As I explain in the section about "what about my free speech right?". There were a couple of things that went into this it might not be immediately obvious.
First of all there were some serious personal contact issues in open source conferences, and in businesses I've been associated with. Things that messed up careers, and had a serious effect on business and investments.
One of the assumptions is that there would be government relations, and we're working with a pharmaceutical foundation right now - because software is a big part of genetic research - that also has some serious regulations on it. And it seemed that the very best way to handle the issues was to take a number of subjects and firmly place them out of bounds, while leaving a carve out for free speech that is somewhat distanced from the rest of the organization.
And yeah, you definitely got roped in. But that's because we all have really strong feelings and it is hard to just look the other way sometimes. I was hoping that a really crisp structure would help some people deal with that.
Thanks
Bruce