Comment by reitanqild | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reitanqild | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

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