Why the Linux CoC is Bad

[LAwLz]

Basically just using this forum as my own memo pad for this.

 

The new CoC adapted by the Linux kernel development is written by Coraline Ada Ehmke. A highly controversial person who seems to have mostly spent her time commenting on Github projects about how they are sexist and not "diverse" enough (and by "diverse" she actually means she believes there are too many white men).

 

The CoC adopted by the Linux Kernel team is called the "Contributor Covenant". 

The problem with this is that the author of this CoC of it has spent a considerate amount of time tracking down developers, looking through their history and then if she does not like them (for example if they have differing political views than her) she has gotten them banned from projects.

Basically, if you for example mentioned on Twitter that you voted for Trump, she might track that down and get you banned from working on certain open source projects. Here are some examples of similar things happening (people getting banned from projects because of things they did on their private accounts. Original reddit comment can be found here):

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Opal, attempt to witch-hunt dev out of the project over personal opinion thwarted by maintainer being open-minded: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

 

The entire GitHub Code of Conduct Drama: http://archive.is/JzOojhttps://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3g8ehh/github_puts_open_code_of_conduct_on_pause_cites/

 

Django attempt to impose "Contributor Covenant" over project for rejected pull requests from "People of Color", then labeling him an ist and saying they'll go to management: https://archive.is/dgilk

As a suggestion I recommend adopting the Contributor Code of Conduct to ensure everybody's contributions are accepted regarless of their sex, sexual orientation, skin color, religion, height, place of origin, etc, etc, etc. As a white straight male and lead of this trending repository, your adoption of this Code of Conduct will send a loud and clear message that inclusion is a primary objective of the Django community and of the software development community in general.

 

Ruby attempt to impose the Contributor Covenant over the project, founder Matz thankfully aware enough to reject it, here's his explanation: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004#note-95 Following that attempts by Contributor Covenant to get Matz separated from "Community Management": https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/690334282607378432 and insults year later: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1029170073938944000 Thankfully he knows what's up: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1041701099378540544

 

PHP attempt to impose Contributor Covenant on the project that thankfully fails after a few skirmishes and a few great explanations why: http://paul-m-jones.com/archives/6214

the Contributor Covenant, and any other codes of conduct originating in Social Justice, are to be opposed out of hand, both in PHP, and in any other place they are suggested

 

Node.js attempt to remove a contributor over sharing an article on Twitter: https://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-speech/ http://archive.is/h6lem

Most recently Rod tweeted in support of an inflammatory anti-Code-of-Conduct article. As a perceived leader in the project, it can be difficult for outsiders to separate Rod’s opinions from that of the project. Knowing the space he is participating in and the values of our community, Rod should have predicted the kind of response this tweet received.

After lengthy attempts to defend himself: https://medium.com/@rvagg/the-truth-about-rod-vagg-f063f6a53557 he barely survives a vote triggered to throw him out of the project, activists are pissed: https://twitter.com/ag_dubs/status/899749156209664000 After the Kangoroo court is over, people point out said activists broke said "Code of Conduct" in much more severe ways, no action is taken: http://archive.is/7cL5s

 

Drupal contributor is thrown out of the project for his personal sex life: https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/drupal-larry-garfield-gor.html after activists in its "Diversity & Inclusion group" set up dozen pages political dossier of supposedly "problematic" comments he might have made on Twitter/Reddit or his Blog: https://www.scribd.com/document/350215190/Crell

 

And now it's the turn for Linux. This is what this and similar "Code of Conducts" are designed to do, and explicitly so by its creator. Create political Drama and arguments and get outside activists to start witch-hunts and Social media/media shitstorms against developers with private political opinions they dislike. It's up to the Linux community to decide if that's what they want or they'd rather keep coding.

 

They're also implicitly anti-meritocratic and such language was embedded within the first versions of it, for instance "pervasive cult of meritocracy": https://twitter.com/dashorst/status/534473049647898624 and even if it's not explicit anymore, the intent of its creator is clear: https://postmeritocracy.org/

 

 

She also worked at GitHub for about a year (probably to fill some diversity quota) and this was the result:

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The creator of the CoC worked at GitHub for a year, was mostly hired on board to signal about "diversity", but got let go about a year later and triggering more Drama: https://where.coraline.codes/blog/my-year-at-github/

 

Which also triggered various "GitHub is sexist" articles upon departure:

https://www.businessinsider.de/fired-github-programmer-coraline-ada-ehmke-speaks-out-2017-7

https://www.themarysue.com/antisocial-coding-github/

 

While working at GitHub someone actually tried applying the same standards that were applied to others in past incidents described above to the CoC creator, which also led to nothing aside from the issue being closed by Ehmke with a passive aggressive explanation: http://archive.is/kdw13

 

If you want to know what this person is about, there's no better than from the horse's mouth, this extended Twitter rant from about a month ago is the pure distilled essence of what is going on: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1029161113848557569

 

Nonetheless I'm sure there are still enough "allies" inside GitHub to try and push this and argue the pretense position of this being about "civility", "welcoming" or "safety" instead of what it is actually used for as explained best here: http://paul-m-jones.com/archives/6214

The archive link shows a very disturbing thing about the creator. The CoC she created gives maintainers the responsibility to make sure nobody who behaves in certain ways should be allowed to work on a project. One of the things the CoC doesn't allow is being hostile towards someone for political reasons. However, when someone raised awareness that the creator was enforcing violence against a journalist because of his political views, she dismissed it as being justified and then closed the issue.

 

 

As mentioned at the end of the first Reddit post quoted, she is also against meritocracy (as explained on the website "Post-meritocracy". I didn't know what meritocracy was so I looked it up.

Meritocracy is the idea that peoples' work and power should be measured by their talent, effort and achievements. That is to say, in a meritocratic system if you perform really well at your job, let's say you write excellent code, then you get rewarded for it. For example if you write an excellent graphics driver then you might be put in charge of overseeing future development of it. You get put in that position not because of your wealth, race or religion, but rather because you have demonstrated your ability to write an excellent driver.

 

Coraline dislikes the idea of being judged by the quality of her work, because:
 

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Our professions do not define us; we are more than the work we do.

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Our success and value is not dependent on exerting all of our energy on contributing to software.

and other such drivel. 

 

My response to that is, sorry but when you're writing code which will be used for things such as controlling nuclear reactors then it does not matter your ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion. The only thing that should matters is how good your code is.

 

 

Edit:

Someone commented and said that I was attacking Coraline rather than the CoC itself and that was unfair.

I disagree that this is unfair because Coraline has on several occasions used this CoC to attack others and in general created controversy in previously peaceful and productive environments. However, I feel like I should address the issues with the CoC itself too, without looking at the history of abuse it has lead to so here goes.

 

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Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:

• The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or advances

I agree with the last part, that unwelcome sexual attention is unacceptable behavior. However, a blanket ban on anything that can be considered "sexualized language or imagery" seems very excessive to me.

 

 

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Project maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, or to ban temporarily or permanently any contributor for other behaviors that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.

I disagree that project managers should have the responsibility to reject/ban contributors who do not follow this CoC. If someone for example says something sexual then I don't think their work should be rejected. Their work should be evaluated solely on the merits of their work, not by the characteristics of potentially unrelated actions of the person who wrote the code. To make an extreme, over the top example, I would prefer working code written by a murderer, over buggy and nonfunctional code written by a charity worker.

 

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This Code of Conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community. Examples of representing a project or community include using an official project e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event. Representation of a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers.

This sounds good, until you realize that "representing the project or its community" is very vague and is one of the reasons why things such as tweets getting dragged up in complaints on GitHub. To make another over the top example, if you follow this CoC to the letter, if I have "Linux Kernel developer" in my Twitter bio and post a picture of some sexy anime feet, I can be deemed "representing the project" and breaking the "no sexualized imagery" guideline, and thus I am no longer allowed to submit code to the Linux Kernel, no matter how good it might be.

While that requires some loose interpretation of the language in the CoC, it is not out of the possibility. For examples of how this can be abused just look at the recent James Gunn debacle, where someone went through over 10 years of twitter history just to find some mildly controversial tweets which were then misinterpreted by people.

 

 

A lot of this is also referring to the maintainers of the project. However, at several points in the past maintainers have been contacted and persuaded to take action on behalf of others who are against some individual.

In order words, it gives project maintainers a lot of power, and then those maintainers gets pushed to use those powers even though they themselves might not agree with the actions taken. "Do this or you're a sexist bigot" is a quite severe threat to some high profile people. With all the hit pieces that gets written in media, it can ruin a project too.

 

Oh, and let's not forget this piece from the CoC:

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Project maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct in good faith may face temporary or permanent repercussions as determined by other members of the project’s leadership.

That is to say, if a project maintainer do not agree that something is abusive and it gets brought up to the project leadership who may have a different opinion (or be pushed/threatened into taking action) that maintainer can face permanent repercussions.

This will most certainly lead to maintainers being overly cautious. If something has the possibility of being deemed offensive, it is in their best interest to delete it because otherwise they might risk getting fired/banned.

 

It creates a very bad and hostile environment where people fear getting fired/banned if they are not overly cautious. Most people don't want to constantly walk on eggshells or risk getting fired.

[tikker]

Well this is... yeah. I don't have the time to read all the references and material now, but I glanced over a few and they seem very forceful...

Comments like

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but you are not a woman or a trans-gendered person so you can't possibly understand what they go through

Are just as bad as what they're implying the developers are doing, in my opinion.

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Code of Conducts are not JUST about conduct

Sure it's not in the name or anything.

 

23 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

However, when someone raised awareness that the creator was enforcing violence against a journalist because of his political views, she dismissed it as being justified and then closed the issue.

Why am I not surprised by this. Use their own arguments against them, in an example of their own, and you are wrong again, because that time it was justified.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

I thought that Linux was open source, as in open to EVERYONE regardless of who they are.

 

One thing that I don't understand about this is that it's not GitHub or Linux's fault that the demographic that they attract check the "caucasian" and "male" categories. If the other demographics are not interested in coding, let them be. 

 

I feel that a position like the writer of the CoC, of any company, requires you to be unbiased to anything and focus on the good of the community it supports. This just alienates users and she herself is going against her own CoC:
 

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Our Pledge

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

 

Edited September 20, 2018 by Dissitesuxba11s

[tikker]

4 minutes ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

I feel that a position like the writer of the CoC, of any company, requires you to be unbiased to anything and focus on the good of the community it supports. This just alienates users and she herself is going against her own CoC:

Nowadays I sometimes feel like as what started as a push for equality and inclusion of whoever or whatever you are is slowly turning into (or has already?) the exact same thing they're fighting against, but with the roles reversed. The oppressed becoming the oppressor, so to speak. This just adds to that feeling

[WereCatf]

27 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The new CoC adapted by the Linux kernel development is written by Coraline Ada Ehmke. A highly controversial person who seems to have mostly spent her time commenting on Github projects about how they are sexist and not "diverse" enough (and by "diverse" she actually means she believes there are too many white men).

I'm just going to cut this short: you're attacking Coraline as a person, just as she, apparently, attacks other people. You didn't address the CoC itself, you're just shooting the messenger. My point is, even really shitty people can be right or do a good thing and who this Coraline is is a separate matter from the CoC itself; address the CoC on its own merits, if any, but don't mix the two.

[doomleika]

Unless you can replicate proper due process, CoC will always be the tool for leftist to silence any one they don't like.

Just look at CoC violation at Node and see the double standard between Rvagg and Ashley Williams. This is nothing short of kangaroo court.

 

Alas, SJW has already infected major projects(python, ruby, rust, linux...). I'll just grab popcorn and enjoy the shitstorm unfold.

 

Having SJW run amok gets you Trump. I am wondering what OSS will heads to when now it's about identity politics than code.

[LAwLz]

32 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

I'm just going to cut this short: you're attacking Coraline as a person, just as she, apparently, attacks other people. You didn't address the CoC itself, you're just shooting the messenger. My point is, even really shitty people can be right or do a good thing and who this Coraline is is a separate matter from the CoC itself; address the CoC on its own merits, if any, but don't mix the two.

1) My attacks on her are because of her hypocrisy and actions. Her attacks are based on things such as race and sexuality. Two very big differences. I have not once said that her opinions are invalid because she is trans, or whatever. I am pointing out that she is a hypocrite.

 

2) Coraline is not the "messenger". She is the person who wrote the CoC she herself can't even follow. 

 

3) As explained in the post, this CoC is being measured by its own merits. It has systematically been used by Coraline and others to hunt people they disagree with for whatever reason, mainly politically motivated. Did you miss the list of examples I posted?

I am judging a tool (this CoC) on the merits of what it has accomplished (politically loaded witch hunts and attempts to attack meritocracy).

This is an atom bomb and when I express worry you tell me to ignore historical events like Hiroshima. Sorry but when I see a pattern of misuse then I get worried and question the validity of the change.

 

 

But sure, I will add my objections to the CoC to the original post. You can scroll up and see the parts I disagree with in like an hour when I have gone through it again and picked out which parts to highlight.

[GlobalPentahedron Corp]

I read peter theil's book a few years ago. I think the book was published in '98 or '99. He warned us about this sort of behaviour coming out of american colleges. There have been many other books on this postmodernism stuff. Some people are even starting to cash in on it by selling books and podcasts to baby boomers. I think it was Jordan Peterson who said he is monetizing SJWs.

 

Get woke go broke.

 

I hope this regressive stuff dies this year. I really do not want to live in a future where people climb the corporate ladder by participating in witch hunts for "fascists" and "nazis". These are potentially our future leaders behaving this way!

[GlobalPentahedron Corp]

1 hour ago, WereCatf said:

you're attacking Coraline as a person

I dont see that in the OP. OP has called them out on being a potential diversity hire - but the reality is this is the consequence of diversity hiring. This is a natural response to when someone from the category of diversity behaves in a way that harms a business and puts into question their actual merit. Its not like OP called her a poo poo head!

 

She isnt actually a diversity hire. She is a busy body that has done extra side projects. In the IT industry there are things people do on the side to get recognition like contributing to writing standards and businessy compliance stuff. I would say her side project work is about enabling diversity hiring, but she screwed up big time by getting fired.

[Sauron]

I'll only tackle the part that criticizes the CoC itself as any consideration on who wrote it is completely irrelevant when discussing its quality in my opinion.

 

You seem to take issue with the fact that some rules are vague and could be abused by someone with an "agenda"; what you may not realize is that the previous CoC merely stated "be excellent to each other" (to summarize it) and was, if anything, far more open to abuse and subjective interpretation. Furthermore, community moderators can (and always could) ban whomever they want for whatever reason as long as they're in agreement with each other - the CoC is not a legal document and it does not override the moderators, just like on this forum. It's just a set of guidelines, more of a warning than a law - any disciplinary action still depends on the context and the moderators' judgement. I would say that in this respect the current CoC is no worse than the previous one and asking for it to be reverted on these grounds is completely unwarranted.

 

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I disagree that project managers should have the responsibility to reject/ban contributors who do not follow this CoC. If someone for example says something sexual then I don't think their work should be rejected. Their work should be evaluated solely on the merits of their work, not by the characteristics of potentially unrelated actions of the person who wrote the code. To make an extreme, over the top example, I would prefer working code written by a murderer, over buggy and nonfunctional code written by a charity worker.

If a murderer wants to submit some dank code to the linux kernel and goes through the motions in a civil manner I'm sure there would be no problem; the problems ensue when someone's behavior hinders collaboration and costs other contributors time and effort that could be better spent. If upon receiving critique of my code I started berating you personally and made the whole process harder for everyone involved, the quality of my code wouldn't matter - there are plenty of talented people around and sometimes keeping a troublesome individual around just for their code isn't worth it.

 

 

This is true in ANY large organization where people need to work with each other; basic human decency is the bare minimum required of everyone involved.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

3) As explained in the post, this CoC is being measured by its own merits. It has systematically been used by Coraline and others to hunt people they disagree with for whatever reason, mainly politically motivated. Did you miss the list of examples I posted?

I am judging a tool (this CoC) on the merits of what it has accomplished (politically loaded witch hunts and attempts to attack meritocracy).

This is an atom bomb and when I express worry you tell me to ignore historical events like Hiroshima. Sorry but when I see a pattern of misuse then I get worried and question the validity of the change.

How the same text has been used outside of the Linux development community doesn't matter - as I said, that depends on who is moderating the community and the old CoC could have been used as justification for pretty much anything if there had been the will to do so.

 

1 hour ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

I thought that Linux was open source, as in open to EVERYONE regardless of who they are.

Yes, that's what the new CoC says, literally in the part you quoted.

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for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

1 hour ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

One thing that I don't understand about this is that it's not GitHub or Linux's fault that the demographic that they attract check the "caucasian" and "male" categories. If the other demographics are not interested in coding, let them be. 

The new CoC makes no mention of any of this.

1 hour ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

I feel that a position like the writer of the CoC, of any company, requires you to be unbiased to anything and focus on the good of the community it supports. This just alienates users and she herself is going against her own CoC:

She wrote it, but it wasn't her decision to make it the Linux code of conduct. The Technical Advisory Board (and Torvalds himself as he signed the change) thought it would be a good text to adopt for their community. And again, the author's personal bias doesn't matter when judging the merits of the text itself. If you feel "alienated" by the fact she wrote it then that's your prerogative, but I'd hardly say it's a fault of the CoC. By that logic she could have written literally anything and you'd be against it out of principle.

[wasab]

30 minutes ago, Sauron said:

 

 

 

If a murderer wants to submit some dank code to the linux kernel and goes through the motions in a civil manner I'm sure there would be no problem; the problems ensue when someone's behavior hinders collaboration and costs other contributors time and effort that could be better spent. If upon receiving critique of my code I started berating you personally and made the whole process harder for everyone involved, the quality of my code wouldn't matter - there are plenty of talented people around and sometimes keeping a troublesome individual around just for their code isn't worth it.

 

 

 

So the most productive Linux contributors must be very nice people then?

If that's the case, I guess Linus Torvalds should just quit and get a real job because he obviously is the meanest person in the Linux world. 

https://adtmag.com/blogs/dev-watch/2014/04/linus-torvalds-rants.aspx?m=1

[Syntaxvgm]

Tech is morality agnostic. Code does not reflect or endorse the views of who wrote it. 
FOSS needs everyone with the skills it can get. 

If Hilter came back and committed a security update to a project, it should only be rejected if it's a bad solution or he named a variable gasTheJews. In the later case change the names and keep the code.  No one's paying hitler for his code. No one cares. They care what furthers the project. This is what holds these projects together- the only important thing being the problems and the solutions. 

 

This is dangerous, and I feel it's a systematic attack on foss solutions- destroying projects from the inside. 
 

[Sauron]

36 minutes ago, wasab said:

So the most productive Linux contributors must be very nice people then?

If that's the case, I guess Linus Torvalds should just quit and get a real job because he obviously is the meanest person in the Linux world. 

https://adtmag.com/blogs/dev-watch/2014/04/linus-torvalds-rants.aspx?m=1

They must be nice enough to allow others to work with them, yes. Torvalds could use a little (maybe a lot of) sugar in his interactions for sure, but at least his rants have almost always been about the code and nothing else. He will berate and demean you for writing what he thinks is bad code, but he won't harass or discriminate against you for your beliefs, ethnicity etc. There are much worse individuals around than L.T.

 

Oh, and in his own code of conflict - the one that's getting replaced - he explicitly said that harassment and bullying was not ok.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

13 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Yes, that's what the new CoC says, literally in the part you quoted.

 

The new CoC makes no mention of any of this.

 

She wrote it, but it wasn't her decision to make it the Linux code of conduct. The Technical Advisory Board (and Torvalds himself as he signed the change) thought it would be a good text to adopt for their community. And again, the author's personal bias doesn't matter when judging the merits of the text itself. If you feel "alienated" by the fact she wrote it then that's your prerogative, but I'd hardly say it's a fault of the CoC. By that logic she could have written literally anything and you'd be against it out of principle.

Ad hominem. I guess I was too focused on what she has done in the past personally to see that what she has written is completely detatched from her. Sorry.

[PlayStation 2]

Usually, when code of conducts say that they won't discriminate on [insert something] and those who have control are "progressive", it tends to lead into a shitty mess that's very discriminatory, usually on the basis of "I hate it, so lemme remove them from being able to do shit".

I would hate if I was barred from doing something because, say, I support Trump. Likewise, if I ever discriminated on political views, I should get shit for it. Those who fight for "equality" and are very "progressive" tend to be the most discriminatory based on characteristics and personality, from what I've seen, anyway.

[Taf the Ghost]

15 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Usually, when code of conducts say that they won't discriminate on [insert something] and those who have control are "progressive", it tends to lead into a shitty mess that's very discriminatory, usually on the basis of "I hate it, so lemme remove them from being able to do shit".

I would hate if I was barred from doing something because, say, I support Trump. Likewise, if I ever discriminated on political views, I should get shit for it. Those who fight for "equality" and are very "progressive" tend to be the most discriminatory based on characteristics and personality, from what I've seen, anyway.

It's almost as if it's projection by people that lie about everything, when it's really just about acquiring power for themselves at the expense of all others.

[Aetheria]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

If a murderer wants to submit some dank code to the linux kernel and goes through the motions in a civil manner I'm sure there would be no problem; the problems ensue when someone's behavior hinders collaboration and costs other contributors time and effort that could be better spent.

I think you need to actually look at some of the examples in OP's post. Forget about political teams for a moment (I'm usually the first person to roll their eyes whenever the Internet plays gender politics, I rolled my eyes at a couple of OP's asides) and just look at the examples provided. The people who have been targeted by these campaigns certainly aren't murderers.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Syntaxvgm said:

Tech is morality agnostic.

I would argue FOSS projects are based on very specific moral principles... especially those licensed under the GPL. Some of those principles are strongly related to ideas of equality and mutual respect. Advocating for FOSS and being, say, racist is at the very least a contradiction.

1 hour ago, Syntaxvgm said:

FOSS needs everyone with the skills it can get.

Not really, there are plenty of talented developers contributing to every large project, including professionals who are paid to do it by their companies. Linux is nowhere near short on contributors. While more help certainly couldn't hurt, and I would encourage anyone willing to help to do it, that doesn't mean anything goes and everything is acceptable. Note that I'm referring to behavior here - of course, everyone is welcome to help if they can treat others with respect.

1 hour ago, Syntaxvgm said:

If Hilter came back and committed a security update to a project, it should only be rejected if it's a bad solution or he named a variable gasTheJews. In the later case change the names and keep the code.  No one's paying hitler for his code. No one cares. They care what furthers the project. This is what holds these projects together- the only important thing being the problems and the solutions.

Would you trust Hitler to welcome criticism of his code and collaborate with others to make it better? Even if you did, would you trust him in any position of responsibility? Of course if he were to participate respectfully and responsibly he should be allowed to, but let's be honest, that's a bit of a stretch. That is all this is about really, make sure that nobody behaves like Hitler would towards their fellow contributors.

2 hours ago, Syntaxvgm said:

This is dangerous, and I feel it's a systematic attack on foss solutions- destroying projects from the inside.

I think your fears are unwarranted - the previous CoC said roughly the same things, just in less detail (and therefore more ambiguously). FreeBSD's CoC is far "worse" according to your metrics, but as far as I know that community is just fine despite the uproar that was raised when it was introduced. In the end the CoC isn't really that impactful, regardless of how good or bad you think it is.

 

22 minutes ago, r.perez said:

When I hear someone complain about leftist infiltration, my eyes roll so hard into the back of my head I have to stop reading. 

This is right-wing propaganda and fear mongering about leftists, nothing more. If I wanted to read right-wing rants I'd go back to [H]ard Forum. 

I didn't want to generalize and say it, but I have to agree. I'm sure not every critic is like that, but I think that's the core of the backlash.

5 minutes ago, Aetheria said:

I think you need to actually look at some of the examples in OP's post. Forget about political teams for a moment (I'm usually the first person to roll their eyes whenever the Internet plays gender politics, I rolled my eyes at a couple of OP's asides) and just look at the examples provided. The people who have been targeted by these campaigns certainly aren't murderers.

I strongly hope they aren't murderers... but that's not the point. The examples given are about different communities moderated by different people. The author of the CoC is not a part of the Linux moderation team as far as I know.

 

But back to the murderer example, what I said only holds true if the murder is unrelated to the community - if that guy went and murdered a fellow developer, do you think they should be allowed to keep contributing as if nothing happened?

[LAwLz]

12 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I think your fears are unwarranted - the previous CoC said roughly the same things, just in less detail (and therefore more ambiguously). FreeBSD's CoC is far "worse" according to your metrics, but as far as I know that community is just fine despite the uproar that was raised when it was introduced. In the end the CoC isn't really that impactful, regardless of how good or bad you think it is.

I don't actually have that much problem with ambiguous CoCs. The problem I have with this is the places where it is vague, and the places where it is very explicit.

It's vague in what warrants punishment, but fairly specific in what the punishment should be. It is also specific when it is OK to take action against the one enforcing it and what the repercussions should be for not following the CoC.

 

I think the tweaks made by the Ruby creator, which makes it more vague, actually improves it a lot.

Here are the modified version proposed by Yukihiro Matsumoto which I find far superior:

Quote

Contributor Code of Conduct

 

As contributors and maintainers of this project, and in the interest of fostering an open and welcoming community, we pledge to respect all people who contribute through reporting issues, posting feature requests, updating documentation, submitting pull requests or patches, and other activities.

 

We are committed to making participation in this project a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, belief, or nationality.

Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:

• The use of sexualized language or imagery
• Personal attacks
• Trolling or insulting/derogatory comments
• Harassment
• Publishing other's private information, such as physical addresses, without explicit permission
• Other unethical conduct

Project maintainers may remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct.

 

Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported by contacting a project maintainer at [INSERT EMAIL ADDRESS]. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated and will result in a response that is deemed necessary and appropriate to the circumstances. Maintainers are obligated to maintain confidentiality with regard to the reporter of an incident.

 

[GE90_115B]

It seems that there had been no formal experiments that really prove/disprove the theory that contributions and pull requests on Github are judged according to sex/race that that kind of factors. It's a bit strange considering how easy it would be to do such an experiment. Decades ago formal experiments that proved the felt superiority of white ppl paved the way for civil rights, and it would be nice if we can have some formal, scientific support today as well.

 

Personally, I think that discrimination is possible in some corporate Github projects. However, it is incredibly unlikely in something as hard core as Linux. Generally speaking, the more hard-core and high level you get, the less politically opinionated ppl are, so it really is hardly imaginable that Linux contributors, being devoted developers, would really discriminate, especially when many contributors are simply known by an email address, and sex/race isn't even disclosed.

[Sauron]

45 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I don't actually have that much problem with ambiguous CoCs. The problem I have with this is the places where it is vague, and the places where it is very explicit.

It's vague in what warrants punishment, but fairly specific in what the punishment should be. It is also specific when it is OK to take action against the one enforcing it and what the repercussions should be for not following the CoC.

 

I think the tweaks made by the Ruby creator, which makes it more vague, actually improves it a lot.

Here are the modified version proposed by Yukihiro Matsumoto which I find far superior:

As I said, the moderators can take whatever action they see fit - it's not like they are suddenly forced to kick someone out as soon as they are perceived to be in breach of the CoC. Maybe, probably even, the suggested changes are superior, but honestly I don't think it really matters because it won't really affect how the community is moderated.

 

Regardless, even if we can agree that it could have been done better (as most things), the outrage and alarmism that sparked this discussion seems a little excessive, don't you think? After all, it's normal to debate the exact semantics of a new CoC; what isn't quite normal is the apocalyptic rethoric and aggression that ensued in this case. Nobody is going to listen if you call it an SJW cuck soyboy conspiracy to destroy foss.

[doomleika]

Well, the shitshow can't come sooner

 

One thing I enjoy Darwinism is that good coder will always find a better job elsewhere.

[Arika]

I have an intense hatred for people that pull this shit. Diversity is useless if the people being hired are not the right people for the job.

 

I would be angry if I found out that the reason that I was hired at a certain place was because I'm female, because it shows that they don't care about my work or accomplishments, they just needed to fill a quota.

 

But if you do not hire a poc even if they are inexperienced compared to the other applicants, you're racist.

 

If you do not hire a woman even if they are inexperienced compared to the other applicants, you're sexist

 

If you do not hire a trans person even if they are inexperienced compared to the other applicants, you're transphobic

 

This shit needs to stop. Want to be hired? Get the experience, level the playing field instead of banking on the fact that because you're a "minority" that you deserve to be given everything.

[LAwLz]

6 minutes ago, doomleika said:

Well, the shitshow can't come sooner

 

One thing I enjoy Darwinism is that good coder will always find a better job elsewhere.

Hmm interesting.

If you ask me, the comment made by Sage Sharp breaks these rules in Linux's new CoC:

• Must use welcoming and inclusive language.
• Must be respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences.
• Can't make derogatory comments, personal or political attacks.
• Can't publicly harass someone.

 

Also, I strongly recommend people read the mail Ted wrote in which he "apologies rapists".

The reason why he is called a "rape apologist" is because he believes a study claiming that 1 in 4 college women are raped is exaggerating the numbers.

According to the report itself, only 27% of the "rape victims" in the report actually claims to have been raped. The other 73% do not categorize their experience as rape, and 46% of the "rape victims" chose to have sex with their rapist again afterwards.

 

This is how he ended his mail (which by the way is over 7 years old now, do these people really have nothing better to do that go through years upon years of emails to try and find something to get offended by?):

Quote

Please note, I am not diminishing what rape is, and or any particular person's experience. However, I *am* challenging the use of statistics that may be hyperbolic and misleading, and ultimately may be very counterproductive if it causes people to become afraid when the reality might not be as horrible as the "1 in 4" numbers might at first sound. Just as it was wrong for George Bush to inspire fear in the population so he could push his War Against Iraq agenda through congress, it's also wrong for people who, out of good intentions, inspire fear in others or themselves of being raped if the statistics used are misleading and manipulated.

 

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

As I said, the moderators can take whatever action they see fit - it's not like they are suddenly forced to kick someone out as soon as they are perceived to be in breach of the CoC. Maybe, probably even, the suggested changes are superior, but honestly I don't think it really matters because it won't really affect how the community is moderated.

If the maintainers fail to take action against things which breaks the CoC, they should be removed from their position according to the CoC. It is fairly explicit on that part.

 

Imagine if the CoC on LinusTechTips said that moderators which don't delete rule breaking posts would be banned.

Like I said, it is most likely put there in order to make the maintainers overly cautious. If something is debatable whether or not it breaks the CoC the maintainers will probably delete it out of fear of being banned.

 

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Regardless, even if we can agree that it could have been done better (as most things), the outrage and alarmism that sparked this discussion seems a little excessive, don't you think? After all, it's normal to debate the exact semantics of a new CoC; what isn't quite normal is the apocalyptic rethoric and aggression that ensued in this case. Nobody is going to listen if you call it an SJW cuck soyboy conspiracy to destroy foss.

I tried to not just resort to call this a SJW cuck soyboy CoC out to destroy FOSS. That's why I brought up examples and in general (at least in my eyes) stayed fairly objective. I might have failed though.

Debating the exact semantics of a new CoC is good and another reason why I am against this specific CoC that Linux now has. It was just rushed though and adopted without any input from the community. If you look at the ratings for things on GitHub it seems like the vast majority of voters disagrees with this particular CoC. Other CoCs such as the one suggested by the Ruby lead developer has gotten almost universal praise.

Why not have a poll on which one to adopt?

 

 

2 hours ago, GE90_115B said:

It seems that there had been no formal experiments that really prove/disprove the theory that contributions and pull requests on Github are judged according to sex/race that that kind of factors. It's a bit strange considering how easy it would be to do such an experiment. Decades ago formal experiments that proved the felt superiority of white ppl paved the way for civil rights, and it would be nice if we can have some formal, scientific support today as well.

 

Personally, I think that discrimination is possible in some corporate Github projects. However, it is incredibly unlikely in something as hard core as Linux. Generally speaking, the more hard-core and high level you get, the less politically opinionated ppl are, so it really is hardly imaginable that Linux contributors, being devoted developers, would really discriminate, especially when many contributors are simply known by an email address, and sex/race isn't even disclosed.

Like I said in my post, Coraline is a strong believer in what she calls "post-meritocracy" which basically means that you should not be judged by how good your work is. Instead things such as gender and sexuality should be taken into account when rewarded for your work.