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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

#41

Post by sph »

Code of conducts are a waste of time. Trolls won’t read it, well-behaved people don’t need to be told how to behave well. It’s not like there are CoCs out there that grant you specific rights others don’t: there is no CoC that says, for example, it is fine to harass people or be a racist idiot. So they’re all a variation of:

  Rule 1: don’t be a ****

  Rule 2: basically rule 1 but with more words
Then why do you need a code of conduct at this point. Not being a **** to other people is an unspoken rule that applies everywhere in life, online and offline.

CoCs simply exist because there is a large contingent of people that really do love making and enforcing rules.

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

#42

Post by Balinares »

saubeidl wrote: post #10

Yikes, I didn't realize Raymond was the kind of guy that posts about "low IQ black people" and sees "Marxists" everywhere. I don't like CoCs either, but ironically guys like him make me think they might be needed after all...

People of ESR's ilk are why you can't have a serious project without a CoC these days. It's just tragic. Else before too long you end up losing your black, trans, etc, contributors. Because somehow it's not "drama" when the ilk does racism/misogyny/transphobia but it is when they're being called out on it.

Having a clear CoC helps keep the good actors safe while having clear red lines to keep the bad actors either in line, or out. But it's so sad that we got to that point at all...

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

#43

Post by arevno »

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.

> it's a formalized "old boys club" dynamic

There's a risk that this happens, sure, but it can be more charitably read as allowing/retaining people like Steve Jobs or Linus Torvalds, who, despite being assholes, are effective assholes and usually spew vitriol only in the interests of the product itself.

Weighing annoyance against contributions is a valid methodology. Your concern is valid, as well, so governance should always be introspective enough to ensure that the metrics of "annoying" and "useful" are objective ones and don't grandfather in the insiders.

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

#44

Post by brazukadev »

unsungNovelty wrote: post #38
brazukadev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What free speech do you expect in a free software project? There is a big chance that discussion is totally off topic and anyone managing a community knows that, for you to not be allowed to destroy it, you should be booted.

Free speech as in right to opinion without worrying about being silenced. Dead simple. On merit. It's not off-topic all the time. Right now, moderation is unfair and used to silence people. And it's not just OSS projects you know? There are OSS related communities like Linux / BSD and many many other projects/communities. CoC unfairness is all over there too.

I don't care about your opinion when I'm reporting or fixing a bug in a open source project, go preach somewhere else.

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

#45

Post by Sophira »

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.

It also establishes that the project is a meritocracy, which is not necessarily something that every project wants. (And from a personal point of view, many meritocracies seem pretty toxic to me.)

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

#46

Post by p_l »

roryirvine wrote: post #32
p_l wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important part to remember is that Cathedral refers to GCC and Bazaar to EGCS , which was a GCC fork that IIRC ESR was big part of and which ultimately replaced GCC

I don't think ESR had anything to do with egcs directly but, yeah, the egcs/gcc split along with the XEmacs / GNU Emacs fracas were likely inspiration for CatB. He was always better known as a writer than as a developer - his most significant FOSS contributions were probably fetchmail prior to 2003, and the ill-fated CML2 kernel config system around 2001. I'm not aware of anything of note that he's produced since.

Well, better said would be that ESR was... loud around EGCS? I got into Linux and FOSS essentially just as EGCS took over GCC for good, so I am less clear on details

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

#47

Post by Sophira »

_moof wrote: post #11
saubeidl wrote: post #10

Yikes, I didn't realize Raymond was the kind of guy that posts about "low IQ black people" and sees "Marxists" everywhere. I don't like CoCs either, but ironically guys like him make me think they might be needed after all...

He's been this way for a long time, unfortunately. I remember reading a blog post of his in the '00s that was openly racist. Come to think of it, that may have been the last thing of his I read.

It feels to me like a lot of people who don't like codes of conduct have similar views.

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

#48

Post by roryirvine »

p_l wrote: post #46
roryirvine wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think ESR had anything to do with egcs directly but, yeah, the egcs/gcc split along with the XEmacs / GNU Emacs fracas were likely inspiration for CatB. He was always better known as a writer than as a developer - his most significant FOSS contributions were probably fetchmail prior to 2003, and the ill-fated CML2 kernel config system around 2001. I'm not aware of anything of note that he's produced since.

Well, better said would be that ESR was... loud around EGCS? I got into Linux and FOSS essentially just as EGCS took over GCC for good, so I am less clear on details

That's fair! And, yes, he seemed to enjoy rushing into every flamewar he could find back then.

It's one of the reasons this current tweet is so surprising - he's moaning about "drama and politics", "negative useful work", and "shit-stirrers" "who are more annoying to work with than [their] contributions justify", but doesn't seem to realise that all of those complaints could have been made more strongly still about ESR himself, especially when he was in his pomp.

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

#49

Post by tempodox »

> But we should be ruthless and merciless towards people who try to turn "Be kind!" into a weapon. Indulging them never ends well.

Indeed, this is how cancel culture started (not just in OSS), and look where it got us.

"If you are more annoying to work with than your contributions justify, you'll be ejected." should be all that is required, if it really needs to be said at all.

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

#50

Post by mariusor »

sph wrote: post #41

Code of conducts are a waste of time. Trolls won’t read it, well-behaved people don’t need to be told how to behave well. It’s not like there are CoCs out there that grant you specific rights others don’t: there is no CoC that says, for example, it is fine to harass people or be a racist idiot. So they’re all a variation of: Rule 1: don’t be a **** Rule 2: basically rule 1 but with more words Then why do you need a c…

The way I understand the necessity for CoCs is not to tell people how to behave, but to have a clear path to understanding why some people get removed or denied contributing to a project. It's easier to say "your behaviour contravenes our CoC" than "I don't like the way you're behaving".
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