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GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

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Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#51

Post by roenxi »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #6
not_your_vase wrote: post #2

Has there been any project which had its community change its conduct after adopting a CoC? Or any projects which had a profound impact due a CoC? I see that having CoC is getting standard with OSS projects, old and new alike. But have no idea if it actually does anything.

Fair warning, I do not like codes of conduct. They're an authoritarian power play justified by fear. Codes of conduct are more about changing who is in the community than about changing the conduct of existing community members. Periodically someone runs afoul of the ruling elite who pass judgement upon them behind closed doors, usually leading to excommunication. The atmosphere of knowing what you say will be report…

In addition, open source projects are generally balancing on a knife-edge between irrelevance and obsolescence. Any bureaucratic tool that draws attention away from their core focus carries a risk of derailing them.

The CoC people are relatively transparent that they want to be able to push people like Torvalds and Stallman out of projects. Raising the question; do we have a limitless supply of Stallmans and Torvalds out there to draw on, or are these people actually quite rare? From what I can tell they are quite rare and need to be encouraged in the good they do rather than ostracised for the flaws that all humans have in some way or another.

Stallman is a great example. There is a long queue of people lining up to criticise him, but nobody has successfully cobbled together an alternative to the FSF. It wouldn't be hard. GPL 2.0 hit a better sweet spot than 3.0. Nobody has stepped up to the plate.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#52

Post by foldr »

Dalewyn wrote: post #46
foldr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely commonplace. Yes, you can be fired for doing something outside of work that would bring your employer into disrepute. If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay.

[flagged]

>What part of having absolutely nothing to do with the company or its business do you not understand?

We were presumably talking about cases where people might be fired or excluded from a project for e.g. making transphobic comments in public outside of a work context. If you agree that this isn't a case where the actions have 'nothing to do with the company or its business' (because of reputational issues), then it seems that we're in agreement.

>If anything, it seems like nowadays people can be routinely fired when it's discovered that they are straight.

Utter nonsense – and you know it.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#53

Post by foldr »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #44
foldr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely commonplace. Yes, you can be fired for doing something outside of work that would bring your employer into disrepute. If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay.

> If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay. Do we really want to go back to those times?

Your comment is a bit cryptic, but I assume you're trying to make an equivalence between, say, someone being fired for being gay in the 1970s and someone now being fired for saying hateful things about trans people. These scenarios are only comparable at a level of abstraction that's not useful. It's only inconsistent to oppose one thing and not the other if you think that employers should be barred from firing people for anything that they say or do outside of work. I don't think there has ever been a society where this was the norm. Looking at the big picture, people nowadays have far more freedom in this respect than they ever did (e.g. women are not fired when they get married).

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#54

Post by Dalewyn »

foldr wrote: post #52
Dalewyn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>What part of having absolutely nothing to do with the company or its business do you not understand? We were presumably talking about cases where people might be fired or excluded from a project for e.g. making transphobic comments in public outside of a work context. If you agree that this isn't a case where the actions have 'nothing to do with the company or its business' (because of reputational issues), then it…

Say you're a car mechanic and you work at a car shop. The car shop fires you for saying the Moon is made of cheese during a BBQ at a friend's on Saturday, because it's against the nebulous code of conduct.

Now let's say you're a programmer and you like volunteering code to GCC. The project bans you because your beliefs expressed anywhere, including in the privacy of your own home, violate the nebulous code of conduct.

That's the kind of world we're slowly but surely moving towards.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#56

Post by LexiMax »

krona wrote: post #50
LexiMax wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t. I have been away from hacker news for about 2 to 3 years and quite frankly I am shocked that this place is still having this same tired argument whereas outside it seems to be an accepted fact of life that having rules surrounding the conduct of project participants is in fact a good thing.

> it seems to be an accepted fact of life Isn't that the problem? Accept it. Don't ask questions, or else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance

> Isn't that the problem?

The problem is that the specific phrase "Code of Conduct" has been dragged into a culture war. And if the problem is the parlance, the solution is to just call it something different, like "Conduct Policy", "Rules", or something similar.

It might seem trite, but in my experience using a different name seems to shut off the part of some folks brain who automatically assume said rules will be enforced in bad faith.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#58

Post by practice9 »

speeder wrote: post #35

I see a lot of people here forgetting a real case of CoC abuse. There was this famous Drupal dev that wrote a transcript of a fetish wedding on his fetish social media profile. An enemy of his on Drupal quoted that transcript and used it as examples the Dev should be punished. Drupal, like GCC proposed rules, allow punishment of someone for something they did outside the community, and not only the guy was punished,…

> Drupal, like GCC proposed rules, allow punishment of someone for something they did outside the community, and not only the guy was punished, an ex girlfriend of his was harassed by "helpful" people

Oh wow. I was undecided about the helpfulness of CoC as sometimes people in the project can become hostile, unstable or passive-aggressive.

But this case is very bad. Seems like CoC opens up ways for character assassination, effectively becoming "rules for the harassment of the outgroup".

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#59

Post by klipt »

kramerger wrote: post #25
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you believe that only married male-female couples should have sex and children? Or that people with penises don't belong in womens spaces? Or whatever other currently controversial topic? It has nothing to do with GCC, nothing with code quality, nothing with your contributions to the project, you don't say that in code, in code comments, on gcc mailing lists, anywhere gcc related. But, because of the CoC ( ht…

So basically you want to go to a technical forum with a significant number of Irish members and tell them that in your opinion Irish people should not exist? Don't you see how that makes the place unwelcoming to them?? (Replace Irish with gay, trans, republican, ...)

There are always scissor cases. Suppose X, a Ukrainian says on Twitter "I wish the Russians would get out of Ukraine" and then Y, a Ukrainian of Russian ethnicity reports X for saying that Y shouldn't exist. Who is right in this case, X or Y?

Replace Russia/Ukraine with your favorite contentious issue and you could potentially see communities splitting up over this.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#60

Post by foldr »

Dalewyn wrote: post #54
foldr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What part of having absolutely nothing to do with the company or its business do you not understand? We were presumably talking about cases where people might be fired or excluded from a project for e.g. making transphobic comments in public outside of a work context. If you agree that this isn't a case where the actions have 'nothing to do with the company or its business' (because of reputational issues), then it…

Say you're a car mechanic and you work at a car shop. The car shop fires you for saying the Moon is made of cheese during a BBQ at a friend's on Saturday, because it's against the nebulous code of conduct. Now let's say you're a programmer and you like volunteering code to GCC. The project bans you because your beliefs expressed anywhere, including in the privacy of your own home, violate the nebulous code of conduct…

>Say you're a car mechanic and you work at a car shop. The car shop fires you for saying the Moon is made of cheese during a BBQ at a friend's on Saturday, because it's against the nebulous code of conduct.

Or maybe we’re slowly but surely moving to a world where the rights of women and minority groups are being slowly eroded after decades of progress, and before long me and all the other gays will be rounded up and sent to conversion camps in Florida run by a newly-nationalised Disney corporation.

I’m gonna guess you don’t find the line of argument in the preceding paragraph super convincing. I feel the same way about what you wrote.

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