11 ms·

Code, conflict, and conduct

64 points by tux1968 8y ago

OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
railroad
beat 8y ago
Kudos to Linus Torvalds for recognizing he has a behavior problem and taking active steps to be a better leader and a better person. It's tremendously difficult to acknowledge shortcomings and failures in such a public way - especially when he could fall back on his accomplishments, authority, and fan base for support, and not do anything about it or even admit he has a problem.
malvosenior 8y ago
> But the purpose of such a code is not to threaten anybody; indeed, it is the opposite. It is a statement that we all have the right to be who we are and participate in the community as equals without having to contend with bullying, abuse, and worse. The creator of the CoC does regularly threaten and bully people though (Opal, Matz...). The double standard is one of the issues I have with putting a CoC in place. When the slightest mistake is punished for some people, while others are free to spew vitriol, it seems like we have a real problem. I'm sad this got adopted into the kernel and is now likely to be pushed elsewhere.
- shadowmint 8y ago
  > That said, the chances are that what will emerge from the dust will be something that looks like the same kernel community that has achieved so much in the last 27 years. Only hopefully it will be a bit friendlier, a bit more diverse, and much stronger. This could indeed be one of those inflection points mentioned by Torvalds in his announcement; the kernel has always emerged from those episodes stronger than ever. It is hard to see any reasons why this time should be different. Is the message to take away here, not some alt-agenda anti-CoC message. Just please, for one moment, consider that this isn’t the end of roman imperialism. Its just a general, welcome, already in progress, change towards more professional conduct.
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    But it's not. It's a power grab and like any power grab it is welcomed by ideological and other kinds of supporters, but not by others. Take diversity for example. What does it have to do with professional conduct? Nothing, of course, it's a purely ideological thing. Why is it there and talked about?
    - codetrotter 8y ago
      > Take diversity for example. What does it have to do with professional conduct? If someone is acting racist towards others for example, or displaying sexist attitudes, then that will absolutely hurt diversity because the people at the receiving end will not want to stick around.
      - malvosenior 8y ago
        The problem comes from the re-defining of sexism and racism. Mainly that you can't be sexist toward men or racist toward white people. The same people that crafted the CoC hold those views.
        detaro 8y ago
        They are not the people enforcing it in the kernel community, so their opinion doesn't matter that much for this use.
      - repolfx 8y ago
        Has the Linux kernel project ever had a real problem with that? Linus is not racist or sexist, and nobody is saying he is. Just that he loses his temper and yells at people when he shouldn't. It appears that Linus' temper problem has been used to slip in "more diverse and stronger" to something apparently unrelated to diversity. This is the sort of thing that gives what should be trivial and uncontroversial (A code of conduct) a terrible reputation for being the first sign of entryism by extremists who try to destroy communities from the inside. The kernel doesn't need a CoC. All it needs is for Linus to say he's going to chill out a bit and for others to hold him to it. But now he's been convinced/pressured/bullied into adopting this deeply ideological document, it's probably only a matter of time before the kernel community is twisting itself into a pulp.
- prolepunk 8y ago
  Keep our ad-hominem attacks to yourself.
lawnchair_larry 8y ago
CoC activism is such an unnecessary distraction.
- sgift 8y ago
  The people who suffer under the behavior called out in CoCs tend to disagree. Can you give a reason why they are wrong and you are right?
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Not OP, but suffering is a sliding scale (sidenote: some suffering is good, it teaches you how to be a better human; think public speaking). You shouldn't be abused or attacked when interacting in a public project, of course, but you also don't have a right to not be offended or having your feelings not hurt. My personal sentiment is that CoCs have been weaponized (in the name of inclusion and protection) when it suits certain supporters of said CoCs to eject members of a collaboration they take issue with. TL;DR All things in moderation.
    - theossuary 8y ago
      Can you show an example or two of such weaponization? I've never come across one. And even if it was weaponized, wouldn't that be the fault of the maintainers judging the situation? You saying it's the CoC's fault is like blaming a gun in a murder.
      - malvosenior 8y ago
        It's often the original creator of the CoC doing the weaponizing. Here are a few examples: * https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004 https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004 * https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165 https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165 * https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 And really you can just go to CoralineAda's twitter to see that the CoC was designed as a political tool and an aggressive one at that.
patrickmay 8y ago
I find the original Code of Conflict (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b0bc65729070b9cbdbb53ff042984a3c545a0e34 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...) to be more concise, more direct, and more applicable to kernel development. I don't see that the new CoC adds anything of value to it.
- Paul-ish 8y ago
  One qualitative difference is where that code of conduct puts the responsibility. The old one spends more time telling people not to be sensitive, but okay if your feeling are hurt here's what you do, and maybe something will happen. Oh yeah, and I guess don't be a jerk. The new code of conduct puts makes it clear to everyone it is their responsibility not to be a bad actor. The responsibility is on YOU to be civil, and if you fail to you will be the one dealing with the consequences.
forgottenpass 8y ago
Edit: This might be one of those cases where I need to explicitly say I agree with the following statement before giving pushback on the thing it defends. Things we strive for should be their best possible version, even if criticizing the current from means giving trolls and opposition ammunition. >But the purpose of such a code is not to threaten anybody; indeed, it is the opposite. The fact that this is regularly and explicitly clarified indicates the original document is poorly drafted. For the sake of avoiding the obvious tangents, lets presuppose the best possible interpretation of the original code. Even in that case, no amount of blaming the people that made the clarification necessary (by - for example - saying that they're uncharitably reading the original) makes the code better drafted.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  >The fact that this is regularly and explicitly clarified indicates the original document is poorly drafted. Would you say the same about the US constitution? It was designed to be updated and changed, rather than be written in stone. To you, is that the same as saying that it's "poorly drafted" and they knew it? To most people, I think they feel that's a sign that they were wise enough to know that they couldn't think of everything, and that the document would have to change over time.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    Is that a valid analogy? The US Constitution tries not to be vague, and is extremely clear about its aims. Being updatable is not the same as having a generic "... and anything else that we might consider problematic" clause in it. And the Constitution comes with an infrastructure that is constantly trying to clarify what it means when applied, not a perfect infrastructure for sure, but at least judges and the Supremes understand that their issue is to clarify interpretation and not simply make judgements about individuals on an ad-hoc basis. In other words, nobody argues that the Constitution is dangerous and designed to nail particular groups to the wall, because the document itself is clear proof that such a statement would be false. The CoC that has caused so much drama in other projects needs this kind of "don't worry it won't be abused" disclaimers, largely because the authors didn't actually try to pin themselves down (they didn't want to). It has deliberately vague clauses and the classic "... and anything else inappropriate" tacked on the end, which renders the document meaningless. In addition it is routinely used to attack certain groups but not others. These problems could have been avoided by better drafting, but one suspects it would then not have met the goals of the drafters.
seany 8y ago
So sad to see big projects fall to this kind of political activism.
chroma 8y ago
> One of the strongest criticisms against the old code of conflict is that it did not enumerate the types of behavior that are unwelcome. The new one cannot be criticized on that account. Except that the list contains rules that are so general as to be completely subjective. The last rule forbids, "Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting." The problem with such general rules is that you get selective enforcement. Node.js has the same code of conduct, and it has been used to try to evict Rod Vagg from the technical committee[1] for tweeting a link to a Quillette article on freedom of speech[2]. Rod's tweet got him in hot water, but one of his peers had plenty of blatantly sexist tweets and received no reports for CoC violations.[3] 1. https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165 https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165 2. https://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-speech/ https://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-sp... 3. Such as https://twitter.com/maybekatz/status/900414216888139776 https://twitter.com/maybekatz/status/900414216888139776 "Men are fragile, often incompetent babies with no sense of humor, and I like reminding them of their inferiority."
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Yes, sadly, it's all about politics and power, not "professional conduct".
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Opposition to them is also all about politics and power, so there you go.
    - justaj 8y ago
      Not necessarily. Opposition to (intentionally) vague documents that have the potential to be used as methods of exerting political power can be seen as purely operational in order to keep the project afloat.
  - kadendogthing 8y ago
    Really? Because it seems like it lists standards that are expected in actual professional environments.
baud147258 8y ago
One problem I find with the CoC is the grey area, which are not defined, but left to the appreciation of the enforcer, like 'Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting', which would vary from country to country and 'Representation of a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers' regarding representation of the project in a public space. With this, an enforcer may easily trump charge against any contributor.
- skybrian 8y ago
  I think you are right that in the end, the project leaders' interpretation determines what the rules mean. But this isn't different from before. A community's customs are complicated and can't entirely be captured in any reasonable set of rules.
davidmr 8y ago
While I get that this discussion is taking place in the context of contentious CoC debates in other projects, what I don't understand is why this is a big deal in the Linux case. Yes, people have been complaining about Linus' occasionally unambiguously abusive behavior for a long time, this genuinely seems like Linus had a bad few days, was pulled aside by some subset of the maintainers, and came to the conclusion that he should make some changes to his behavior and to the community of the project he controls. I didn't see any threats or endless contentious debate derailing the project, so I'm genuinely struggling to understand why people are upset about this. If his previous behavior was acceptable, surely his new behavior will be acceptable as well?
- beat 8y ago
  I don't think anyone is expecting his "new behavior" to be worse. I think he pretty clearly gets that the way he was behaving before was wrong, and that he needs some help and guidance in order to deal with that. And the new CoC is part of that... it's there to help him as well as others, and he understands that. Unfortunately, the very concept of codes of conduct sets off a lot of political anger, mostly among the very people who really, desperately need a code of conduct applied to them.
forgottenpass 8y ago
I want what's best for Linux and Linus. It would be presumptuous if I said I knew exactly what that was. I hope we can all give them the space they need to figure it out.

64 points by tux1968 8y ago

railroad

beat 8y ago

Kudos to Linus Torvalds for recognizing he has a behavior problem and taking active steps to be a better leader and a better person. It's tremendously difficult to acknowledge shortcomings and failures in such a public way - especially when he could fall back on his accomplishments, authority, and fan base for support, and not do anything about it or even admit he has a problem.

malvosenior 8y ago

> But the purpose of such a code is not to threaten anybody; indeed, it is the opposite. It is a statement that we all have the right to be who we are and participate in the community as equals without having to contend with bullying, abuse, and worse. The creator of the CoC does regularly threaten and bully people though (Opal, Matz...). The double standard is one of the issues I have with putting a CoC in place. When the slightest mistake is punished for some people, while others are free to spew vitriol, it seems like we have a real problem. I'm sad this got adopted into the kernel and is now likely to be pushed elsewhere.

shadowmint 8y ago
> That said, the chances are that what will emerge from the dust will be something that looks like the same kernel community that has achieved so much in the last 27 years. Only hopefully it will be a bit friendlier, a bit more diverse, and much stronger. This could indeed be one of those inflection points mentioned by Torvalds in his announcement; the kernel has always emerged from those episodes stronger than ever. It is hard to see any reasons why this time should be different. Is the message to take away here, not some alt-agenda anti-CoC message. Just please, for one moment, consider that this isn’t the end of roman imperialism. Its just a general, welcome, already in progress, change towards more professional conduct.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  But it's not. It's a power grab and like any power grab it is welcomed by ideological and other kinds of supporters, but not by others. Take diversity for example. What does it have to do with professional conduct? Nothing, of course, it's a purely ideological thing. Why is it there and talked about?
  - codetrotter 8y ago
    > Take diversity for example. What does it have to do with professional conduct? If someone is acting racist towards others for example, or displaying sexist attitudes, then that will absolutely hurt diversity because the people at the receiving end will not want to stick around.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      The problem comes from the re-defining of sexism and racism. Mainly that you can't be sexist toward men or racist toward white people. The same people that crafted the CoC hold those views.
      - detaro 8y ago
        They are not the people enforcing it in the kernel community, so their opinion doesn't matter that much for this use.
    - repolfx 8y ago
      Has the Linux kernel project ever had a real problem with that? Linus is not racist or sexist, and nobody is saying he is. Just that he loses his temper and yells at people when he shouldn't. It appears that Linus' temper problem has been used to slip in "more diverse and stronger" to something apparently unrelated to diversity. This is the sort of thing that gives what should be trivial and uncontroversial (A code of conduct) a terrible reputation for being the first sign of entryism by extremists who try to destroy communities from the inside. The kernel doesn't need a CoC. All it needs is for Linus to say he's going to chill out a bit and for others to hold him to it. But now he's been convinced/pressured/bullied into adopting this deeply ideological document, it's probably only a matter of time before the kernel community is twisting itself into a pulp.
prolepunk 8y ago
Keep our ad-hominem attacks to yourself.

lawnchair_larry 8y ago

CoC activism is such an unnecessary distraction.

sgift 8y ago
The people who suffer under the behavior called out in CoCs tend to disagree. Can you give a reason why they are wrong and you are right?
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Not OP, but suffering is a sliding scale (sidenote: some suffering is good, it teaches you how to be a better human; think public speaking). You shouldn't be abused or attacked when interacting in a public project, of course, but you also don't have a right to not be offended or having your feelings not hurt. My personal sentiment is that CoCs have been weaponized (in the name of inclusion and protection) when it suits certain supporters of said CoCs to eject members of a collaboration they take issue with. TL;DR All things in moderation.
  - theossuary 8y ago
    Can you show an example or two of such weaponization? I've never come across one. And even if it was weaponized, wouldn't that be the fault of the maintainers judging the situation? You saying it's the CoC's fault is like blaming a gun in a murder.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      It's often the original creator of the CoC doing the weaponizing. Here are a few examples: * https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004 https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004 * https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165 https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165 * https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 And really you can just go to CoralineAda's twitter to see that the CoC was designed as a political tool and an aggressive one at that.

patrickmay 8y ago

I find the original Code of Conflict (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b0bc65729070b9cbdbb53ff042984a3c545a0e34 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...) to be more concise, more direct, and more applicable to kernel development. I don't see that the new CoC adds anything of value to it.

Paul-ish 8y ago
One qualitative difference is where that code of conduct puts the responsibility. The old one spends more time telling people not to be sensitive, but okay if your feeling are hurt here's what you do, and maybe something will happen. Oh yeah, and I guess don't be a jerk. The new code of conduct puts makes it clear to everyone it is their responsibility not to be a bad actor. The responsibility is on YOU to be civil, and if you fail to you will be the one dealing with the consequences.

forgottenpass 8y ago

Edit: This might be one of those cases where I need to explicitly say I agree with the following statement before giving pushback on the thing it defends. Things we strive for should be their best possible version, even if criticizing the current from means giving trolls and opposition ammunition. >But the purpose of such a code is not to threaten anybody; indeed, it is the opposite. The fact that this is regularly and explicitly clarified indicates the original document is poorly drafted. For the sake of avoiding the obvious tangents, lets presuppose the best possible interpretation of the original code. Even in that case, no amount of blaming the people that made the clarification necessary (by - for example - saying that they're uncharitably reading the original) makes the code better drafted.

wccrawford 8y ago
>The fact that this is regularly and explicitly clarified indicates the original document is poorly drafted. Would you say the same about the US constitution? It was designed to be updated and changed, rather than be written in stone. To you, is that the same as saying that it's "poorly drafted" and they knew it? To most people, I think they feel that's a sign that they were wise enough to know that they couldn't think of everything, and that the document would have to change over time.
- repolfx 8y ago
  Is that a valid analogy? The US Constitution tries not to be vague, and is extremely clear about its aims. Being updatable is not the same as having a generic "... and anything else that we might consider problematic" clause in it. And the Constitution comes with an infrastructure that is constantly trying to clarify what it means when applied, not a perfect infrastructure for sure, but at least judges and the Supremes understand that their issue is to clarify interpretation and not simply make judgements about individuals on an ad-hoc basis. In other words, nobody argues that the Constitution is dangerous and designed to nail particular groups to the wall, because the document itself is clear proof that such a statement would be false. The CoC that has caused so much drama in other projects needs this kind of "don't worry it won't be abused" disclaimers, largely because the authors didn't actually try to pin themselves down (they didn't want to). It has deliberately vague clauses and the classic "... and anything else inappropriate" tacked on the end, which renders the document meaningless. In addition it is routinely used to attack certain groups but not others. These problems could have been avoided by better drafting, but one suspects it would then not have met the goals of the drafters.

seany 8y ago

So sad to see big projects fall to this kind of political activism.

chroma 8y ago

> One of the strongest criticisms against the old code of conflict is that it did not enumerate the types of behavior that are unwelcome. The new one cannot be criticized on that account. Except that the list contains rules that are so general as to be completely subjective. The last rule forbids, "Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting." The problem with such general rules is that you get selective enforcement. Node.js has the same code of conduct, and it has been used to try to evict Rod Vagg from the technical committee[1] for tweeting a link to a Quillette article on freedom of speech[2]. Rod's tweet got him in hot water, but one of his peers had plenty of blatantly sexist tweets and received no reports for CoC violations.[3] 1. https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165 https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165 2. https://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-speech/ https://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-sp... 3. Such as https://twitter.com/maybekatz/status/900414216888139776 https://twitter.com/maybekatz/status/900414216888139776 "Men are fragile, often incompetent babies with no sense of humor, and I like reminding them of their inferiority."

zzzcpan 8y ago
Yes, sadly, it's all about politics and power, not "professional conduct".
- maxerickson 8y ago
  Opposition to them is also all about politics and power, so there you go.
  - justaj 8y ago
    Not necessarily. Opposition to (intentionally) vague documents that have the potential to be used as methods of exerting political power can be seen as purely operational in order to keep the project afloat.
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  Really? Because it seems like it lists standards that are expected in actual professional environments.

baud147258 8y ago

One problem I find with the CoC is the grey area, which are not defined, but left to the appreciation of the enforcer, like 'Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting', which would vary from country to country and 'Representation of a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers' regarding representation of the project in a public space. With this, an enforcer may easily trump charge against any contributor.

skybrian 8y ago
I think you are right that in the end, the project leaders' interpretation determines what the rules mean. But this isn't different from before. A community's customs are complicated and can't entirely be captured in any reasonable set of rules.

davidmr 8y ago

While I get that this discussion is taking place in the context of contentious CoC debates in other projects, what I don't understand is why this is a big deal in the Linux case. Yes, people have been complaining about Linus' occasionally unambiguously abusive behavior for a long time, this genuinely seems like Linus had a bad few days, was pulled aside by some subset of the maintainers, and came to the conclusion that he should make some changes to his behavior and to the community of the project he controls. I didn't see any threats or endless contentious debate derailing the project, so I'm genuinely struggling to understand why people are upset about this. If his previous behavior was acceptable, surely his new behavior will be acceptable as well?

beat 8y ago
I don't think anyone is expecting his "new behavior" to be worse. I think he pretty clearly gets that the way he was behaving before was wrong, and that he needs some help and guidance in order to deal with that. And the new CoC is part of that... it's there to help him as well as others, and he understands that. Unfortunately, the very concept of codes of conduct sets off a lot of political anger, mostly among the very people who really, desperately need a code of conduct applied to them.

forgottenpass 8y ago

I want what's best for Linux and Linus. It would be presumptuous if I said I knew exactly what that was. I hope we can all give them the space they need to figure it out.