SQLite Code of Ethics | Hacker News Reader

SQLite Code of Ethics

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34 pointsthrower12319 comments

D. Richard Hipp (Oct 22, 2018; 11:29am) [1]:

So then, why not use a more modern CoC? I looked at that too, but found the so-called "modern" CoCs to be vapid. They are trendy feel-good statements that do not really get to the heart of the matter in the way the the ancient Rule does... One final reason for publishing the current CoC is as a preemptive move, to prevent some future customer from imposing on us one of those modern CoCs that I so dislike.

D. Richard Hipp (Oct 24, 2018; 6:11pm) [2]:

It took me several days and countless hours reading enraged tweets to figure this out, but in the end, the solution was as simple as renaming the offensive "Code of Conduct" to "Code of Ethics", thus avoiding the name-of-special-significance, then drop in a pre-packaged CoC in place of the one that became the CoE, and all is well. Took less than 5 minutes once I figured out what to do. Who know it was that easy?

[1] http://sqlite.1065341.n5.nabble.com/Regarding-CoC-tp104277p1...

[2] http://sqlite.1065341.n5.nabble.com/Regarding-CoC-tp104277p1...

Yeah. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. See the rules: 23 Do not nurse a grudge. 34 Be Not Proud. 71 Make peace with your adversary before the sun sets. And so forth.

> No one is required to follow The Rule, to know The Rule, or even to think that The Rule is a good idea. The Founder of SQLite believes that anyone who follows The Rule will live a happier and more productive life, but individuals are free to dispute or ignore that advice if they wish.

It seemed strange at first that community members aren't required to follow the code of conduct, but I think it actually makes a lot of sense. The maintainers follow this set of rules so that this type of good conduct becomes the norm in the community since SQLite is a cathedral style project where most of the code changes come from the few (three?) core developers. It's more of "how you can expect to be treated" instead of "how you should treat others", which works better in this project than in others like Linux.

SQLite also has a more-traditional Code of Conduct that includes by reference the Mozilla Developer Guidelines.

"The original document we put here was more of a Code of Ethics of the Project Founder. While we stand by those principles, they are not in line with the modern technical meaning of a Code of Conduct and have hence been renamed." Source: https://sqlite.org/codeofconduct.html

Thanks for posting this.

> The founder of SQLite and all current developers have pledged to follow spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability.

Where could I find more info about this? Does each developer have a signed message on file similar to their dedication to public domain?

> All code authors, and representatives of the companies they work for, have signed affidavits dedicating their contributions to the public domain and originals of those signed affidavits are stored in a firesafe at the main offices of Hwaci.

https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

You don't need to find out anything.

The founder has asked his peers by mail, phone, personal conversation, whatever, and that's that.

You have no right to have your curiosity satisfied.

I wouldn't say it's anything like a perverse curiosity. I can take Richard's word for it, no problem. He seems like a good man, in addition to his great work on sqlite and fossil. I thank him for sharing.

It's more of a functional curiosity, and that's mainly why I'm interested to ask (even though it does come off as stand-off-ish or doubting Thomas-y). Perhaps he has an interesting technical approach or has already starting thinking about one.

My approach, which I'm working on right now, uses Rust + Lua + C (Libsodium), found at https://github.com/foundpatterns The ability to send cryptographically strong, web-based messages is a fundamental building block for what I have in mind with LightTouch. (Coincidentally, for pledges like this, among many other things.)

So far, I have keys generating in a simple profile creation interface, and then sending the profiles and keys to friends' machines. This sets up the ability to add witnesses to eachothers' messages, which so far happens by default when any user requests a document. LightTouch puts an http signature in the header for every outgoing response. And the Lua web client, which uses Rust's Actix-Web client, verifies these incoming response using Libsodium and the on-file key (in the future, also algebra with witnesses), and it saves that message for later.

So, to put my words into code. I will mark Richard as a trustworthy person in my profile for him. And, when he puts up a cryptographically verifiable profile to sign what he says on sqlite.org, my incoming messages will show them as true to his word.

This is a wonderful, subversive attack on now-pervasive Codes of Conduct.

Most Codes of Conduct I've read are self-contradictory documents that have nothing to do with software. I love that a major free software project is calling them out.

The sad part is that as soon as this original code of conduct became exposed to the wider world, after eight months of prior existence, a shitstorm immediately ensued, and they were pressured into adopting a more politically correct one.

The creator of sqlite is a devout christian, and does not mean this as a joke:

https://twitter.com/DRichardHipp/with_replies

Good for him for standing up for his values, exceedingly so when you take a look at the twitter threads that came about after the change a few days ago.

If everyone lived by the general concept of that code, the world would be a better place.

They couldn't leave it alone...

Because they wouldn't be left alone.

Isn't it great to have a world full of tolerance? :)

I think the clarity they've added is welcome.

What does that mean?

Flagged??.. Why?

It's been posted multiple times and it's not the kind of topic that spawns healthy and intellectually enriching discussions on HN.

First time I've seen it, and anything Richard Hipp has to share (even on repeat) is bound to be healthier and more intellectually enriching than most of the crap on this board.

A welcome break from money, machine learning, and the 10,000th personal implementation of an embryonic LISP.

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