14 ms·

New FreeBSD Code of Conduct

77 points by doppp 9y ago

soyiuz 9y ago
I am always surprised at the backlash against such codes of conduct. One can point to numerous cases of harassment, abuse, and inequality in the tech community. Who is harmed by a stronger CoC? Let's discuss an example where CoC led to a negative outcome for some group.
- xyzzyz 9y ago
  What’s the purpose of a Code of Conduct? If someone is abusive and harassing others, you can eject them without having some Code of Conduct giving the community permission to do so, and if you lack clout to eject someone for actual abuse and harrasment, how will CoC help you? Do you think that without CoC, people in the community believe that harrasment and abuse is OK, and it’s only CoC that will make them change their minds? Instituting the CoC is a power play. It allows you to increase your power and influence by pushing the boundaries of what counts as harrasment much further than it would otherwise be understood, for very simple reason — for most people, fighting against CoC is not the hill they want to die on, as nobody wants to be seen as defender of abuse and harrasment. It is similar to child pornography legislation — you can go to jail for hand drawn pictures of specialized children, which is pretty stupid if you think about it, but most people don’t care: they aren’t pedophiles and so they aren’t interested in sexualized content featuring children, and the personal gain of feeling good about defending individual freedom and liberty is not worth the status loss from, you know, defending actual pedophiles. With CoC it is similar — you are expanding your sphere of power and influence, and everyone opposed is just dirty defender of abuse and harrasment, and so basically a harraser herself, and thus we need to eject her for the good of the community.
  - soyiuz 9y ago
    Let's take a starker example, for the sake of the argument. The building I live in today did not allow Jews, Asians, or people of color until the 1960s (my family would not be allowed in). An explicit Code of Conduct, now in our bylaws, prohibits discrimination based on those categories. Was it a "power play"? Would you make the same argument as above to justify not passing bylaw amendments that argue against discrimination? The BSD rules are a softer version of that starker example. I am truly perplexed by the resistance to it. It has huge benefits for a marginalized group and marginal inconvenience for those already in power, already privy to all of the benefits.
- akerro 9y ago
  FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) has a lot of problems right now, and rewriting CoC makes me think they put effort into completely wrong places. Hey FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) developers have you patched spectre and meltdown already? Have you fixed your communication issues with security researchers who stopped notifying you of serious bugs? No? Oh I would hug you to cheer you up, but it's now allowed now.
  - 2trill2spill 9y ago
    > FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) has a lot of problems right now, and rewriting CoC makes me think they put effort into completely wrong places. You realize people and projects can work on multiple things at once right? > Hey FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) developers have you patched spectre and meltdown already? The FreeBSD and OpenBSD developers were notified 6 months late and you expect them to magically have a patch ready. > Have you fixed your communication issues with security researchers who stopped notifying you of serious bugs? FreeBSD did nothing wrong to security researchers so there isn't anything to fix. > Oh I would hug you to cheer you up, but it's now allowed now. You sound like a wonderful person, not! Seriously the COC is to keep toxic people like you away.
    - akerro 9y ago
      >Seriously the COC is to keep toxic people like you away. Then they did it right, I am most probably not going to donate to FreeBSD foundation first time in 5 years.
      - 2trill2spill 9y ago
        > Then they did it right, I am most probably not going to donate to FreeBSD foundation first time in 5 years. You must not care much about FreeBSD if a code of conduct saying don't be a asshole is what drove you to stop donating. Also I'm skeptical you ever donated, you were spreading misinformation in you previous post about FreeBSD and now your mad they wrote a CoC that say things like don't threaten violence or stalk people.
- voidr 9y ago
  Some of us don't want to be part of a community that ejects you for writing: "hug" Some of us just want to keep politics out of tech. We are probably the weirdos I guess.
  - imsofuture 9y ago
    "Keep politics out of tech" is extremely disingenuous. This CoC can be summarized as "don't be a jerk to other people". I can't even fathom how that's a controversial or political statement, but yet, here we are.
    - ygaf 9y ago
      If the actual thing was summarized, it wouldn't be political. Instead it's sesame street time where we learn about systemic oppression.
    - Slansitartop 9y ago
      > This CoC can be summarized as "don't be a jerk to other people". I can't even fathom how that's a controversial or political statement, but yet, here we are. Your summary is as disingenuous as someone summarizing the Republican party's platform as "run the US government well." It drops all of the important details to arrive at a meaningless platitude. I'm pretty sure you can fathom the controversy, but you're just being deliberately obtuse.
    - voidr 9y ago
      > This CoC can be summarized as "don't be a jerk to other people" That is true if in your world saying or writing the following is being a jerk: - hug, <3 - smoking is bad for you, you should eat healthier food, I think that food is disgusting - men have higher testosterone levels All of these violate their CoC. If all they wanted is a CoC that says "don't be a jerk" then they would have put that into their CoC and not what's in it currently, like many other projects had done so[1]. > I can't even fathom how that's a controversial or political statement, but yet, here we are. It's political because it's being pushed by political activist groups and it's controversial because not everyone agrees that writing hug should get you banned from a technical community. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNdQJSlg54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNdQJSlg54
rayiner 9y ago
This is great: simple and easy to understand. For everyone feigning confusion about modern professional behavioral norms, just memorize this list.
- jdp23 9y ago
  Yeah really! cperciva had a great tweet on this a few days ago: "Probably the most important thing to keep in mind when reading the FreeBSD Code of Conduct is that we weren't trying to change any rules. Rather, we were trying to elaborate on the rule under which the FreeBSD project has operated for years: Don't Be An Asshole."
  - rurban 9y ago
    It rather looks like an elaboration on the rule: "be free to label your critic as asshole"
    - mwfunk 9y ago
      Well that's easy to avoid- don't give anyone ammunition with which to dismiss you as an asshole. It's totally unrelated to whether or not someone really is an asshole. It's trivially easy, and if it's not trivially easy, well that's a big giant glowing arrow pointing at an impending personal growth opportunity with a reward:effort ratio that's off the charts. Whether or not someone is an actual asshole, the ability to avoid misunderstandings is critical to moving forward and getting stuff done and not wasting time on distractions and petty arguments. CoC's are simply an organization's defense mechanism against pointless interpersonal chaos that doesn't belong on their mailing lists (or whatever) in the first place. Source: genetically inclined to be a total and complete asshole, have spent the last few decades trying to get better though.
  - Joky 9y ago
    Exactly what happened in LLVM as well: let make it explicit what the expectations have always been and how everyone (most) already behave! https://llvm.org/docs/CodeOfConduct.html https://llvm.org/docs/CodeOfConduct.html
davehtaylor 9y ago
It's sad that things like this have to be explicitly spelled out
- oblio 9y ago
  If you’re operating on the internet and you truly have global reach, you have to. Assumption is the mother of all fck-ups.
- psyc 9y ago
  While I’ve been persuaded that the CoC trend is probably net positive, I am still very interested in this larger background problem. “There is deep infantilism in the culture ... They want to be told, or, they want to decide and say, ‘This is good, this is bad, I’m saying so.’ Anything that in any way conflicts with that is not to be borne.” -Stephen Fry
ky738 9y ago
After using FreeBSD since 3.4, I am done with it. This is an utter joke.
- s_kilk 9y ago
  Why? Has the formalisation of previously implicit rules harmed you in some way?
  - ky738 9y ago
    Did you just assume that I was harmed by implicit (now explicit) rules? You are reported.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- soyiuz 9y ago
  Which part exactly do you find funny and why?
  - ky738 9y ago
    The part where they have to write a CoC to please some groups, and disregard a thing called "common sense" which always existed inside the community. Thus making this a joke.
    - ethomson 9y ago
      I'm not sure why it matters how long we've been using FreeBSD, but I've been using FreeBSD off and on since roughly 2.1. You may be shocked to learn that some people actually do not have common sense. And that there is very little recourse when those people - the ones lacking common sense - decide to harass or intimidate people. Unless you actually _make rules_ about your community, you cannot _enforce those rules_. So there are no "common sense" solutions to these problems unless you actually spell them out in advance. As an open source maintainer myself, I assure you that we do not do these things "to please some groups" but to have a framework for operating when people who lack "common sense" decide to be jerks and harass or intimidate other members of our community.
schizoidboy 9y ago
I like that they tried to define terms, but what does "the ways" mean? For example, would someone not be allowed to say certain things, and if so, what are those things? > Systemic oppression: The ways in which history, culture, ideology, public policies, institutional practices, and personal behaviors and beliefs interact to maintain a hierarchy — based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and/or other group identities — that allows the privileges associated with the dominant group and the disadvantages associated with the oppressed, targeted, or marginalized group to endure and adapt over time. (Derived from Aspen Institute, via Open Source Leadership) Edit: Added example ambiguity.
Joky 9y ago
I very much empathize with Code of Conduct, and as many I regret that it is necessary to have to make explicit what seems fairly obvious. On a tangent though, I feel the word "harassment" is now generalized and used for any "inappropriate conduct". It loses the meaning that I'm getting from dictionaries ( https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/harassment https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/harassment and https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harass https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harass ) or Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harassment#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harassment#United_States ) which seems to include some specific elements that make it stand out, like "repetition" or "persistence" in a behavior, or continuing after someone asked to stop.
- ygaf 9y ago
  >I regret that it is necessary to have to make explicit what seems fairly obvious. I don't think it was (necessary). Given the incident where someone tried to get a github user 'fired' from a project for 'transphobia' on twitter, I have no faith anything wrong even happened in FreeBSD's virtual workplace.
aap_ 9y ago
This makes me sad. Do people really need to be told what not to do and say like that? To me it feels insulting that I am not trusted to be nice to others.
- alangpierce 9y ago
  > it feels insulting that I am not trusted to be nice to others This isn't targeted at you, though, or even the average person. Even if this stuff is obvious to most people, there certainly exist people who can't be trusted to be nice to others, and they're the ones causing problems, so they're the most important target audience for a code of conduct.
- detaro 9y ago
  Rules existing doesn't say that you aren't trusted, it just says that there are some people that are not. Are you insulted by laws forbidding you to do bad things? I'm more concerned about rules that I think might apply to me in a way I'd consider unfair than about rules that I'm already staying a safe distance from violating.
- temprature 9y ago
  Given that there's groups of people railing against being told not to do the things on this list, yes, apparently.
  - aap_ 9y ago
    Not liking being told what not to do does not imply that you want to actually do it though. Maybe I don't want to leave the house today, but that doesn't mean I will accept being locked up.
    - 2trill2spill 9y ago
      > Not liking being told what not to do does not imply that you want to actually do it though. Maybe I don't want to leave the house today, but that doesn't mean I will accept being locked up. So you agree with the contents of the code of conduct but your not going to following them just to be difficult?
thoaway1 9y ago
If more and more groups insist on forcing their ideological agenda down the throats of contributors and users maybe it's time to start hacking on projects that don't feel the need to bring politics into software.
- rayiner 9y ago
  This is the exact opposite: It's rules for how to work on code without bringing personal crap into it. Do you want a date? Do you think there is something wrong with trans people? Do you have thoughts on race relations? Nobody cares, check that baggage at the door.
  - whatshisface 9y ago
    As far as I can see, the real problem here is that some forms of baggage are still allowed (an inevitable problem with any finite list of rules), meaning that you will end up with baggage imbalances and endless debate over which baggages are permissable self-expression and which ones are unacceptable.
    - ethomson 9y ago
      It is not a finite list of rules. It is an explanation of the values (eg, respecting diversity) and a list of examples of things that are obviously prohibited. It is explicitly "not an exhaustive list of things that you should not do", and although it does list some _examples_ of things that are prohibited - it provides examples that are "not limited to" the ones provided. This clearly reduces the ambiguity in the community. And even if some ambiguity does remain - which, as you point out, is inevitable - having examples of obviously impermissible behavior and a framework for conflict resolution is requisite for a community.
  - said 9y ago
    "Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion." This doesn't preclude thoughts on race-relations—if that was the goal, it would've simply said so. We know what this means.
whatshisface 9y ago
> Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion. So, there's a lot of "politicking" going on back and forth over this, but I'd like to suggest a specific problem: by attempting to formalize what used to be intuition, you're opening the door for people to follow up bad behavior with legal arguments that it was actually allowed. For example, someone could say something that was obviously meant against a group, and then defend it by pointing to specific wording in the CoC. ("But can you prove the oppression was systemic? Says the person who is obviously acting maliciously but is not obviously part of a system.")
- rayiner 9y ago
  By that reasoning, we should never have rules, because any rule will create the possibility of people trying to lawyer out of the rules.
  - whatshisface 9y ago
    The cost of rules is a court system and the lawyers to argue in it. In the end, introducing rules can lead to more time spent on strife than was spent before the rules, because of this overhead. If you try to avoid this by interpreting the rules according to the present and changing intuitions of the project leaders, then you haven't really changed much from before.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Doesn't sound bad. Most communities survived 20+ years, and even thrived, without any such rules.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - detaro 9y ago
      A group thriving does not mean it didn't do damage to (former) members or others while doing so, and neither should "but look at what we achieved!" be a good excuse for it. (of course, groups also can have written rules and still behave badly, rules do not automatically solve these problems)
protomyth 9y ago
"Only permanent resolutions (such as bans) may be appealed." - why?
- lolikoisuru 9y ago
  Because in communities that require a lot of moderation and CoCks the people who need the protection from uncomfortable content are the mods themselves. You can't get protection from uncomfortable things if you have to review appeals.
lolikoisuru 9y ago
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=325828 https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=32582... Never forget
- gkya 9y ago
  The following is from the very top of a random file in the removed set I clicked: A bad little girl in Madrid, A most reprehensible kid, Told her Tante Louise That her cunt smelled like cheese, And the worst of it was that it did! Wat!? Good riddance.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    One fears that by repeating the verse here, you've stamped it on eternity.
  - lolikoisuru 9y ago
    Do you seriously not know what `fortune` is?
    - gkya 9y ago
      Why am I supposed to know it? For the matter I do know it, but nobody needs their computer tell them jokes, especially tasteless ones like this.
gkya 9y ago
I've always read that whitelisting is more preferable to blacklisting. So wouldn't a rule like "FreeBSD projects' communication media are strictly restricted to technical and philosophical discussions related to the projects themselves, and all use of language for branding and naming must be politically and socially neutral and not-offensive" would be actually better than a list of what not to do? The law has lots of lists, and quite often we find out that those lists were a bit too short, and things like loopholes happen.
malvosenior 9y ago
> Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion. Harassment should be harassment, no? Does it matter if the perpetrator is "reinforcing systemic oppression" or just being obnoxious? Why put this clause in here? Will it be enforced when someone says "kill all men" or "apply for our speaking position if you're not a white male"? This CoC seems sharply political, which is sad because something like FreeBSD should more or less be totally free of politics.
- soyiuz 9y ago
  When "killing all men" type of behavior becomes problematic you will have a point. The problem has been that some people don't understand what "being obnoxious" is and need it spelled out for them. Because men have not been historically a target of oppression, the explanation now has the language that it does, using actual examples / lines of harassment.
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    And this is what I mean by dragging politics into an open source project where it doesn't belong. > When "killing all men" type of behavior becomes problematic you will have a point. Every time someone "ironically" tweets this, it's a problem. I've yet to see a CoC used effectively to stop it.
    - soyiuz 9y ago
      Consider that from your point of view the open source project is free from politics and the anti-harassment policy is "dragging politics into it." But from the point of view of someone who has experienced harassment, politics were indeed an issue. The inconvenience to you is minor. You now have to spend an extra moment to consider another point of view. The inconvenience to your aggrieved peer was major. They were actually harassed. The benefit to them outweighs your annoyance.
      - 9y ago
ham-2_718281828 9y ago
So now we have "free as in freedom", "free as in beer", and with this policy, "free as in Stalin". This policy itself is disgusting example of newspeak, redefining the well-known word "harassment" to conform to this groups' political agenda. The project should be renamed to "TotalitarianBSD". I suppose that today, to speak honestly and call things as they are in daily life, one must now travel to places that preserve those freedoms like China, Iran, North Korea, or Somalia. Did I just get sentenced to the countryside for re-education and self-criticism? OOPS!
jsiepkes 9y ago
There is a reason why laws are not drafted as specific as this code of conduct. If someone can think of another way of harassing then making "Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes" it's allowed? I doubt that's the intention. So why the oddly specific rules?
- cperciva 9y ago
  So why the oddly specific rules? Not weirdly specific rules; weirdly specific examples. And the answer is "because these are things which have happened".
dokem 9y ago
This document serves no real purpose, aka 'virtue signaling'.
- sergiotapia 9y ago
  Metastasized cancer spreading to more and more projects these days. Who benefits?
randomname2 9y ago
Copied from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16377044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16377044 Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/7xapx2/freebsds_new_geek_feminismbased_code_of_conduct/ https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/7xapx2/freebsds_ne... Comments from one of the people responsible for creating the CoC are here: https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/7xapx2/freebsds_new_geek_feminismbased_code_of_conduct/du7200b/ https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/7xapx2/freebsds_ne...
nutherforgot 9y ago
What's changed that these CoC's are now deemed neccessary where they previously weren't?
HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
I wonder how short you could make a code of conduct. Here's my attempt: 1. No politics 2. No religion 3. Don't be a cunt
- louiz 9y ago
  Your rule 3 would probably create a looooot of drama. So, attempt failed.
  - ygaf 9y ago
    I'm writing a CoCoC before he attempts another CoC.
  - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
    > Your rule 3 would probably create a looooot of drama. I could provide a translation into US English. Asshole? Jerk? Douche?
Caveman_Coder 9y ago
I wonder why tech communities need their CoC... I'm a member of a local HAM radio group and we don't have any CoC and we don't have any issues at all. The male/female makeup is about 70/30 and there are people of various political/religious viewpoints, but I haven't once seen any issues over these differences. I've seen leftists amicably talk and work with conservatives because when we meet as a group it is all about HAM radio, nothing else. I'm not sure why tech communities have all these problems to be honest...it seems like there are groups that purposefully want to stir up discord because they make money (get funding) if there are issues...
- soyiuz 9y ago
  CoCs are useful for coordination among large, non-local, diverse communities. Have you considered that instead of "purposefully want[ing] to stir up discord" for funding the rules are meant to reduce the incidence of actual harassment/abuse? Or to promote inclusivity? How does an articulation of values "stir up discord?" I can point you to numerous examples of harassment and inequity in the tech community. Can you point me to an example of "discord" brought about by better rules of conduct? Or to this funding that you mention?
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    > "Can you point me to an example of "discord" brought about by better rules of conduct? Or to this funding that you mention?" Only my wife's anecdotal experience...she was a full-time software developer and the companies she worked for routinely tried to use her as an example in their "we support women in tech" PR. She hated it and said it felt degrading. Also, there were various "women in tech" groups that reached out to her, based on some of her open source work, for conference speaking engagements/panels/writing/etc, and they were pushy about it. When she was showing the groups to me, they were all operating off of donations from various Fortune 500 companies. The "discord" is that a lot of these "women in tech" groups, advocated in some cases by women who aren't even doing anything tech related, castigated my wife, on two various instances, for not wanting to participate. My wife didn't want to be a pawn for some corporate PR or for some "women in tech" group...she just wanted to engineer things in peace.
grey-sunshine 9y ago
Cancer seeps in.
mvdwoord 9y ago
Bryan Lunduke did an episode on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNdQJSlg54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNdQJSlg54
qbaqbaqba 9y ago
Hugs and kisses. If you don't mind.
bitcharmer 9y ago
Can someone please explain why this was necessary and what was wrong with the previous CoC?
Slansitartop 9y ago
Where has the official debate or contributor feedback about this CoC been occuring? I've looked through the FreeBSD forums and mailing list archives, and I haven't seen a peep about this, not even an announcement.
coinerone 9y ago
https://github.com/Ybalrid/FreeHugsBSD https://github.com/Ybalrid/FreeHugsBSD
MaskedCoward 9y ago
FreeBSD: The Power to Cuck

77 points by doppp 9y ago

I am always surprised at the backlash against such codes of conduct. One can point to numerous cases of harassment, abuse, and inequality in the tech community. Who is harmed by a stronger CoC? Let's discuss an example where CoC led to a negative outcome for some group.

xyzzyz 9y ago
What’s the purpose of a Code of Conduct? If someone is abusive and harassing others, you can eject them without having some Code of Conduct giving the community permission to do so, and if you lack clout to eject someone for actual abuse and harrasment, how will CoC help you? Do you think that without CoC, people in the community believe that harrasment and abuse is OK, and it’s only CoC that will make them change their minds? Instituting the CoC is a power play. It allows you to increase your power and influence by pushing the boundaries of what counts as harrasment much further than it would otherwise be understood, for very simple reason — for most people, fighting against CoC is not the hill they want to die on, as nobody wants to be seen as defender of abuse and harrasment. It is similar to child pornography legislation — you can go to jail for hand drawn pictures of specialized children, which is pretty stupid if you think about it, but most people don’t care: they aren’t pedophiles and so they aren’t interested in sexualized content featuring children, and the personal gain of feeling good about defending individual freedom and liberty is not worth the status loss from, you know, defending actual pedophiles. With CoC it is similar — you are expanding your sphere of power and influence, and everyone opposed is just dirty defender of abuse and harrasment, and so basically a harraser herself, and thus we need to eject her for the good of the community.
- soyiuz 9y ago
  Let's take a starker example, for the sake of the argument. The building I live in today did not allow Jews, Asians, or people of color until the 1960s (my family would not be allowed in). An explicit Code of Conduct, now in our bylaws, prohibits discrimination based on those categories. Was it a "power play"? Would you make the same argument as above to justify not passing bylaw amendments that argue against discrimination? The BSD rules are a softer version of that starker example. I am truly perplexed by the resistance to it. It has huge benefits for a marginalized group and marginal inconvenience for those already in power, already privy to all of the benefits.
akerro 9y ago
FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) has a lot of problems right now, and rewriting CoC makes me think they put effort into completely wrong places. Hey FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) developers have you patched spectre and meltdown already? Have you fixed your communication issues with security researchers who stopped notifying you of serious bugs? No? Oh I would hug you to cheer you up, but it's now allowed now.
- 2trill2spill 9y ago
  > FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) has a lot of problems right now, and rewriting CoC makes me think they put effort into completely wrong places. You realize people and projects can work on multiple things at once right? > Hey FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) developers have you patched spectre and meltdown already? The FreeBSD and OpenBSD developers were notified 6 months late and you expect them to magically have a patch ready. > Have you fixed your communication issues with security researchers who stopped notifying you of serious bugs? FreeBSD did nothing wrong to security researchers so there isn't anything to fix. > Oh I would hug you to cheer you up, but it's now allowed now. You sound like a wonderful person, not! Seriously the COC is to keep toxic people like you away.
  - akerro 9y ago
    >Seriously the COC is to keep toxic people like you away. Then they did it right, I am most probably not going to donate to FreeBSD foundation first time in 5 years.
    - 2trill2spill 9y ago
      > Then they did it right, I am most probably not going to donate to FreeBSD foundation first time in 5 years. You must not care much about FreeBSD if a code of conduct saying don't be a asshole is what drove you to stop donating. Also I'm skeptical you ever donated, you were spreading misinformation in you previous post about FreeBSD and now your mad they wrote a CoC that say things like don't threaten violence or stalk people.
voidr 9y ago
Some of us don't want to be part of a community that ejects you for writing: "hug" Some of us just want to keep politics out of tech. We are probably the weirdos I guess.
- imsofuture 9y ago
  "Keep politics out of tech" is extremely disingenuous. This CoC can be summarized as "don't be a jerk to other people". I can't even fathom how that's a controversial or political statement, but yet, here we are.
  - ygaf 9y ago
    If the actual thing was summarized, it wouldn't be political. Instead it's sesame street time where we learn about systemic oppression.
  - Slansitartop 9y ago
    > This CoC can be summarized as "don't be a jerk to other people". I can't even fathom how that's a controversial or political statement, but yet, here we are. Your summary is as disingenuous as someone summarizing the Republican party's platform as "run the US government well." It drops all of the important details to arrive at a meaningless platitude. I'm pretty sure you can fathom the controversy, but you're just being deliberately obtuse.
  - voidr 9y ago
    > This CoC can be summarized as "don't be a jerk to other people" That is true if in your world saying or writing the following is being a jerk: - hug, <3 - smoking is bad for you, you should eat healthier food, I think that food is disgusting - men have higher testosterone levels All of these violate their CoC. If all they wanted is a CoC that says "don't be a jerk" then they would have put that into their CoC and not what's in it currently, like many other projects had done so[1]. > I can't even fathom how that's a controversial or political statement, but yet, here we are. It's political because it's being pushed by political activist groups and it's controversial because not everyone agrees that writing hug should get you banned from a technical community. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNdQJSlg54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNdQJSlg54

rayiner 9y ago

This is great: simple and easy to understand. For everyone feigning confusion about modern professional behavioral norms, just memorize this list.

jdp23 9y ago
Yeah really! cperciva had a great tweet on this a few days ago: "Probably the most important thing to keep in mind when reading the FreeBSD Code of Conduct is that we weren't trying to change any rules. Rather, we were trying to elaborate on the rule under which the FreeBSD project has operated for years: Don't Be An Asshole."
- rurban 9y ago
  It rather looks like an elaboration on the rule: "be free to label your critic as asshole"
  - mwfunk 9y ago
    Well that's easy to avoid- don't give anyone ammunition with which to dismiss you as an asshole. It's totally unrelated to whether or not someone really is an asshole. It's trivially easy, and if it's not trivially easy, well that's a big giant glowing arrow pointing at an impending personal growth opportunity with a reward:effort ratio that's off the charts. Whether or not someone is an actual asshole, the ability to avoid misunderstandings is critical to moving forward and getting stuff done and not wasting time on distractions and petty arguments. CoC's are simply an organization's defense mechanism against pointless interpersonal chaos that doesn't belong on their mailing lists (or whatever) in the first place. Source: genetically inclined to be a total and complete asshole, have spent the last few decades trying to get better though.
- Joky 9y ago
  Exactly what happened in LLVM as well: let make it explicit what the expectations have always been and how everyone (most) already behave! https://llvm.org/docs/CodeOfConduct.html https://llvm.org/docs/CodeOfConduct.html

davehtaylor 9y ago

It's sad that things like this have to be explicitly spelled out

oblio 9y ago
If you’re operating on the internet and you truly have global reach, you have to. Assumption is the mother of all fck-ups.
psyc 9y ago
While I’ve been persuaded that the CoC trend is probably net positive, I am still very interested in this larger background problem. “There is deep infantilism in the culture ... They want to be told, or, they want to decide and say, ‘This is good, this is bad, I’m saying so.’ Anything that in any way conflicts with that is not to be borne.” -Stephen Fry

ky738 9y ago

After using FreeBSD since 3.4, I am done with it. This is an utter joke.

s_kilk 9y ago
Why? Has the formalisation of previously implicit rules harmed you in some way?
- ky738 9y ago
  Did you just assume that I was harmed by implicit (now explicit) rules? You are reported.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
soyiuz 9y ago
Which part exactly do you find funny and why?
- ky738 9y ago
  The part where they have to write a CoC to please some groups, and disregard a thing called "common sense" which always existed inside the community. Thus making this a joke.
  - ethomson 9y ago
    I'm not sure why it matters how long we've been using FreeBSD, but I've been using FreeBSD off and on since roughly 2.1. You may be shocked to learn that some people actually do not have common sense. And that there is very little recourse when those people - the ones lacking common sense - decide to harass or intimidate people. Unless you actually _make rules_ about your community, you cannot _enforce those rules_. So there are no "common sense" solutions to these problems unless you actually spell them out in advance. As an open source maintainer myself, I assure you that we do not do these things "to please some groups" but to have a framework for operating when people who lack "common sense" decide to be jerks and harass or intimidate other members of our community.

schizoidboy 9y ago

I like that they tried to define terms, but what does "the ways" mean? For example, would someone not be allowed to say certain things, and if so, what are those things? > Systemic oppression: The ways in which history, culture, ideology, public policies, institutional practices, and personal behaviors and beliefs interact to maintain a hierarchy — based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and/or other group identities — that allows the privileges associated with the dominant group and the disadvantages associated with the oppressed, targeted, or marginalized group to endure and adapt over time. (Derived from Aspen Institute, via Open Source Leadership) Edit: Added example ambiguity.

Joky 9y ago

I very much empathize with Code of Conduct, and as many I regret that it is necessary to have to make explicit what seems fairly obvious. On a tangent though, I feel the word "harassment" is now generalized and used for any "inappropriate conduct". It loses the meaning that I'm getting from dictionaries ( https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/harassment https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/harassment and https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harass https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harass ) or Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harassment#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harassment#United_States ) which seems to include some specific elements that make it stand out, like "repetition" or "persistence" in a behavior, or continuing after someone asked to stop.

ygaf 9y ago
>I regret that it is necessary to have to make explicit what seems fairly obvious. I don't think it was (necessary). Given the incident where someone tried to get a github user 'fired' from a project for 'transphobia' on twitter, I have no faith anything wrong even happened in FreeBSD's virtual workplace.

aap_ 9y ago

This makes me sad. Do people really need to be told what not to do and say like that? To me it feels insulting that I am not trusted to be nice to others.

alangpierce 9y ago
> it feels insulting that I am not trusted to be nice to others This isn't targeted at you, though, or even the average person. Even if this stuff is obvious to most people, there certainly exist people who can't be trusted to be nice to others, and they're the ones causing problems, so they're the most important target audience for a code of conduct.
detaro 9y ago
Rules existing doesn't say that you aren't trusted, it just says that there are some people that are not. Are you insulted by laws forbidding you to do bad things? I'm more concerned about rules that I think might apply to me in a way I'd consider unfair than about rules that I'm already staying a safe distance from violating.
temprature 9y ago
Given that there's groups of people railing against being told not to do the things on this list, yes, apparently.
- aap_ 9y ago
  Not liking being told what not to do does not imply that you want to actually do it though. Maybe I don't want to leave the house today, but that doesn't mean I will accept being locked up.
  - 2trill2spill 9y ago
    > Not liking being told what not to do does not imply that you want to actually do it though. Maybe I don't want to leave the house today, but that doesn't mean I will accept being locked up. So you agree with the contents of the code of conduct but your not going to following them just to be difficult?

thoaway1 9y ago

If more and more groups insist on forcing their ideological agenda down the throats of contributors and users maybe it's time to start hacking on projects that don't feel the need to bring politics into software.

rayiner 9y ago
This is the exact opposite: It's rules for how to work on code without bringing personal crap into it. Do you want a date? Do you think there is something wrong with trans people? Do you have thoughts on race relations? Nobody cares, check that baggage at the door.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  As far as I can see, the real problem here is that some forms of baggage are still allowed (an inevitable problem with any finite list of rules), meaning that you will end up with baggage imbalances and endless debate over which baggages are permissable self-expression and which ones are unacceptable.
  - ethomson 9y ago
    It is not a finite list of rules. It is an explanation of the values (eg, respecting diversity) and a list of examples of things that are obviously prohibited. It is explicitly "not an exhaustive list of things that you should not do", and although it does list some _examples_ of things that are prohibited - it provides examples that are "not limited to" the ones provided. This clearly reduces the ambiguity in the community. And even if some ambiguity does remain - which, as you point out, is inevitable - having examples of obviously impermissible behavior and a framework for conflict resolution is requisite for a community.
- said 9y ago
  "Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion." This doesn't preclude thoughts on race-relations—if that was the goal, it would've simply said so. We know what this means.

whatshisface 9y ago

> Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion. So, there's a lot of "politicking" going on back and forth over this, but I'd like to suggest a specific problem: by attempting to formalize what used to be intuition, you're opening the door for people to follow up bad behavior with legal arguments that it was actually allowed. For example, someone could say something that was obviously meant against a group, and then defend it by pointing to specific wording in the CoC. ("But can you prove the oppression was systemic? Says the person who is obviously acting maliciously but is not obviously part of a system.")

rayiner 9y ago
By that reasoning, we should never have rules, because any rule will create the possibility of people trying to lawyer out of the rules.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  The cost of rules is a court system and the lawyers to argue in it. In the end, introducing rules can lead to more time spent on strife than was spent before the rules, because of this overhead. If you try to avoid this by interpreting the rules according to the present and changing intuitions of the project leaders, then you haven't really changed much from before.
- coldtea 9y ago
  Doesn't sound bad. Most communities survived 20+ years, and even thrived, without any such rules.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - detaro 9y ago
    A group thriving does not mean it didn't do damage to (former) members or others while doing so, and neither should "but look at what we achieved!" be a good excuse for it. (of course, groups also can have written rules and still behave badly, rules do not automatically solve these problems)

protomyth 9y ago

"Only permanent resolutions (such as bans) may be appealed." - why?

lolikoisuru 9y ago
Because in communities that require a lot of moderation and CoCks the people who need the protection from uncomfortable content are the mods themselves. You can't get protection from uncomfortable things if you have to review appeals.

lolikoisuru 9y ago

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=325828 https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=32582... Never forget

gkya 9y ago
The following is from the very top of a random file in the removed set I clicked: A bad little girl in Madrid, A most reprehensible kid, Told her Tante Louise That her cunt smelled like cheese, And the worst of it was that it did! Wat!? Good riddance.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  One fears that by repeating the verse here, you've stamped it on eternity.
- lolikoisuru 9y ago
  Do you seriously not know what `fortune` is?
  - gkya 9y ago
    Why am I supposed to know it? For the matter I do know it, but nobody needs their computer tell them jokes, especially tasteless ones like this.

gkya 9y ago

I've always read that whitelisting is more preferable to blacklisting. So wouldn't a rule like "FreeBSD projects' communication media are strictly restricted to technical and philosophical discussions related to the projects themselves, and all use of language for branding and naming must be politically and socially neutral and not-offensive" would be actually better than a list of what not to do? The law has lots of lists, and quite often we find out that those lists were a bit too short, and things like loopholes happen.

malvosenior 9y ago

> Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion. Harassment should be harassment, no? Does it matter if the perpetrator is "reinforcing systemic oppression" or just being obnoxious? Why put this clause in here? Will it be enforced when someone says "kill all men" or "apply for our speaking position if you're not a white male"? This CoC seems sharply political, which is sad because something like FreeBSD should more or less be totally free of politics.

soyiuz 9y ago
When "killing all men" type of behavior becomes problematic you will have a point. The problem has been that some people don't understand what "being obnoxious" is and need it spelled out for them. Because men have not been historically a target of oppression, the explanation now has the language that it does, using actual examples / lines of harassment.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  And this is what I mean by dragging politics into an open source project where it doesn't belong. > When "killing all men" type of behavior becomes problematic you will have a point. Every time someone "ironically" tweets this, it's a problem. I've yet to see a CoC used effectively to stop it.
  - soyiuz 9y ago
    Consider that from your point of view the open source project is free from politics and the anti-harassment policy is "dragging politics into it." But from the point of view of someone who has experienced harassment, politics were indeed an issue. The inconvenience to you is minor. You now have to spend an extra moment to consider another point of view. The inconvenience to your aggrieved peer was major. They were actually harassed. The benefit to them outweighs your annoyance.
    - 9y ago

ham-2_718281828 9y ago

So now we have "free as in freedom", "free as in beer", and with this policy, "free as in Stalin". This policy itself is disgusting example of newspeak, redefining the well-known word "harassment" to conform to this groups' political agenda. The project should be renamed to "TotalitarianBSD". I suppose that today, to speak honestly and call things as they are in daily life, one must now travel to places that preserve those freedoms like China, Iran, North Korea, or Somalia. Did I just get sentenced to the countryside for re-education and self-criticism? OOPS!

jsiepkes 9y ago

There is a reason why laws are not drafted as specific as this code of conduct. If someone can think of another way of harassing then making "Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes" it's allowed? I doubt that's the intention. So why the oddly specific rules?

cperciva 9y ago
So why the oddly specific rules? Not weirdly specific rules; weirdly specific examples. And the answer is "because these are things which have happened".

dokem 9y ago

This document serves no real purpose, aka 'virtue signaling'.

sergiotapia 9y ago
Metastasized cancer spreading to more and more projects these days. Who benefits?

randomname2 9y ago

Copied from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16377044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16377044 Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/7xapx2/freebsds_new_geek_feminismbased_code_of_conduct/ https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/7xapx2/freebsds_ne... Comments from one of the people responsible for creating the CoC are here: https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/7xapx2/freebsds_new_geek_feminismbased_code_of_conduct/du7200b/ https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/7xapx2/freebsds_ne...

nutherforgot 9y ago

What's changed that these CoC's are now deemed neccessary where they previously weren't?

HumanDrivenDev 9y ago

I wonder how short you could make a code of conduct. Here's my attempt: 1. No politics 2. No religion 3. Don't be a cunt

louiz 9y ago
Your rule 3 would probably create a looooot of drama. So, attempt failed.
- ygaf 9y ago
  I'm writing a CoCoC before he attempts another CoC.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  > Your rule 3 would probably create a looooot of drama. I could provide a translation into US English. Asshole? Jerk? Douche?

Caveman_Coder 9y ago

I wonder why tech communities need their CoC... I'm a member of a local HAM radio group and we don't have any CoC and we don't have any issues at all. The male/female makeup is about 70/30 and there are people of various political/religious viewpoints, but I haven't once seen any issues over these differences. I've seen leftists amicably talk and work with conservatives because when we meet as a group it is all about HAM radio, nothing else. I'm not sure why tech communities have all these problems to be honest...it seems like there are groups that purposefully want to stir up discord because they make money (get funding) if there are issues...

soyiuz 9y ago
CoCs are useful for coordination among large, non-local, diverse communities. Have you considered that instead of "purposefully want[ing] to stir up discord" for funding the rules are meant to reduce the incidence of actual harassment/abuse? Or to promote inclusivity? How does an articulation of values "stir up discord?" I can point you to numerous examples of harassment and inequity in the tech community. Can you point me to an example of "discord" brought about by better rules of conduct? Or to this funding that you mention?
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  > "Can you point me to an example of "discord" brought about by better rules of conduct? Or to this funding that you mention?" Only my wife's anecdotal experience...she was a full-time software developer and the companies she worked for routinely tried to use her as an example in their "we support women in tech" PR. She hated it and said it felt degrading. Also, there were various "women in tech" groups that reached out to her, based on some of her open source work, for conference speaking engagements/panels/writing/etc, and they were pushy about it. When she was showing the groups to me, they were all operating off of donations from various Fortune 500 companies. The "discord" is that a lot of these "women in tech" groups, advocated in some cases by women who aren't even doing anything tech related, castigated my wife, on two various instances, for not wanting to participate. My wife didn't want to be a pawn for some corporate PR or for some "women in tech" group...she just wanted to engineer things in peace.

grey-sunshine 9y ago

Cancer seeps in.

mvdwoord 9y ago

Bryan Lunduke did an episode on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNdQJSlg54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxNdQJSlg54

qbaqbaqba 9y ago

Hugs and kisses. If you don't mind.

bitcharmer 9y ago

Can someone please explain why this was necessary and what was wrong with the previous CoC?

Slansitartop 9y ago

Where has the official debate or contributor feedback about this CoC been occuring? I've looked through the FreeBSD forums and mailing list archives, and I haven't seen a peep about this, not even an announcement.

coinerone 9y ago

https://github.com/Ybalrid/FreeHugsBSD https://github.com/Ybalrid/FreeHugsBSD

MaskedCoward 9y ago

FreeBSD: The Power to Cuck