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Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

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Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#21

Post by Symbiote »

duskwuff wrote: post #17
Symbiote wrote: post #9

Eric's suggestion for a CoC: > "If you are more annoying to work with than your contributions justify, you'll be ejected." is not unreasonable (whether written down or not) for an individual's hobby project, but for something run by a company or other organization I think more detail is required. The OSI code of conduct seems too general, perhaps open for different interpretations or potentially selective enforcement…

> > "If you are more annoying to work with than your contributions justify, you'll be ejected." I'd argue that this is unreasonable for any project large enough to need a CoC at all. What it amounts to is excusing misconduct by project insiders, while allowing them to drive off new users by declaring their behavior 'annoying'. This isn't a code of conduct at all; it's a formalized "old boys club" dynamic.

You are correct, thanks for the explanation.

Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#22

Post by saubeidl »

keanb wrote: post #20
saubeidl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" If you kick out your Jews and replace them with Black women, that's a 25 to 30-point drop in average IQ. In an individual this would be severe brain damage." Some politics are not within the realm of what is considered acceptable.

[flagged]

It is our job as a society to keep it that way.

Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#23

Post by mytailorisrich »

duskwuff wrote: post #17
Symbiote wrote: post #9

Eric's suggestion for a CoC: > "If you are more annoying to work with than your contributions justify, you'll be ejected." is not unreasonable (whether written down or not) for an individual's hobby project, but for something run by a company or other organization I think more detail is required. The OSI code of conduct seems too general, perhaps open for different interpretations or potentially selective enforcement…

> > "If you are more annoying to work with than your contributions justify, you'll be ejected." I'd argue that this is unreasonable for any project large enough to need a CoC at all. What it amounts to is excusing misconduct by project insiders, while allowing them to drive off new users by declaring their behavior 'annoying'. This isn't a code of conduct at all; it's a formalized "old boys club" dynamic.

An OSS project has de facto owners and an established group of contributors. If they want to "drive off" new users that's their prerogative.

In fact, a CoC is no more than them laying down the law explicitly on how they want people to behave in the project.

"If you are more annoying to work with than your contributions justify, you'll be ejected" is spot-on on how things work in general.

That might lead the project to fail or fork (beauty of OSS) but that's life.

Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#26

Post by its-summertime »

Code of Conducts are misaligned, in telling people what is allowed and what isn't.

What is practical is a list of obligations the maintainers are willing to do for the community:

Maintainers can only directly control themselves, after all. Only through their actions does anything happen, either merging code, or removing people from accessing the project.

Knowing where the maintainers are going to draw the line is far more useful.

Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#28

Post by rincebrain »

I think my problem with codes of conduct is that, in my experience, they're usually just accountability sinks[1].

e.g. "all violations must be reported to the committee" => "we will forbid anyone taking action without the committee's prior approval, and insist that disclosing any reports to us is a violation of policy, then refuse to take any action on reports".

So a thing that was supposed to explicitly communicate shared expectations and norms, instead becomes a way to minimize risk of bad PR for the project by silencing anyone who believed they were operating in good faith.

[1] - https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks

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