team to take note of it.

I support the Lavender letter authors and message. I also support the response here by Stack Exchange.

That said...

It's hard to please everyone, and the original wording clearly didn't strike the correct balance. That's fine. Finding a balance is difficult, especially when it comes across as dictating community behavior.

However, waiting a year to address it is problematic. A very large issue here is not the changing of terms or guidance, but of trust. If the community had more trust, then they would trust the company to fix their mistake.

Mistakes are fine, but they must be corrected immediately and without doubling down on their faults. The pitfall that I continuously see from the company is either not immediately correcting, or doubling down when wrong. Look at this post, look at all the censorship. There are deletions all over the place, if you wanted to have a message with no responses, then take it to the blog.

Letting issues like this languish causes problems. Going forward, there needs to be much more attention paid to issues, with immediate responses, when it affects the entire community. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs a best effort response. If that fails, acknowledge it, and make adjustments. If the legal department complains, replace them; their track record is horrendous.

The team now running the show here inherited a mountain of trust from the community, and while a lot of it remains, it has been severely diminished. That trust was not built from quarterly statements, or roadmaps. It was built by a group who always responded, and who did so with an air of humility and respect. They were a part of the community, not above it.

I would love to see some humility return to the group of leadership at this company. This post is at least moving in that direction, and it would behoove the rest of the team to take note of it.