The idea is that any rule you apply should be done fairly and, where that isn't clear, equally.
So as an example. If I say "Pepsi tastes like cow urine", and a corporate shill from Pepsi who has built their self-worth around the company and spent most of their life defending themselves from the usual Pepsi-bashing jokes by bullies telling them that Coke is better, and maybe they fall into some protected class and maybe they don't.
Now, their complaint is valid and their hurt is real. But the intent of the original comment was not to bash this person (or corporation) - it was the spirit of valid criticism.
If the intent is removed from the evaluation of the rules, nobody is safe from those who would manipulate the rules and pretend to be the hurt party to the benefit of a corporation.
[Note: I've re-read everything that person said, and now even I'm not sure. It feels to me like highly honed satire, and if it is, hats off to them, though they've maybe forgotten that a large portion of the Ruby team is not natively English speaking - hence their PR got accepted. If it isn't satire... well, they're not gonna read this, so it would be a wasted education]
Someone with the same name invoked the old good intentions clause on the mailing list.[1] Apparently sincerely.
[1] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...
I'm left to conclude that they are just simply "out to lunch," to put it politely.
Some of these comments are obviously bait to me - e.g., the one about how we should privilege members of boards of directors - and this looks like a careful attempt not to take the bait.
Note that PR 2690 is not from @hmdne and was unchanged from how it was proposed. PR 2691 is, and perhaps should not have been accepted in its present form because of the "protected class" language, but there are good-faith comments in 2690 (with no mention of corporations) about why the "opposing views" line should be removed.
> Some people may have views that when expressed, may be harmful to the interest of particular groups of people like big corporations. This has to be taken into account.
> universally accepted corporate values
> That's California Core Corporate Policies in work
> For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class.
> Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause
Given the success of the pull requests, I can only assume that this is not a sockpuppet mocking the rules in question. Is it some kind of multi-layered joke?