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Comment by civodul | Hacker News Reader

As co-maintainer of GNU Guix, I want to point out that the views expressed in Richard Stallman's message are his and not those of the Guix maintainers.

In particular, by writing that codes of conduct are "punitive spirit", RMS shows a misunderstanding of how these texts came into existence.

More importantly, by writing that he disagrees with "making diversity a goal", RMS seems to deny the role we free software people play in the demographics of our communities.

Many of us in Guix (and I think I can speak for my fellow Guix co-maintainer here) believe that free software should empower everyone. As such, correcting the biases, conscious or not, that have led to the poor diversity of our communities, must be part of our mission.

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> by writing that codes of conduct are "punitive spirit", RMS shows a misunderstanding of how these texts came into existence

Why? It seems like he's just recognising that these codes are heavily focused on identifying and punishing "bad actors" rather than correcting the undesirable behaviour, or developing practices that reduce the chance of undesirable exchanges from occurring.

If Linus really is as socially incapable of recognising the effects of his tone, then punishing him for something he doesn't understand serves no purpose, and you'll lose a good contributor as well.

> correcting the biases, conscious or not, that have led to the poor diversity of our communities, must be part of our mission

Aren't you assuming the conclusion here? Uneven demographics are not necessarily indicative of any kind of bias. If you just focus on good encouraging good communication practices that aren't exclusionary, anything beyond that is unnecessary to officially codify. Certainly you can make that a personal goal, but you're talking about taking it far beyond that.

> correcting the biases, conscious or not

This insipid attitude was destructive when it first appeared during the academic "culture wars" of the 1980s.

It's also extremely authoritarian--everyone is already guilty, not merely of incorrect conscious thoughts, but also unconscious thoughts!

Please do not take a harsh tone towards other participants, and especially don't make personal attacks against them. Go out of your way to show that you are criticizing a statement, not a person.

Please avoid statements about the presumed typical desires, capabilities or actions of some demographic group. They can offend people in that group, and they are always off-topic in GNU Project discussions.

No personal attacks were made; the posting individual was not even mentioned. Arguing against an opposing idea is permitted.

No demographic groups were mentioned. Academics are not a demographic group, save possibly in the most academic possible interpretation of the word, and are certainly not a protected demographic group.

Absolutely! The "insipid attitude" was never attributed to any person at all and no one supports "authoritarian" behavior.

Sarcasm only works when it has a valid point to make.

The "insipid attitude" and "authoritarian behavior" was attributed to a (non-protected) group. Now, it might be that the individual that the poster was replying to is an exemplar of that group but is the beliefs and behavior of the group as a whole that is being challenged, not the individual.

A person wasn't even mentioned ...

indirectly implied via the reference to the poster's attitude.

They quoted the parent, and referred to what they said as being an "insipid attitude". To me, that's close enough as makes no difference.

I think it's important to understand that while everyone has conscious and unconscious biases, it's not true that recognizing that fact is the same as assigning blame. The idea is to better know one's self, to try and understand one's own bias (to the best of one's ability, that is) in order to try and apply correctives when making decisions involving people who are different than we are.

It's when we actively press into these biases that we hold and steadfastly cling to them in the face of contrary evidence that we become guilty.

Now I'm not claiming that having bias is a good thing, it's quite the opposite. I am saying, however, that having bias does not imply culpability.

This is fine as an ethics or description of good manners.

The problem is that it is often turned into a politics.

The logic of this kind of identitarian social critique, insofar as it becomes political, is decidedly illiberal.

It is authoritarian.

But all of this is nothing new! In fact it's about 30+ years old.

It originates in the aftermath of the failed revolution of the 1960s--in other words, it appeared as a phenomenon of the dissolution of the New Left in the 1970s-1980s.

Some see its origins in the Maoist practice of self-critique. I think it's better understood as the response to the realization that the New Left's politics was no longer viable--that its historical potential was completely exhausted.

"The problem is that it is often turned into a politics."

Everything is politics. Politics is part of everyone's life, and affects everyone's life. Some more than others, and some have the good fortune to not have to face that fact every day.

No, this attitude is harmful. First, because it dilutes the meaning of the word "politics", which describes something much more specific than "everything". And second, because as you point out in your last sentence, politics is something that can and should be kept separate from many aspects of life.

Inviting politics where it does not belong particularly harms vulnerable populations, because politics is about the use of power and force. We agree to leave our politics at home in many realms of life, and this allows us to band together regardless of our political differences to prevent greedy and powerful people from exploiting those realms.

"politics is something that can and should be kept separate from many aspects of life."

The Trump administration had plans leaked this weekend that stated their intent to change the definition of "gender" so that trans people would not exist to the Federal Government. I'm sorry, but being able to keep politics separate is a privilege.

Listing the outrage du jour is not a good counterargument. The principle of "keep politics where it belongs" is a critical part of your ability to effect political change on issues like yours.

If you abandon it, then it gets much easier to silence unpopular voices -- the cab driver won't take you to the protest march, your ISP shuts down your advocacy domain, facebook bans your support group, all because your politics conflicts with theirs. Total political war is bad for everyone, especially those who are already unpopular.

Cabs are political, see Uber. ISPs are political, see net neutrality and state providing. Facebook is political because it is a corporate entity defined in law.

But do go on...

"X is political because it is a corporate entity defined in law." is a fully general argument that every company ever "is political", which is the dilution into meaningless I mentioned earlier.

And for all the things you mention, I support making them less political rather than more, and so should you. Finding an example of a politicized aspect of a thing is not an argument that it should become more politicized.

Or optionally, a corporation under capitalism is a political entity with political implications?

Your pick, though, it sure seems meaningless...

You are still wrong, and the parent comment is correct.

The political axis may be invisible to //you// because you are privileged. A bathroom is political. Food is political. Education is political.

Stallman’s guidelines fully support correcting biases. Making diversity a goal is identity politics, which is a very different thing than correcting biases.

> Making diversity a goal is identity politics, which is a very different thing than correcting biases.

I don't understand this assertion. Is there a subtlety of terminology I'm missing here? Should I read "diversity" only as a goal to produce a group that is composed of x% from group A, y% from group B, etc., rather than the more generous reading that the goal is to ensure that members of various groups feel welcome to participate?

What you state about percentages is exactly what has been pushed under the guise of diversity in many cases. Meritocracy has been specifically targeted by the more recent "code of conduct" silliness going around.

Yes, you should read it that way, even though your latter description is what makes the most sense.

>Making diversity a goal is identity politics

I think you may be being too absolutist here? This would only be true if literally every demographic thought identically about every aspect of a project or product and brought the same point of view. Then everyone would be interchangeable beyond pure technical competence. However I don't think that's always true, and when it's not that means that diversity can have some value purely in and of itself since it will bring a better reflection of global usage goals and UX considerations.

I want to emphasize that this doesn't mean it's a more important value then anything else, which might be where some of the reflexive opposition comes from. It shouldn't be a zero-sum game, where gaining diversity means necessarily losing on other important values. But neither is diversity never of any inherent positive value, it can be, and that in turn is worth some positive effort to pursue isn't it? Not merely correcting biases, but actively seeking a wider array of PoVs from intelligent people could help avoid mental boxes and unpleasant surprises when something goes out into the general world.

So maybe a better version of what you said would be "making diversity the only goal" or even "the goal above all else" or "diversity a goal but never taking into account whether any cost/benefit tradeoffs to existing culture makes for a net win" or something along those lines?

What you're saying makes sense, and I don't think anybody would disagree that having a diverse PoV on a project would be beneficial. In practice though, organizations saying that they strive for diversity normally don't bother to look any deeper than skin color and gender. That's one of the common criticisms of big tech companies; they claim to value diversity, but they still mainly hire people from a handful of top schools, creating a largely homogenous culture that share a similar PoV, but they say that they're diverse just because a lot of their employees have different skin colors.

As an example, I'm a white male without college experience, raised in a single parent, lower income household. Most people hiring for "diversity" would overlook me just because I'm a white male, but would welcome my wife's vietnamese friend, even though she comes from a wealthy background and went to a prominent school that makes her much less diverse culturally than their existing employees.

To add to this, the benefits of “diversity” are vastly overstated and unproven. I believe that the benefits could plausibly exist in certain narrow cases, mainly things like UX design, marketing, etc. I don’t believe these benefits generally exist in any meaningful way for things like low level code or backend services.

I very much want to weed out bad experiences from turning otherwise interested contributors away, and strongly support that. But when it crosses a line to superficial tokenism, we all lose, including those who are underrepresented.

> This would only be true if literally every demographic thought identically about every aspect of a project or product and brought the same point of view

Assuming that someone's demographic means that they think differently about a topic to another demographic strikes me as very uncomfortable. Basing an argument for diversity on the assumption that e.g a black female programmer is unable to think about a problem in the same way as a white male programmer doesn't feel like a step forward.

Okay, let's revise the claim slightly for clarity: Making "diversity" a goal is identity politics.

I'm not sure diversity is a measurable goal (you can never be too diverse, and there are so many ways to be diverse beyond sexuality, gender, skin colour, etc.) but diversity in and of itself has nothing to do with identity politics.

Similarly so, what sense does it make to 'correct' a bias? More often than not that means trading one bias for another, not becoming purely unbiased.

The opposition to "identity politics" is a form of identity politics in itself. The reaction to so-called identity politics is merely a defense of the current status quo where the demographic of software developers is predominantly male, as the most obvious example. You could try to argue that this is somehow natural, although the evidence suggests that actually computer science and software was a lot more popular with women until the artificial intervention of certain technology magazines pitching software development as a hobby for men.

For instance see how the rate of women in computer science began to attenuate around 1985: https://jaxenter.com/women-in-computer-science-majors-133646...

Men acting in a misogynistic way defends and reinforces this trend, which is what codes of conduct attempt to alleviate. Calling the opposition to this is a staple of what has been labelled "identity politics", although again it is merely a form of defensive identity politics itself to maintain it as maintaining these behaviours will maintain the downward trend of women participating in computer science.

That is absurd.

Anyone who thinks that “the privileged” respond the way that they do out of fear is seriously delusional. Activists who think that way will never accomplish their goals, because they fundamentally misunderstand the problem.

It's only fear for a minority of far-right activists. For everyone else it's just gate keeping.

RMS seems to deny the role we free software people play in the demographics of our communities.

You're making a major assumption that any such role is played. There's no reason to think that is the case. The free software community is in many ways highly diverse, as measured by things like the countries they come from, their ages, their life experiences. It is dominated by men because women generally don't volunteer to write any kind of software at all. If there was really a widespread problem with GNU maintainers excluding legions of open source devoted women, we'd see open source projects crop up that consist entirely of women and a general separation of the community. That doesn't happen because women simply don't turn up to start with. That's not the fault of men anymore than the dominance of women in primary school teaching is the fault of women.

>As such, correcting the biases, conscious or not, that have led to the poor diversity of our communities, must be part of our mission.

Free software can easily empower people that aren't part of the development community. There is no reason to think that you need a black developer to have a mail client that works for black people.

If your software has actual different implication for certain demographics (e.g. languages or skin color for image recognition) then it helps to have representatives, but that's not the case for most software (beyond providing UI translation files).

Your effort to "correct biases" creates a hostile environment both for those who want to help but are overrepresented and those who are underrepresented. The former because there is no enthusiasm when they say they are interested in helping and the latter because people end up assuming "diversity candidates" were brought on to fill a diversity quota, not because they were the most qualified.

> In particular, by writing that codes of conduct are "punitive spirit", RMS shows a misunderstanding of how these texts came into existence.

I'll not argue over why they came into existence as the idea seems good enough (and if you'd asked me a few years ago I'd even said it was a good idea), but now I'll ask:

Over the years I've heard a number of times where a CoC has been used to make a lot of trouble in projects that where originally more or less healthy.

I read my it and open source news from Ars Technica, HN and from time to time Slashdot though, so I might be heavily biased.

Can anyone point me to one ore more projects where CoCs have actually improved open source/free software projects or communities?

As I already mentioned I guess originally I would have thought it was a good idea, but over the last few years I've heard either nothing or problems from projects that adopted a CoC.

> Can anyone point me to one ore more projects where CoCs have actually improved open source/free software projects or communities

For the record, the purpose of a project adopting a CoC isn't always to improve something, but can be to codify existing (but unwritten) community guidelines.

The LLVM project talked a lot about this when discussing adopting a CoC. They weren't necessarily doing it to change anything – but they wanted to have a written set of the community guidelines that they were already following.

There is a benefit in having such policies available in a form where people can reference it, and not have that institutional knowledge of community policies exist only in lots of people's heads.

Over the years I've heard a number of times where a CoC has been used to make a lot of trouble in projects that where originally more or less healthy.

Examples?

Offhand, I can think of maybe a handful of instances where trouble was made by applying the CoC to someone's behavior, either rightly or wrongly. To me, it's seemed that the "trouble" that comes is when a project decides to adopt a CoC, and several members protest agains the idea of having one.

>In particular, by writing that codes of conduct are "punitive spirit", RMS shows a misunderstanding of how these texts came into existence.

But they are written in a punitive spirit. Someone did something, or behave in a way that someone dislike, rightly so in most cases. There's just some weird assumption that we can punish our way out of having certain types of people in or around a project. That never going to work, it doesn't work in real life and it's certainly not going to work online.

I have yet to see a single code of conduct, besides what Stallmann just posted, that's actually trying to address the underlying issues, and not just ban people. Kicking someone of a project isn't going to make them go away, nor is it going to positively influence they personality.

In one of his videos Brian Lunduke rightly pointed out that many of the people behind the FreeBSD code of conduct could be kicked on the FreeBSD project, if you where to follow their new code of conduct strictly. That it issue with most codes of conduct, they are written extremely aggressively, but enforce very very selectively.

Also, one question that has me puzzled, let's say that a person with autism behaves badly, not because he or she is a bad person, but rather have extremely poor social skills, due to a handicap. In many cases you can't kick that person of the project, because that would be targeting a person with a mental handicap. You can't really allow that person to stay either, because someone else got their feelings hurt, or feel attacked. Stallmans solution is better, because you instead aim to correct the behaviour.

Let's face it, in the end the vast majority of us know who to behave professionally, and the small group of people that we're targetting with a code of conduct isn't the type of people that will change due to the words of a well intended document. If you could write a text that would make people realise that they've behaved inappropriately the world would already be a much better place.

A bit OT, but perception of discrimination is itself subject to bias, for example discrimination of women and minorities is taken seriously while discrimination of whites and men is laughed off. Bias in perception of discrimination would prevent you from even recognizing existing biases, not to mention weighting them correctly, and possibly lead you to aggravate existing discrimination.

Usually that's because when claims about discrimination against whites and men are made, there's no evidence that they are actively being discriminated against. Rather, the case is usually that they're not being favored as they were. Which, if you are in the previously favored class, may feel like discrimination, but in reality it's simply giving everyone else a chance as well.

This is an example of a bias in perception of discrimination. You dismiss the idea of discrimination of whites and men upfront. You probably believe whites and men are not discriminated against in any substantial way. You are even willing to paint discrimination of whites and men as a "loss of previous favors".

Consider this example: Difference in pay between men and women is a small discomfort (single women can afford 5% smaller homes) while divorce and child custody courts ruin lives (of men in 90% of cases) and cause unbearable pain (due to loss of contact with children). Yet pay equality is talked about and politically pushed through much more than joint child custody. This is what I call bias in perception of discrimination.

This is all a bit OT, but I think it is understood that misjudging discrimination and taking disproportionate action can damage opensource projects.

"You dismiss the idea of discrimination of whites and men upfront."

I'm saying I'm not seeing evidence of any.

"This is what I call bias in perception of discrimination."

You're exhibiting just as much bias as you're accusing others of having. You're picking and choosing what you're considering important to worry about, and dismissing other items.

You're not the only GNU maintainer who is unsatisfied with Stallman's response. GNU Octave also stands with Guix here, and I think I speak on behalf of at least of a few other co-maintainers. Maybe we should be drafting our own CoC.

Good to hear; I know of other GNU maintainers who feel the same, I don't think we're isolated. FWIW, Guix adopted the Contributor Covenant and it's worked great for us—our reaction to incidents is firm but it has never been "punitive" contrary to what RMS suggests.

> Maybe we should be drafting our own CoC.

As an octave fan, please don't; at least publicly. Do you really need to push this? Do you have actual harassment cases among your developers that such a "punitive" CoC would help to solve?

If you object to a CoC (which is really the same damn thing as the GKCC, what kind of "punitive" measures can we take, really), then I really don't want you around the Octave community.

And yes, we've had our share of unpleasantness.

My objection to the GKCC is that rms is failing to address the actual problems such as the disadvantage of certain groups. I think CoC detractors think that the CoC is going to be used to unfairly punish them in ways they don't understand but, (1) there really isn't much punishing that could be done even if we tried and (2) every community already has an implicit CoC. Writing one only makes it explicit.

Wouldn't you rather know what the rules are instead of having to guess? Right now the rules already exist, but you might not know about them.

>correcting the biases, conscious or not, that have led to the poor diversity of our communities

What you're missing is a proof that the only reason a community is not 'diverse' is due to 'biases' within the community. You will find this is a very hard thing to prove as a general concept. Reminds me of the following paragraph:

>For the record, here is a small sample of other communities where black people are strongly underrepresented:

>Runners (3%). Bikers (6%). Furries (2%). Wall Street senior management (2%). Occupy Wall Street protesters (unknown but low, one source says 1.6% but likely an underestimate). BDSM (unknown but low) Tea Party members (1%). American Buddhists (~2%). Bird watchers (4%). Environmentalists (various but universally low). Wikipedia contributors (unknown but low). Atheists (2%). Vegetarian activists (maybe 1-5%). Yoga enthusiasts (unknown but low). College baseball players (5%). Swimmers (2%). Fanfiction readers (2%). Unitarian Universalists (1%).

>Can you see what all of these groups have in common?

>No. No you can’t. source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/02/11/black-people-less-like...

> Swimmers (2%)

The low rate of black swimmers isn't just an interesting quirk, but the consequence of historical actions to keep blacks out. For instance, public pools in New York City used to be kept deliberately cold on the theory that this discouraged black participants (source: The Power Broker).

Lack of swimming skills has deadly consequences; black children drown in swimming pools at 5.5 times the rate of white children. Source: CDC https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6319a2.htm

Thanks for this one.

The history of black people being excluded from pools has an UGLY history. The grandparents positioning this as some innocent thing is... well.... Check this out: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/motel-manager-pouring-acid-...

> What you're missing is a proof that the only reason a community is not 'diverse' is due to 'biases' within the community.

There's an enormous amount of research and evidence showing that biases, conscious and unconscious, cause a lack of diversity. It's like saying we are missing proof that smoking leads to cancer.

But here's a simple way to look at it: For a long time in the West, white males enacted in law, in custom, and extralegally (lynchings, for example), explicit biases that excluded others. In 2018, we know that some white males today explicitly endorse the same biases, and many more do so quietly. In areas where we say there is a lack of diversity, the same group, the white males, has the power and the resources (jobs or whatever), and the same groups are excluded.

What is the hypothesis that explains these facts? Is it that it's really a meritocracy now and that the same outcomes as the non-meritocracy are coincidence? In my judgement, that is very unlikely and very irresponsible to believe, and letting other people suffer because we don't want to deal with the problem is the corruption that comes with power.

What you've written here sounds like the preaching of a religious person.

We must correct our "biases, conscious or not"? What evidence do you have that all of us are laboring under the weight of some kind of original sin of "bias"?

Can any one of us investigate these claims scientifically, or must we appeal to an authority in your belief system to get answers?

Your virtue signaling is unimpressive. Please take it elsewhere. What RMS is doing here is clearly a step in the right direction.

This comment breaks several of HN's guidelines, including the one against calling names in arguments, as well as this one:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when posting here.

I disagree strongly with your interpretation of my comment, which I made in good faith. I apologize for sounding rude or aggressive, but I'm confident that I haven't broken any guidelines.

I've asserted that the OP is preaching what is essentially religious ideology, and that he or she is engaging in virtue signaling. I think it's a very uncharitable interpretation of what I've written to label it as "name calling".

I have responded to the strongest possible interpretation of OP's comment, a reasonable summary of which is: "We are all laboring under biases, conscious or unconscious, which have directly caused a certain demographic constitution in our community". Again it's very uncharitable to suggest that this is a straw man.

In my view, OP is advertising very bad ideas that deserve to be challenged passionately. Am I not allowed to do so here on HN?

I'm not sure what the difference is between sounding rude or aggressive and being rude or aggressive, which certainly the site guidelines are asking you not to do.

Swipey phrases like "preaching of a religious person" count as name-calling in HN's sense.

Your comment was clearly written in the flamewar style. ("Your virtue signaling is unimpressive. Please take it elsewhere.") That's very much what we're trying to avoid here, so please don't do it on HN.

Fair enough. I appreciate your feedback and will take it to heart.

Wait, do you not think you have any biases?

No, but I am challenging the rather spectacular claim that we're all suffering from a kind of bias which has directly caused the demographic makeup of our (very large) community.

I'd just like to know how you come to the conclusion that evening out the demographics in the free software community could in any way improve the quality of projects. I guess you're looking for better harmony in the community? Still, please explain how setting quotas would improve anything, rather than stirring up more strife.

This is a good example of bad faith arguing. The original poster never mentioned "quotas" but this comment presumes and assumes that is what is happening.

The use of words like 'please' doesn't make things better.

Speaking counter to not only RMS but also the tide of popular opinion not only on HN but the internet at large I'm sure takes a lot of courage -- and I just want to say thank you.

This isn't Reddit and downvotes, if any, don't come with jail time. Can we maybe dispense with making it sound like the above poster is reporting on free speech in Saudi Arabia? It's kind of inappropriate.

...something, something, ..., could have a negative effect on the career,... something...

People who avoid saying what they think because they are afraid of losing internet points are retarded to begin with.

Please do not take a harsh tone towards other participants, and especially don't make personal attacks against them. Go out of your way to show that you are criticizing a statement, not a person.

We've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I rolled my eyes as soon as I saw the subject line in my inbox this morning. This is the culmination of an extremely frustrating internal GNU discussion. RMS has not handled this situation appropriately at all.

That's intriguing... Could you tell us more?

No, I can't. All I will say is that I've been involved with GNU in several ways over the past 5 years, even working at the FSF for awhile, and I've become increasingly disappointed in RMS' leadership abilities. He simply doesn't have the social awareness to foster a healthy community.

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