[Development] QUIP 12: Code of Conduct

[Martin Smith]

>I am not aware of a single country without laws.
>Over here e.g. "insult" is an offense.

First, most of us aren't in Germany and don't have the German legal system to protect us. But more to the point, A CoC need not be adequate to deal with actual crimes nor even violations of civil law, because, as you point out, every country has laws to deal with incidents that rise to that level. For dealing with these problems, our CoC can simply state that the committee will refer such incidents to the appropriate legal authority.

The forums where our CoC is needed are like meetings, but they are online. Imagine a group of contributors attending a meeting in a room. Abusive behavior would not be allowed there, and it probably wouldn't happen anyway, because people generally remain civil in a face to face context. But the same set of behaviors that would not be allowed in that face to face meeting should not be allowed in our online interactions, whether synchronous in an actual online meeting or asynchronous via code reviews and email list discussions.

And because we are online and spread all around the world, there is currently no way for us to stop and prevent abusive behavior.We need a formal procedure to enable that, and the CoC is that procedure.

________________________________________
From: André Pönitz <apoenitz at t-online.de>
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2018 8:37:12 PM
To: Martin Smith
Cc: Bernhard Lindner; development at qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] QUIP 12: Code of Conduct

On Sat, Oct 27, 2018 at 05:34:30PM +0000, Martin Smith wrote:
> >Actions that are considered offenses by a society are typically mentioned
> >in its laws. If something is not forbidden by law it usually means that
> >there is no majority, let alone consensus in that society that this action
> >is an offense.
>
> Exactly. Without a CoC, we have no laws, so the implication
> is we don't consider any behavior an offense.

I am not aware of a single country without laws.

Over here e.g. "insult" is an offense.

Andre'