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Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

596 points by stargrave 8y ago

ekianjo 8y ago
> Please assume other participants are posting in good faith, even if you disagree with what they say. When people present code or text as their own work, please accept it as their work. Please do not criticize people for wrongs that you only speculate they may have done; stick to what they actually say and actually do. That's a breath of fresh air. There's always someone who tries to read between the lines and strawman people for what they did not say/express. Keeping the benefit of the doubt is always a more charitable (and peaceful) way for conversations to take place.
- noch 8y ago
  > There's always someone who tries to read between the lines and strawman people for what they did not say/express. The claim that there is always someone creating strawmen is itself the creation of a strawman. If you assume good faith of participants then it might be useful to assume good faith of those who criticise even if they misunderstand or misread or assume unwarranted implications.
  - de_watcher 8y ago
    I'll assume good faith before we overflow the stack.
    - codeulike 8y ago
      I was going to make a comment like this but yours is much better.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    I think this would be covered under assuming people are acting in good faith but I absolutely agree this is something that should be stated explicitly. Don't treat someone who says they felt hurt or excluded as someone overly sensitive. Because even when someone gets the wrong impression you may find it valuable to reflect on why that impression was received in the first place. And please don't treat people who try to point out exclusionary or hurtful language like they're your adversary or trying to control you -- it can be incredibly hard for people of disprivileged demographics to speak up for themselves. I have to rely on the defense of others constantly because when I speak for myself I'm not taken seriously.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jelly 8y ago
    "There's always one" is a common rhetorical device whose meaning is closer to "There's often one, and I easily forget the times there's not." I don't think the parent's intention was to make such a claim.
    - cipherzero 8y ago
      Whether GP meant to make a strawman or not, i found the comment to be a good reminder to apply the strategy GP espoused. Hopefully that’s how it’s perceived- and not as an indictment of hypocrisy.
  - gweinberg 8y ago
    Well, in the case of volunteer software projects, I think people who make significant contributions should be cut a great deal of slack, whereas those who criticize contributors without contributing themselves aren't entitled to any slack at all.
    - Spivak 8y ago
      I mean that's pretty much how it works in practice, I don't think there's really a need to codify "you can get away with being insufferable so long as you're valuable enough." It's not exactly a goal to strive for and more something that is tolerated until another options presents.
    - ljm 8y ago
      I think there's a huge difference between cutting slack and assuming positive intent, in the same way that there's a huge difference between criticism and constructive feedback. Cutting slack is essentially turning the other cheek to otherwise unwelcome behaviour, for whatever reason that might be. I don't believe it's healthy at all to cut slack for some people and not others. On the contrary, it's incredibly healthy to give everyone the exact same assumption of positive intent up until it's proven otherwise. Those making significant contributions should be doing their best to set the example, to show what the high standard is, and if you let them off the hook you're not holding them to account. You're putting them above the guidelines and essentially enabling them. This doesn't mean that everyone should be criticised equally, but nobody should be above receiving constructive feedback on their communication just because they've contributed a lot of work. And on that level, it also stands to reason that feedback has to be delivered compassionately and appropriately, and it works a lot better if that's done in the context of a trusting relationship or through people who are skilled in engaging in such conversations. A newcomer to the community who criticises everybody else is not communicating kindly or compassionately. The assumption of positive intent may suggest that they're not familiar with the guidelines, so the constructive feedback would be to present those guidelines and point out where the newcomer may have fallen short. Hard work, but communities are hard work.
- xoa 8y ago
  This is similar to what I consider to be one of the most important parts of the HN Guidelines: >Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. I think it nicely and concisely encapsulates a few critical parts of online conversation: that it's a two-way street and to be productive requires responders to also really think about what is being said, and that we should all take a certain level of humility as a baseline because we lack a lot of the non-verbal cues that face to face discussion has. A big one (and a definitional part of the whole "global community" thing) is that it can be hard to tell on the Internet if someone is a native speaker or not. Particularly for English, since that gets a significant level of formal education through much of the world and is also a significant focus of machine translation with probably one of the larger learning sets due to being an early target. IRL people can quickly tell if there is some sort of language barrier and adjust accordingly, but in online discussions it can be a lot harder to not project too many expectations onto people on the other side of the screen. And of course even native speakers can just plain be tired, or have had a bad day, things which again non-verbal cues could suggest but takes conscious effort with just words. Finally, people outside of a specialization can have valuable ideas to convey but lack the terminology to express it the way someone specialized would. One could say they're not "native speakers" of that sub-dialect of English even if they're native English speakers. So it really helps as a baseline to try to figure out what people are really aiming for even if they lack the precise words to convey it. I've found it's a suggestion that has made me contemplate and rewrite responses even if I still forget sometimes. One fair corollary however: this is all as long as there is reason to assume good faith. That's the default assumption, but it's not a right either, it is in fact possible for someone to demonstrate bad faith. In that case suppression or expulsion should be swift despite any cries of "censorship", because resource exhaustion attacks are also a major threat in online discussion. Less so in more specialized areas like mailing lists then general forums, but even there it can happen via rules lawyering and the like.
- flukus 8y ago
  > That's a breath of fresh air. There's always someone who tries to read between the lines and strawman people for what they did not say/express. Lately strawman arguments seem to have become much more common under the guise of "virtue signalling" or "dog whistling".
avar 8y ago
Side note: This is the first E-Mail I've seen from Stallman in over 4 years that hasn't started with his usual boilerplate: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] See e.g. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2018-10/msg00293.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2018-10/msg00... (just picked his latest on emacs-devel) for an example.
- okket 8y ago
  Stallman without boilerplate, Linus without rants, what has the world become? Maybe, when everybody is loud and screaming in rage, the escapist role is the quiet, humble and introspect one.
- yur3i__ 8y ago
  Likely because its an official announcement rather than a "personal" email. eg when libreboot left GNU he didn't include it there either: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2017-01/msg00001.html http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2017-01/msg00001....
- adamrezich 8y ago
  Maybe he wants the NSA and FBI to take note as well.
x220 8y ago
I think this is a good approach, since these guidelines seem to arise out of compassion and wanting to make both the disrespectful contributors and the people they disrespect better communicators, and make the community better as a whole. In contrast I get the sense that most CoCs I read are motivated by a desire to punish people who make you feel bad.
phoe-krk 8y ago
A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them. It is the heavy-handed way of teaching people to behave differently, and since it only comes into action when people do something against the rules, it doesn't try to teach people to do better than what the rules require. To be sure, the appointed maintainer(s) of a GNU package can, if necessary, tell a contributor to go away; but we do not want to need to have recourse to that. That is the paragraph that captures the essence of the CoC issues for me. A CoC seems to be used as a weapon for killing those that do not abide by its rules, not as a tool for teaching each other to be awesome to each other. Edit: I also love how each paragraph in the guidelines starts with "please". It's such a different approach than the one taken in CoC: "please do this or that for everyone's benefit" rather than "do this and that or you'll be judged by the appropriate judging organ". We lack this kind of gentleness in the world of raging wars between pro-CoC people and anti-CoC people.
- _pmf_ 8y ago
  “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” ― Robert Conquest
  - dangerlibrary 8y ago
    The relevance of the quote you've posted might be less obvious than you think it is.
    - folknor 8y ago
      It's relevant because this wave of CoC attacks on open source projects was started by someone who has literally said "I can’t wait for the mass exodus from Linux now that it’s been infiltrated by SJWs."[1], in reference to the kernel adopting their CoC. This person obviously does not care about the people who contribute to the kernel. They wrote the "Contributor Covenant"[2], which is what the kernel (among tons of other projects) adopted. 1: https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1041441155874009093 https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1041441155874009093 2: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/ https://www.contributor-covenant.org/
dijit 8y ago
1) I hate this trend 2) I like that he acknowledges the criticisms against the trend and attempts to get to the root of the issue rather than "agreeing" with one of the polarised sides. (Anti-CoC/Pro-CoC people). It's nice to have guidelines, they're less aggressive than whips. Hopefully this is enough to appease both sides. EDIT: please criticise my points. If you have something to say, don't hide behind the downvote button.
hprotagonist 8y ago
This is a remarkably sane and cogent approach. His point about CoCs failing to encourage behavior “above and beyond” the rules is well made, and i hadn’t thought about that side of Goodheart’s Law in this setting before.
- carlmr 8y ago
  >Goodheart’s Law Didn't know this one yet. Thank you for pointing it out. I'll bring it up on my next discussion on targeting 100% code coverage vs seeing it just as an indicator of insufficient tests.
TotempaaltJ 8y ago
> Rather than trying to have the last word, look for the times when there is no need to reply, perhaps because you already made the relevant point clear enough. If you know something about the game of Go, this analogy might clarify that: when the opponent's move is not strong enough to require a direct response, it is advantageous to give it none and instead move elsewhere. I love this analogy of why not responding might be your best option.
- bjt2n3904 8y ago
  Perhaps the most overlooked part of the document. This is something I struggle with, a mentality of "everything must be logically evaluated and upvoted or downvoted". Sometimes, there doesn't need to be a response.
- whiddershins 8y ago
  I was very influenced when I read Paul Graham’s assertion that comment quality tends to be inversely proportional to reply depth. I can’t find the reference but I really took that to heart, and try as hard as I can to avoid replying to a reply to one of my comments, here and elsewhere. The exception would be if I was very unclear originally, or if someone asks something specific that only I can answer. What’s interesting is how effective this seems to be. If my original statement is worth defending usually someone else will chime in. Otherwise it’s a great mental exercise to just let the criticism stand, and try to think how to be more airtight in the future.
  - hueving 8y ago
    That's a good pointer maybe for debate threads but it's not a good way to have a real conversation.
funkythings 8y ago
> In August, a discussion started among GNU package maintainers about the problem that GNU development often pushes women away I'm not trying to offend people or anything, but where is the evidence for this in GNU specifically?
- jordigh 8y ago
  I was there to witness the private mailing list that culminated in this, and there was a very clear example of that happening there. A certain GNU contributor, let's call her Sal, was voicing concerns with current practices. Someone else replied to her with "Sally," condescendingly talking down to her. To this she said, "I did not invite you to call me by a nickname. Call me Sal." A sub-discussion then erupted about the etymology of "Sally" and whether or not it was technically correct to someone who preferred "Sal" to be called "Sally" instead. Instead of, you know, just calling people what they want to be called and be done with it. And not be condescending about it.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    That sounds utterly trivial - why was Sal/Sally so upset by an attempt to be polite by not using a short form/pet name. That must happen to her all the time in formal settings. As for "voicing concerns with current practices", what were those concerns and practices? Technical?
    - yarrel 8y ago
      It wasn't an attempt to be polite. They didn't use the long form of their name (which would be irritating but I can see that being an attempt to be polite), they used a rather infantilising diminutive. The effect was condescending and "Sal" was well within their rights to object. In the general case, telling someone that actually you are the person who has the last word on what they are called is bullying.
      - repolfx 8y ago
        Sure, if someone says "call me this" and you don't, I agree, that's annoying. But it should be a polite request, not the start of a fight. And what is the long form then? The only female name I can think of that shortens to Sal is Sally. This whole story seems suspect.
marijn 8y ago
While it sounds very reasonable, friendly, and non-authoritarian, a big problem with an approach like this, without real teeth or rigidity, is that it is very easy to harass people out of a community while staying within its constraints, and provides very little recourse for those being harassed (who often are not in a position of power) to put on pressure for getting something done about it. The approach taken largely ignores the discussion that's been going on about this topic, and sounds pretty naive, if not willfully passive.
- morley 8y ago
  I don't think any one action is going to completely fix what's wrong with society. But I do think these guidelines are likely make society _better_ and and unlikely to make them worse. This definitely should not be the last action taken to make society better, and I look forward to more actions along these same lines.
- ajross 8y ago
  The current push for codes of conduct in software projects isn't about harassment per se. Realistically anyone can be harassed out of a community regardless of rules. The point of the rules is to change the norms such that behavior that would otherwise have been exclusionary or just off-putting is specifically called out and recognized as "wrong". "This code is fucking garbage and you should be ashamed" may or may not be "harassement" according to the intent of the writer or interpretation of the reader. But it's still wrong and we don't want that.
  - frogeg 8y ago
    Do you really need a CoC to know someone who says "This code is fucking garbage and you should be ashamed" is an idiot? Do you really need a CoC to kick out someone who says that?
    - ajross 8y ago
      That kind of behavior is endemic in our community. So... yes, I guess we do.
Millennium 8y ago
This is interesting, but I have to say I'm skeptical that it'll do any better than the Linux kernel community's attempt to apply Wheaton's Law back in 2015. The geek community was largely formed by people who had been unfairly targeted by those who enforce social norms: picking inappropriate targets, taking things to inappropriate extremes, and the like. Our response was to create a community that didn't enforce social norms at all -Geek Social Fallacy #1, essentially- and a lot of beautiful things came from that. We changed the world for the better in a lot of ways, precisely because we refused to reject people just because they acted in ways that went against the social norm. But there was a problem: some behaviors really shouldn't be accepted, and some people really won't change without the application of force. Unlike the people who first formed the geek communities -people we should all aspire to be like- this second group was fairly ostracized: appropriate targets, appropriate measures. They came to our community, not precisely for support, but for enablers; having been rejected from everywhere else, they fled to a group that refused to reject anybody. And that's exactly what we did, if not always enthusiastically. It's hard to find a geek circle without at least one of Those Geeks: the kind who drag things down and ruin things for everyone, but people feel a duty to put up with their crap because that's what it means to be a geek. They continue to abuse us and play us, for exactly this reason. And they aren't going to change unless they are forced to. Some of them won't change even then, but you do what you have to do. And that's the problem with the kernel's old code of conduct, and with these "Kind Communication Guidelines". They're a step in the right direction, because they spell out unacceptable behaviors. But because they don't spell out clear and consistent consequences for those behaviors, creepers gonna creep. You might catch a few mild cases, and that's not insignificant, but the mild cases aren't at the core of the problem, so the needle isn't going to move much. I know only too well how hard it is to lay down the law against someone who is abusing your goodwill, especially when they're valued for other reasons, and most of all when it feels so much like they're "just a little more extreme" than most. It's a horribly painful thing to have to do -if you haven't had to do it before, it hurts just as much as you might imagine, if not even worse- and I can't blame people for being reluctant to do that. But this is how you induce change in the hardcore. Guidelines like this can serve as decent warning that real change is coming, but they don't bring about that change themselves. Still, this is a step in the right direction. It's at least an acknowledgment that there are norms, and they are to be observed. But it's not going to be the magic pill. There simply is none.
wpietri 8y ago
On the one hand, I'm glad that he's at least acknowledging that this is a problem. It's disappointing to me that he talks about the problem as if people first noticed it in August, when I've heard it discussed for a decade or more. But still, baby steps. There's also a crashing lack of self-awareness here. This bit sounds great: "The only political positions that the GNU Project endorses are (1) that users should have control of their own computing (for instance, through free software) and (2) supporting basic human rights in computing." But a) that's a very political position, b) many people in the diversity and inclusion world see it as a direct consequence of basic human rights, and c) I don't think it's consistent with Stallman's behavior. E.g., it was only in May he declared it important to keep a stale joke about American politics in the code: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stallman/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stal...
- phoe-krk 8y ago
  I find c) to be correct, I observe the same thing. But, given that I perceive Stallman as even less self-aware in that aspect than Linus, baby steps it is indeed.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Yes, but under the circumstances, I'm unconvinced that hypocrisy is a bad thing. Consistency is overrated. It's good when people change their minds. Rigidly sticking with the same bad position seems like a bigger problem?
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Sure, if I have to choose between hypocrisy and improvement, I'll take improvement. But I'd rather have both. And given the extent to which this is written as highfalutin moral principle, I don't think it's unreasonable to deal with it on its own terms. He could have just announced this as an improvement without taking slaps at political views he disagrees with.
    - skybrian 8y ago
DannyB2 8y ago
What seems to be lacking is a viral clause so that when you 'be excellent to each other' the others are also required to abide by the same code of conduct.
- wwarner 8y ago
  That is an excellent observation! In a sense, copyleft is the most inclusive code of conduct ever devised.
brobdingnagians 8y ago
> The way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try to help people learn to make their communication more kind. This is excellent; using love and persuasion to help someone improve is so much better than by force, compulsion, and fear. How many children rebel against restrictive and domineering parents? but a child who is loved and taught, but allowed to make choices and pursue independence usually ends up much healthier and happier. >I disagree with making "diversity" a goal. If the developers in a specific free software project do not include demographic D, I don't think that the lack of them as a problem that requires action; there is no need to scramble desperately to recruit some Ds. >Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D. This dovetails in so nicely as well. You get more bees with honey than vinegar, and it is better to make a project open, kind, mentor-friendly, and productive-- which furthers the industriousness and quality of a product. Let all come who desire to come and treat them in the spirit of kindness and co-operation, but giving no preference or overt recruitment campaigns, which in themselves could end up sidelining or diverting attention from the true aims of the project. I don't always agree with Stallman, but I think this is a magnificent and well-thought out plan and response.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  So, here's the thing. Statements like this? Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D. This is not a new statement. This is what people pushing diversity have been saying for years and years. The only ways for this to be a new and refreshing thing to you are: 1. You were not paying attention, or 2. You were getting all your information from people who were doing their best to misinform you.
  - nabla9 8y ago
    >2. You were getting all your information from people who were doing their best to misinform you. When there is moral panic, sensible people who advocated the issues long time are pushed aside and polarization happens.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
VictorSCushman 8y ago
> The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start guiding people towards kinder communication at a point well before one would even think of saying, "You are breaking the rules." I really like this. I think it'll help the community become a more welcoming place overall without needing to view politeness as a rule set. I see this as an overall benefit to the GNU project, as well as to OSS as a whole.
interfixus 8y ago
A CoC in any other name is still a CoC. A very thin end of a wedge is stil the end of a wedge.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  A wedge towards... what? Polite and professional behavior isn't a bad thing.
  - interfixus 8y ago
    No, clearly not. Enforcement of behavior is a terrible thing. And of course it won't stop with a few, fairly reasonable suggestions. It never, ever does.
  - letstrynvm 8y ago
    "professional behavior" would make sense if both sides are getting paid. If only the user is getting paid, and he wants support or something else from the FOSS author, why should the FOSS author be held to this "professional behavior" standard?
civodul 8y ago
As co-maintainer of GNU Guix, I want to point out that the views expressed in Richard Stallman's message are his and not those of the Guix maintainers. In particular, by writing that codes of conduct are "punitive spirit", RMS shows a misunderstanding of how these texts came into existence. More importantly, by writing that he disagrees with "making diversity a goal", RMS seems to deny the role we free software people play in the demographics of our communities. Many of us in Guix (and I think I can speak for my fellow Guix co-maintainer here) believe that free software should empower everyone. As such, correcting the biases, conscious or not, that have led to the poor diversity of our communities, must be part of our mission.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  Stallman’s guidelines fully support correcting biases. Making diversity a goal is identity politics, which is a very different thing than correcting biases.
  - jt2190 8y ago
    > Making diversity a goal is identity politics, which is a very different thing than correcting biases. I don't understand this assertion. Is there a subtlety of terminology I'm missing here? Should I read "diversity" only as a goal to produce a group that is composed of x% from group A, y% from group B, etc., rather than the more generous reading that the goal is to ensure that members of various groups feel welcome to participate?
    - jki275 8y ago
      What you state about percentages is exactly what has been pushed under the guise of diversity in many cases. Meritocracy has been specifically targeted by the more recent "code of conduct" silliness going around.
    - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
LiterallyDoge 8y ago
Is it really this complicated to treat other people with respect?
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  "Treat other people with respect" has been (in various forms and phrasings) a foundational principle of major moral frameworks around the world for thousands of years. But espousing a principle, and abiding by that principle, are two very different things. Overwhelming empirical evidence suggests that getting the people who do the former to also do the latter is quite difficult, yes.
- Nelson69 8y ago
  Why is it such a dog whistle? What's mindblowing is the rage that seems to pour out of, mostly, non-contributors when this stuff comes up. There is a more fundamental insecurity or just a fundamental disrespect that some of these folks seem to have for others. I've heard claims that there have even been planted "social justice warriors" that have intentionally engaged in conflict to change projects. When you have guys like Eric Raymond saying that sort of thing, what do you expect?
  - tomatocracy 8y ago
    It's become a "dog whistle" issue because there is a perception that some activists may use CoC-type documents to deny contributors' ability to freely engage in political speech in other, unrelated, contexts. The worry is that this in turn will lead to either witch hunts or chilling effects, which are viewed as at odds with modern Western political free speech culture. Many people feel uncomfortable with this as a concept, regardless of whether they agree with the ideas in question. They point out that this effect may well reduce the contributor pool in much the same way that a particularly harsh technical culture (eg LKML) might do, i.e. it ends up substituting one disincentive to participate with another for no net gain. On the other side, some people argue that the speech they are concerned about is not "political" and that it is right that it should be punished beyond simple disagreement. At first blush, this might seem rather tangential to the issue at hand. But there are some high profile examples of this actually having happened - see [1], or the example of Brendan Eich at Mozilla. [1] https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
brickmort 8y ago
This is much. much more reasonable than the "Post-Meritocracy" Code of Conduct.
binaryapparatus 8y ago
Being politically correct vs getting the job done, I'll always choose getting the job done. There is plenty or role playing projects where your feeling matter more than your skills. In last couple of jobs I am always asking about company policy, if they start piling about diversity and getting everybody heard and how everybody's feelings are most important thing, I don't want to work there. Earn your place with your quality and your skills, not with the help of inventing newer and newer rules until nobody can say how crappy, sub average and difficult to work with you are. (Talking to a random programmer with no skills but huge area of possible butt-hurt). Edit: btw can't agree more with Stallman if that's not clear from my post. Love that guy.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  > Being politically correct vs getting the job done, I'll always choose getting the job done. I am absolutely baffled at the idea that there is ever a situation where getting the job done requires a choice to be politically incorrect as implied here. Do you have an example of the phenomenon you're discussing?
  - mirko22 8y ago
    For example not calling a problem in the code “a problem” but “possible place for improvement” as to do so might lead people to think their code is “problematic”... then i resigned...
    - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
      I’m unsure if this is the sort of politics that’s the context of the article in question. For clarity, the article in question spawned off of an email thread regarding calling women by nicknames in a condescending manner without their consent.
      - dec0dedab0de 8y ago
        I am absolutely baffled at the idea that there is ever a situation where... {example} I’m unsure if this is the sort of politics that’s the context of the article... I think it's fair to assume they were replying to you, not the article.
ajpikul 8y ago
Fantastic!
Kenji 8y ago
Aah, I see that libero-fascism has now trickled all the way down. You will soon learn to appreciate classic values like: - Respect those who earned it - Criticise broken things ruthlessly - Getting things done is more important than coddling everyone You will see. Political correctness is deeply authoritarian and anti goal-oriented work. Hard and reliable workers will turn their backs on you.
davidkellis 8y ago
This seems to be a verbose restatement of the Golden Rule - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule - that one is taught as a child.
- blt 8y ago
  But then people use excuses like "I have thick skin, I wouldn't be offended if someone else said the same thing to me, I prefer honesty over decorum", etc. Most often these people come from a privileged background where negative feedback rolls off more easily because they know that, at the end of the day, they'll always have a comfortable life without any serious hardship.
- samcat116 8y ago
  One thing that I learned in a training at work is the platinum rule: Treat others the way _they_ want to be treated.
guardian5x 8y ago
I'm very glad that there seems to be change in the community, and also that Linus is doing some self-reflection. He is a role model for many in his position, and some people in discussions started to take his behavior as an excuse to have bad manners themselves and that it is ok to be rude to others.
fossdev 8y ago
Diversity as a goal is fundamentally flawed. It is what leads to policies like "affirmative action" which are in themselves simply a form of reverse discrimination.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  Affirmative action is about noticing that a system was biased against a particular group of people, and attempting to counteract the bias. For example: if Group X is historically discriminated against, and you can quantify the resulting bias (which may not be conscious) such that on a 100-point school admission scale it works out to on average a 5-point disadvantage, adding some points based on membership in that group is not "reverse discrimination" -- it is a correction for the known inaccuracy of the admission system (since in an unbiased system, candidates from that group would, on average, have scored higher). And if you believe discrimination should be banished, when will you be showing up to protest schools which give preferential admission to "legacies" (descendants or other kin of alumni), to protest companies which preferentially recruit from only very specific schools, or other forms of admission/recruiting/hiring which give weight to factors other than pure individual merit?
  - exprA 8y ago
    Affirmative action is racist. Accepting that, you can of course debate what sorts of racism we should allow, and perhaps even encourage. I probably disagree with you, but that's just my opinion.
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      Observing a bias, quantifying it as best as possible, and deploying countermeasures in corresponding degree to reduce its impact, is not racism. But if you believe anything which assigns admission/hiring/recruiting scores on any basis other than objectively-measured individual merit is "racist", you cannot plausibly be in favor of current hiring, recruiting or admissions practices, and have far larger fish to fry than the relatively small number of people whose admission/hiring is solely due to affirmative action. In all seriousness: look up the ratio of "legacy" admits to, say, black students admitted at top colleges, and then remind yourself that "black" is not synonymous with "affirmative action admit", and then ponder which of "legacy" and "affirmative action" would cause the greatest overall change toward fairness if eliminated. Then focus your efforts accordingly.
yosefzeev 8y ago
To me, the answer has more to do with discerning the spirit of the conversation rather than adopting any particular protocol. There will always be some joker somewhere that will violate the rules that one adopts in such a way that debate is created that causes a system to self-destruct.
joshuamorton 8y ago
So, I read through the list of guidelines, and while I have some minor quibbles with them, overall they seem fine and reasonable. But what happens if someone refuses to be kind? What happens if that person is a major contributor? What would happen if, in some strange alternate reality, Linux was a GNU project, and Linus-of-2012 said he'd really rather not care about all this politeness nonsense, and would prefer to continue on the way he was? The problem I see with your bees/honey comment is that there is no commitment here from the maintainers and leaders of the project. This is just a more verbose "Be kind to each other", but without any commitment from the leadership of the project to actually maintain a kind, welcoming environment. A non-committal claim to be kind may be honey, but its on a flytrap, and many people recognize this.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  How much damage have Linus's snippy emails really caused, in light of how they have benefited us? I and many other people like reading them because they are fun, so you have to take that in to account. Different people like different things, and that principle extends to writing styles and personalities. Indeed, if you really want to have diversity you should have some emails that I like to read in addition to having emails that you like to read, which by necessity implies that every email thread needs at least a few glib comments. I have heard that Matz and by extension the Ruby community is nice, maybe that project needs to recruit a Linus to fill out their personality lineup.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    I think that whole issue was, while it may be amusing to watch the drama unfold, that valuable contributors were being disaffected. No, its not about how entertaining the email chain reads. Its about getting work done? And it's disingenuous to describe the vicious attacks as 'snippy' and 'glib'.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      Different people saw those emails in different ways. In fact, some people are invigorated by strong words as opposed to being cowed and driven away by them. I'm not saying that you didn't perceive them as vicious attacks, I'm saying that the spectrum of human behavior includes people who think being harsh is fine, and give and take it freely. You can't just throw out everyone that behaves in a way that makes you uncomfortable, that's just xenophobia sneaking in through the back way. What's really wrong is when someone consciously goes out of their way to target another person's emotions, but that has little to do with the average niceness of their writing (which is mostly set by their natural personality baseline).
bitcynth 8y ago
I do agree with this trend, while there are some comments like "we just want to get the work done and not worry about being nice" I do think they are forgetting about a certain part. I as a developer might not contribute to certain open source projects due to the fear of being called things against my gender identity (I am transgender) or being yelled at. And the thing is that I am not getting paid or anything to do it, so instead I am just not going to contribute because I don't want to try to help and instead be yelled at. I think that the free and open source software community is moving in the right direction by making code of conducts or other similar things.
allannienhuis 8y ago
> Please don't argue unceasingly for your preferred course of action when a decision for some other course has already been made. That tends to block the activity's progress. I've seen this so many times in non-oss work too. Why do some people have such a hard time letting go? Even more so for Open Source projects - If you care _that_ much about your ideas - fork and move on; otherwise spend you and your co-contributors time advancing the project in other ways.
- dec0dedab0de 8y ago
  I have a hard time letting go when I feel like my input was dismissed out of hand, or not understood.
  - letstrynvm 8y ago
    It helps me to remember in a public forum, whether my point is acknowledged by the OP or not, is only a small fraction of the number of people who may read and accept it. If the OP unreasonably denies or refutes it, in fact they may be silently judged accordingly. No need to make your good point a hostage in your own mind to whether the OP will publicly accept it.
jaydestro 8y ago
this reads childish and stupid. what a terrible way to say you don't agree with change.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  Could you clarify what in the article reads as immature and why? I don't feel I fully understand your position here.
JulianMorrison 8y ago
When people are arguing for "diversity" what they are meaning, generally, is "there is already an enormous thumb on the scales, this can be shown empirically by outcomes". So to the extent Stallman's intent is to take the thumb off the scales and make everyone welcome, it is very reasonable. That said, I think he's wrong to devalue quota type approaches, because in some circumstances, particularly institutional ones in business and government, those are a very effective way to force a noncompliant culture to take its thumb off the scales.
- dleslie 8y ago
  > force a noncompliant culture The problem, as many see it, is that force ought not be used as a persuasion.
- indigochill 8y ago
  >those are a very effective way to force a noncompliant culture to take its thumb off the scales. I think some would argue that quota approaches aren't quite this, but rather that they're a thumb on the other end of the scale. The first thumb is still there because non-compliant cultures that aren't fundamentally converted to becoming compliant at the cultural level will generally continue to be non-compliant cultures and only comply insofar as the quotas require (to take a rather contrived example, you can hire 50% women, but what about when 30% of them are harassed, feel unwelcome, and leave?). I'm personally of the mind that the only way to really take the first thumb off the scales is to persuade the non-compliant culture that complying is in their best interest. Which seems to be the gist of these guidelines: "We all agree contributors are a good thing. Let's be welcoming to all demographics so we optimize the number of contributors."
  - electrograv 8y ago
    Well said! Moreover, the popular “thumb on the opposite side of the scale” approach risks accidentally encouraging a “thumb war” of sorts: I think people’s attention is naturally drawn to the thumb on the opposite end of the scale, and thinking this to be unfair, will respond in kind with more thumb pressure on their end. This could escalate more and more, until you eventually end up with extreme unfairness vs extreme fairness. The “thumb on scale” approach does work in some cases, I think, but it’s important that there be a “de-escalation” (or “de-thumbing”?) endgame strategy. What you don’t want is a situation where there are thumbs on each side of the scale, and each side is telling the other to remove pressure but neither side wants to because it’ll benefit the other.
Waterluvian 8y ago
I've been experimenting with the idea that good code/design/whatever technical is RARELY more important than good work environment and professional relationships. My intuition tells me that you'll end up with a worse off product being developed more slowly if you focus on good code at all costs. That's not to say you should become a team that focuses on feelings. I had a manager once entirely shut down code reviews because he felt it was hurting people's feelings. There's a right balance to strike and I really don't think that was it. My thought is that when you're somewhere near that balance and aren't sure, lean towards good relationships, over good code. This generally happens at the moment when I have to decide just how nitpicky I should be about something, often minor. The problem is that I'm no industry veteran. I don't have a lot of experience or hard facts to back this idea. But I just "feel" that it might be true.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D." I think that hits the nail on the head as to why a lot of these initiatives are a good thing: If you make things more welcoming overall, more people of all walks of life feel more likely to contribute.
lgleason 8y ago
Long term I expect to see the quality of GNU and Linux software falter over efforts like this. This is not because I don't advocate for treating other people well, on the contrary I do. It is because in practice these are politically motivated trojan horses meant to tear down things like a meritocracy, the very thing that created this great software. I've personally watched the activists pushing these target women and other under-represented minorities using these documents for the crime of disagreeing with the narrative. IE: https://medium.com/@marlene.jaeckel/the-empress-has-no-clothes-the-dark-underbelly-of-women-who-code-and-google-women-techmakers-723be27a45df https://medium.com/@marlene.jaeckel/the-empress-has-no-cloth... I fully expect to see purges happen of talented individuals based on politically motivated targeting etc. with secret tribunals where the accused are guilty until proven innocent etc.. It's happened to people like Larry Garfield of Drupal, the Opalgate crew tried to do it to a guy who dared to express his conservative views on Twitter in a personal capacity etc..
- rotw 8y ago
  > It is because in practice these are politically motivated trojan horses meant to tear down things like a meritocracy, the very thing that created this great software. 1. Why is respecting gender identity a "trojan horse" - in what way is it deceptive? 2. How is a project a meritocracy if it scares away potentially better contributors with an antagonistic discussion climate? > tried to do it to a guy who dared to express his conservative views on Twitter in a personal capacity etc.. I feel like you and the Medium post are missing out crucial information here. What were these views? How did they relate to the workplace? The Medium post mentions she is friends with James Damore - who was clearly fired because his manifesto by implication, but unmistakebly deemed women developers less competent than men, thereby creating a hostile work environment, which the author completely glosses over. This leads me to suspect that the "disagreeing with the narrative" is a euphemism for anti-women, anti-minority views and policies.
  - lgleason 8y ago
    For #1 and #2, there is a thing called emotional resilience that we have lost today. More importantly, the conversations do not get any less antagonistic in communities with this policies. If anything I have seen them get more vicious towards those in the "out group". In times past it was very rare when people were banned from groups. Today it is a regular occurrence, often made with threats of bringing in the police, ruining ones career etc.. Her post actually does a pretty good job at that. But to summarize, as a women in tech she does not feel that women should be given preferential treatment and she is outspoken against lowering the bar and etc. to increase diversity numbers. For example with one group they held a hackathon. In most hackathons they focus on tech and participants are encouraged to talk about it. One Women in Tech group however held one for women only and actively encouraged the participants to not talk about tech and focused on identity politics, marketing and celebrity endorsements (I was a volunteer and observed this first hand and actively ignored, went against the organizers wishes with the groups I worked with by encouraging them to explore, talk and learn about the tech). Their mentors, with encouragement from the organizers, even went so far as to discourage participants from talking about the tech because it is "boring". The medium post author spoke up about this and ended up with a big target on her back for daring to suggest that the women should be held to the same standard, encouraged to talk about the tech and level up if they are not their yet. > Damore - who was clearly fired because his manifesto by implication, but unmistakebly deemed women developers less competent than men, thereby creating a hostile work environment, which the author completely glosses over. Marlene, the author of the medium post and a women in tech who wants to be recognized for her skill when she's at a job or conference etc. and feels that many of the initiatives that lower the standards etc. work against that goal. She, along with many other women and prominent scientists came to a very different conclusion after reading this. Yet this intelligent, independent thinking woman is ostracized for daring to not go along with the narrative. One of the organizers of these women in tech groups suggested that her husband needed to control her, you can't make this up, and another female organizer who, unlike Marlene, literally had no real tech experience, said that Marlene, an experienced women in tech is being banned from a woman in tech group because her views that are "harmful to women and under represented people". She is pro-women etc, but if we are being honest, it's because she is not a progressive and is not afraid to speak the truth.
rationalfaith 8y ago
The level of "aggression" is extremely high on the male side rather than women. This is a very welcome add. Hopefully less ego's to deal with and actually objectively good work being done.
M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
> For instance, call them by the names they use, and honor their preferences about their gender identity That's a backhanded way of cementing the validity of the concept of "gender expression" throughout the GNU project. I would have been perfectly on board with a guideline that simply said not to police people's gender expressions, the question being rather off-topic and disruptive in the given context. That would do the job regardless of what your political opinions on the gender question are.
- pseudalopex 8y ago
  The question is how to talk to and about other members of the community. Calling other people by their preferred names is a basic norm that goes beyond gender. Gender expression is rarely relevant in the context of software development, but gendered language is common enough in English to make the issue of gender identity unavoidable. You can require speakers to respect others' preferences, mandate gender-neutral language, or allow speakers to refer to others however they like.
  - M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
    Is it not possible to refer to someone by the name and pronouns they refer to themselves by not because you believe in the validity of transgenderism, but because that has simply always been the social convention? Gender identity needs to play no part in it, even if gendered language is being used. The outcome in the software should be the same whether the developer who claims to be a woman is really a man or vice versa. Someone who isn't satisfied with that but rather requires full intellectual submission to their ideology is just as disruptive on a software mailing list as those who go out their way to "root out the trannies".
usrusr 8y ago
> Please avoid statements about the presumed typical desires, capabilities or actions of some demographic group. They can offend people in that group You can tell a programmer's writing by how closely that rule dodges recursing upon itself.
methehack 8y ago
A question for the folks who would like to do more than just communicate in a way that welcomed all demographics -- how would so-called "demographic quotas" work in practice? It may well be my lack of imagination, but I'm having trouble imagining an outcome based approach that still allowed progress on projects to continue. Also, if such an approach could be articulated, would it be incompatible with this code of conduct?
microtherion 8y ago
Clearly RMS believes in having software licenses with teeth, which is why he so strongly advocates the GPL over the BSD and MIT licenses. When he disagreed with Apple's stance on IP litigation, he didn't just exhort them to be excellent — he boycotted them for several years. So it's not that RMS is strongly opposed to coercive enforcement; he just doesn't value people as highly as he does code.
- letstrynvm 8y ago
  There are no punitive 'teeth' in GNU licences. If you don't like the terms, don't use the thing under that license. Stallman is his own man and can boycott what he likes and explain why to others. "Punitive" "teeth" as found in proprietary EULAs and various unreasonable copyright laws looks like jailtime and financial ruin.
  - microtherion 8y ago
    The same copyright law can be used to enforce the terms of the GPL. And if you don't like a code of conduct, you can equally just stop participating in a community. Unlike rejecting a license, you can even reject a code of conduct and continue to use the software produced by that community.
    - letstrynvm 8y ago
      Nope... https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-gu... That's the basis of eg Kernel enforcement, the most-distributed project out there by far.
      - microtherion 8y ago
        This describes, as far as I can tell, the de facto enforcement practices of ONE GPL copyright holder. I don't see where it places any binding limits on even the enforcement the SFLC would take, and of course it has no power to enforce any limits whatsoever on other GPL copyright holders. In the particular case of Kernel development, contributors are NOT required to assign their copyrights to any shared institution, are perfectly within their rights to take any enforcement action against violators that they wish, and sometimes do exercise that right: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats-internal-legal-threat/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats-internal-legal-thr...
Nickersf 8y ago
Well the social justice team wins again. We're not talking about writing code, instead we're talking about identity politics. These people need to hear more "NO!"
a-dub 8y ago
I like it. It captures the best spirit of the CoC stuff while also explicitly calling out and avoiding the parts of existing attempts at this stuff that some perceive to be aggressive. Can basically be summed up as: 1) Everyone is welcome, 2) Don't scare people away by being shitty and 3) Keep it on-topic But it seems that the discussion here misses the absolute best part. In true GNU fashion, Stallman refuses to accept grammatically incorrect use of pronouns and instead offers a brand spanking new extension built on a homegrown abstraction. Here comes _GNU_ENGLISH!
deleted 8y ago
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jancsika 8y ago
Linus: I'm taking time off and getting help from people who are (probably) trained to understand people's emotions. RMS: Armed only with email archives, I generated a novel solution from inside my own head and tested it against feedback arriving back to my own head from a smattering of individuals. What every happened to, "Gee, I don't know the answer to that question. Perhaps I should ask an expert for help."
- 51lver 8y ago
  What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem? Are you suggesting that hackers cannot hack behavior and must rely on the medical community?
  - jancsika 8y ago
    > What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem? If there are outstanding effective approaches in fields outside of one's area of expertise, everything. At least one should seek the guidance of people who study these problems for a living. I don't see any evidence that RMS did that-- his only footnote refers to his own article wrt pronouns. The hacker ethic is great. But if it is seen not as a supplement to prior art but as an alternative to it-- as you seem to imply-- that's a real problem.
mark_l_watson 8y ago
Well said. I think Richard Stallman got this just right. I know he is specifically talking about making everyone feel welcome in FSF development communities, and, I think what he says also applies to the business of writing software, starting companies, forming community groups, etc. Our industry has some problems of un-kind and sometime illegal behavior. By encouraging people to use kind communication and be inclusive, then all reasonable people win. If someone in your environment is disrespectful of someone it seems lighter and more likely to succeed to point out that they are being un-kind rather than breaking a rule.

596 points by stargrave 8y ago

> Please assume other participants are posting in good faith, even if you disagree with what they say. When people present code or text as their own work, please accept it as their work. Please do not criticize people for wrongs that you only speculate they may have done; stick to what they actually say and actually do. That's a breath of fresh air. There's always someone who tries to read between the lines and strawman people for what they did not say/express. Keeping the benefit of the doubt is always a more charitable (and peaceful) way for conversations to take place.

noch 8y ago
> There's always someone who tries to read between the lines and strawman people for what they did not say/express. The claim that there is always someone creating strawmen is itself the creation of a strawman. If you assume good faith of participants then it might be useful to assume good faith of those who criticise even if they misunderstand or misread or assume unwarranted implications.
- de_watcher 8y ago
  I'll assume good faith before we overflow the stack.
  - codeulike 8y ago
    I was going to make a comment like this but yours is much better.
- Spivak 8y ago
  I think this would be covered under assuming people are acting in good faith but I absolutely agree this is something that should be stated explicitly. Don't treat someone who says they felt hurt or excluded as someone overly sensitive. Because even when someone gets the wrong impression you may find it valuable to reflect on why that impression was received in the first place. And please don't treat people who try to point out exclusionary or hurtful language like they're your adversary or trying to control you -- it can be incredibly hard for people of disprivileged demographics to speak up for themselves. I have to rely on the defense of others constantly because when I speak for myself I'm not taken seriously.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jelly 8y ago
  "There's always one" is a common rhetorical device whose meaning is closer to "There's often one, and I easily forget the times there's not." I don't think the parent's intention was to make such a claim.
  - cipherzero 8y ago
    Whether GP meant to make a strawman or not, i found the comment to be a good reminder to apply the strategy GP espoused. Hopefully that’s how it’s perceived- and not as an indictment of hypocrisy.
- gweinberg 8y ago
  Well, in the case of volunteer software projects, I think people who make significant contributions should be cut a great deal of slack, whereas those who criticize contributors without contributing themselves aren't entitled to any slack at all.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    I mean that's pretty much how it works in practice, I don't think there's really a need to codify "you can get away with being insufferable so long as you're valuable enough." It's not exactly a goal to strive for and more something that is tolerated until another options presents.
  - ljm 8y ago
    I think there's a huge difference between cutting slack and assuming positive intent, in the same way that there's a huge difference between criticism and constructive feedback. Cutting slack is essentially turning the other cheek to otherwise unwelcome behaviour, for whatever reason that might be. I don't believe it's healthy at all to cut slack for some people and not others. On the contrary, it's incredibly healthy to give everyone the exact same assumption of positive intent up until it's proven otherwise. Those making significant contributions should be doing their best to set the example, to show what the high standard is, and if you let them off the hook you're not holding them to account. You're putting them above the guidelines and essentially enabling them. This doesn't mean that everyone should be criticised equally, but nobody should be above receiving constructive feedback on their communication just because they've contributed a lot of work. And on that level, it also stands to reason that feedback has to be delivered compassionately and appropriately, and it works a lot better if that's done in the context of a trusting relationship or through people who are skilled in engaging in such conversations. A newcomer to the community who criticises everybody else is not communicating kindly or compassionately. The assumption of positive intent may suggest that they're not familiar with the guidelines, so the constructive feedback would be to present those guidelines and point out where the newcomer may have fallen short. Hard work, but communities are hard work.
xoa 8y ago
This is similar to what I consider to be one of the most important parts of the HN Guidelines: >Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. I think it nicely and concisely encapsulates a few critical parts of online conversation: that it's a two-way street and to be productive requires responders to also really think about what is being said, and that we should all take a certain level of humility as a baseline because we lack a lot of the non-verbal cues that face to face discussion has. A big one (and a definitional part of the whole "global community" thing) is that it can be hard to tell on the Internet if someone is a native speaker or not. Particularly for English, since that gets a significant level of formal education through much of the world and is also a significant focus of machine translation with probably one of the larger learning sets due to being an early target. IRL people can quickly tell if there is some sort of language barrier and adjust accordingly, but in online discussions it can be a lot harder to not project too many expectations onto people on the other side of the screen. And of course even native speakers can just plain be tired, or have had a bad day, things which again non-verbal cues could suggest but takes conscious effort with just words. Finally, people outside of a specialization can have valuable ideas to convey but lack the terminology to express it the way someone specialized would. One could say they're not "native speakers" of that sub-dialect of English even if they're native English speakers. So it really helps as a baseline to try to figure out what people are really aiming for even if they lack the precise words to convey it. I've found it's a suggestion that has made me contemplate and rewrite responses even if I still forget sometimes. One fair corollary however: this is all as long as there is reason to assume good faith. That's the default assumption, but it's not a right either, it is in fact possible for someone to demonstrate bad faith. In that case suppression or expulsion should be swift despite any cries of "censorship", because resource exhaustion attacks are also a major threat in online discussion. Less so in more specialized areas like mailing lists then general forums, but even there it can happen via rules lawyering and the like.
flukus 8y ago
> That's a breath of fresh air. There's always someone who tries to read between the lines and strawman people for what they did not say/express. Lately strawman arguments seem to have become much more common under the guise of "virtue signalling" or "dog whistling".

avar 8y ago

Side note: This is the first E-Mail I've seen from Stallman in over 4 years that hasn't started with his usual boilerplate: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] See e.g. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2018-10/msg00293.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2018-10/msg00... (just picked his latest on emacs-devel) for an example.

okket 8y ago
Stallman without boilerplate, Linus without rants, what has the world become? Maybe, when everybody is loud and screaming in rage, the escapist role is the quiet, humble and introspect one.
yur3i__ 8y ago
Likely because its an official announcement rather than a "personal" email. eg when libreboot left GNU he didn't include it there either: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2017-01/msg00001.html http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2017-01/msg00001....
adamrezich 8y ago
Maybe he wants the NSA and FBI to take note as well.

x220 8y ago

I think this is a good approach, since these guidelines seem to arise out of compassion and wanting to make both the disrespectful contributors and the people they disrespect better communicators, and make the community better as a whole. In contrast I get the sense that most CoCs I read are motivated by a desire to punish people who make you feel bad.

phoe-krk 8y ago

A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them. It is the heavy-handed way of teaching people to behave differently, and since it only comes into action when people do something against the rules, it doesn't try to teach people to do better than what the rules require. To be sure, the appointed maintainer(s) of a GNU package can, if necessary, tell a contributor to go away; but we do not want to need to have recourse to that. That is the paragraph that captures the essence of the CoC issues for me. A CoC seems to be used as a weapon for killing those that do not abide by its rules, not as a tool for teaching each other to be awesome to each other. Edit: I also love how each paragraph in the guidelines starts with "please". It's such a different approach than the one taken in CoC: "please do this or that for everyone's benefit" rather than "do this and that or you'll be judged by the appropriate judging organ". We lack this kind of gentleness in the world of raging wars between pro-CoC people and anti-CoC people.

_pmf_ 8y ago
“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” ― Robert Conquest
- dangerlibrary 8y ago
  The relevance of the quote you've posted might be less obvious than you think it is.
  - folknor 8y ago
    It's relevant because this wave of CoC attacks on open source projects was started by someone who has literally said "I can’t wait for the mass exodus from Linux now that it’s been infiltrated by SJWs."[1], in reference to the kernel adopting their CoC. This person obviously does not care about the people who contribute to the kernel. They wrote the "Contributor Covenant"[2], which is what the kernel (among tons of other projects) adopted. 1: https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1041441155874009093 https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1041441155874009093 2: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/ https://www.contributor-covenant.org/

dijit 8y ago

1) I hate this trend 2) I like that he acknowledges the criticisms against the trend and attempts to get to the root of the issue rather than "agreeing" with one of the polarised sides. (Anti-CoC/Pro-CoC people). It's nice to have guidelines, they're less aggressive than whips. Hopefully this is enough to appease both sides. EDIT: please criticise my points. If you have something to say, don't hide behind the downvote button.

hprotagonist 8y ago

This is a remarkably sane and cogent approach. His point about CoCs failing to encourage behavior “above and beyond” the rules is well made, and i hadn’t thought about that side of Goodheart’s Law in this setting before.

carlmr 8y ago
>Goodheart’s Law Didn't know this one yet. Thank you for pointing it out. I'll bring it up on my next discussion on targeting 100% code coverage vs seeing it just as an indicator of insufficient tests.

TotempaaltJ 8y ago

> Rather than trying to have the last word, look for the times when there is no need to reply, perhaps because you already made the relevant point clear enough. If you know something about the game of Go, this analogy might clarify that: when the opponent's move is not strong enough to require a direct response, it is advantageous to give it none and instead move elsewhere. I love this analogy of why not responding might be your best option.

bjt2n3904 8y ago
Perhaps the most overlooked part of the document. This is something I struggle with, a mentality of "everything must be logically evaluated and upvoted or downvoted". Sometimes, there doesn't need to be a response.
whiddershins 8y ago
I was very influenced when I read Paul Graham’s assertion that comment quality tends to be inversely proportional to reply depth. I can’t find the reference but I really took that to heart, and try as hard as I can to avoid replying to a reply to one of my comments, here and elsewhere. The exception would be if I was very unclear originally, or if someone asks something specific that only I can answer. What’s interesting is how effective this seems to be. If my original statement is worth defending usually someone else will chime in. Otherwise it’s a great mental exercise to just let the criticism stand, and try to think how to be more airtight in the future.
- hueving 8y ago
  That's a good pointer maybe for debate threads but it's not a good way to have a real conversation.

funkythings 8y ago

> In August, a discussion started among GNU package maintainers about the problem that GNU development often pushes women away I'm not trying to offend people or anything, but where is the evidence for this in GNU specifically?

jordigh 8y ago
I was there to witness the private mailing list that culminated in this, and there was a very clear example of that happening there. A certain GNU contributor, let's call her Sal, was voicing concerns with current practices. Someone else replied to her with "Sally," condescendingly talking down to her. To this she said, "I did not invite you to call me by a nickname. Call me Sal." A sub-discussion then erupted about the etymology of "Sally" and whether or not it was technically correct to someone who preferred "Sal" to be called "Sally" instead. Instead of, you know, just calling people what they want to be called and be done with it. And not be condescending about it.
- repolfx 8y ago
  That sounds utterly trivial - why was Sal/Sally so upset by an attempt to be polite by not using a short form/pet name. That must happen to her all the time in formal settings. As for "voicing concerns with current practices", what were those concerns and practices? Technical?
  - yarrel 8y ago
    It wasn't an attempt to be polite. They didn't use the long form of their name (which would be irritating but I can see that being an attempt to be polite), they used a rather infantilising diminutive. The effect was condescending and "Sal" was well within their rights to object. In the general case, telling someone that actually you are the person who has the last word on what they are called is bullying.
    - repolfx 8y ago
      Sure, if someone says "call me this" and you don't, I agree, that's annoying. But it should be a polite request, not the start of a fight. And what is the long form then? The only female name I can think of that shortens to Sal is Sally. This whole story seems suspect.

marijn 8y ago

While it sounds very reasonable, friendly, and non-authoritarian, a big problem with an approach like this, without real teeth or rigidity, is that it is very easy to harass people out of a community while staying within its constraints, and provides very little recourse for those being harassed (who often are not in a position of power) to put on pressure for getting something done about it. The approach taken largely ignores the discussion that's been going on about this topic, and sounds pretty naive, if not willfully passive.

morley 8y ago
I don't think any one action is going to completely fix what's wrong with society. But I do think these guidelines are likely make society _better_ and and unlikely to make them worse. This definitely should not be the last action taken to make society better, and I look forward to more actions along these same lines.
ajross 8y ago
The current push for codes of conduct in software projects isn't about harassment per se. Realistically anyone can be harassed out of a community regardless of rules. The point of the rules is to change the norms such that behavior that would otherwise have been exclusionary or just off-putting is specifically called out and recognized as "wrong". "This code is fucking garbage and you should be ashamed" may or may not be "harassement" according to the intent of the writer or interpretation of the reader. But it's still wrong and we don't want that.
- frogeg 8y ago
  Do you really need a CoC to know someone who says "This code is fucking garbage and you should be ashamed" is an idiot? Do you really need a CoC to kick out someone who says that?
  - ajross 8y ago
    That kind of behavior is endemic in our community. So... yes, I guess we do.

Millennium 8y ago

This is interesting, but I have to say I'm skeptical that it'll do any better than the Linux kernel community's attempt to apply Wheaton's Law back in 2015. The geek community was largely formed by people who had been unfairly targeted by those who enforce social norms: picking inappropriate targets, taking things to inappropriate extremes, and the like. Our response was to create a community that didn't enforce social norms at all -Geek Social Fallacy #1, essentially- and a lot of beautiful things came from that. We changed the world for the better in a lot of ways, precisely because we refused to reject people just because they acted in ways that went against the social norm. But there was a problem: some behaviors really shouldn't be accepted, and some people really won't change without the application of force. Unlike the people who first formed the geek communities -people we should all aspire to be like- this second group was fairly ostracized: appropriate targets, appropriate measures. They came to our community, not precisely for support, but for enablers; having been rejected from everywhere else, they fled to a group that refused to reject anybody. And that's exactly what we did, if not always enthusiastically. It's hard to find a geek circle without at least one of Those Geeks: the kind who drag things down and ruin things for everyone, but people feel a duty to put up with their crap because that's what it means to be a geek. They continue to abuse us and play us, for exactly this reason. And they aren't going to change unless they are forced to. Some of them won't change even then, but you do what you have to do. And that's the problem with the kernel's old code of conduct, and with these "Kind Communication Guidelines". They're a step in the right direction, because they spell out unacceptable behaviors. But because they don't spell out clear and consistent consequences for those behaviors, creepers gonna creep. You might catch a few mild cases, and that's not insignificant, but the mild cases aren't at the core of the problem, so the needle isn't going to move much. I know only too well how hard it is to lay down the law against someone who is abusing your goodwill, especially when they're valued for other reasons, and most of all when it feels so much like they're "just a little more extreme" than most. It's a horribly painful thing to have to do -if you haven't had to do it before, it hurts just as much as you might imagine, if not even worse- and I can't blame people for being reluctant to do that. But this is how you induce change in the hardcore. Guidelines like this can serve as decent warning that real change is coming, but they don't bring about that change themselves. Still, this is a step in the right direction. It's at least an acknowledgment that there are norms, and they are to be observed. But it's not going to be the magic pill. There simply is none.

wpietri 8y ago

On the one hand, I'm glad that he's at least acknowledging that this is a problem. It's disappointing to me that he talks about the problem as if people first noticed it in August, when I've heard it discussed for a decade or more. But still, baby steps. There's also a crashing lack of self-awareness here. This bit sounds great: "The only political positions that the GNU Project endorses are (1) that users should have control of their own computing (for instance, through free software) and (2) supporting basic human rights in computing." But a) that's a very political position, b) many people in the diversity and inclusion world see it as a direct consequence of basic human rights, and c) I don't think it's consistent with Stallman's behavior. E.g., it was only in May he declared it important to keep a stale joke about American politics in the code: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stallman/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/gnu_glic_abort_stal...

phoe-krk 8y ago
I find c) to be correct, I observe the same thing. But, given that I perceive Stallman as even less self-aware in that aspect than Linus, baby steps it is indeed.
skybrian 8y ago
Yes, but under the circumstances, I'm unconvinced that hypocrisy is a bad thing. Consistency is overrated. It's good when people change their minds. Rigidly sticking with the same bad position seems like a bigger problem?
- wpietri 8y ago
  Sure, if I have to choose between hypocrisy and improvement, I'll take improvement. But I'd rather have both. And given the extent to which this is written as highfalutin moral principle, I don't think it's unreasonable to deal with it on its own terms. He could have just announced this as an improvement without taking slaps at political views he disagrees with.
  - skybrian 8y ago

DannyB2 8y ago

What seems to be lacking is a viral clause so that when you 'be excellent to each other' the others are also required to abide by the same code of conduct.

wwarner 8y ago
That is an excellent observation! In a sense, copyleft is the most inclusive code of conduct ever devised.

brobdingnagians 8y ago

> The way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try to help people learn to make their communication more kind. This is excellent; using love and persuasion to help someone improve is so much better than by force, compulsion, and fear. How many children rebel against restrictive and domineering parents? but a child who is loved and taught, but allowed to make choices and pursue independence usually ends up much healthier and happier. >I disagree with making "diversity" a goal. If the developers in a specific free software project do not include demographic D, I don't think that the lack of them as a problem that requires action; there is no need to scramble desperately to recruit some Ds. >Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D. This dovetails in so nicely as well. You get more bees with honey than vinegar, and it is better to make a project open, kind, mentor-friendly, and productive-- which furthers the industriousness and quality of a product. Let all come who desire to come and treat them in the spirit of kindness and co-operation, but giving no preference or overt recruitment campaigns, which in themselves could end up sidelining or diverting attention from the true aims of the project. I don't always agree with Stallman, but I think this is a magnificent and well-thought out plan and response.

ubernostrum 8y ago
So, here's the thing. Statements like this? Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D. This is not a new statement. This is what people pushing diversity have been saying for years and years. The only ways for this to be a new and refreshing thing to you are: 1. You were not paying attention, or 2. You were getting all your information from people who were doing their best to misinform you.
- nabla9 8y ago
  >2. You were getting all your information from people who were doing their best to misinform you. When there is moral panic, sensible people who advocated the issues long time are pushed aside and polarization happens.

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VictorSCushman 8y ago

> The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start guiding people towards kinder communication at a point well before one would even think of saying, "You are breaking the rules." I really like this. I think it'll help the community become a more welcoming place overall without needing to view politeness as a rule set. I see this as an overall benefit to the GNU project, as well as to OSS as a whole.

interfixus 8y ago

A CoC in any other name is still a CoC. A very thin end of a wedge is stil the end of a wedge.

crooked-v 8y ago
A wedge towards... what? Polite and professional behavior isn't a bad thing.
- interfixus 8y ago
  No, clearly not. Enforcement of behavior is a terrible thing. And of course it won't stop with a few, fairly reasonable suggestions. It never, ever does.
- letstrynvm 8y ago
  "professional behavior" would make sense if both sides are getting paid. If only the user is getting paid, and he wants support or something else from the FOSS author, why should the FOSS author be held to this "professional behavior" standard?

civodul 8y ago

As co-maintainer of GNU Guix, I want to point out that the views expressed in Richard Stallman's message are his and not those of the Guix maintainers. In particular, by writing that codes of conduct are "punitive spirit", RMS shows a misunderstanding of how these texts came into existence. More importantly, by writing that he disagrees with "making diversity a goal", RMS seems to deny the role we free software people play in the demographics of our communities. Many of us in Guix (and I think I can speak for my fellow Guix co-maintainer here) believe that free software should empower everyone. As such, correcting the biases, conscious or not, that have led to the poor diversity of our communities, must be part of our mission.

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lawnchair_larry 8y ago
Stallman’s guidelines fully support correcting biases. Making diversity a goal is identity politics, which is a very different thing than correcting biases.
- jt2190 8y ago
  > Making diversity a goal is identity politics, which is a very different thing than correcting biases. I don't understand this assertion. Is there a subtlety of terminology I'm missing here? Should I read "diversity" only as a goal to produce a group that is composed of x% from group A, y% from group B, etc., rather than the more generous reading that the goal is to ensure that members of various groups feel welcome to participate?
  - jki275 8y ago
    What you state about percentages is exactly what has been pushed under the guise of diversity in many cases. Meritocracy has been specifically targeted by the more recent "code of conduct" silliness going around.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago

LiterallyDoge 8y ago

Is it really this complicated to treat other people with respect?

ubernostrum 8y ago
"Treat other people with respect" has been (in various forms and phrasings) a foundational principle of major moral frameworks around the world for thousands of years. But espousing a principle, and abiding by that principle, are two very different things. Overwhelming empirical evidence suggests that getting the people who do the former to also do the latter is quite difficult, yes.
Nelson69 8y ago
Why is it such a dog whistle? What's mindblowing is the rage that seems to pour out of, mostly, non-contributors when this stuff comes up. There is a more fundamental insecurity or just a fundamental disrespect that some of these folks seem to have for others. I've heard claims that there have even been planted "social justice warriors" that have intentionally engaged in conflict to change projects. When you have guys like Eric Raymond saying that sort of thing, what do you expect?
- tomatocracy 8y ago
  It's become a "dog whistle" issue because there is a perception that some activists may use CoC-type documents to deny contributors' ability to freely engage in political speech in other, unrelated, contexts. The worry is that this in turn will lead to either witch hunts or chilling effects, which are viewed as at odds with modern Western political free speech culture. Many people feel uncomfortable with this as a concept, regardless of whether they agree with the ideas in question. They point out that this effect may well reduce the contributor pool in much the same way that a particularly harsh technical culture (eg LKML) might do, i.e. it ends up substituting one disincentive to participate with another for no net gain. On the other side, some people argue that the speech they are concerned about is not "political" and that it is right that it should be punished beyond simple disagreement. At first blush, this might seem rather tangential to the issue at hand. But there are some high profile examples of this actually having happened - see [1], or the example of Brendan Eich at Mozilla. [1] https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

brickmort 8y ago

This is much. much more reasonable than the "Post-Meritocracy" Code of Conduct.

binaryapparatus 8y ago

Being politically correct vs getting the job done, I'll always choose getting the job done. There is plenty or role playing projects where your feeling matter more than your skills. In last couple of jobs I am always asking about company policy, if they start piling about diversity and getting everybody heard and how everybody's feelings are most important thing, I don't want to work there. Earn your place with your quality and your skills, not with the help of inventing newer and newer rules until nobody can say how crappy, sub average and difficult to work with you are. (Talking to a random programmer with no skills but huge area of possible butt-hurt). Edit: btw can't agree more with Stallman if that's not clear from my post. Love that guy.

SolaceQuantum 8y ago
> Being politically correct vs getting the job done, I'll always choose getting the job done. I am absolutely baffled at the idea that there is ever a situation where getting the job done requires a choice to be politically incorrect as implied here. Do you have an example of the phenomenon you're discussing?
- mirko22 8y ago
  For example not calling a problem in the code “a problem” but “possible place for improvement” as to do so might lead people to think their code is “problematic”... then i resigned...
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    I’m unsure if this is the sort of politics that’s the context of the article in question. For clarity, the article in question spawned off of an email thread regarding calling women by nicknames in a condescending manner without their consent.
    - dec0dedab0de 8y ago
      I am absolutely baffled at the idea that there is ever a situation where... {example} I’m unsure if this is the sort of politics that’s the context of the article... I think it's fair to assume they were replying to you, not the article.

ajpikul 8y ago

Fantastic!

Kenji 8y ago

Aah, I see that libero-fascism has now trickled all the way down. You will soon learn to appreciate classic values like: - Respect those who earned it - Criticise broken things ruthlessly - Getting things done is more important than coddling everyone You will see. Political correctness is deeply authoritarian and anti goal-oriented work. Hard and reliable workers will turn their backs on you.

davidkellis 8y ago

This seems to be a verbose restatement of the Golden Rule - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule - that one is taught as a child.

blt 8y ago
But then people use excuses like "I have thick skin, I wouldn't be offended if someone else said the same thing to me, I prefer honesty over decorum", etc. Most often these people come from a privileged background where negative feedback rolls off more easily because they know that, at the end of the day, they'll always have a comfortable life without any serious hardship.
samcat116 8y ago
One thing that I learned in a training at work is the platinum rule: Treat others the way _they_ want to be treated.

guardian5x 8y ago

I'm very glad that there seems to be change in the community, and also that Linus is doing some self-reflection. He is a role model for many in his position, and some people in discussions started to take his behavior as an excuse to have bad manners themselves and that it is ok to be rude to others.

fossdev 8y ago

Diversity as a goal is fundamentally flawed. It is what leads to policies like "affirmative action" which are in themselves simply a form of reverse discrimination.

ubernostrum 8y ago
Affirmative action is about noticing that a system was biased against a particular group of people, and attempting to counteract the bias. For example: if Group X is historically discriminated against, and you can quantify the resulting bias (which may not be conscious) such that on a 100-point school admission scale it works out to on average a 5-point disadvantage, adding some points based on membership in that group is not "reverse discrimination" -- it is a correction for the known inaccuracy of the admission system (since in an unbiased system, candidates from that group would, on average, have scored higher). And if you believe discrimination should be banished, when will you be showing up to protest schools which give preferential admission to "legacies" (descendants or other kin of alumni), to protest companies which preferentially recruit from only very specific schools, or other forms of admission/recruiting/hiring which give weight to factors other than pure individual merit?
- exprA 8y ago
  Affirmative action is racist. Accepting that, you can of course debate what sorts of racism we should allow, and perhaps even encourage. I probably disagree with you, but that's just my opinion.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    Observing a bias, quantifying it as best as possible, and deploying countermeasures in corresponding degree to reduce its impact, is not racism. But if you believe anything which assigns admission/hiring/recruiting scores on any basis other than objectively-measured individual merit is "racist", you cannot plausibly be in favor of current hiring, recruiting or admissions practices, and have far larger fish to fry than the relatively small number of people whose admission/hiring is solely due to affirmative action. In all seriousness: look up the ratio of "legacy" admits to, say, black students admitted at top colleges, and then remind yourself that "black" is not synonymous with "affirmative action admit", and then ponder which of "legacy" and "affirmative action" would cause the greatest overall change toward fairness if eliminated. Then focus your efforts accordingly.

yosefzeev 8y ago

To me, the answer has more to do with discerning the spirit of the conversation rather than adopting any particular protocol. There will always be some joker somewhere that will violate the rules that one adopts in such a way that debate is created that causes a system to self-destruct.

joshuamorton 8y ago

So, I read through the list of guidelines, and while I have some minor quibbles with them, overall they seem fine and reasonable. But what happens if someone refuses to be kind? What happens if that person is a major contributor? What would happen if, in some strange alternate reality, Linux was a GNU project, and Linus-of-2012 said he'd really rather not care about all this politeness nonsense, and would prefer to continue on the way he was? The problem I see with your bees/honey comment is that there is no commitment here from the maintainers and leaders of the project. This is just a more verbose "Be kind to each other", but without any commitment from the leadership of the project to actually maintain a kind, welcoming environment. A non-committal claim to be kind may be honey, but its on a flytrap, and many people recognize this.

whatshisface 8y ago
How much damage have Linus's snippy emails really caused, in light of how they have benefited us? I and many other people like reading them because they are fun, so you have to take that in to account. Different people like different things, and that principle extends to writing styles and personalities. Indeed, if you really want to have diversity you should have some emails that I like to read in addition to having emails that you like to read, which by necessity implies that every email thread needs at least a few glib comments. I have heard that Matz and by extension the Ruby community is nice, maybe that project needs to recruit a Linus to fill out their personality lineup.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  I think that whole issue was, while it may be amusing to watch the drama unfold, that valuable contributors were being disaffected. No, its not about how entertaining the email chain reads. Its about getting work done? And it's disingenuous to describe the vicious attacks as 'snippy' and 'glib'.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Different people saw those emails in different ways. In fact, some people are invigorated by strong words as opposed to being cowed and driven away by them. I'm not saying that you didn't perceive them as vicious attacks, I'm saying that the spectrum of human behavior includes people who think being harsh is fine, and give and take it freely. You can't just throw out everyone that behaves in a way that makes you uncomfortable, that's just xenophobia sneaking in through the back way. What's really wrong is when someone consciously goes out of their way to target another person's emotions, but that has little to do with the average niceness of their writing (which is mostly set by their natural personality baseline).

bitcynth 8y ago

I do agree with this trend, while there are some comments like "we just want to get the work done and not worry about being nice" I do think they are forgetting about a certain part. I as a developer might not contribute to certain open source projects due to the fear of being called things against my gender identity (I am transgender) or being yelled at. And the thing is that I am not getting paid or anything to do it, so instead I am just not going to contribute because I don't want to try to help and instead be yelled at. I think that the free and open source software community is moving in the right direction by making code of conducts or other similar things.

allannienhuis 8y ago

> Please don't argue unceasingly for your preferred course of action when a decision for some other course has already been made. That tends to block the activity's progress. I've seen this so many times in non-oss work too. Why do some people have such a hard time letting go? Even more so for Open Source projects - If you care _that_ much about your ideas - fork and move on; otherwise spend you and your co-contributors time advancing the project in other ways.

dec0dedab0de 8y ago
I have a hard time letting go when I feel like my input was dismissed out of hand, or not understood.
- letstrynvm 8y ago
  It helps me to remember in a public forum, whether my point is acknowledged by the OP or not, is only a small fraction of the number of people who may read and accept it. If the OP unreasonably denies or refutes it, in fact they may be silently judged accordingly. No need to make your good point a hostage in your own mind to whether the OP will publicly accept it.

jaydestro 8y ago

this reads childish and stupid. what a terrible way to say you don't agree with change.

SolaceQuantum 8y ago
Could you clarify what in the article reads as immature and why? I don't feel I fully understand your position here.

JulianMorrison 8y ago

When people are arguing for "diversity" what they are meaning, generally, is "there is already an enormous thumb on the scales, this can be shown empirically by outcomes". So to the extent Stallman's intent is to take the thumb off the scales and make everyone welcome, it is very reasonable. That said, I think he's wrong to devalue quota type approaches, because in some circumstances, particularly institutional ones in business and government, those are a very effective way to force a noncompliant culture to take its thumb off the scales.

dleslie 8y ago
> force a noncompliant culture The problem, as many see it, is that force ought not be used as a persuasion.
indigochill 8y ago
>those are a very effective way to force a noncompliant culture to take its thumb off the scales. I think some would argue that quota approaches aren't quite this, but rather that they're a thumb on the other end of the scale. The first thumb is still there because non-compliant cultures that aren't fundamentally converted to becoming compliant at the cultural level will generally continue to be non-compliant cultures and only comply insofar as the quotas require (to take a rather contrived example, you can hire 50% women, but what about when 30% of them are harassed, feel unwelcome, and leave?). I'm personally of the mind that the only way to really take the first thumb off the scales is to persuade the non-compliant culture that complying is in their best interest. Which seems to be the gist of these guidelines: "We all agree contributors are a good thing. Let's be welcoming to all demographics so we optimize the number of contributors."
- electrograv 8y ago
  Well said! Moreover, the popular “thumb on the opposite side of the scale” approach risks accidentally encouraging a “thumb war” of sorts: I think people’s attention is naturally drawn to the thumb on the opposite end of the scale, and thinking this to be unfair, will respond in kind with more thumb pressure on their end. This could escalate more and more, until you eventually end up with extreme unfairness vs extreme fairness. The “thumb on scale” approach does work in some cases, I think, but it’s important that there be a “de-escalation” (or “de-thumbing”?) endgame strategy. What you don’t want is a situation where there are thumbs on each side of the scale, and each side is telling the other to remove pressure but neither side wants to because it’ll benefit the other.

Waterluvian 8y ago

I've been experimenting with the idea that good code/design/whatever technical is RARELY more important than good work environment and professional relationships. My intuition tells me that you'll end up with a worse off product being developed more slowly if you focus on good code at all costs. That's not to say you should become a team that focuses on feelings. I had a manager once entirely shut down code reviews because he felt it was hurting people's feelings. There's a right balance to strike and I really don't think that was it. My thought is that when you're somewhere near that balance and aren't sure, lean towards good relationships, over good code. This generally happens at the moment when I have to decide just how nitpicky I should be about something, often minor. The problem is that I'm no industry veteran. I don't have a lot of experience or hard facts to back this idea. But I just "feel" that it might be true.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

"Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D." I think that hits the nail on the head as to why a lot of these initiatives are a good thing: If you make things more welcoming overall, more people of all walks of life feel more likely to contribute.

lgleason 8y ago

Long term I expect to see the quality of GNU and Linux software falter over efforts like this. This is not because I don't advocate for treating other people well, on the contrary I do. It is because in practice these are politically motivated trojan horses meant to tear down things like a meritocracy, the very thing that created this great software. I've personally watched the activists pushing these target women and other under-represented minorities using these documents for the crime of disagreeing with the narrative. IE: https://medium.com/@marlene.jaeckel/the-empress-has-no-clothes-the-dark-underbelly-of-women-who-code-and-google-women-techmakers-723be27a45df https://medium.com/@marlene.jaeckel/the-empress-has-no-cloth... I fully expect to see purges happen of talented individuals based on politically motivated targeting etc. with secret tribunals where the accused are guilty until proven innocent etc.. It's happened to people like Larry Garfield of Drupal, the Opalgate crew tried to do it to a guy who dared to express his conservative views on Twitter in a personal capacity etc..

rotw 8y ago
> It is because in practice these are politically motivated trojan horses meant to tear down things like a meritocracy, the very thing that created this great software. 1. Why is respecting gender identity a "trojan horse" - in what way is it deceptive? 2. How is a project a meritocracy if it scares away potentially better contributors with an antagonistic discussion climate? > tried to do it to a guy who dared to express his conservative views on Twitter in a personal capacity etc.. I feel like you and the Medium post are missing out crucial information here. What were these views? How did they relate to the workplace? The Medium post mentions she is friends with James Damore - who was clearly fired because his manifesto by implication, but unmistakebly deemed women developers less competent than men, thereby creating a hostile work environment, which the author completely glosses over. This leads me to suspect that the "disagreeing with the narrative" is a euphemism for anti-women, anti-minority views and policies.
- lgleason 8y ago
  For #1 and #2, there is a thing called emotional resilience that we have lost today. More importantly, the conversations do not get any less antagonistic in communities with this policies. If anything I have seen them get more vicious towards those in the "out group". In times past it was very rare when people were banned from groups. Today it is a regular occurrence, often made with threats of bringing in the police, ruining ones career etc.. Her post actually does a pretty good job at that. But to summarize, as a women in tech she does not feel that women should be given preferential treatment and she is outspoken against lowering the bar and etc. to increase diversity numbers. For example with one group they held a hackathon. In most hackathons they focus on tech and participants are encouraged to talk about it. One Women in Tech group however held one for women only and actively encouraged the participants to not talk about tech and focused on identity politics, marketing and celebrity endorsements (I was a volunteer and observed this first hand and actively ignored, went against the organizers wishes with the groups I worked with by encouraging them to explore, talk and learn about the tech). Their mentors, with encouragement from the organizers, even went so far as to discourage participants from talking about the tech because it is "boring". The medium post author spoke up about this and ended up with a big target on her back for daring to suggest that the women should be held to the same standard, encouraged to talk about the tech and level up if they are not their yet. > Damore - who was clearly fired because his manifesto by implication, but unmistakebly deemed women developers less competent than men, thereby creating a hostile work environment, which the author completely glosses over. Marlene, the author of the medium post and a women in tech who wants to be recognized for her skill when she's at a job or conference etc. and feels that many of the initiatives that lower the standards etc. work against that goal. She, along with many other women and prominent scientists came to a very different conclusion after reading this. Yet this intelligent, independent thinking woman is ostracized for daring to not go along with the narrative. One of the organizers of these women in tech groups suggested that her husband needed to control her, you can't make this up, and another female organizer who, unlike Marlene, literally had no real tech experience, said that Marlene, an experienced women in tech is being banned from a woman in tech group because her views that are "harmful to women and under represented people". She is pro-women etc, but if we are being honest, it's because she is not a progressive and is not afraid to speak the truth.

rationalfaith 8y ago

The level of "aggression" is extremely high on the male side rather than women. This is a very welcome add. Hopefully less ego's to deal with and actually objectively good work being done.

M_Bakhtiari 8y ago

> For instance, call them by the names they use, and honor their preferences about their gender identity That's a backhanded way of cementing the validity of the concept of "gender expression" throughout the GNU project. I would have been perfectly on board with a guideline that simply said not to police people's gender expressions, the question being rather off-topic and disruptive in the given context. That would do the job regardless of what your political opinions on the gender question are.

pseudalopex 8y ago
The question is how to talk to and about other members of the community. Calling other people by their preferred names is a basic norm that goes beyond gender. Gender expression is rarely relevant in the context of software development, but gendered language is common enough in English to make the issue of gender identity unavoidable. You can require speakers to respect others' preferences, mandate gender-neutral language, or allow speakers to refer to others however they like.
- M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
  Is it not possible to refer to someone by the name and pronouns they refer to themselves by not because you believe in the validity of transgenderism, but because that has simply always been the social convention? Gender identity needs to play no part in it, even if gendered language is being used. The outcome in the software should be the same whether the developer who claims to be a woman is really a man or vice versa. Someone who isn't satisfied with that but rather requires full intellectual submission to their ideology is just as disruptive on a software mailing list as those who go out their way to "root out the trannies".

usrusr 8y ago

> Please avoid statements about the presumed typical desires, capabilities or actions of some demographic group. They can offend people in that group You can tell a programmer's writing by how closely that rule dodges recursing upon itself.

methehack 8y ago

A question for the folks who would like to do more than just communicate in a way that welcomed all demographics -- how would so-called "demographic quotas" work in practice? It may well be my lack of imagination, but I'm having trouble imagining an outcome based approach that still allowed progress on projects to continue. Also, if such an approach could be articulated, would it be incompatible with this code of conduct?

microtherion 8y ago

Clearly RMS believes in having software licenses with teeth, which is why he so strongly advocates the GPL over the BSD and MIT licenses. When he disagreed with Apple's stance on IP litigation, he didn't just exhort them to be excellent — he boycotted them for several years. So it's not that RMS is strongly opposed to coercive enforcement; he just doesn't value people as highly as he does code.

letstrynvm 8y ago
There are no punitive 'teeth' in GNU licences. If you don't like the terms, don't use the thing under that license. Stallman is his own man and can boycott what he likes and explain why to others. "Punitive" "teeth" as found in proprietary EULAs and various unreasonable copyright laws looks like jailtime and financial ruin.
- microtherion 8y ago
  The same copyright law can be used to enforce the terms of the GPL. And if you don't like a code of conduct, you can equally just stop participating in a community. Unlike rejecting a license, you can even reject a code of conduct and continue to use the software produced by that community.
  - letstrynvm 8y ago
    Nope... https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-gu... That's the basis of eg Kernel enforcement, the most-distributed project out there by far.
    - microtherion 8y ago
      This describes, as far as I can tell, the de facto enforcement practices of ONE GPL copyright holder. I don't see where it places any binding limits on even the enforcement the SFLC would take, and of course it has no power to enforce any limits whatsoever on other GPL copyright holders. In the particular case of Kernel development, contributors are NOT required to assign their copyrights to any shared institution, are perfectly within their rights to take any enforcement action against violators that they wish, and sometimes do exercise that right: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats-internal-legal-threat/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats-internal-legal-thr...

Nickersf 8y ago

Well the social justice team wins again. We're not talking about writing code, instead we're talking about identity politics. These people need to hear more "NO!"

a-dub 8y ago

I like it. It captures the best spirit of the CoC stuff while also explicitly calling out and avoiding the parts of existing attempts at this stuff that some perceive to be aggressive. Can basically be summed up as: 1) Everyone is welcome, 2) Don't scare people away by being shitty and 3) Keep it on-topic But it seems that the discussion here misses the absolute best part. In true GNU fashion, Stallman refuses to accept grammatically incorrect use of pronouns and instead offers a brand spanking new extension built on a homegrown abstraction. Here comes _GNU_ENGLISH!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jancsika 8y ago

Linus: I'm taking time off and getting help from people who are (probably) trained to understand people's emotions. RMS: Armed only with email archives, I generated a novel solution from inside my own head and tested it against feedback arriving back to my own head from a smattering of individuals. What every happened to, "Gee, I don't know the answer to that question. Perhaps I should ask an expert for help."

51lver 8y ago
What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem? Are you suggesting that hackers cannot hack behavior and must rely on the medical community?
- jancsika 8y ago
  > What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem? If there are outstanding effective approaches in fields outside of one's area of expertise, everything. At least one should seek the guidance of people who study these problems for a living. I don't see any evidence that RMS did that-- his only footnote refers to his own article wrt pronouns. The hacker ethic is great. But if it is seen not as a supplement to prior art but as an alternative to it-- as you seem to imply-- that's a real problem.

mark_l_watson 8y ago

Well said. I think Richard Stallman got this just right. I know he is specifically talking about making everyone feel welcome in FSF development communities, and, I think what he says also applies to the business of writing software, starting companies, forming community groups, etc. Our industry has some problems of un-kind and sometime illegal behavior. By encouraging people to use kind communication and be inclusive, then all reasonable people win. If someone in your environment is disrespectful of someone it seems lighter and more likely to succeed to point out that they are being un-kind rather than breaking a rule.