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The vast majority of open source projects do not create their own open source license- most of them choose from a relatively small selection of widely used lice

The vast majority of open source projects do not create their own open source license- most of them choose from a relatively small selection of widely used licenses (GPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, etc.). Why then do so many project choose to roll their own CoC? I'd expect that there would also be a relatively small handful of widely used CoCs to choose from, and a project could pick based on their projects' needs.

Macha 5y ago
I'd wager this is because there is one outright leader in the field (the Contributor Covenant) who's author has at times been a controversial figure in her views on enforcement and scope of codes of conduct, which can lead to people being apprehensive of just adopting the popular example. You can see similar with licenses. Stallman was initially controversial for his views on software licensing, and so in the early days there was a proliferation of licenses like the eclipse public license, mozilla public license, microsoft public license, CCDL, etc.
bluGill 5y ago
I'm on a tiny project without a CoC because I don't know how to enforce it if we had one. Enforce means it needs to apply to me, and also whoever enforces it needs to be active to watch for issues. I wish KDE/Gnome/other big project would just do a CoC as a service for tiny projects. For the most part the CoC should be standard, and a few experts to enforce it would be better than random enforcement. (note I have no idea if the above is possible)
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > For the most part the CoC should be standard, and a few experts to enforce it would be better than random enforcement. I've heard that large-scale enforcement of CoC is super easy and that all the big social media companies have it figured out ;-)
- ufmace 5y ago
  I don't think it makes sense to have a CoC beyond "Don't be a jerk" until you have multiple teams and more complex governance structures.
- b3morales 5y ago
  I don't think you can really have good moderation of a stable group without the moderators being members of the group themselves -- and known and trusted/viewed positively by a majority. Otherwise they'll just be perceived as jerk outsiders who swoop in to make more trouble than they solve. And they will face constant pushback and non-compliance.

Macha 5y ago

I'd wager this is because there is one outright leader in the field (the Contributor Covenant) who's author has at times been a controversial figure in her views on enforcement and scope of codes of conduct, which can lead to people being apprehensive of just adopting the popular example. You can see similar with licenses. Stallman was initially controversial for his views on software licensing, and so in the early days there was a proliferation of licenses like the eclipse public license, mozilla public license, microsoft public license, CCDL, etc.

bluGill 5y ago

I'm on a tiny project without a CoC because I don't know how to enforce it if we had one. Enforce means it needs to apply to me, and also whoever enforces it needs to be active to watch for issues. I wish KDE/Gnome/other big project would just do a CoC as a service for tiny projects. For the most part the CoC should be standard, and a few experts to enforce it would be better than random enforcement. (note I have no idea if the above is possible)

throwawaygh 5y ago
> For the most part the CoC should be standard, and a few experts to enforce it would be better than random enforcement. I've heard that large-scale enforcement of CoC is super easy and that all the big social media companies have it figured out ;-)
ufmace 5y ago
I don't think it makes sense to have a CoC beyond "Don't be a jerk" until you have multiple teams and more complex governance structures.
b3morales 5y ago
I don't think you can really have good moderation of a stable group without the moderators being members of the group themselves -- and known and trusted/viewed positively by a majority. Otherwise they'll just be perceived as jerk outsiders who swoop in to make more trouble than they solve. And they will face constant pushback and non-compliance.