[Development] QUIP 12: Code of Conduct

Thu Oct 25 12:15:11 CEST 2018

> On 25 Oct 2018, at 11:50, Rafael Roquetto <rafael at roquetto.com> wrote:
> 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?

Because not all of us have *observed* issues doesn’t mean that there have not been any issues. This community would not be the first from which people that feel assaulted or disrespected would rather quietly disappear than to raise the concern.

> 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.

Having clear communication about what we as a community care about, and what we don’t care about, creates clarity and sets expectations. What you are suggesting is a code of conduct, actually:

“We only care about the quality of your code. You can behave in whichever way you want, and don’t have to fear that the community will sanction you for being yourself.”

That’s a CoC, and if that’s the CoC we want, then we should write it down so that people know what to expect.

> 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.

So, programming for you has always only been about code, but you wrote a paragraph about how it is about people and their interactions anyway :)

Especially in an Open Source project, coding is a social interaction, and not at all just about bits and bytes. You make pull requests that you want people to review and comment on. You have ideas that you want people to embrace and join. You write code that you want others to use. You want co-contributors that take ownership and responsibility when their changes happen to break your feature. Perhaps you even want to write software that is based on thorough insights into what people struggle with, This requires observing, communicating, and empathizing with your users, before you start hacking.

> 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.

Common sense is unfortunately not very common.

Cheers,
Volker

> 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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