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GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

phoronix.com

361–370 of 387 posts

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an extreme case, but some people are just naturally attention-seeking trolls. The right thing to do is to ignore them.

That's the thing though, it's hard to ignore them since they pose themselves as coming from a morally righteous place, and they have the followers to back them up with their demands. Just look at the Opal thread I posted, it's started as a demand, and then a bunch of people who've had 0 to do with Opal start spamming the thread to back up the OP and hurling insults around at all the contributors for "daring" to assoc…

Every time I've seen a project get targeted by these CoCs, all the maintainers approach it from a good place assuming no malice

That unfortunately just shows how naive the average person has become.

Anyone else notice that all of this identity politics stuff seems to mainly infect projects in more "accessible" languages? I've heard about it in Javascript, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. but not much in C/C++ and basically none in Asm. The sibling comment here about SQLite's response (a pure C project) to this trolling provides a great contrast. People and projects solidly focused on technical stuff know better.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#362
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the dead part which is the trigger for some? I've read recently that phrase unalive is being used as substitute of various dead, suicide related words, to avoid being auto-censored or demonetized in the social media - but that's a bit different thing, innit

Somebody decided that the word "master" is bad enough to become taboo, so the same thing happening to "dead" is not particularly far-fetched.

On that matter, i can see the point when used to describe a master/slave configuration, but I don’t see how it can make sense when talking for example about the git master branch: there is no such thing as a slave branch, and “master” in there only refers to a “master copy” (concept borrowed from cd-crom mass production from what I know, where the final iso image to be burned to all disks is indeed called the master copy).

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The “hey guys” thing is always some friend-of-a-friend who says it happened. I’m sure there are receipts for it happening somewhere, but it sounds like it’s uncommon.

The CoC is mainly used to eject serial harassers out of a community, as far as I can tell. Serial harassers generally try to skirt the rules and hide their behavior, so the CoC has that “violations of this code outside these spaces” clause in it. You know, somebody making sexual remarks to other community members at a bar after a conference, or worse.

I have seen a lot of projects push to use inclusive language along the lines of whitelist/blacklist -> allowlist/denylist, or master/slave -> leader/follower. I’ve seen the CoC used to justify the changes, but nobody’s getting ejected from the community for refusing to use the terms.

(Please don’t interpret universal quantifiers mathematically.)

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

The “hey guys” thing is always some friend-of-a-friend who says it happened. I’m sure there are receipts for it happening somewhere, but it sounds like it’s uncommon. The CoC is mainly used to eject serial harassers out of a community, as far as I can tell. Serial harassers generally try to skirt the rules and hide their behavior, so the CoC has that “violations of this code outside these spaces” clause in it. You kn…

> The “hey guys” thing is always some friend-of-a-friend who says it happened. I’m sure there are receipts for it happening somewhere, but it sounds like it’s uncommon.

I’ve encountered it directly multiple times, so I’m feeling slightly gaslighted.

> but nobody’s getting ejected from the community for refusing to use the terms.

How do you know this? And which communities are you referring to? Surely you can’t be suggesting that no company has ever reprimanded an employee for refusing to stop using certain kinds of language? There are ramifications other than direct ejection, so this issue isn’t quite as black and white as you seem to be portraying. At least anecdotally, I can tell you that it was a problem when a former colleague refused to stop saying “that’s what she said.” It’s not a fireable offence per se, but it does move the needle with management sentiment on whether or not the professional relationship ought to continue.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow—that's a lot to read into just a single word! > It sounds like arrogance, group-think, and a lack of empathy for outsiders was pretty much at the heart of your cyber-libertarian dream utopia. that sure is one way to characterize being a lonely teen who discovered a feeling of belonging in an emergently developing meta-culture set in an incredibly diverse environment of digital creativity, inspiration, and hope fo…

> were you there for the Old Times? Do you even lift, bruh? Come on, you said you were in middle school in 2004ish. "Old Times", indeed.

Peak Desktop Internet was twentyish years ago man, and the Web was only mainstreamish for, what, tenish years before that? if that?

a lot has changed in the past 20 years, culturally, with the rise of the smartphone, and it's useful to reflect upon that—I don't know why you're insisting on being a dick about it. I have to assume you grew up in the smartphone era, and that's all you've ever known.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> were you there for the Old Times? Do you even lift, bruh? Come on, you said you were in middle school in 2004ish. "Old Times", indeed.

Peak Desktop Internet was twentyish years ago man, and the Web was only mainstreamish for, what, tenish years before that? if that? a lot has changed in the past 20 years, culturally, with the rise of the smartphone, and it's useful to reflect upon that—I don't know why you're insisting on being a dick about it. I have to assume you grew up in the smartphone era, and that's all you've ever known.

> Peak Desktop Internet was twentyish years ago man, and the Web was only mainstreamish for, what, fifteenish years before that?

20 years ago = 2003

15 years before that= 1988

First web client = 1990

First public web page = 1991

NCSA Mosaic = 1993

Netscape Navigator = 1994

Mainstream Web is mid-late 90s.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#367
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine does not, but then around here we have anti-bullying, anti-harassment and anti-discrimination laws so these things are penal matters, not merely contract breaches.

Do you believe there are legal things you could do outside of work that would get you fired?

Maybe, but they’d need to prove that it has an effect on how I do my job. They cannot just fire me because I say something they don’t like.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine does not, but then around here we have anti-bullying, anti-harassment and anti-discrimination laws so these things are penal matters, not merely contract breaches.

CoC is not a contract. It's a non-binding promise that the project leadership will take actions up to banning someone if harassment happens.

The whole point of it is that there are consequences if you breach it, otherwise it is almost entirely pointless.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CoC is not a contract. It's a non-binding promise that the project leadership will take actions up to banning someone if harassment happens.

The whole point of it is that there are consequences if you breach it, otherwise it is almost entirely pointless.

yes but the consequences are decided by normal humans via the organization's normal decision-making procedures. The legal system isn't involved.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> were you there for the Old Times? Do you even lift, bruh? Come on, you said you were in middle school in 2004ish. "Old Times", indeed.

Peak Desktop Internet was twentyish years ago man, and the Web was only mainstreamish for, what, tenish years before that? if that? a lot has changed in the past 20 years, culturally, with the rise of the smartphone, and it's useful to reflect upon that—I don't know why you're insisting on being a dick about it. I have to assume you grew up in the smartphone era, and that's all you've ever known.

You know what they say about assumptions?
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