It's insane that we might reach a point where people install different branches of a project based on their political leanings...
I think the main takeaway here is that a Code of Conduct, while valuable, has to be treated carefully. A lot of these projects agreed to a Code of Conduct just to appease a certain faction of their devs, and are now seeing that it can be used against them.
Owch, before this it wouldn't have occurred to me that a "Code of Conduct" would be crafted for the purpose of giving identity politics some leverage into open source projects, for twitter mobs to better harass developers. I would have taken the idea at face value - a codification of "don't be a dick".
They seem to have a twitter smear campaign running in parallel to bring in random people to pile on. Unless the dev has said something else, I can't see any hate from him (though I disagree with his view).
A repeating pattern I saw on the mailing list is that people who oppose the code of conduct does so from fear that it will be wielded as a weapon in misunderstandings and politics.
What I also saw is basically 3 different type of camps. The one I mentioned above. The second group which think the code of conduct is good, needed, and will change the kernel maintainers so it has more diverse group. Last the group that is supposed to enforce the code of conduct and who has consistently proclaim that that isn't their job and that the code of conduct is more of a guide in mediation. The group I have not seen is those who say they need the code of conduct to feel safe as developers.
I think this is an interesting line of thought but think we should take it further. These codes of conduct that focus of the feelings of third parties over the good of the project (the code) can themselves be seen as an attack on the project. They also often are imposed on projects via peer pressure and other social engineering methods. Perhaps we can use these codes of conduct and the people that push them as open examples of how projects can be infiltrated by those with different agendas and learn from them how to better defend against such attacks.
Code of conducts are a response to the democratization and increased accessibility of software development. Like in other communities, as the number of collaborators increases and the number of personalities, behaviors, backgrounds, and ideologies intersect, the chance of disagreements goes up.
Code of conducts are a sane effort to highlight behavior that won't be tolerated, such that it's written down and no longer implicit.
That being said, one is free to disagree with the content of a particular code of conduct if the content does not appeal, but a mere presence of one should not result in becoming dismissive of a project.
Behavior outside a community should very little consequences inside of it. Of course there are some extreme cases where this might be a problem however those cases are extremely rare and should not generally be used for the basis of creating a Code of conduct or rule set
The wider political climate in world today is making have to be that simple.
While the article talks about more extreme cases like actual physical sexual assault, today far far far too many communities are using simple political disagreement and criticism and framing that as "harassment" using that "harassment" as method to remove any political dissenters from their ranks
I have seen it attempted (some times with great success) in several open source projects.
Personally I dislike the very concept of Codes of Conduct and I generally oppose most of the terms in many of the more modern Code of Conduct being pushed forward, likely as a result of my very libertarian political views. That said Codes of Conducts (should a community or project adopt them) should only be enforced based on actions WITH IN that community and/or toward people that are IN THAT community.
Not generalized actions of people taken in other communities with a different set of conventions and rules.
Code of Conduct should be seen as a contract of Behavior that all people agree to when voluntary associating with the community to treat all other MEMBERS of that community based on that code of conduct, it should not apply to conduct when interacting with people not a part of that community and thus never agreed to the code of conduct.
Well, we know how this will go. A number of commenters will object, pointing out how the code of conduct reserves the right to police what people say in non-project spaces, relies on secret evidence and opaque processes, and does not protect people from being harassed for their political views. Then the project maintainers will ignore them and install the code anyway.
Many years ago, I read a comment on Slashdot saying "the fact of a programming language having a "code of conduct" makes it ripe for everlasting drama and politics."
This is likely to start more flames than stop future ones, but I have an inkling that enforced, codes of conduct could encourage less participation and diversity as the enforcers have their own prejudices. (For example against developers with limited english language commnuication skills).
It could also, and I've seen it happen before, been used to exclude users who can be subjectively labeled by the leaders as 'toxic' when they only challenged the leaders.
However, the vast majority of times Codes of Conduct are there to keep people happy and only in the largest projects or rarest times are enforced. This no code of conduct effort would likely cause more strife than stop them, and I wouldn't be surprised if this thread is flagged.
From what I understand, the code of conduct is supposed to limit the participation in the community around the software. Issue tracking, support groups etc. If you don't adhere to it, you're free to fork and make your own github repo, discourse, IRC channels or whatever.
I found your perspective quite insightful, so thank you for taking the time to respond.
I believe the author represents a very valid sense of alienation and dismissal many people feel when a code of conduct appears on a project they may have worked on for years.
While I cannot speak for the author, I have had several conversations with people who hold views similar to that of the author in the past week thanks to current events. People are afraid. They see the Contributor Covenant and other codes of conduct and view them as at best a cudgel for exclusion and at worst a power grab by political groups they feel unwelcome with.
I'll be honest, when I first read this article I pretty much pumped my fist in the air, this is like a call to arms against those awful codes of conduct. So I may be so blind to the issues of the people who call for codes of conduct that it is in the 'unknown unknowns' for me. I just don't know about them.
This is going to get rammed through a bunch of projects that are either sympathetic or apathetic, the same way all this code of conduct business infiltrated through everything.
Most projects already have formal or informal rules set in place for discussion, project management, issue tracking.
A code of conduct would be redundant as such. More often than not, it seems to mostly be a veiled appeasement. The Linux kernel's "Code of Conflict" is a blatant and hilarious example of this.
That sounds romantic, except this whole Code of Conduct thing started with them being imposed on projects by outside activists literally to punish existing contributors for having the wrong politics. I'm not kidding. Look up Opalgate.
A facetious example of the lunacy of the existing "Code of Conduct" brigade:
- Project members must be treated with impunity if they wear footwear inside or not but especially if the footwear is required to define the personality of the wearer.
- Project members must be treated with impunity if they smoke inside or not, especially if their preference is vape brand bubble gum heaven.
- Obey the law, obey the speed limit in your country.
- Obey the law, pay for your groceries.
- The contribution of code, ideas or documentation to the project is unnecessary.
A Sane "Code of Conduct", which would not be written down because it's implied by baseline civility and common sense:
- This project requires cordial behaviour from everyone involved.
- This project is to improve this particular software (and/or documentation, artwork etc)
Reminder that the Code of Conduct was also implemented as a way to inject entropy in open-source projects that are deemed a threat to the information control matrix sponsored by Eric Schmidt, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates.
I'm not the parent poster, but will post anyway. I really don't want to get into this discussion, which is kind of ironic because the reason I don't want to get into the discussion is the very reason codes of conduct are purported to exist. It is very easy to become targeted and vilified if you happen to have a different point of view on the subject.
A very common clause in codes of conduct is that people who are identified with a project must uphold the code of contact when they are communicating, even when they do so outside the context of the project. Usually "identified with a project" is defined loosely enough that it can be used fairly indiscriminately. It has happened that people who voiced objectionable ideas outside the context of a project have been forcibly removed from those projects.
For some, this is a triumph of justice. For others (and I include myself in this camp) it is further fostering an "us" vs "them" viewpoint, vilifying those whose ideas differ. Interpersonal conflict is difficult and requires considerable skill to moderate. A code of conduct, while it can simply be a communication of the ideals that the project strives towards, can be used as a scaffolding to attack those who we disagree with and wish to punish.
I think the main takeaway here is that a Code of Conduct, while valuable, has to be treated carefully. A lot of these projects agreed to a Code of Conduct just to appease a certain faction of their devs, and are now seeing that it can be used against them.
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