7 ms·

GitHub's Atom Switches from the Open Code of Conduct to the Contributor Convent

58 points by pauloday 11y ago

josteink 11y ago
Actual pull request here: https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/8312 https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/8312 Related HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043356 Edit: looking at the discussion in general and this article by ESR[1] in particular, I'm surprised they didn't just drop this COC nonsense entirely instead of adopting a new "flawed" one. [1] https://archive.is/6F9Yr https://archive.is/6F9Yr
pauloday 11y ago
Contributor Covenent: http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/2/0/ http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/2/0/
Zikes 11y ago
Title should be "Covenant" not "Convent".
- jerelunruh 11y ago
  Ha, I initially didn't realize that was a typo and thought things were getting pretty serious with this whole contributor conduct thing.
xn 11y ago
Covenant
tvanantwerp 11y ago
There appears to be a lot of drama around both the Open Code of Conduct and the Contributor Convent. I'm not at all familiar with either--is there anyone who is who could share the disagreements going on around both documents?
- new_corp_dev 11y ago
  The Contributor Covenant is a simple document that explicitly tells people not to do the things they already know not to do. The Open Code of Conduct is a design-by-committee list of all the reasons you're a terrible person and you just don't know it yet, but don't worry as soon as you slip up we'll wage a campaign of harassment against you because you're "privileged" and you deserve it. And don't you dare criticize it, because "reverse"-isms don't exist.
- josteink 11y ago
  The drama is over having a CoC in the first place. ESR has written about one of the CoC authors here: https://archive.is/6F9Yr https://archive.is/6F9Yr Tldr: the people who claims to deliver a product providing order and civility (the "CoC") are usually the people who are conducting the abusive behaviour. In such a CoC is very alarming signal with regard to who is in charge of a project's management.
  - djur 11y ago
    ESR has political motivations to oppose these CoCs, and the strongest argument that post makes is an attempt at guilt by association. I found it extremely unconvincing.
    - josteink 11y ago
      He has his political motivation, just like the CoCers have theirs. This probably applies to everyone, so it's not an argument which can be used to blanket reject a statement as such. His political position is that open source projects should be about the code, not gender, politics and endless subjects ripe for tactical abuse and causing drama. Personally I find that a perfectly reasonable and rational position. What fault do you find with it?
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    ESR is against a lot of things, like 'not being a racist.'
- 11y ago
tzs 11y ago
This looks like a good move to me. The text of the CC only has one potential problem area that I see: This code of conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community. The potential problem here is what does it mean to be "representing the project or its community"? For example, suppose on my personal website I include a link to my resume, and on that resume I list my work on the project. Suppose also on my personal website I have have a blog, and on that blog I post an article containing sexualized language or imagery. Am I in violation of the CC? The use of sexualized language or imagery is one of the specific examples given in the CC of a violation. I would say that, based on current common usage of English, stating on a site unrelated to the project, as part of biographical information (such as a resume) that I contribute to the project would NOT be "representing the project or its community", and so would be outside the scope of the CC.
- omginternets 11y ago
  >The text of the CC only has one potential problem area that I see Have we been reading the same thing? What about the part where they consider "other unethical or unprofessional conduct" to be violations of the CC? This whole thing is set up to be arbitrary and highly political in its application. I invite everyone to see the broad and hand-wavy language for themselves: http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/2/0/code_of_conduct.md http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/2/0/code_of_conduc... It's only 18 lines long, if you can believe it.
- VLM 11y ago
  The meta problem is trying to discuss specific examples of rules lawyering when the purpose of one CC is to eliminate detailed rules lawyering isn't going to philosophically work well. None the less, for a corporate interpretation of the exact same topic but with respect to email: http://www.emaildisclaimers.com/Sample_disclaimers.htm#Liability http://www.emaildisclaimers.com/Sample_disclaimers.htm#Liabi... Generally speaking identifying yourself as a legal representative of a project or community has all kinds of interesting legal problems; you don't want the project sued because some idle conversation between some contributor and a service provider was seen by the provider as a verbal contract between them and the project for their services. Another example would be copyright, if the project owns the copyright to your self made pr0n example (because you posted it on the project wiki) then you're probably in huge trouble, but if everyone legally agrees you own the copyright and not the project, well, its kind of hard to argue you represent someone you're clearly not legally working for.
throwaway54984 11y ago
It's sad that programming is starting to mean more and more politics.
- freshhawk 11y ago
  It's involved politics ever since more than two people were doing it. Are you sad that it's being made explicit and being talked about or that it's being talked about in terms of identity politics?
  - pauloday 11y ago
    Not the OC, but it seems like there are more an more outsiders coming in and trying to enforce their politics while not contributing anything. I think this has always happened, but it seems like there's been an uptick recently and that worries me.
    - djur 11y ago
      Can you name some of these outsiders? Most of the people I've seen involved in promoting social justice in the open source community are themselves open source contributors.
      - pauloday 11y ago
        Well, CoralineAda with that whole Opal thing for one. I guess I was unclear, I didn't mean outsiders as in people who don't contribute to open source as much as outsiders who don't contribute to specific projects coming into those projects and trying to impose a COC. Perhaps I'm overreacting.
protomyth 11y ago
"This code of conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community." What exactly constitutes "representing the project or its community"?
- steve19 11y ago
  I presume this means anywhere the general public can read it (twitter, Facebook, youtube) or infer "it" from secondary sources (campaign contributions). It refers to anything that the mob disagrees with. This is the most scary development in open source I have witnessed. I will have nothing to do with an open source project that means I cannot express my views in public (whatever those views might be) without fear of reprisal.
iza 11y ago
I definitely prefer the wording of the Contributor Code of Conduct over the Open Code of Conduct. I don't really see the point though. Everything listed is just common sense, and there is still a catch-all clause open to interpretation.
- omginternets 11y ago
  >Everything listed is just common sense, and there is still a catch-all clause open to interpretation. And, as I've been repeating ad nauseam, these codes of conduct fail to distinguish between genuine harassment and garden variety ass-hattery. Attempting to govern the latter is a fool's errand, and good for nobody in the long run. I don't think anybody can honestly claim to have never fallen short of absolute professionalism and kindness. These codes of conduct are little more than pretexts to ostracize and publicly shame arbitrary individuals.
LyndsySimon 11y ago
:%s/convent/covenant/
djur 11y ago
The Open Code of Conduct is just too long and specific. To me, it feels like an attempt to preemptively head off 'rules lawyer' casuistry by ensuring that everything that could be a cause for ejecting someone from a community is explicitly listed. In my experience, this just provides a much larger surface of attack -- and the OCoC seems to be suffering from exactly that now. The Contributor Covenant's approach seems to be to make a clear statement of intent, and relying on the community to apply it correctly. It doesn't specifically ban, say, offering a backrub, but the necessary and appropriate response to someone saying "ha, but there's no rule against repeatedly offering a stranger backrubs, IS there?" isn't to draft a new rule, it's to show them the door.
- pauloday 11y ago
  Well put. The solution to rules lawyering is not more rules.
pauloday 11y ago
> We are committed to making participation in this project a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, or nationality. It seems like you don't need a laundry list of things that are not OK to harass people about unless certain types of harassment are OK. For example "differences of opinion" is not on the list. Is it OK to harass someone who disagrees with me? I doubt that's the intention, and it's probably covered by the rest of the covenant, but if that's the case why do they need to list out all the things it's not OK to harass people about? It just seems needlessly complicated and ripe for causing further drama.
- bluecalm 11y ago
  I agree and I think it's politically motivated. What about: "avoid personal remarks and don't make any personal information public without permission". Who cares if it's religion, food preferences or gender. Harassing people is bad, giving away their personal information is bad - don't do it no matter what the specifics are.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Yes, I noticed that intelligence isn't listed. So are we set to deride folks of lesser IQ, but not so little they classify as "disabled"? Maybe they're just aping what they see in other places. Eg freedom of religion should be a no-op, fully covered by other rights. Folks should be free to think and do as they please. Religion shouldn't be an excuse to get away with other things. Yet this wording seems copied around as if it was deep or something. Same thing here, with a few added classes?
kzhahou 11y ago
I honestly don't understand why any of this is necessary. Without the doc, if I hurl nasty insults and personal attacks, the community will tell me to fuck off and not accept my work. Won't they?
- mordocai 11y ago
  According to some people I have seen argue against a code of conduct they would still accept your work because your insults/attacks have "nothing to do with the code".
  - pauloday 11y ago
    I think that's a good idea in principle, but if they're insulting everyone you don't want them to be a part of the community, and rejecting code might be your way of rejecting them from the community. I think it depends on the value of the code as well. If someone who fixed 1000 bugs probably has a little more license to be rude than someone who fixed a typo in the README.
    - mordocai 11y ago
      Sure, but that makes it hard to draw a line. I feel the main point with these covenants is to give more or less incontrovertible authority to kick someone out when they violate it. Theoretically it settles a lot of counter-arguments the person might try to make. The convenant still leaves it up to the project leadership to decide whether anything happens regarding a particular reported incident.
- pauloday 11y ago
  Yup. A COC is supposed to codify that so it seems less arbitrary? I think it could be good idea in principle, if only to prevent all this pointless drama. Unfortunately, many of these seem to be pushed by political interests looking to gain power in communities, and that's never good. It seems like the most COC that would ever be needed amounts to: "Be respectful. If someone violates this, give them the benefit of the doubt and talk to them about it before bringing it to the community. We're all adults here, lets act like it."
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
madink 11y ago
Regardless or who is right or wrong in that case it's interesting that the US moral standard are being applied all over the internet. I mean if the main part of github community was from say Italy where there is less and a quite different social justice context we would not have this debate. The SJW think differently all over the world , but we only apply Californian value . Same for nudity on Facebook for exemple . As the internet grow more centralised , mostly over US based entities i'm sad to see different culture get dissolve into the US mold.

58 points by pauloday 11y ago

Actual pull request here: https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/8312 https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/8312 Related HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043356 Edit: looking at the discussion in general and this article by ESR[1] in particular, I'm surprised they didn't just drop this COC nonsense entirely instead of adopting a new "flawed" one. [1] https://archive.is/6F9Yr https://archive.is/6F9Yr

pauloday 11y ago

Contributor Covenent: http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/2/0/ http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/2/0/

Zikes 11y ago

Title should be "Covenant" not "Convent".

jerelunruh 11y ago
Ha, I initially didn't realize that was a typo and thought things were getting pretty serious with this whole contributor conduct thing.

xn 11y ago

Covenant

tvanantwerp 11y ago

There appears to be a lot of drama around both the Open Code of Conduct and the Contributor Convent. I'm not at all familiar with either--is there anyone who is who could share the disagreements going on around both documents?

new_corp_dev 11y ago
The Contributor Covenant is a simple document that explicitly tells people not to do the things they already know not to do. The Open Code of Conduct is a design-by-committee list of all the reasons you're a terrible person and you just don't know it yet, but don't worry as soon as you slip up we'll wage a campaign of harassment against you because you're "privileged" and you deserve it. And don't you dare criticize it, because "reverse"-isms don't exist.
josteink 11y ago
The drama is over having a CoC in the first place. ESR has written about one of the CoC authors here: https://archive.is/6F9Yr https://archive.is/6F9Yr Tldr: the people who claims to deliver a product providing order and civility (the "CoC") are usually the people who are conducting the abusive behaviour. In such a CoC is very alarming signal with regard to who is in charge of a project's management.
- djur 11y ago
  ESR has political motivations to oppose these CoCs, and the strongest argument that post makes is an attempt at guilt by association. I found it extremely unconvincing.
  - josteink 11y ago
    He has his political motivation, just like the CoCers have theirs. This probably applies to everyone, so it's not an argument which can be used to blanket reject a statement as such. His political position is that open source projects should be about the code, not gender, politics and endless subjects ripe for tactical abuse and causing drama. Personally I find that a perfectly reasonable and rational position. What fault do you find with it?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  ESR is against a lot of things, like 'not being a racist.'
11y ago

tzs 11y ago

This looks like a good move to me. The text of the CC only has one potential problem area that I see: This code of conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community. The potential problem here is what does it mean to be "representing the project or its community"? For example, suppose on my personal website I include a link to my resume, and on that resume I list my work on the project. Suppose also on my personal website I have have a blog, and on that blog I post an article containing sexualized language or imagery. Am I in violation of the CC? The use of sexualized language or imagery is one of the specific examples given in the CC of a violation. I would say that, based on current common usage of English, stating on a site unrelated to the project, as part of biographical information (such as a resume) that I contribute to the project would NOT be "representing the project or its community", and so would be outside the scope of the CC.

omginternets 11y ago
>The text of the CC only has one potential problem area that I see Have we been reading the same thing? What about the part where they consider "other unethical or unprofessional conduct" to be violations of the CC? This whole thing is set up to be arbitrary and highly political in its application. I invite everyone to see the broad and hand-wavy language for themselves: http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/2/0/code_of_conduct.md http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/2/0/code_of_conduc... It's only 18 lines long, if you can believe it.
VLM 11y ago
The meta problem is trying to discuss specific examples of rules lawyering when the purpose of one CC is to eliminate detailed rules lawyering isn't going to philosophically work well. None the less, for a corporate interpretation of the exact same topic but with respect to email: http://www.emaildisclaimers.com/Sample_disclaimers.htm#Liability http://www.emaildisclaimers.com/Sample_disclaimers.htm#Liabi... Generally speaking identifying yourself as a legal representative of a project or community has all kinds of interesting legal problems; you don't want the project sued because some idle conversation between some contributor and a service provider was seen by the provider as a verbal contract between them and the project for their services. Another example would be copyright, if the project owns the copyright to your self made pr0n example (because you posted it on the project wiki) then you're probably in huge trouble, but if everyone legally agrees you own the copyright and not the project, well, its kind of hard to argue you represent someone you're clearly not legally working for.

throwaway54984 11y ago

It's sad that programming is starting to mean more and more politics.

freshhawk 11y ago
It's involved politics ever since more than two people were doing it. Are you sad that it's being made explicit and being talked about or that it's being talked about in terms of identity politics?
- pauloday 11y ago
  Not the OC, but it seems like there are more an more outsiders coming in and trying to enforce their politics while not contributing anything. I think this has always happened, but it seems like there's been an uptick recently and that worries me.
  - djur 11y ago
    Can you name some of these outsiders? Most of the people I've seen involved in promoting social justice in the open source community are themselves open source contributors.
    - pauloday 11y ago
      Well, CoralineAda with that whole Opal thing for one. I guess I was unclear, I didn't mean outsiders as in people who don't contribute to open source as much as outsiders who don't contribute to specific projects coming into those projects and trying to impose a COC. Perhaps I'm overreacting.

protomyth 11y ago

"This code of conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community." What exactly constitutes "representing the project or its community"?

steve19 11y ago
I presume this means anywhere the general public can read it (twitter, Facebook, youtube) or infer "it" from secondary sources (campaign contributions). It refers to anything that the mob disagrees with. This is the most scary development in open source I have witnessed. I will have nothing to do with an open source project that means I cannot express my views in public (whatever those views might be) without fear of reprisal.

iza 11y ago

I definitely prefer the wording of the Contributor Code of Conduct over the Open Code of Conduct. I don't really see the point though. Everything listed is just common sense, and there is still a catch-all clause open to interpretation.

omginternets 11y ago
>Everything listed is just common sense, and there is still a catch-all clause open to interpretation. And, as I've been repeating ad nauseam, these codes of conduct fail to distinguish between genuine harassment and garden variety ass-hattery. Attempting to govern the latter is a fool's errand, and good for nobody in the long run. I don't think anybody can honestly claim to have never fallen short of absolute professionalism and kindness. These codes of conduct are little more than pretexts to ostracize and publicly shame arbitrary individuals.

LyndsySimon 11y ago

:%s/convent/covenant/

djur 11y ago

The Open Code of Conduct is just too long and specific. To me, it feels like an attempt to preemptively head off 'rules lawyer' casuistry by ensuring that everything that could be a cause for ejecting someone from a community is explicitly listed. In my experience, this just provides a much larger surface of attack -- and the OCoC seems to be suffering from exactly that now. The Contributor Covenant's approach seems to be to make a clear statement of intent, and relying on the community to apply it correctly. It doesn't specifically ban, say, offering a backrub, but the necessary and appropriate response to someone saying "ha, but there's no rule against repeatedly offering a stranger backrubs, IS there?" isn't to draft a new rule, it's to show them the door.

pauloday 11y ago
Well put. The solution to rules lawyering is not more rules.

pauloday 11y ago

> We are committed to making participation in this project a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, or nationality. It seems like you don't need a laundry list of things that are not OK to harass people about unless certain types of harassment are OK. For example "differences of opinion" is not on the list. Is it OK to harass someone who disagrees with me? I doubt that's the intention, and it's probably covered by the rest of the covenant, but if that's the case why do they need to list out all the things it's not OK to harass people about? It just seems needlessly complicated and ripe for causing further drama.

bluecalm 11y ago
I agree and I think it's politically motivated. What about: "avoid personal remarks and don't make any personal information public without permission". Who cares if it's religion, food preferences or gender. Harassing people is bad, giving away their personal information is bad - don't do it no matter what the specifics are.
MichaelGG 11y ago
Yes, I noticed that intelligence isn't listed. So are we set to deride folks of lesser IQ, but not so little they classify as "disabled"? Maybe they're just aping what they see in other places. Eg freedom of religion should be a no-op, fully covered by other rights. Folks should be free to think and do as they please. Religion shouldn't be an excuse to get away with other things. Yet this wording seems copied around as if it was deep or something. Same thing here, with a few added classes?

kzhahou 11y ago

I honestly don't understand why any of this is necessary. Without the doc, if I hurl nasty insults and personal attacks, the community will tell me to fuck off and not accept my work. Won't they?

mordocai 11y ago
According to some people I have seen argue against a code of conduct they would still accept your work because your insults/attacks have "nothing to do with the code".
- pauloday 11y ago
  I think that's a good idea in principle, but if they're insulting everyone you don't want them to be a part of the community, and rejecting code might be your way of rejecting them from the community. I think it depends on the value of the code as well. If someone who fixed 1000 bugs probably has a little more license to be rude than someone who fixed a typo in the README.
  - mordocai 11y ago
    Sure, but that makes it hard to draw a line. I feel the main point with these covenants is to give more or less incontrovertible authority to kick someone out when they violate it. Theoretically it settles a lot of counter-arguments the person might try to make. The convenant still leaves it up to the project leadership to decide whether anything happens regarding a particular reported incident.
pauloday 11y ago
Yup. A COC is supposed to codify that so it seems less arbitrary? I think it could be good idea in principle, if only to prevent all this pointless drama. Unfortunately, many of these seem to be pushed by political interests looking to gain power in communities, and that's never good. It seems like the most COC that would ever be needed amounts to: "Be respectful. If someone violates this, give them the benefit of the doubt and talk to them about it before bringing it to the community. We're all adults here, lets act like it."

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

madink 11y ago

Regardless or who is right or wrong in that case it's interesting that the US moral standard are being applied all over the internet. I mean if the main part of github community was from say Italy where there is less and a quite different social justice context we would not have this debate. The SJW think differently all over the world , but we only apply Californian value . Same for nudity on Facebook for exemple . As the internet grow more centralised , mostly over US based entities i'm sad to see different culture get dissolve into the US mold.