[Development] QUIP 12: Code of Conduct

Thu Oct 25 11:50:05 CEST 2018

I understand this has already been set in stone, and I am not here in
the hopes this will change. However, I do feel like I should voice my
own humble opinion - perhaps it can be useful, or maybe not...

I would like to start by saying I fully agree with Shawn: what exactly
are we trying to fix? That is not to say problems never happened, but
these things have side effects - sometimes the most unintended ones. As
C++ programmers, we should know well that unintended side-effects
steaming from well-intentioned constructs are no exception (pun intended).

So I will go back to my question: what is it we are trying to solve? Or
rather, what is it that happened, that we are trying to prevent from
happening again? There will always be lunatics, and a CoC won't stop
them. Perhaps it will improve things... but... perhaps it will do more
harm than good. Or is it proven technology?

Which brings to my second point, a very personal one: more or less in
line with what Jason said, programming *to me* has always been about
bits and bytes, about the code, about computers, about being able to
make things appear on the screen and to control the machine. Free
Software has been about.... free software and that's it. I find it
extremely off-putting to see that the Qt project is embarking in this
sort of politics - again, if things were broken and a CoC could fix
them, I would be more than happy to join the train, but that doesn't
seem to be the case. At least from my humble perspective.

During all these years contributing to Qt I have encountered many times
strong criticism in gerrit - some people were very harsh or *seemingly*
rude - or that was what I thought, until I realized that: 1) it was just
their modus operandi; 2) at the end of the day, their comments made
sense and improved my code; 3) they were not butt hurt when roles were
reversed.

Communication/criticism just like this is unambiguously straightforward
and I *personally* prefer it this way. Unfortunately I could not make it
to the QtCS, but had I been there, I would have voted against the CoC,
for sure. I hate to see politics tainting the project. But, that is my
view, and in spite of that, I do hope that in the end I am wrong and
that the CoC is another step on the right direction. Let's remain
positive and hope it won't even be necessary to invoke it after all, and
that respect and common-sense shall prevail.

- Rafael

PS: if you have read this far (sorry!), you may also be interested in
donating a tad more of your time and help with reviewing this

     https://codereview.qt-project.org/#/c/241598/

     ;)

On 10/25/18 5:58 PM, Lars Knoll wrote:
>> On 25 Oct 2018, at 09:51, Volker Krause via Development
>> <development at qt-project.org <mailto:development at qt-project.org>> wrote:
>>
>> On Thursday, 25 October 2018 09:11:42 CEST Simon Hausmann wrote:
>>> Am 25.10.18 um 08:31 schrieb Shawn Rutledge:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 24 Oct 2018, at 17:09, Jason H <jhihn at gmx.com
>>>>> <mailto: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
>>
>> +1
>>
>> We do have a Code of Conduct at KDE for about 10 years now, and this
>> hasn't 
>> led to abuse of power, suppression of free speech, racism against
>> white people 
>> or whatever other nonsense people seem to attribute to CoCs nowadays.
>>
>> On the contrary, it gave us a solid foundation to act against the
>> (very few, 
>> fortunately) cases of abusive behavior to protect our contributors. As
>> Simon I 
>> have seen the damage such behavior can do, and therefore would also
>> welcome 
>> tools/rules to be in place to deal with such situations.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Volker
> 
> I fully agree.
> 
> And btw, we have had a clear majority in favour of adding a CoC at the
> Contributor Summit, and explicitly agreed that a group of people will
> work on creating it. I’m happy we now have a first version, that we can
> use as a basis for further discussions.
> 
> Cheers,
> Lars
> 
> 
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