[Development] QUIP 12: Code of Conduct

[Robin Burchell]

On Thu, Oct 25, 2018, at 11:50 AM, Rafael Roquetto 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?

The problem with that question is that by the time you need to _solve_ something, or prevent it from happening _again_, it has already happened. The point of a code of conduct as I understand it is that it is supposed to help prevent situations from arising/escalating out of control in the first place, and if that ever does happen, provide a process to resolve it in a well defined (and ideally, minimally damaging) way.

[ As an aside, I've seen communities go very bad - with or without a code of conduct - so the "code" alone won't save you- at the end of the day, it's all down to you, me, and everyone here to do the right thing and make this place a good one. ]

> 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.

I will first acknowledge that I am in a privileged position - I've never been on the bad end of any sort of discrimination - and for those that have been, or worse, are systematically in that position, it is much harder for them to effect any real change to that without the clear capability to show that this sort of thing is not OK.

With that having been said: my own personal stance is that I would _like_ it to be possible for this stuff to not be needed. I would _like_ people to be smart enough to understand that they should do, or not do, certain things in order to cooperate and "get on". But everyone is different, after all, and a common sense of "correct" is not necessarily as common as we might think, or hope.

So while I don't personally find it necessary, I do try put myself in the shoes of someone less "fortunate" than myself while considering it.

What do you do if you are certain that your contributions are being ignored not because of technical merits, but because of [ your own ] personal characteristics? Without a clear guideline of how that sort of a situation is approached, the only real answer is, simply, "you stop contributing". Which is a losing proposition: the community loses a potentially valuable contributor, at the cost of a toxic environment that is not at all based around technical merit - the exact opposite of what we want to happen, I'd say.

> 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.

I tried to spell this out, but I think it needs repeating. In my view, a code of conduct is not a political tool, nor a legal document (if it is done well). It is a codified form of what is acceptable to the project, which at the purest form might be: contributions good from all comers of all types, and if bad things happen, here's how they are resolved.

-- 
  Robin Burchell
  robin at crimson.no