> Given a choice between only two extremes, I'd far rather have Linus Torvalds telling me I'm an idiot and my code is shit, then exist in an offense taking culture where various forms of criticism are re-branded as "harassment."
However, the Linux copy has cut one of the more malicious paragraphs: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
Or, "releasing kernel with my shitty code and ruining the day for a lot of people."
They could just refuse your code without calling you an idiot.
This leads people to fear that contributors, some of them long-term, may be removed because of things like political views, even if they don't come up in a mailing list discussion, or if they were said by the person 30 years ago on Usenet.
A lot of other people feel it wrongly shifts the focus from code-quality to political correctness and feelings, which are far harder to measure objectively. See paragraph 1.
I do agree on the other hand that digging up 30-year-old Usenet posts would tend to just get everyone in trouble and a code-of-conduct process should ignore them, or at most provide ample opportunity to distance oneself from those statements and then go with what's said today.
My preferred solution is to make sure the party handling the code of conduct process is someone who seems level-headed and likely to use their judgment well. It means you move away from codified rules, but it also means rules can't be gamed. For Linux the enforcement body is the Technical Advisory Board, which I think is a little weird precisely because it's a technical body and not necessarily a good-at-people one, but we can see how it goes. For small projects the enforcement body is typically the project founder, and if you don't think the founder will handle things reasonably, no code of conduct can make them trustworthy.
However unrelated statements, even very politically incorrect ones, should be outside it’s remit. If for example someone was a virulent racist on twitter. That’s arguably a bad thing, but those statements are unrelated to the project and should have no bearing on contributions to it.
(Now that’s going to be an unpopular sentiment. Downvotes ahead.)
Does "shut up and hack" apply to telling them to keep their racism to themselves?
(I realize you didn't say anything about racism, but you replied supportively to a comment about it, so I'm not sure where you stand.)
If that's really true, doesn't "shut up and hack" apply all the more? If you really cared about the code, you could keep your political opinions to yourself.
(Also, this is precisely why many codes of conduct define the exact harms they care about - so racism is an excluded harm, but, say, making Hans Reiser feel bad about being a murderer isn't. If you're a fan of racism, you might use this as an indicator to avoid the project and find another one, or fork it under the license.)
However on forking I do tend to agree. There appears to be an audience for projects with less controlling, or less ideologically intended rules. These projects should be formed and developers should make their own choice between them.
Linux means big money now, you can't leave that in the hands of the rabble.
I feel like one of the neat things about a code of conduct is it provides cleanly defined answers for people who are genuinely unsure whether sexual advances are welcome at professional conferences.
So chatting at the convention center bar with other attendees falls outside CoC scope?
Or are you saying that the clearly defined "no" exists exclusively for the kind of people that would be unsure, while the answer remains "yes" for people who are self-assured?
(A fear that a code of conduct will not be applied equitably without regard of persons is an entirely valid reason to object to one.)
I think it's completely overblown. If a person's ability to discuss software development requires them to belittle others for their sexuality or political observation or gender or anything else not related to software development, then they should feel unwelcome and they should make a hasty exit from the community.
The CoC makes room for everyone except serial harassers. If a person can't work on professional terms as part of a larger development community, they should go somewhere else and probably work on their own instead.
And harassment/belittelment is always a question of feelings. You can't set up a clear concise objective standard. It's a case by case thing.
So instead of merely depending on the feelings of the accuser, it depends on the feelings of two thirds of the board? That's not much better. You can make objective rules that are not subject to feelings, you just have to be willing to not please everyone. When you don't have objective rules, people are less likely to participate in the game because people can't be sure that they aren't breaking a rule.
Perfectly normal.
If you have a set of strict objective rules, some people will find a way to game them, and still harass people.