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>but organisations and structures defining themselves by those words very rarely practice what they preach Is there some sort of evidence for this? >A meritoc

by valvar 8y ago

>but organisations and structures defining themselves by those words very rarely practice what they preach Is there some sort of evidence for this? >A meritocracy would never allow harassment of people on the basis of things that have nothing to do with their code - it would take a hard stance against sexism and harassment, it would attempt to communicate in a way that doesn’t drive people away from the project in a biased manner, since those and many other behaviours drive away people who may have merit I can buy that. But that means that you do believe in merit as a central principle. The new CoC is founded on an ideology that explicitly rejects it. >If anything, a well-designed code of conduct can create something closer to a real meritocracy, as you don’t drive away contributors on anything but the merit of their contributions. If that were the purpose of the new Contributor Covenant, I don't think anyone would be complaining.

icebraining 8y ago
> Is there some sort of evidence for this? What type of evidence would change your mind? > The new CoC is founded on an ideology that explicitly rejects it. The GPL is also founded on an ideology that rejects proprietary software, yet Linux is used by plenty of companies who develop such software. "Foundations" are just an origin story. What part of the actual text of the CoC prevents a meritocracy? > If that were the purpose of the new Contributor Covenant, I don't think anyone would be complaining. Reusing the previous example, the purpose of the GPL was to drive out proprietary software; yet the people using it in Linux do not yield it that way. It doesn't matter what purpose the original writer had in mind, only the purpose of those who have the power to interpret and implement it. Do you believe the TAB has any other purpose in mind?
- roenxi 8y ago
  > Reusing the previous example, the purpose of the GPL was to drive out proprietary software; yet the people using it in Linux do not yield it that way. That was an outcome that was hoped for, not a purpose. The purpose is pretty explicit in the preamble paragraphs [0] - to promote a certain style of freedom. As a body, the Free Software community wouldn't deny that if creating non-free software is legal, then free software can be used to achieve that goal. They have a more fundamental objection to the government creating and then enforcing the concept of copyright. The kernel community has been very aggressive about securing that freedom for themselves, particularly in arenas such as allowing non-free drivers into the kernel. They don't take a politically activist stance of lobbying to change the law, but they don't seem to deal with code that they can't legally modify themselves. The kernel community may well be cherry-picking from the GNU strategy, but the GPL is being used as intended - to promote and secure freedom for users. > What part of the actual text of the CoC prevents a meritocracy? The part where it sets out that the Technical Advisory Board (aka the TAB) will presumably remove people form the community who are in breach of the code of conduct, without language that exempts people who have a long history of positive technical contribution. Everything involves tradeoffs. Being a meritocracy means that individuals of technical merit are given leeway to fumble, or even potentially abuse, the status of their position. Good example is Hans Reiser - the case was rendered moot by him being imprisoned, but a meritocracy says "the code is good, let him keep contributing" and a non-meritocractic community would presumably say "we don't want to associate with murderers". Obviously nobody wants the to encourage bad behavior, but the question being asked is /how much/ slack do great technical contributors get if they happen to be, say, autistic and antisocial. Historically, the answer has been lots of slack. In future, the answer looks like it will be corporate-acceptable-behavior, which is a higher standard. Presumably if there is a group who thinks this change is needed it will be followed by a purge of the community where marginal maintainers are pushed out. [0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
  - vertex-four 8y ago
    You can be autistic, not good in social situations, and still not abuse, harass, or discriminate against people. Associating abuse and harassment with being a fundamental part of autism is not ok. Autistic people can fully understand "do not perform this behaviour again" - they can also understand consequences of their behaviour, including both positive ("people like to talk to me more and are more accepting of my ideas if I do X") and negative ("I will be removed from this community if I do X"). If anything, a clear, structured description of what behaviour is and is not acceptable - such as described in a code of conduct - is incredibly useful for many autistic people. Please do not make the argument that autistic people cannot learn to control their behaviour again. In the incredibly rare cases where a person, autistic or not, cannot learn how not to abuse people, they need a full-time carer, who will be able to help them interact with the world in a way which doesn't harm other people. It is not the responsibility of people involved in an arbitrary software community to suffer abuse just to make an abuser happy. Finally - if you allow abusive people to exist within a community, you by definition exclude everybody who they would abuse. You exclude a number of people who may have greater merit, whether individually or collectively. You just can't see that because you're supporting an abusive person over and above anybody else who might wish to contribute. You're supporting them even while they drive out countless contributors, who you can't see the "merit" of because they're no longer contributing. All you can really see is the merit of abusive people, and you ignore the merit of those they abuse.
    - roenxi 8y ago
      I suppose you are arguing that meritocratic communities aren't the best setup for a community - which is a pretty reasonable one. I mean, the big successful countries aren't meritocracies, they are democracies. So fair enough. > Finally - if you allow abusive people to exist within a community, you by definition exclude everybody who they would abuse. You are going directly to how a meritocratic society might fail. Meritocratic communities can fail, but so can communities with any ideological underpinning. Sometimes you have a choice between someone who knows exactly what they are doing but has questionable behaviors vs. someone who doesn't know quite as much but is better behaved. A meritocracy gives power to the first person. We can have long conversations about whether that person should strive to improve themselves over time (pretty easy to answer that question), but change is slow and in the interim a choice has to be made.
maccam94 8y ago
I haven't read the source quotes, but I would argue that a pure meritocracy does not organically establish and maintain itself. Humans don't behave like perfect robots, we're messy. We have cognitive biases, sometimes we act irrationally, we like to form tribes and in-groups and out-groups. We trust some people and distrust others, and that can affect our judgement both consciously and subconsciously. Without rules and governance, there is nothing to enforce a consistent meritocratic system.

by valvar 8y ago

icebraining 8y ago

> Is there some sort of evidence for this? What type of evidence would change your mind? > The new CoC is founded on an ideology that explicitly rejects it. The GPL is also founded on an ideology that rejects proprietary software, yet Linux is used by plenty of companies who develop such software. "Foundations" are just an origin story. What part of the actual text of the CoC prevents a meritocracy? > If that were the purpose of the new Contributor Covenant, I don't think anyone would be complaining. Reusing the previous example, the purpose of the GPL was to drive out proprietary software; yet the people using it in Linux do not yield it that way. It doesn't matter what purpose the original writer had in mind, only the purpose of those who have the power to interpret and implement it. Do you believe the TAB has any other purpose in mind?

roenxi 8y ago
> Reusing the previous example, the purpose of the GPL was to drive out proprietary software; yet the people using it in Linux do not yield it that way. That was an outcome that was hoped for, not a purpose. The purpose is pretty explicit in the preamble paragraphs [0] - to promote a certain style of freedom. As a body, the Free Software community wouldn't deny that if creating non-free software is legal, then free software can be used to achieve that goal. They have a more fundamental objection to the government creating and then enforcing the concept of copyright. The kernel community has been very aggressive about securing that freedom for themselves, particularly in arenas such as allowing non-free drivers into the kernel. They don't take a politically activist stance of lobbying to change the law, but they don't seem to deal with code that they can't legally modify themselves. The kernel community may well be cherry-picking from the GNU strategy, but the GPL is being used as intended - to promote and secure freedom for users. > What part of the actual text of the CoC prevents a meritocracy? The part where it sets out that the Technical Advisory Board (aka the TAB) will presumably remove people form the community who are in breach of the code of conduct, without language that exempts people who have a long history of positive technical contribution. Everything involves tradeoffs. Being a meritocracy means that individuals of technical merit are given leeway to fumble, or even potentially abuse, the status of their position. Good example is Hans Reiser - the case was rendered moot by him being imprisoned, but a meritocracy says "the code is good, let him keep contributing" and a non-meritocractic community would presumably say "we don't want to associate with murderers". Obviously nobody wants the to encourage bad behavior, but the question being asked is /how much/ slack do great technical contributors get if they happen to be, say, autistic and antisocial. Historically, the answer has been lots of slack. In future, the answer looks like it will be corporate-acceptable-behavior, which is a higher standard. Presumably if there is a group who thinks this change is needed it will be followed by a purge of the community where marginal maintainers are pushed out. [0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
- vertex-four 8y ago
  You can be autistic, not good in social situations, and still not abuse, harass, or discriminate against people. Associating abuse and harassment with being a fundamental part of autism is not ok. Autistic people can fully understand "do not perform this behaviour again" - they can also understand consequences of their behaviour, including both positive ("people like to talk to me more and are more accepting of my ideas if I do X") and negative ("I will be removed from this community if I do X"). If anything, a clear, structured description of what behaviour is and is not acceptable - such as described in a code of conduct - is incredibly useful for many autistic people. Please do not make the argument that autistic people cannot learn to control their behaviour again. In the incredibly rare cases where a person, autistic or not, cannot learn how not to abuse people, they need a full-time carer, who will be able to help them interact with the world in a way which doesn't harm other people. It is not the responsibility of people involved in an arbitrary software community to suffer abuse just to make an abuser happy. Finally - if you allow abusive people to exist within a community, you by definition exclude everybody who they would abuse. You exclude a number of people who may have greater merit, whether individually or collectively. You just can't see that because you're supporting an abusive person over and above anybody else who might wish to contribute. You're supporting them even while they drive out countless contributors, who you can't see the "merit" of because they're no longer contributing. All you can really see is the merit of abusive people, and you ignore the merit of those they abuse.
  - roenxi 8y ago
    I suppose you are arguing that meritocratic communities aren't the best setup for a community - which is a pretty reasonable one. I mean, the big successful countries aren't meritocracies, they are democracies. So fair enough. > Finally - if you allow abusive people to exist within a community, you by definition exclude everybody who they would abuse. You are going directly to how a meritocratic society might fail. Meritocratic communities can fail, but so can communities with any ideological underpinning. Sometimes you have a choice between someone who knows exactly what they are doing but has questionable behaviors vs. someone who doesn't know quite as much but is better behaved. A meritocracy gives power to the first person. We can have long conversations about whether that person should strive to improve themselves over time (pretty easy to answer that question), but change is slow and in the interim a choice has to be made.

maccam94 8y ago

I haven't read the source quotes, but I would argue that a pure meritocracy does not organically establish and maintain itself. Humans don't behave like perfect robots, we're messy. We have cognitive biases, sometimes we act irrationally, we like to form tribes and in-groups and out-groups. We trust some people and distrust others, and that can affect our judgement both consciously and subconsciously. Without rules and governance, there is nothing to enforce a consistent meritocratic system.