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What if you believe that only married male-female couples should have sex and children? Or that people with penises don't belong in womens spaces? Or whatever o

What if you believe that only married male-female couples should have sex and children? Or that people with penises don't belong in womens spaces? Or whatever other currently controversial topic? It has nothing to do with GCC, nothing with code quality, nothing with your contributions to the project, you don't say that in code, in code comments, on gcc mailing lists, anywhere gcc related. But, because of the CoC ( https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct.html https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct.html ), which says: > This code of conduct applies to all spaces managed by the GCC project. This includes IRC, the mailing lists, the issue tracker, events, and any other forums created by the project team which the community uses for communication. (this ^ part is ok, you should behave like a professional when dealing with stuff like this; general (non-gcc-related) politics or whatever non-gcc-related doesn't belong in GCC mailing lists) > In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them. But this part changes everything, and makes CoCs like this one a bad thing. Been on a (eg.) Trump rally in your free time, unrelated to anything GCC? Some overzelaous CoC enforcer bans you, and it's "totally fine", because the CoC allows this.

074edc15 3y ago
I'm not sold on the idea that "violations of this code outside these spaces" is a bad thing, it depends what those violations are. I'm completely happy and have spent my career working with people who's views don't always align with my own. If I have a religious co-worker who believes I will spend eternity burning in hell for my sexuality, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. They have a right to their view, I have a right to my view, and discussion of those views should be left outside of the workplace. As long as this person treats me with respect, the fact they think I'll spend my non-existent afterlife in a non-existent hell has zero impact on my life. On the other hand, if they spend their free time advocating for things which will have an impact on my life, such as sending me to prison for my sexuality, that's a very different story. It would be impossible for me to work with someone in a constructive way knowing they're pushing for a world without me in it. If they're happy to throw me out of society and into prison, I'm happy to throw them out of my project.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  >I'm not sold on the idea that "violations of this code outside these spaces" is a bad thing, Let's frame it in a more relatable context. Your employer can fire you for violating the company code of conduct, despite your behaviour having absolutely nothing to do with the company or its business.
  - foldr 3y ago
    This is completely commonplace. Yes, you can be fired for doing something outside of work that would bring your employer into disrepute. If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay.
    - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
      > If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay. Do we really want to go back to those times?
      - foldr 3y ago
        Your comment is a bit cryptic, but I assume you're trying to make an equivalence between, say, someone being fired for being gay in the 1970s and someone now being fired for saying hateful things about trans people. These scenarios are only comparable at a level of abstraction that's not useful. It's only inconsistent to oppose one thing and not the other if you think that employers should be barred from firing people for anything that they say or do outside of work. I don't think there has ever been a society where this was the norm. Looking at the big picture, people nowadays have far more freedom in this respect than they ever did (e.g. women are not fired when they get married).
        torstenvl 3y ago
        How many people are fired for saying hateful things about trans people? vs. How many people are fired for saying things that many trans people disagree with?
kramerger 3y ago
So basically you want to go to a technical forum with a significant number of Irish members and tell them that in your opinion Irish people should not exist? Don't you see how that makes the place unwelcoming to them?? (Replace Irish with gay, trans, republican, ...)
- Akronymus 3y ago
  That's not what GP advocated for, at all. GP said that the behaviour outside of the workplace is not relevant to the workplace.
- klipt 3y ago
  There are always scissor cases. Suppose X, a Ukrainian says on Twitter "I wish the Russians would get out of Ukraine" and then Y, a Ukrainian of Russian ethnicity reports X for saying that Y shouldn't exist. Who is right in this case, X or Y? Replace Russia/Ukraine with your favorite contentious issue and you could potentially see communities splitting up over this.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    There's no right or wrong in this case though. The statement is a wish, it's not punching down on Russians. And the report is invalid, because X did not in fact say what Y claims that they said. It's not the issue itself, it's the intent. If the intent is exclusionary - if X did say Y should not exist - then there's negative, unwelcoming intent. It's not actually as complicated as the anti-CoC crowd is trying to make it look. All CoC's should / could be summarized as "be nice", with the caveat that if you're not, you won't be treated nicely either. And even that's not the case, because nine times out of ten, you will be asked to change your behaviour and patiently explained why it's bad. And most adults can accept that. They can accept that saying "X should not exist" is bad.
foldr 3y ago
The irony here is that you're using the same kind of logic (the project can't survive if it's closed to transphobes!) that's mocked in the following comment when the shoe is on the other foot (LOL the project can't survive without trans people): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36430649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36430649 This does highlight the point that diversity is to some extent a zero sum game. You can welcome trans people to your project, or transphobes, but not necessarily both. (I am just using trans people as one of many possible examples.)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- userbinator 3y ago
  You can welcome trans people to your project, or transphobes, but not necessarily both. You don't need to "welcome" either. You just don't talk about that stuff because it has zero relevance to your project, unless you're trying to use it as a political statement (which technical projects shouldn't be at all.)
  - glonq 3y ago
    As regressive as "don't ask; don't tell" sounds, I pretty much agree. Unless it is somehow very relevant to the project, I just don't want to know about anybody's race, gender, genitals, or politics. All those things can be weaponized to become divisive. I just want to work together with other people who are passionate about great technology.
    - foldr 3y ago
      Are you sure you want race and gender in the list there? You’re going to refer to all your colleagues as ‘they’ and ask them to avoid accidentally revealing their gender? Don’t mention that you got a gift for Father’s Day! I guess they’re not allowed to put photos on their GitHub profiles in case you can determine which race they probably are. Meeting any of them in person is, of course, completely out of the question. This ‘don’t ask don’t’ tell stuff is regressive, but in discussions like this it sometimes seems to devolve into pure nonsense. No human community functions as you're suggesting. The literal content of what’s being said is so crazy that the subtext is clear: “if you’re not cis, white and hetero, then keep quiet about it”.
sasmithjr 3y ago
> because the CoC allows this. Project owners could do this before the CoC was created, and even if the CoC explicitly disallowed it, the project owners could do it anyway. The existence of the CoC changes absolutely nothing about what the project owners can and cannot do.
- revelio 3y ago
  They could, but their justification had to be "I don't like you". The CoC process is designed to enable exclusion via opaque committees who justify their decisions by reference to vague and subjective criteria. It makes the people doing it feel better by allowing them to pretend everyone signed up for whatever random thing they decided today, and thus shield themselves from criticism.

074edc15 3y ago

I'm not sold on the idea that "violations of this code outside these spaces" is a bad thing, it depends what those violations are. I'm completely happy and have spent my career working with people who's views don't always align with my own. If I have a religious co-worker who believes I will spend eternity burning in hell for my sexuality, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. They have a right to their view, I have a right to my view, and discussion of those views should be left outside of the workplace. As long as this person treats me with respect, the fact they think I'll spend my non-existent afterlife in a non-existent hell has zero impact on my life. On the other hand, if they spend their free time advocating for things which will have an impact on my life, such as sending me to prison for my sexuality, that's a very different story. It would be impossible for me to work with someone in a constructive way knowing they're pushing for a world without me in it. If they're happy to throw me out of society and into prison, I'm happy to throw them out of my project.

Dalewyn 3y ago
>I'm not sold on the idea that "violations of this code outside these spaces" is a bad thing, Let's frame it in a more relatable context. Your employer can fire you for violating the company code of conduct, despite your behaviour having absolutely nothing to do with the company or its business.
- foldr 3y ago
  This is completely commonplace. Yes, you can be fired for doing something outside of work that would bring your employer into disrepute. If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay.
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    > If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay. Do we really want to go back to those times?
    - foldr 3y ago
      Your comment is a bit cryptic, but I assume you're trying to make an equivalence between, say, someone being fired for being gay in the 1970s and someone now being fired for saying hateful things about trans people. These scenarios are only comparable at a level of abstraction that's not useful. It's only inconsistent to oppose one thing and not the other if you think that employers should be barred from firing people for anything that they say or do outside of work. I don't think there has ever been a society where this was the norm. Looking at the big picture, people nowadays have far more freedom in this respect than they ever did (e.g. women are not fired when they get married).
      - torstenvl 3y ago
        How many people are fired for saying hateful things about trans people? vs. How many people are fired for saying things that many trans people disagree with?

kramerger 3y ago

So basically you want to go to a technical forum with a significant number of Irish members and tell them that in your opinion Irish people should not exist? Don't you see how that makes the place unwelcoming to them?? (Replace Irish with gay, trans, republican, ...)

Akronymus 3y ago
That's not what GP advocated for, at all. GP said that the behaviour outside of the workplace is not relevant to the workplace.
klipt 3y ago
There are always scissor cases. Suppose X, a Ukrainian says on Twitter "I wish the Russians would get out of Ukraine" and then Y, a Ukrainian of Russian ethnicity reports X for saying that Y shouldn't exist. Who is right in this case, X or Y? Replace Russia/Ukraine with your favorite contentious issue and you could potentially see communities splitting up over this.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  There's no right or wrong in this case though. The statement is a wish, it's not punching down on Russians. And the report is invalid, because X did not in fact say what Y claims that they said. It's not the issue itself, it's the intent. If the intent is exclusionary - if X did say Y should not exist - then there's negative, unwelcoming intent. It's not actually as complicated as the anti-CoC crowd is trying to make it look. All CoC's should / could be summarized as "be nice", with the caveat that if you're not, you won't be treated nicely either. And even that's not the case, because nine times out of ten, you will be asked to change your behaviour and patiently explained why it's bad. And most adults can accept that. They can accept that saying "X should not exist" is bad.

foldr 3y ago

The irony here is that you're using the same kind of logic (the project can't survive if it's closed to transphobes!) that's mocked in the following comment when the shoe is on the other foot (LOL the project can't survive without trans people): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36430649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36430649 This does highlight the point that diversity is to some extent a zero sum game. You can welcome trans people to your project, or transphobes, but not necessarily both. (I am just using trans people as one of many possible examples.)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 3y ago
You can welcome trans people to your project, or transphobes, but not necessarily both. You don't need to "welcome" either. You just don't talk about that stuff because it has zero relevance to your project, unless you're trying to use it as a political statement (which technical projects shouldn't be at all.)
- glonq 3y ago
  As regressive as "don't ask; don't tell" sounds, I pretty much agree. Unless it is somehow very relevant to the project, I just don't want to know about anybody's race, gender, genitals, or politics. All those things can be weaponized to become divisive. I just want to work together with other people who are passionate about great technology.
  - foldr 3y ago
    Are you sure you want race and gender in the list there? You’re going to refer to all your colleagues as ‘they’ and ask them to avoid accidentally revealing their gender? Don’t mention that you got a gift for Father’s Day! I guess they’re not allowed to put photos on their GitHub profiles in case you can determine which race they probably are. Meeting any of them in person is, of course, completely out of the question. This ‘don’t ask don’t’ tell stuff is regressive, but in discussions like this it sometimes seems to devolve into pure nonsense. No human community functions as you're suggesting. The literal content of what’s being said is so crazy that the subtext is clear: “if you’re not cis, white and hetero, then keep quiet about it”.

sasmithjr 3y ago

> because the CoC allows this. Project owners could do this before the CoC was created, and even if the CoC explicitly disallowed it, the project owners could do it anyway. The existence of the CoC changes absolutely nothing about what the project owners can and cannot do.

revelio 3y ago
They could, but their justification had to be "I don't like you". The CoC process is designed to enable exclusion via opaque committees who justify their decisions by reference to vague and subjective criteria. It makes the people doing it feel better by allowing them to pretend everyone signed up for whatever random thing they decided today, and thus shield themselves from criticism.