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GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

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Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#331

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

redeeman wrote: post #324
logicprog wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is pretty invasive behavior, I won't lie. However, if [this]( https://blade.ruby-lang.org/ruby-core/72916 ) is the tenor of the "valid points" brought up against her CoC, I'm... not impressed. It's just standard conservative whining. The language you use towards other people does matter, actually, to the kind of culture and environment you build, and wanting to have guidelines around that doesn't make you "perpe…

well guess what, as everyone likes to say, "we live in a democracy", part of the rules is respecting that other people have other opinions. If you work within the system in a legal and peaceful manner, then that is fair game, and what these people are trying to do is discriminate against others, that which they claim to oppose so wholeheartedly. It truly exposes them for what they are

> part of the rules is respecting that other people have other opinions.

not at all. We can acknowledge that other people have opinions ("respecting" a fact makes no sense in english) but we don't have to respect either the people or the opinions, depending on who they are or what they are: such respect can be earned and lost on merit

> If you work within the system in a legal and peaceful manner, then that is fair game

working within the system means complying with the CoC and any other terms & prerequisites to contributing

if you aren't doing that, you're trying to fight the system, that which you claim to support so wholeheartedly, exposing you for who you truly are

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#332

Post by that_guy_iain »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #288
that_guy_iain wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BDSM doesn't "make women slaves". This specific BDSM-fetish did. That was part of the kink and the ideology behind it.

Do you have documentation of that? Can you prove that it was non-consensual? Was there a prosecution of human trafficking that followed on? I ask because I'm not surprised at all that there's slavery among BDSM aficionados, but it is supposed to be consensual, and Larry himself asserts that every slave relationship is consensual in the communities he belonged to, as of 2017: https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outi…

There is no such implication. And you yourself described it as a slave relationship. So I’m not really sure what your point really is?

Their kink was a slave relationship and some people thought that was taking advantage of a mentally challenged woman. He says he even consulted with doctors to ensure they were able to consent. He says police also attended and were ok with it (but Dahmer and others prove that doesn’t really mean anything).

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#333

Post by foldr »

userbinator wrote: post #307
foldr wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re essentially proposing to do nothing and have faith that everyone will get along and that everyone will feel comfortable contributing. It’s a nice idea, but it tends not to work in practice. Left to their own devices, people will talk about things that aren’t directly related to the project. How would you propose to stop them if not by enforcing certain conduct rules? You’re effectively just advocating for a di…

Those who try to inject politics, especially identity politics, where it doesn't belong should simply be ignored. As the saying goes, "don't feed the trolls".

That’s your proposed rule (which I disagree with), but how do you propose to enforce it? It’s either just wishful thinking or a different - and worse - code of conduct.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#334

Post by sensanaty »

logicprog wrote: post #258
sensanaty wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but from what I remember they would seek out every possible opportunity in every single possible open source community they could find and propose the CoC that they wrote. 0 contributions to the projects, with the exception of demanding that people implement incredibly verbose CoC's in their projects under the guise of "protecting the minorities contributing to the projects". Most infamous instance is pro…

That is pretty invasive behavior, I won't lie. However, if [this]( https://blade.ruby-lang.org/ruby-core/72916 ) is the tenor of the "valid points" brought up against her CoC, I'm... not impressed. It's just standard conservative whining. The language you use towards other people does matter, actually, to the kind of culture and environment you build, and wanting to have guidelines around that doesn't make you "perpe…

If we're talking software projects, and especially large open source projects with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of contributors, we also have to realize that there's many, MANY people from all over the world with all sorts of opinions to be found amongst the contributors. One man's (or woman's) idea of what is offensive can be entirely innocent to another, and vice versa of course.

And I don't see why anyone's opinion outside the relevant project should matter at all. I've contributed to many projects over the years and I can't think of a single time I've ever come close to caring or even knowing what the maintainer's opinions on the world are. It's simply not something that comes up unless you explicitly go looking for it, and honestly what's the point? I'm sure many of the projects I've worked with have had their fair share of people that I'd disagree with on any number of topics, but that's wholly irrelevant if we're talking PRs since we're not evaluating someones morals and opinions, but the code they're producing. Chances are there's no slurs or anything political in the code they're submitting, so why give the energy to looking at anything else?

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#335

Post by foldr »

glonq wrote: post #318
userbinator wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can welcome trans people to your project, or transphobes, but not necessarily both. You don't need to "welcome" either. You just don't talk about that stuff because it has zero relevance to your project, unless you're trying to use it as a political statement (which technical projects shouldn't be at all.)

As regressive as " don't ask; don't tell " sounds, I pretty much agree. Unless it is somehow very relevant to the project, I just don't want to know about anybody's race, gender, genitals, or politics. All those things can be weaponized to become divisive. I just want to work together with other people who are passionate about great technology.

Are you sure you want race and gender in the list there? You’re going to refer to all your colleagues as ‘they’ and ask them to avoid accidentally revealing their gender? Don’t mention that you got a gift for Father’s Day! I guess they’re not allowed to put photos on their GitHub profiles in case you can determine which race they probably are. Meeting any of them in person is, of course, completely out of the question.

This ‘don’t ask don’t’ tell stuff is regressive, but in discussions like this it sometimes seems to devolve into pure nonsense. No human community functions as you're suggesting. The literal content of what’s being said is so crazy that the subtext is clear: “if you’re not cis, white and hetero, then keep quiet about it”.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#336

Post by account42 »

Voultapher wrote: post #330
Akronymus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>..., it depends what those violations are. It decidedly does not. To quote Kovarex, a Factorio dev: “If Stalin had a good writeup on programming, would linking that be dangerous?” [1] I believe VERY strongly in separating the art from the artist. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/o2ly6f/friday_fac...

You seem to be conflating reading an idea and working together. If Stalin had some good programming idea, that idea itself isn't tainted. I wouldn't mind using a library that incorporates that idea. However I would never want to work with him together on a project. A common theme in this discussion seems to be the delusion that working together on code is some pure abstract thing without any emotions or personality i…

> A common theme in this discussion seems to be the delusion that working together on code is some pure abstract thing without any emotions or personality involved.

Yes, strive towards that. If you can't keep your emotions in check, seek help with that instead of taking it out on people you are emotional about.

> And in regards to the dangerous part, there is a very real danger in giving people a platform and potentially promoting them.

Deplatforming based on feelings and especially the normalization of that is a much much much bigger danger. Don't expect to always be on the good sides of those holding the power even if you are now.

> Their world views are so strongly incompatible with mine that I don't want to help them become more popular, even by proxy.

If their world views don't affect their contributions to the project then that's squarely a you problem.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#337

Post by roenxi »

toast0 wrote: post #218
roenxi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Is there a current need for the FSF or alternatives? There's a wide variety of licenses already developed and between GPL2 and 3, LGPLs, AGPL, BSD/MIT, Apache, Mozilla, and normal commercial licenses, plus or minus PATENTS files, I'm not sure we need…

I suspect we agree that, in all there world, there might be literally a single-digit number of people who would found the FSF. If it doesn't look like a good idea now, it looks like an even worse idea when Stallman did it. Nobody believed there was a possibility of it working, let alone that there could possibly be a need.

The issue I have is the people who are confident that cancelling that person is a good idea. It seems like a mistake.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#338

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

klodolph wrote: post #202
davidjfelix wrote: post #197

There's an awful lot of straw man accusations going on in this thread from people who seem to feel threatened by some invisible person who is going to persecute them for something they believe or say or are as a person. Even just an ounce of empathy and you'd realize that's possible without a CoC too and the goal of establishing these boundaries is to protect the people who feel that same way daily because of who the…

Yes, this thread feels like stepping into bizarro land. I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future. This reminds me of the complaints about seatbelts. Yeah, every once in a while, a seatbelt makes a crash worse. Requiring seatbelts takes away the sense of freedom you have in a car. That sort of thing. Sometimes, a CoC will be abused to harass people. Step back and look…

> I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future.

I don't think this is unreasonable. As another commenter has alluded to, one of the more typical implementation details of this meme is to forbid the common greeting "hey guys" and to instead insist people use "hey folks".

Anyone can understand that the word "folks" is superficially more inclusive than "guys", but I don't think performing that switcheroo actually helps anyone[^1].

There are many examples of don't-say-this-word-but-instead-say-this-other-one in this space, so I don't think the 1984-newspeak future characterisation is unfair.

---

[^1]: Ok, I can imagine someone feeling othered in some scenario, but I don't think blanket language bans are a good solution. Empathy and thoughtfulness would be better than pearl clutching and minutiae keeping.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#339

Post by foldr »

Dalewyn wrote: post #329
foldr wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already responded to that question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36431254 I may have misunderstood what you meant by it, in which case it would be helpful if you could explain what you did mean.

No, we are not in agreement. If an employee makes "transphobic comments in public outside of a work context" then upon what grounds does the employer have to terminate him for that? An employer should not be able to terminate an employee for something they do in their private time. Likewise, GCC should not be able to ban someone for doing something not related to GCC. That GCC's code of conduct allows for that is pre…

>An employer should not be able to terminate an employee for something they do in their private time.

My point was just that this is nothing new. It's always been the case that you could be fired for certain things that you did in your private time (e.g., historically, being gay). This is because what you do outside of work can affect the reputation of your employer. Within legal limits your employer has the right to freedom of association (just as you do).

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#340

Post by classified »

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,…

Humans are resourceful and able to abuse or weaponize anything and everything. That alone doesn't make it a bad idea.
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