[Development] QUIP 12: Code of Conduct

[Simon Hausmann]

Am 25.10.18 um 08:31 schrieb Shawn Rutledge:
>
>> On 24 Oct 2018, at 17:09, Jason H <jhihn at gmx.com> wrote:
>>
>> In case it needs to be said-
>> I am AGAINST racism, sexism, bigotry, and all the other exclusionary things. But I am also against people judging other people's code for factors that have nothing to do with the code itself. I find that adding a value judgement of conduct to code to be intolerant. We had the ideal.
>> I am FOR inclusion. I want everyone to feel welcome here. Everyone.
> I agree.  It seems to be about fixing something that isn’t broken, or as in that story in the Bible where the people came to a consensus that every other country around them had a king, so they should have a king too.  Nothing good came out of it in any cases where we have seen this kind of illogic applied.  “Most other big corporations have a deep hierarchy of management, with too much power concentrated at the top, and we want to be a big corporation, so we need to replicate that.”  “The other lemmings are running away so maybe we’d better follow.”  It’s not the open source way, which seemed to be working well enough already.
>
> If you give power to a committee of 3 people, they will probably abuse it eventually, misjudge, cause bitterness, create factions, and some developers will end up walking away.  Seems predictable, doesn’t it?
>

You claim that this is about fixing something that isn't broken. Your 
statement that a committee will predictably and eventually abuse their 
powers and misjudge is, I feel, a

statement that is spreading fear, doubt and uncertainty, without any 
evidence within the scope of this community.


On the other hand I am aware of at least one concrete case where the 
behavior of a reviewer has caused a contributor (with a track record of 
accepted patches, btw) to

turn away from the project and even resulted in an email of complaint 
sent to the community manager. The lack of tools, written understanding 
and common agreement

on what is good behavior resulted in that nothing happened at all and 
the contributor in question has stayed away from the project since then.


I do think that this is the exception, but it is crucial that we have 
the right tools and mechanisms in place when unlikely exceptions happen, 
in order to deal with them

instead of ignoring them. After having seen this with my own eyes, I am 
convinced of that.


Whether it is a code of conduct or kindness guidelines - anything like 
that is something that I welcome as an improvement.


Simon