Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

Anyways, in an ideal world, yes this would be true. Unfortunately, we don't live in one. There are underlying biases that all of us have (including me!) that the possessor may not be aware of. These can have a "tilt" across all of society[1]. At the least, these codes can those the target of such phenomena to point them out to those already in "power" and knowing that there *is* such a process can help to ease concerns of those that are more likely to be targets that the project is willing to approach any such problems that may arise.

As an example relevant to GNU, someone developing a non-free application shows up to ask questions about autoconf for their project. One might have worried that they'd be attacked for the non-free-ness of their application (or their @badcompany.com email address) before rather than just getting an answer to their question. Now they know that such things are not tolerated at the project level and can rest assured that if such does happen, something will actually happen about it.

Of course, communities can neglect them and knowing the social code is meaningless is a reputation thing (not dissimilar to neglected code bit-rotting to outside contributors as time passes).

[1]One might not be racist but might unknowingly perpetuate societal norms which *are* racist.