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Someone at GitLab just made a suggestion to change the wording of the policy that I merged https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/32614/dif

by sytse 7y ago

Someone at GitLab just made a suggestion to change the wording of the policy that I merged https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/32614/diffs https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...

repolfx 7y ago
That merge appears to change the policy in ways that render this discussion largely irrelevant (given the current subject line). It used to say: We do not currently exclude anyone from being a customer based on moral/value grounds. followed by a list of reasons why not. It now says: In some circumstances, we may opt to not work with particular organizations, but we assess those on a case-by-case basis. Some reasons we may choose not to work with certain entities include, but are not limited to ... Making derogatory statements ... Encouraging violence or discrimination against protected groups.
- cbuchanan 7y ago
  We're a team that moves quickly and is receptive to ideas and opinions. I'm very proud of that.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    It looks from the outside like the opposite - you changed the policy explicitly so you can refuse to deal with organisations whose ideas and opinions you're not receptive to. Worse, it looks like you just reversed direction because the Register made fun of you. You went from being willing to work with all organisations to reserving the right to drop any organisation on a whim. I wonder, what does Gitlab believe exactly? You aren't the CEO but apparently the actual CEO lets you set global sales policy, so perhaps you can illustrate with some examples how your new-new policy will work. I ask because the edited policy looks more like a personal speech code than something designed for companies. Do software development organisations routinely "encourage violence towards protected groups"? They don't, in my experience. So which organisations did you have in mind when writing it? Who exactly will you refuse to do business with now who would have been served before? You list some categorisations that look quite vague and state it's not a full list. For example, in recent times certain political factions have argued that immigration control is violence against protected groups: can you clarify if you do/would sell Gitlab to ICE?
    - williamchia 7y ago
      GitLabber here, one of our core values is iteration and our mission statement is "Everyone can contribute" https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration Honestly, you could submit and merege request to our handbook to change global sales policy and tag our CEO to review and merge if he agrees :) Admittedly, this is a unique way to run a company. Other companies are limited by only getting ideas from a small group of people that are directors and executives. At GitLab we understand that good ideas can come from anywhere and we embrace that.
      - repolfx 7y ago
        I get where you're trying to go with this, but a core value of 'iteration' just means you don't have any values. Any value you may claim to have can be 'iterated' at any time into the polar opposite, which makes any statement of what GitLab believes as a group to be worthless. You should accept that your organisation stands for nothing. It's not so bad. Most people work for such firms. Ultimately the values of a company must come from the CEO, as he is the only person who can enforce them. Your CEO can and does decide what the policy is, the fact that he uses PRs to do so is a distraction. But it appears he either doesn't know what he believes or his beliefs are so weak that criticism from some random journalist or marketing woman is sufficient to change them completely. We currently use GitHub. Microsoft isn't perfect but its position on selling to customers is pretty well established: they sell to anyone who uses computers, and always have. Satya Nadella does not reverse his companies policies because someone filed a pull request. This is reassuring. I don't want to ever be in a situation where Chrissie Buchanan, a blog writer of no importance at all, gets to influence our business relationships because who the hell knows when she might decide that her personal "values" don't include doing business with us? What even are her values? She refuses to explain when asked: just more evidence GitLab makes it up as it goes along. I have nothing against your software. Other than the fact you're a distributed company and make a GitHub competitor, I didn't know much or have any opinions about you before this incident. But frankly this looks astonishingly unprofessional. Businesses want certainty and you give none.
- swebs 7y ago
  >Encouraging violence or discrimination against protected groups. But violence against non-protected groups is ok, I guess.
- cabaalis 7y ago
  It's called a reversal. They went from "we do not currently exclude" to "this list, _not limited to_" which means anything they want it to mean.
djsumdog 7y ago
> we encourage diversity of ideas. We respect the uniqueness and autonomy of others, even if we do not always agree with them. I like this. I like this a lot. I've never been a fan of the way the Contributors Code of Conduct does explicitly allow for people to have opinions of their own outside the projects so long as they don't try to represent those opinions as being a representative of the project. If it had, and offered remedies, the guy in the Opal situation could have just removed Opal from his Twitter profile, instead of being asked to leave the project.
- bitwize 7y ago
  If Coraline Ada Ehmke were here, she'd say something like: "That language is there for a reason. Transforming open source into a more welcoming place for marginalized communities is the main goal of all my work, from the Contributor Covenant to Ethical Source. But thank you for making your opinion known. I can now confidently recommend to conference organizers that you be banned in advance from any conference I plan on attending."
- pseudalopex 7y ago
  No one with any power asked Elia Schito to leave Opal. He kept his position and still mentions it in his Twitter profile.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/elia https://twitter.com/elia
archi42 7y ago
This still leaves the "talking about politics is banned"-point-of-criticism. Since you're the CEO: How did problems discussing politics manifest at GitLab that you feel this step is necessary? Or is this a "preemptive strike"?
- sytse 7y ago
  For example I was deeply moved by Executive Order 13769 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769 and posted so in our Slack. The first comment was 'F* Trump', written out. At the same time many people in our company probably voted for Trump.
  - midnighttoker4 7y ago
    You should fire those people, they are not good people.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    I don’t think there is anything preventing them from defending him or EO13769 is there? I don’t quite see how they could effectively do that, but the possibility is there. (Yes, I realize it would be social suicide, but while I understand that this is theoretically a bad thing, I just cannot quite apply it to Trump supporters)
    - Thorrez 7y ago
      > I don’t think there is anything preventing them from defending him or EO13769 is there? The new ban on politics would ban them from defending Trump or EO13769 in the workplace. Before the ban they could have defended Trump and EO13769, and the following discussion would have likely devolved even further than just "'F* Trump', written out".
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - archi42 7y ago
    This sounds like one example out of many? Disclaimer: I don't know the involved persons and their personalities, and I'm only a remote spectator to the whole thing playing out in the US. But here is my take at the issue: There is a increasing divide splitting the American people, and the fronts are hardening more and more. I know a company is not a place to heal the nation, but the wider the gap becomes, the more difficult it becomes for the people to actually discuss their views and develop understanding for one another - as opposed to yelling at each other (and "F* T." is close to that). Whatever your stance on that EO or T. or the whole state of politics is: I think instead of outright banning discussions of politics (or are violations against the CoC not enforced?), you should maybe try to foster a culture of "you're neither required disclose your political views nor to participate in political discussions, but if you do either, be constructive and accept that others might have a different opinion.". (Or something in that general direction - I don't have too much time today to produce a nice and watertight formulation of this ;-))
iamasoftwaredev 7y ago
So you'll still do business with say, nazis, you just aren't gonna brag quite as loud about it. You're a coward.
ricardobeat 7y ago
The new text is on a slippery slope: "Derogatory staments", "threats" and "discrimination" are all very subjective and up to the interpretation of whoever-has-power or feels offended by anything, and we've seen this go wrong so many times recently. It's almost a complete reversal from the previous statement.
- danso 7y ago
  Most aspects of running an organization and having a culture are subjective by nature. The previous statement — “do not discuss politics in the workplace” — is no less prone to subjectivity and interpretation.
midnighttoker4 7y ago
Does that in any way change the meaning? Would you still do business with say, turkey as they move in the kurds? India as they continue to oppress kashmir? Or gab? stormfront? do you have a line beyond legal minimums?
sytse 7y ago
We added a second clarification https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/32628/diffs https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...
- hnuser54 7y ago
  This seems like a knee-jerk backtrack that is a step or two too far. "Gitlab Inc is full of wishy-washy dudes and I think old people always drive slow." I guess I'm banned from paying for Gitlab now if anyone chooses to "assess" me, since I made derogatory statements about your community and encouraged discrimination, however trivial, against the elderly.
- sytse 7y ago
  And a third with only minor changes I think https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/32638 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...
- sld 7y ago
  - Engaging in illegal, unlawful behavior. - Encouraging violence or discrimination against legally protected groups. You might need to clarify what legal jurisdiction you apply to those rules. California's definitions? Another U.S. state? Another country? As a global company where illegality varies by country, I think those statements present an opportunity for different interpretations without clarification. - Related topic: We generally don't discuss religion or politics..... Too much waffling added. Political discussion in the workplace can devolve into a hostile work environment. I'd suggest this simplification of the two versions: We do not discuss politics in the workplace. However, we encourage discussion and iteration on any company policy.
remram 7y ago
This reads like a complete 180 on the previous policy. It's very far from a "change of wording". Don't get me wrong, I welcome it, and if the most we can get I feel like it is acceptable. However calling it a "change of wording" is a bit dishonest, really you reverted it completely in response to the negative feedback.
matthewcford 7y ago
Out of interest does anyone know what Atlassian's policy on this is? (as someone who moved from github to gitlab, and is now open to other options).

by sytse 7y ago

repolfx 7y ago

That merge appears to change the policy in ways that render this discussion largely irrelevant (given the current subject line). It used to say: We do not currently exclude anyone from being a customer based on moral/value grounds. followed by a list of reasons why not. It now says: In some circumstances, we may opt to not work with particular organizations, but we assess those on a case-by-case basis. Some reasons we may choose not to work with certain entities include, but are not limited to ... Making derogatory statements ... Encouraging violence or discrimination against protected groups.

cbuchanan 7y ago
We're a team that moves quickly and is receptive to ideas and opinions. I'm very proud of that.
- repolfx 7y ago
  It looks from the outside like the opposite - you changed the policy explicitly so you can refuse to deal with organisations whose ideas and opinions you're not receptive to. Worse, it looks like you just reversed direction because the Register made fun of you. You went from being willing to work with all organisations to reserving the right to drop any organisation on a whim. I wonder, what does Gitlab believe exactly? You aren't the CEO but apparently the actual CEO lets you set global sales policy, so perhaps you can illustrate with some examples how your new-new policy will work. I ask because the edited policy looks more like a personal speech code than something designed for companies. Do software development organisations routinely "encourage violence towards protected groups"? They don't, in my experience. So which organisations did you have in mind when writing it? Who exactly will you refuse to do business with now who would have been served before? You list some categorisations that look quite vague and state it's not a full list. For example, in recent times certain political factions have argued that immigration control is violence against protected groups: can you clarify if you do/would sell Gitlab to ICE?
  - williamchia 7y ago
    GitLabber here, one of our core values is iteration and our mission statement is "Everyone can contribute" https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration Honestly, you could submit and merege request to our handbook to change global sales policy and tag our CEO to review and merge if he agrees :) Admittedly, this is a unique way to run a company. Other companies are limited by only getting ideas from a small group of people that are directors and executives. At GitLab we understand that good ideas can come from anywhere and we embrace that.
    - repolfx 7y ago
      I get where you're trying to go with this, but a core value of 'iteration' just means you don't have any values. Any value you may claim to have can be 'iterated' at any time into the polar opposite, which makes any statement of what GitLab believes as a group to be worthless. You should accept that your organisation stands for nothing. It's not so bad. Most people work for such firms. Ultimately the values of a company must come from the CEO, as he is the only person who can enforce them. Your CEO can and does decide what the policy is, the fact that he uses PRs to do so is a distraction. But it appears he either doesn't know what he believes or his beliefs are so weak that criticism from some random journalist or marketing woman is sufficient to change them completely. We currently use GitHub. Microsoft isn't perfect but its position on selling to customers is pretty well established: they sell to anyone who uses computers, and always have. Satya Nadella does not reverse his companies policies because someone filed a pull request. This is reassuring. I don't want to ever be in a situation where Chrissie Buchanan, a blog writer of no importance at all, gets to influence our business relationships because who the hell knows when she might decide that her personal "values" don't include doing business with us? What even are her values? She refuses to explain when asked: just more evidence GitLab makes it up as it goes along. I have nothing against your software. Other than the fact you're a distributed company and make a GitHub competitor, I didn't know much or have any opinions about you before this incident. But frankly this looks astonishingly unprofessional. Businesses want certainty and you give none.
swebs 7y ago
>Encouraging violence or discrimination against protected groups. But violence against non-protected groups is ok, I guess.
cabaalis 7y ago
It's called a reversal. They went from "we do not currently exclude" to "this list, _not limited to_" which means anything they want it to mean.

djsumdog 7y ago

> we encourage diversity of ideas. We respect the uniqueness and autonomy of others, even if we do not always agree with them. I like this. I like this a lot. I've never been a fan of the way the Contributors Code of Conduct does explicitly allow for people to have opinions of their own outside the projects so long as they don't try to represent those opinions as being a representative of the project. If it had, and offered remedies, the guy in the Opal situation could have just removed Opal from his Twitter profile, instead of being asked to leave the project.

bitwize 7y ago
If Coraline Ada Ehmke were here, she'd say something like: "That language is there for a reason. Transforming open source into a more welcoming place for marginalized communities is the main goal of all my work, from the Contributor Covenant to Ethical Source. But thank you for making your opinion known. I can now confidently recommend to conference organizers that you be banned in advance from any conference I plan on attending."
pseudalopex 7y ago
No one with any power asked Elia Schito to leave Opal. He kept his position and still mentions it in his Twitter profile.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/elia https://twitter.com/elia

archi42 7y ago

This still leaves the "talking about politics is banned"-point-of-criticism. Since you're the CEO: How did problems discussing politics manifest at GitLab that you feel this step is necessary? Or is this a "preemptive strike"?

sytse 7y ago
For example I was deeply moved by Executive Order 13769 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769 and posted so in our Slack. The first comment was 'F* Trump', written out. At the same time many people in our company probably voted for Trump.
- midnighttoker4 7y ago
  You should fire those people, they are not good people.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  I don’t think there is anything preventing them from defending him or EO13769 is there? I don’t quite see how they could effectively do that, but the possibility is there. (Yes, I realize it would be social suicide, but while I understand that this is theoretically a bad thing, I just cannot quite apply it to Trump supporters)
  - Thorrez 7y ago
    > I don’t think there is anything preventing them from defending him or EO13769 is there? The new ban on politics would ban them from defending Trump or EO13769 in the workplace. Before the ban they could have defended Trump and EO13769, and the following discussion would have likely devolved even further than just "'F* Trump', written out".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- archi42 7y ago
  This sounds like one example out of many? Disclaimer: I don't know the involved persons and their personalities, and I'm only a remote spectator to the whole thing playing out in the US. But here is my take at the issue: There is a increasing divide splitting the American people, and the fronts are hardening more and more. I know a company is not a place to heal the nation, but the wider the gap becomes, the more difficult it becomes for the people to actually discuss their views and develop understanding for one another - as opposed to yelling at each other (and "F* T." is close to that). Whatever your stance on that EO or T. or the whole state of politics is: I think instead of outright banning discussions of politics (or are violations against the CoC not enforced?), you should maybe try to foster a culture of "you're neither required disclose your political views nor to participate in political discussions, but if you do either, be constructive and accept that others might have a different opinion.". (Or something in that general direction - I don't have too much time today to produce a nice and watertight formulation of this ;-))

iamasoftwaredev 7y ago

So you'll still do business with say, nazis, you just aren't gonna brag quite as loud about it. You're a coward.

ricardobeat 7y ago

The new text is on a slippery slope: "Derogatory staments", "threats" and "discrimination" are all very subjective and up to the interpretation of whoever-has-power or feels offended by anything, and we've seen this go wrong so many times recently. It's almost a complete reversal from the previous statement.

danso 7y ago
Most aspects of running an organization and having a culture are subjective by nature. The previous statement — “do not discuss politics in the workplace” — is no less prone to subjectivity and interpretation.

midnighttoker4 7y ago

Does that in any way change the meaning? Would you still do business with say, turkey as they move in the kurds? India as they continue to oppress kashmir? Or gab? stormfront? do you have a line beyond legal minimums?

sytse 7y ago

We added a second clarification https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/32628/diffs https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...

hnuser54 7y ago
This seems like a knee-jerk backtrack that is a step or two too far. "Gitlab Inc is full of wishy-washy dudes and I think old people always drive slow." I guess I'm banned from paying for Gitlab now if anyone chooses to "assess" me, since I made derogatory statements about your community and encouraged discrimination, however trivial, against the elderly.
sytse 7y ago
And a third with only minor changes I think https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/32638 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...
sld 7y ago
- Engaging in illegal, unlawful behavior. - Encouraging violence or discrimination against legally protected groups. You might need to clarify what legal jurisdiction you apply to those rules. California's definitions? Another U.S. state? Another country? As a global company where illegality varies by country, I think those statements present an opportunity for different interpretations without clarification. - Related topic: We generally don't discuss religion or politics..... Too much waffling added. Political discussion in the workplace can devolve into a hostile work environment. I'd suggest this simplification of the two versions: We do not discuss politics in the workplace. However, we encourage discussion and iteration on any company policy.

remram 7y ago

This reads like a complete 180 on the previous policy. It's very far from a "change of wording". Don't get me wrong, I welcome it, and if the most we can get I feel like it is acceptable. However calling it a "change of wording" is a bit dishonest, really you reverted it completely in response to the negative feedback.

matthewcford 7y ago

Out of interest does anyone know what Atlassian's policy on this is? (as someone who moved from github to gitlab, and is now open to other options).