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> Repositories for most projects are more project repositories than mere code repositories. Indeed, but for some reason it still feels odd. I've acknowledged I

> Repositories for most projects are more project repositories than mere code repositories. Indeed, but for some reason it still feels odd. I've acknowledged I'm getting old, right? ;-) Also, there is some rational justification to my feeling. It used to be that you might kick-ban someone from a channel or /dev/null their mailing list contributions. But if they made a technically meritorious merge request via SCM the contribution would still get due consideration. Even assholes can be good programmers, after all. That always felt healthy & mature to me. Finding a way to protect the masses from assholes without exiling the asshole always felt like a sign of good community stewardship. It's something I strived to do in communities I moderated. So, what? I guess this: Bundling the CoC into the repo violates this expectation. Just because someone couldn't get along doesn't mean we kick them out of the hobby. I think that's why it makes me uncomfortable. In a hobby org, you don't let the known jerk on the board. You definitely don't let him man the booth at community outreach events! However, you also don't usually kick him out of the core activity. In a non-OSS hobby context, I've had folks steal things but still allowed them to stay in the community while taking away unsupervised physical access to common property. Measured tolerance and forgiveness are both important virtues, and sticking around in a community after public humiliation shows a commendable level of commitment to the hobby/community. The social bonding that happens via the process of apology and forgiveness often does far more good for the community than the harm of the infraction. But, also, I've always considered OSS a hobby scene rather than a business model or resume booster. I guess if an OSS project is just a way for companies to commodify complements and for contributors to get jobs, then treating it like a Fortune 500 all-hands makes sense. But I'm not interested in those types of communities; I have hobbies, and programming can be a hobby for me, but I charge a lot for my labor and would never, ever work in a corporate environment for free. I wonder how much of the conflict around CoCs boils down to this split in people's perception of what OSS projects are. Again, getting old I guess.

dogleash 5y ago
I'm 30 and that paragraph about OSS vs F500 resonates with me. I don't know how far it goes towards explaining all of my own tastes in OSS community, but the corporate sterility is definitely showing up to different levels in various places. It's the kind of thing I find offputting in and of itself, without even knowing what it's being used to enforce.
munificent 5y ago
> Indeed, but for some reason it still feels odd. I think putting the CoC into the repo is mainly to clarify that it applies to discussions on the issue tracker. If GitHub didn't also do issue tracking and other things where actual discussions occur, there would probably be fewer CoCs in repos. > Measured tolerance and forgiveness are both important virtues There are a small number of extremely toxic people in positions of power who will abuse "forgiveness" in order to deliberately commit an unending series of abuses on a string of people. People kept "forgiving" Harvey Weinstein for decades. The line between tolerance and enabling can get hard to distinguish, especially when someone has enough power to control the narrative. So a community must be aware that its tolerance mechanisms can themselves be maliciously abused. But the alternative—intolerance and being unwilling to forgive—ends up harming the larger number of people who are fallible, do hurtful things, but can be remediated. It gives less room for people to be human. Finding the balance between these opposing forces is hard. A maximally efficient and happy community is one of complete trust between all participants. But that is also the definition of a maximally vulnerable and exploitable one. > But, also, I've always considered OSS a hobby scene rather than a business model or resume booster. That line got really blurry when open source ate the world and many large tech companies now work heavily with open source. You have many employees (like myself) who work on open source projects full time at work. And you have others who work on open source because it helps them find employment at companies that use that code.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
This is a super mature, nuanced post so thanks for that. > It used to be that you might kick-ban someone from a channel or /dev/null their mailing list contributions. But if they made a technically meritorious merge request via SCM the contribution would still get due consideration. Even assholes can be good programmers, after all. That always felt healthy & mature to me. Finding a way to protect the masses from assholes without exiling the asshole always felt like a sign of good community stewardship. It's something I strived to do in communities I moderated. To some extent I think this is because GitHub doesn't offer the same tools that running your own mailing list would. A mailing list can do what you said, /dev/null ML contributions while still letting patches through. That's not something you can do easily in GitHub. > I guess if an OSS project is just a way for companies to commodify complements and for contributors to get jobs, then treating it like a Fortune 500 all-hands makes sense. Rust has a pretty friendly community (from what I've encountered at least), but a lot of its core stakeholders do have a lot of corporate obligations, and many of them Rust related. It makes sense to me that the Rust community would be more interested in treating interaction with Rust like a corporate project instead of a hobby club given that many of them are hacking on Rust for their actual job. > I wonder how much of the conflict around CoCs boils down to this split in people's perception of what OSS projects are. Github is part of it, but in general I think a lot of today's OSS projects don't have a strict separation of "community" and "code" in the way that projects in the past used to. Part of that is modern tools (Git forges like Gitea, sr.ht, etc) don't really enforce that separation, and that older tools like mailing lists are cumbersome enough to maintain that newer developers don't actually explore using them very often.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > [Moderation is] not something you can do easily in GitHub That seems like a pretty significant design flaw :( > Part of that is modern tools (Git forges like Gitea, sr.ht, etc) don't really enforce that separation [between "community" and "code"] Indeed, this makes perfect sense. > It makes sense to me that the Rust community would be more interested in treating interaction with Rust like a corporate project instead of a hobby club given that many of them are hacking on Rust for their actual job. Yup, totally fair and makes sense.
M2Ys4U 5y ago
The assumption here is that any violation of the Code of Conduct would result in the offender being instantly kicked out, right? But there are other ways to deal with actions that go against a code of conduct, to de-escalate situations and encourage rehabilitation within the project - just like what a healthy project would do without an explicit code of conduct. Because let's be honest - those hobby groups you're talking about almost certainly did have a code of conduct, but it was probably implicit and uncodified.

dogleash 5y ago

I'm 30 and that paragraph about OSS vs F500 resonates with me. I don't know how far it goes towards explaining all of my own tastes in OSS community, but the corporate sterility is definitely showing up to different levels in various places. It's the kind of thing I find offputting in and of itself, without even knowing what it's being used to enforce.

munificent 5y ago

> Indeed, but for some reason it still feels odd. I think putting the CoC into the repo is mainly to clarify that it applies to discussions on the issue tracker. If GitHub didn't also do issue tracking and other things where actual discussions occur, there would probably be fewer CoCs in repos. > Measured tolerance and forgiveness are both important virtues There are a small number of extremely toxic people in positions of power who will abuse "forgiveness" in order to deliberately commit an unending series of abuses on a string of people. People kept "forgiving" Harvey Weinstein for decades. The line between tolerance and enabling can get hard to distinguish, especially when someone has enough power to control the narrative. So a community must be aware that its tolerance mechanisms can themselves be maliciously abused. But the alternative—intolerance and being unwilling to forgive—ends up harming the larger number of people who are fallible, do hurtful things, but can be remediated. It gives less room for people to be human. Finding the balance between these opposing forces is hard. A maximally efficient and happy community is one of complete trust between all participants. But that is also the definition of a maximally vulnerable and exploitable one. > But, also, I've always considered OSS a hobby scene rather than a business model or resume booster. That line got really blurry when open source ate the world and many large tech companies now work heavily with open source. You have many employees (like myself) who work on open source projects full time at work. And you have others who work on open source because it helps them find employment at companies that use that code.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

This is a super mature, nuanced post so thanks for that. > It used to be that you might kick-ban someone from a channel or /dev/null their mailing list contributions. But if they made a technically meritorious merge request via SCM the contribution would still get due consideration. Even assholes can be good programmers, after all. That always felt healthy & mature to me. Finding a way to protect the masses from assholes without exiling the asshole always felt like a sign of good community stewardship. It's something I strived to do in communities I moderated. To some extent I think this is because GitHub doesn't offer the same tools that running your own mailing list would. A mailing list can do what you said, /dev/null ML contributions while still letting patches through. That's not something you can do easily in GitHub. > I guess if an OSS project is just a way for companies to commodify complements and for contributors to get jobs, then treating it like a Fortune 500 all-hands makes sense. Rust has a pretty friendly community (from what I've encountered at least), but a lot of its core stakeholders do have a lot of corporate obligations, and many of them Rust related. It makes sense to me that the Rust community would be more interested in treating interaction with Rust like a corporate project instead of a hobby club given that many of them are hacking on Rust for their actual job. > I wonder how much of the conflict around CoCs boils down to this split in people's perception of what OSS projects are. Github is part of it, but in general I think a lot of today's OSS projects don't have a strict separation of "community" and "code" in the way that projects in the past used to. Part of that is modern tools (Git forges like Gitea, sr.ht, etc) don't really enforce that separation, and that older tools like mailing lists are cumbersome enough to maintain that newer developers don't actually explore using them very often.

throwawaygh 5y ago
> [Moderation is] not something you can do easily in GitHub That seems like a pretty significant design flaw :( > Part of that is modern tools (Git forges like Gitea, sr.ht, etc) don't really enforce that separation [between "community" and "code"] Indeed, this makes perfect sense. > It makes sense to me that the Rust community would be more interested in treating interaction with Rust like a corporate project instead of a hobby club given that many of them are hacking on Rust for their actual job. Yup, totally fair and makes sense.

M2Ys4U 5y ago

The assumption here is that any violation of the Code of Conduct would result in the offender being instantly kicked out, right? But there are other ways to deal with actions that go against a code of conduct, to de-escalate situations and encourage rehabilitation within the project - just like what a healthy project would do without an explicit code of conduct. Because let's be honest - those hobby groups you're talking about almost certainly did have a code of conduct, but it was probably implicit and uncodified.