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Comment by throwaway_9832 | Hacker News Reader

It was the same for me when Go introduced the CoC. I remember a witch-hunt conducted by someone on one of the important developers because of his language on some other forum. It just reeked of BS and pseudo superiority. I consider myself tolerant and liberal yet I find it bad. I wish people realise that CoC is not a passive constitution. It becomes an active weapon.. and most victims are the ones who actually contribute to the code. I am looking for linux's downfall now.

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Rust, the programming language project, is one of the most inclusive projects there is, and they have a strong CoC. They seem to be doing fine.

I don't think this is going to kill Linux. As for Linus's vacation/break/whatever, it's good that they're practicing giving the reins away. It is bound to happen at some future anyway. It's equally good that they're practicing behaving well, because it's quite possible that the next project lead will not have the history and personality to make bad communication work -- and that could destroy Linux.

> is one of the most inclusive projects there is

There is absolutely no proof a CoC drives "inclusiveness", whatever it means, however there are multiple examples where codes of conducts were used to exclude contributors because they said something someone did not like in a setting completely unrelated to the project community.

https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/drupal-larry-garfield-gor.htm...

CoC are political tools to eliminate diversity of ideas and impose an "intersectional" mindset on all contributors, under threat of exclusion.

Larry did not harass anybody in the Drupal community yet was kicked out of any official Drupal related conferences and cannot contribute to the project anymore, just because he shared a fetish with his wife someone did not approve of.

> said something someone did not like in a setting completely unrelated to the project community.

This is always a difficult line to draw. If you find out someone is a nazi (and thus would like to see you dead or preferably never born) it's hard to just look past that fact and colllaborate constructively just because the behavior was "unrelated to the project". The simple rule would be- would you be fired on the spot from your workplace if these comments were discovered? Then it's not so strange you might face issues in a collaborative project either.

> eliminate diversity of ideas

I think that's reading a bit much into the CoC to be honest.

>This is always a difficult line to draw.

It's not difficult at all. What contributors are doing privately has nothing to do with the project.

As I was trying to explain - behavior in the project is certainly more important, but outside behavior can’t be entirely ignored. Just like in a workplace.

Why is the project like a workplace? Do the contributors all get paid? Do they all, or do most of them consider it as a workplace? What makes you think it's proper to treat the project like a workplace, and downplay those think otherwise?

Because it’s a collaborative environment with humans. Like a workplace. Why would pay be relevant to expected behavior? Is someone really going to say e.g that it’s within their right to be racist because they aren’t getting paid not to?

> would you be fired on the spot from your workplace if these comments were discovered

That is not a simple rule at all: there are all kinds of workplaces out there in the world, some of which allow drunk naked people cursing while puking at the same time.

There's a lot not to like about the Drupal situation, but the powers that be didn't remove Garfield "just because he shared a fetish with his wife". The Gorean subculture seems to be controversial even in BDSM circles. Some of what was used against him was dredged up from semi-private pages, but some of it was public. He seemed to argue against interpreting it as just role-play. When he was told to stop using Gorean mannerisms at Drupal events, he argued it discriminated against his culture.

Also, how is the Code of Conduct to blame? The official position seems to be that he didn't violate it.

If you read the official Drupal statement it comes across very differently: https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/drupal-association-a...

There was a dispute which was being handled privately, and in consultation with Larry, but he decided to attack the project in public over it.

>CoC are political tools to eliminate diversity of ideas

How so?

> Rust, the programming language project, is one of the most inclusive projects there is

Right. Let's see Klabnik accept a PR from Curtis Yarvin. The "inclusiveness" of Rust, and projects like it, only applies if you hold the correct opinions.

The definition of "inclusive" as viewed by most of these CoCs is extremely narrow.

We do not police people’s political views outside of Rust, and we have a number of people from all over the political spectrum doing work. Including people farther right than Republicans.

Politics discussion is off-topic, and so it’s geneally a non-issue. I don’t discuss my political beliefs, and neither does anyone else.

> The definition of "inclusive" as viewed by most of these CoCs is extremely narrow.

That is, of course, a complete lie.

I like Rust and all, but its hype obscures any real result. You see posts everywhere telling that the language is great and here are some features of it, but it's not as widely used as talked about. And also it's not like there is noticeable "diversity" Rust supposed to encourage among people who make things with it.

By "doing fine", I refer to them having real, measurable progress on every single release (which happens every 6 weeks like clockwork) since 1.0 and probably before too, plus the ecosystem growing.

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