Behavioral standards in the free software community

Behavioral standards in the free software community

Posted Jun 16, 2006 22:44 UTC (Fri) by kfogel (guest, #20531)
Parent article: Behavioral standards in the free software community

It's interesting that the community feels the need to spell out the
code of conduct (or at least some in the community do). My feeling
has always been that, since anyone who's kicked out can take a
copy of the code with them, all that's really happening is that one
group of people is saying they will no longer associate with another
group (perhaps the latter group numbers only 1, but the theory
is, er, fully general). In that circumstance, the question of what fairness
requires becomes more complex. The kicked-out person has not
been deprived of anything except the company of people who, by
definition, don't want his company. Of course, in reality he's lost
something very tangible -- the ability to influence the other developers
directly -- but he lost that because they decided they didn't want his
influence.

Which makes the Keith Packard / XFree86 example interesting: what
happened there was exactly what should have happened, really.
Packard proposed working in a way the others didn't like. They
said no (i.e., kicked him out), he went on to revitalize X.org and now
things there run the way he originally proposed. It's as true that he
kicked out the rest of XFree86 as vice versa, although of course no
one ever puts it that way :-).

So I guess I have to admit I don't see the need for a code of conduct
when sharing a replicable resource. If people aren't behaving well,
talk to them. If they don't change, no code of conduct is going to
make a difference, you just have to decide whether to remain associated
with them, or they with you.

(Of course, a code given as a guideline can be very useful -- "Avoid
personal insults and you'll get a lot more done around here" is great.
But when someone starts making personal insults, the reason to
kick them out then is not that they violated the code that they had
been previously notified of, it's that they're being insulting!)

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