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First, to quote myself: > Due to repeated Code Of Conduct violations two years ago I was banned from Drupal. This story is known and frankly, not worth a damn

by chx 7y ago

First, to quote myself: > Due to repeated Code Of Conduct violations two years ago I was banned from Drupal. This story is known and frankly, not worth a damn discussing it again. It’s only a background. Second, let me state this extremely clearly and forcefully: it was better for the community and at the end of the day, for myself, to ban me at the end of 2016. It is absolutely pointless and a fruitless waste of time trying to dissect the specifics leading up to that (especially for people who were not part of the community and can't remember how it was -- and frankly, why should anyone remember? Almost all of this is 5+ years ago.). And despite it gave me an opportunity to grow as a person, it is still a wound that hurts prying into so I respectfully ask not to. and > We are now looking forward to Linus Torvalds to be shown the door from the Linux project This was a joke. Nonetheless, Linus was seen industry wide as a jerk (again check https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in-not-being-a-jerk-in-open-source https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in... ) and a few months after that blog post, Linus stepped away for a month and a CoC was established -- how effective that all was, well, https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/6/13/1892 https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/6/13/1892 and for the consequences of such behavior see https://lwn.net/ml/linux-fsdevel/20200217001153.GE10776@dread.disaster.area/ https://lwn.net/ml/linux-fsdevel/20200217001153.GE10776@drea...

yencabulator 7y ago
> This was a joke. That makes it worse. Some people's "jokes" are allowed, some are punished by censoring and expulsion. Selective enforcement is a central part of the criticism toward CoCs.
- chx 7y ago
  I am getting really exasperated, every time this topic comes up there are always some who presumes the worst of ... I do not know who but someone who just wants to use the CoC as a tool to censor and expell people. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't. It never did, it's not about that. It's about making everyone feel safe and welcome. I tried to explain and I feel you didn't read and just parrot the usual bro words. Did you read my blog posts? Really, come now, I have grown up behind the Iron Curtain, do you think I don't know what censorship is?
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    It's not about what's being presumed, but what the effects are, out there in the real world. The CoC's that people are finding highly problematic in practice (such as the so-called "Contributor's Covenant", a misnomer if there ever was one) are not being advocated as generic statements that "everyone [should] feel safe and welcome"; they're supposed to act as bright-line rulesets that everyone, both contributors and maintainers, should ultimately be bound by and actively enforce. For such a ruleset to be so transparently vulnerable to abuse as a "tool to censor and expell people" is a critical weakness, no matter if that abuse was originally predicted or not; no matter if it was intended or not. Having NO "bright-line" CoC whatsoever is preferable by far to having one which makes a project utterly unmanageable in the face of bad actors. This is not rocket surgery; it's simply astounding to me that some people can simply fail to see these problems when they are so clearly apparent to everyone else.
    - chx 7y ago
      Did. you. read. my. blog. post. https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-developer-who-got-banned-from-his-community-due-to-code-of-conduct-22d8f066ab9e https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-deve... > Having NO "bright-line" CoC whatsoever is preferable by far to having one which makes a project utterly unmanageable in the face of bad actors. The only bad actors here are people spouting nonsense like this. It doesn't happen. Show me the open source project that because unmanageable because they enforced their CoC.
      - zozbot234 7y ago
        > Did. you. read. my. blog. post. Exactly. You state that reporting a bug/potential feature, or issuing a pull request, are inherently "confrontational" processes, but this is far from the truth in well-managed projects. And to the extent that it has become so, it's precisely because of procedural roadblocks like CoC's. CoC's make it so project maintainers can no longer use effective moral suasion to require of all contributors to be less confrontational and keep professionalism and the goodness of the project as their shared, common goals. Their hands are tied; they are now only allowed to act as enforcers of a legalistic "code" that focuses on punishing perceived discrimination against a laundry list of overtly-acknowledged ("protected") groups - even the perception of such outside project spaces! - but leaves literally everything else as a toxic free-for-all where the loudest and most obnoxious trolls win, and the maintainer's hard-won wisdom and judgment ultimately counts for nothing. And that's only the slightest of problems with the most common CoC's; other issues are far more serious.

by chx 7y ago

yencabulator 7y ago

> This was a joke. That makes it worse. Some people's "jokes" are allowed, some are punished by censoring and expulsion. Selective enforcement is a central part of the criticism toward CoCs.

chx 7y ago
I am getting really exasperated, every time this topic comes up there are always some who presumes the worst of ... I do not know who but someone who just wants to use the CoC as a tool to censor and expell people. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't. It never did, it's not about that. It's about making everyone feel safe and welcome. I tried to explain and I feel you didn't read and just parrot the usual bro words. Did you read my blog posts? Really, come now, I have grown up behind the Iron Curtain, do you think I don't know what censorship is?
- zozbot234 7y ago
  It's not about what's being presumed, but what the effects are, out there in the real world. The CoC's that people are finding highly problematic in practice (such as the so-called "Contributor's Covenant", a misnomer if there ever was one) are not being advocated as generic statements that "everyone [should] feel safe and welcome"; they're supposed to act as bright-line rulesets that everyone, both contributors and maintainers, should ultimately be bound by and actively enforce. For such a ruleset to be so transparently vulnerable to abuse as a "tool to censor and expell people" is a critical weakness, no matter if that abuse was originally predicted or not; no matter if it was intended or not. Having NO "bright-line" CoC whatsoever is preferable by far to having one which makes a project utterly unmanageable in the face of bad actors. This is not rocket surgery; it's simply astounding to me that some people can simply fail to see these problems when they are so clearly apparent to everyone else.
  - chx 7y ago
    Did. you. read. my. blog. post. https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-developer-who-got-banned-from-his-community-due-to-code-of-conduct-22d8f066ab9e https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-deve... > Having NO "bright-line" CoC whatsoever is preferable by far to having one which makes a project utterly unmanageable in the face of bad actors. The only bad actors here are people spouting nonsense like this. It doesn't happen. Show me the open source project that because unmanageable because they enforced their CoC.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      > Did. you. read. my. blog. post. Exactly. You state that reporting a bug/potential feature, or issuing a pull request, are inherently "confrontational" processes, but this is far from the truth in well-managed projects. And to the extent that it has become so, it's precisely because of procedural roadblocks like CoC's. CoC's make it so project maintainers can no longer use effective moral suasion to require of all contributors to be less confrontational and keep professionalism and the goodness of the project as their shared, common goals. Their hands are tied; they are now only allowed to act as enforcers of a legalistic "code" that focuses on punishing perceived discrimination against a laundry list of overtly-acknowledged ("protected") groups - even the perception of such outside project spaces! - but leaves literally everything else as a toxic free-for-all where the loudest and most obnoxious trolls win, and the maintainer's hard-won wisdom and judgment ultimately counts for nothing. And that's only the slightest of problems with the most common CoC's; other issues are far more serious.