The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 26, 2018 22:05 UTC (Wed) by psymin (guest, #127492)
Parent article: The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

I dislike videos but here is a relevant one regarding the Contributor Covenant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nND3EYzIONg

Here is ESR's take:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8139

There are calls already to eject people from the community:

http://archive.is/Y7ltY

My opinion is that the worst part of this change is that it polices actions *outside* of the community itself. Look at what happened with Opal

https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

The person accused wasn't representing the project, but did have info in his twitter bio about it. Policing actions in this manner to suppress speech and/or eject people from the community is not a great idea.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 26, 2018 22:52 UTC (Wed) by agrover (guest, #55381) [Link] (12 responses)

> There are calls already to eject people from the community:

> http://archive.is/Y7ltY

Nope. Nope. Nope. This is questioning if someone with such views should be in a position of enforcing the CoC by virtue of being on the TAB.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 26, 2018 23:29 UTC (Wed) by psymin (guest, #127492) [Link] (7 responses)

You don't believe that sage sharp wants this man ejected?

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 26, 2018 23:54 UTC (Wed) by raof (subscriber, #57409) [Link] (6 responses)

This seems to becoming a classical pattern in people arguing against a CoC: they ignoring the actual content of what people are saying and instead substitute their own cataclysmic assumptions about people mean.

What Sage Sharp has said is that having someone who has given the impression by his words and arguments that he's unlikely to be sympathetic to a report by a woman suffering sexual harassment on the board that adjudicates complaints is likely to result in women being hesitant to report sexual harassment to the board. Particularly since there's currently no mechanism for sending a report to anyone but the whole board.

This doesn't seem to be a particularly unreasonable claim, and seems a perfectly sensible thing to point out as being a problem.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 0:05 UTC (Thu) by agrover (guest, #55381) [Link]

Well said.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 0:07 UTC (Thu) by psymin (guest, #127492) [Link]

My apologies. And on the other concerns?

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 9:24 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (3 responses)

having someone who has given the impression by his words and arguments that he's unlikely to be sympathetic to a report by a woman suffering sexual harassment on the board that adjudicates complaints

AFAIK Ted Ts'o has expressed doubts about the statistics and methodology in some studies put forward in a discussion about rape incidence. How that implies that “he's unlikely to be sympathetic to a report by a woman suffering sexual harassment” is unclear to me. It's not as if empathy towards specific individuals and reasonable skepticism about statistics in scientific papers were mutually exclusive. Both are to be encouraged. And it is never wrong to be interested in the facts.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 14:38 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

Understanding why this is so requires considering the context of the claims, as well as possibly reading through the dicussion that followed the claims, or the way he responded to being informed of the way these claims in this context would appear to others.

It's accurate, even if it's not initially obvious.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 17:17 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]

Given that I come from a small town ( 5000 people ) in which rumors and false accusation spread from thin air and more often than not those rumors and false accusation break relationship,families and scar people for life.

Why is Ted supposed to be sympathetic and why is his credibility in question if he is not the accused in the matter?

Is he not allowed by community members to do his own research,form his own opinions based on his own beliefs and perceptions on these topics as any other, or are individuals perceptions supposed to be fixed on certain topic?

Also is not the TAB supposed to be neither biased or sympathetic to either party but review the facts since they are the judge,jury and potential ( career ) executioners over the accused individual?
( in addition to any maintainer apparently "Maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, or to ban temporarily or permanently any contributor for other behaviors that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful. )

And what if the individual is falsely accused? What happens to the accusee then?

Will the deciding and enforcing party set the record straight if the accused indvidual is being publicly
executed in the community or on blog post, news article etc?

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 28, 2018 7:09 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> It's not as if empathy towards specific individuals and reasonable skepticism about statistics in scientific papers were mutually exclusive. Both are to be encouraged

Yes but maybe not exert the latter *when* the former is expected?

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 26, 2018 23:41 UTC (Wed) by gus3 (guest, #61103) [Link] (3 responses)

Case study: Brendan Eich as head of the Mozilla Corporation. He privately espoused intolerance, even after it got publicity. I see this as contradicting a core value of Mozilla, namely, freedom to be left alone.

So, he resigned, rightfully claiming that, "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader." And I supported this move. I still do.

Brendan Eich endorsed intolerance, enforced not through a CoC, but rather with the force of law. I have no problem with his endorsement, but I can't reconcile that with any Free Software leadership position.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 5:26 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm not really sure if there's a fundamental conflict with Free Software leadership with someone taking the position Brendan Eich took. I say this as someone who was *very* directly affected by Prop 8, and very angry about it and those who supported it.

I just am unsure that there's a fundamental conflict, despite how much I am not excited about interacting as peers or leaders with someone who is willing to take such a drastic step.

As far as being a leader of a company, I feel rather differently. Company executives hold a great deal more power over their employees than free software project leaders do over contributors. I think it's totally reasonable that a leader who takes actions that strongly clash with the values of a company is questioned and possibly rejected by the employees.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 5:54 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't know if you intend that last paragraph to apply to Brendan, but in case people aren't aware: AFAIK not a single Mozilla Corporation employee openly advocated (internally or externally) for Brendan to step down. A few Mozilla Foundation employees famously did, but they never reported to Brendan. Their actions were ... not popular within MoCo.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 11:10 UTC (Thu) by gus3 (guest, #61103) [Link]

The parent comment by roc, and the parent comment to that one by k8to, demonstrate exactly the point I'm making.

Eich's endorsements hurt the Mozilla brand, by engendering conflict about Eich himself.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 2:32 UTC (Thu) by psymin (guest, #127492) [Link]

Sorry for the not so great post. Stressful day, hangry etc. I'll post a better one later. Maybe.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 3:02 UTC (Thu) by timrichardson (subscriber, #72836) [Link] (1 responses)

That famous opal thread. The complaint was rejected, the person who was the subject of the complaint has continued to be a top contributor to the project. A CoC doesn't fail because someone raises a complaint. As far as I can, the complaint did not even proceed to a formal process of investigation.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 27, 2018 15:36 UTC (Thu) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]

Unless I'm getting mixed up, the CoC that Opal ended up with was eventually authored by the person who was being complained about too.