Secret Society Ideology/Principles

There is somewhat lively debate about what founding principles should be included in the /prog/ secret society. We need a list of aims on which we can agree, and a list of problems to solve. Here is something to start, neither written in stone nor comprehensive:

Basic goals:
Freedom to conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells, to explore the universe, etc. etc.
Survival of the Society
Arcane power

We need a means for resolving disagreements. I suggested we ignore them insofar as it is possible to do so. E.g. "what is the UNIX philosophy and is it good?" is an entertaining question for debate, and an answer is probably necessary in the long term, but it does not contribute concretely to the goal of writing software. So membership should not require that an individual answer one way or the other on such questions.

Balancing freedom with economic sustainability
We want to give our software away, but we also want to be able to afford to write more software and engage in other activities. This is a structural conflict.
Best known solution: release software for free to the public, but at cost to governments and profit-making entities.

We need a name. We also need a motto. "We conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells" has been suggested, and I support it.

Other?

>>2
How about pseudonymity? Also one can use different identities for different projects and so on. The one thing I can think of that we'll actually need persistent pseudonyms for is for code auditing and signing (since that requires trust, and trust is built over time).

Best known solution: release software for free to the public, but at cost to governments and profit-making entities.

We need to talk to a nice and friendly lawyer and construct an actual license that does this. Maybe Michael Geist might be interested in helping out. It might annoy companies that they'll have to make 1000 small payments to 1000 different programmers every time they buy a software/OS distribution, though. It might also annoy programmers to keep accepting small payments and sending out receipts. One of us could create an intermediary company that manages that and takes care of splitting and merging payments to individual programmers.