SQLite updated Code of Conduct | Hacker News Reader

SQLite updated Code of Conduct

sqlite.org

41 pointsDaviey88 comments

With the pressure put on antirez, Linus and now Dwayne Richard Hipp, I'm getting nervous when imagining of falling outside of the "accepted social norms".

The web was always a rough place, but it was a place that allowed separate cultures with different standards to develop. Lately it feels like this is being actively demolished, where only places of anonymity (4chan f.e.) or banality (Facebook Comments) are used to discuss contrarian opinions.

The biggest indicator that something chilling is happening to me is that I feel obliged to underline that I'm not in favor of the ideas postulated in DRHs previous CoC...

When CoC's exist to foster inclusivity, exactly which "contrarian opinions" are you feeling are being suppressed? That's it's OK to harass or exclude minority groups? I am not trying to put words in your mouth, but the purpose of a CoC is to create a constructive and progressive environment. A CoC is project wide, not internet wide. This is not an attack on freedom of speech, but providing a stable environment and refusing to give a platform to those who's views do not align with a project's. And a project choosing what views it wishes to platform is entirely within its rights.

> And a project choosing what views it wishes to platform is entirely within its rights.

Ah, so you are OK with their original CoC, right?

The original CoC was not a code of conduct in any meaningful sense of the word and is not really comparable to this current one.

As a Christian, I don't have any objection to The Rule.

As an American who believes in the separation of church and state, I definitely understand and sympathize with the instinct that, although religious laws often provide good moral guidance for secular codes of conduct, the two serve distinct purposes. You don't have to reject the ten commandments to recognize why we need more graularity and detail in actual laws regarding murder.

As a developer, I recognize that there are concrete and specific ways in which documents like The Rule fail to meet the pragmatic needs of a code of conduct, including:

1. clearly delineating acceptable from unacceptable behavior

2. establishing a reporting mechanism

3. codifying specific consequences for doing things that were clearly delineated as unacceptable.

A perhaps important thing to realize about monkish orders is that they were intrinsically self-selecting; you didn't need to worry about the "spirit" vs. the "letter" of the law. Monks did not need to worry about people misunderstanding ambiguously stated laws (e.g. "love thy neighbor"). The process of joining a monk-hood or a a religion includes an indoctrination/inculcation/instruction into the "spirit" of the law. Sending a pull or posting on a message list is not even remotely similar.

I.e., if you want to extend the development community beyond a small a close-knit group who understands each other, then you need something closer to laws than to religious commandments.

> if you want to extend the development community beyond a small a close-knit group who understands each other...

But of course, the development community for SQLite has always been, and likely will continue to be, a close-knit group who understands each other. Which means that the requirements for a "true" code of conduct (the benefits of which have yet to be proven) don't really apply here.

Yes, I was, and I was also OK with not using the project while they held that "CoC".

The literal written meaning of a Code of Conduct and the way that Code of Conduct can be used as a political weapon do not have to be congruent.

Exactly. Just add the NCoC type of CoC, like https://github.com/domgetter/NCoC or this text:

We are all adults. We accept anyone's contributions. If you are feeling harrassed speak up by yourself. We do not censor, we don't stop any discussions. Nothing else matters.

It's the threat of force that bothers me. I don't find looming threats very welcoming, particularly where they pertain to behaviour that may be interpreted rather differently depending on the location of the speaker.

I, personally, would feel much more welcomed by those which adopt non-violent communication. RMS' recent proposal is one such example.

If the purpose is to create a progressive environment and a person doesn't identify as progressive, they may not feel included.

Possibly what may make people nervous are statements like this (from Mozilla's): "we recognize that it is possible for actions taken outside of Mozilla’s online or inperson spaces to have a deep impact on community health."

This may be a perfectly reasonable caveat, as the given example that follows seems to be, or not, because it doesn't really say much more detail than that. But it's fairly certain it means that the CoC is not strictly limited to Mozilla resources and functions and how you behave in them; i.e., it isn't just project-wide, and you might run afoul of it other places. I know it certainly gives me pause to consider, and I've been a Mozilla community member for almost 15 years.

Most CoC's I've seen have been more about exclusion than inclusion. It boils down to "by not excluding people who talk about X, you aren't being inclusive of group Y". And it's not even talking about harassing or excluding minorities, it's anything that goes against extreme leftist views. Something as simple as "illegal immigrants should be deported" is considered racist hate speech by some groups. Outside of the SV tech bubble, it's considered a political opinion about how laws should be enforced, but even on this site I've seen people say that wanting immigration laws enforced is almost as bad as being a white-nationalist nazi. You can usually look at the wording of the CoC and see that they have an agenda behind it. For example, the FreeBSD CoC only bans comments that reinforce systemic oppression, so when you know about who wrote the CoC, it means that negative comments about white males are acceptable because they don't fit into the "systematically oppressed" groups the author's had in mind.

Also, if a project was deciding on it's own code of conduct, that's one thing. But when you have people creating twitter hate mobs that threaten to contact your employer and get your fired, or get you blacklisted from events if you don't adopt their CoC, it's not really the project owner's wishes. The people trying to force adoption of certain CoC frequently don't even participate in the project who's owner they're harrassing.

People are making it Internet-wide, though. There's a chain reaction affect where upstream projects are contacting their dependents and forcing CoCs on them. Even if there weren't, the people who started the "movement" are aggressively pushing their views. No wonder they are facing resistance.

On the contrary, these code of conducts are here to help everyone feel welcomed, and to allow everyone to have their differences (cultural or otherwise).

There's absolutely no reasons to fear anything if you are respectful of other people.

> There's absolutely no reasons to fear anything if you are respectful of other people.

DRH has, as far as I can see, always been emphatically respectful of others, and has made it abundantly clear that he never intended for anyone to be excluded.

And yet a bunch of people who are not in any way contributors to the SQLite project gave him a bunch of hate online, including calling on backers of SQLite to pressure him to change his CoC.

For a private project whose hard work has been gifted to the public domain for decades, you'd think we could maybe cut them some slack?

I agree that the HR-speak of most CoC's is pretty harmless, but when there's a vocal minority of jerks pushing these CoC's accusing people who want to (respectfully) try a different approach of some pretty uncharitable things, it makes me doubt that these CoC's really do anything.

EDIT: fixed typo

What's an example of a different approach that is incompatible with the current CoC?

The religious code published instead of a real CoC was a mockery of CoCs. It clearly wasn't honestly trying a different approach, but it was a jerk reaction or malicious compliance[1].

A respectful and emphatic response could be along lines of "I don't think it's needed, but if it makes you feel better, I'll copy this template and be done with it".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance

That definition of "malicious compliance" refers to orders that come from a superior.

Why should people outside the SQLite project have standing to give such an order to the SQLite maintainers in the first place?

Why should the "respectful and emphatic" response be to resign oneself to reluctant compliance, even if the SQLite maintainers disagree with it? That sounds Orwellian to me.

I think that's what rubs people the wrong way about this. It all feels very authoritarian. It's expressed in language of positivity and inclusion, but it operates in terms of pressure and coercion. It all sounds great if you're aligned with all of the politics of it. If you're not, then you're the enemy: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1042249983590838272

Your response implies that you do not believe that the original CoC was published in good faith.

It seems to me that there are two broad mindsets that could lead to this (though I am abundantly aware of my own failings of creative thinking, so please let me know if I am neglecting a viewpoint).

1. That it is not, in fact, possible to post a CoC in good faith that is derived from religious texts.

2. That there is evidence in this specific instance that the population of contributors to SQLite, or some subset of these individuals, was, in fact, choosing to adopt the prior CoC out of malice or mockery or other mal-intent.

So, is it impossible or did the contributors act in a way (outside of the text of the CoC) to indicate that they were in fact mocking other CoCs?

Coverage in El Reg for those, including myself, who didn't see this occur: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/22/sqlite_code_of_cond...

I am fearful of zealots. Zealots are almost never tolerant of anything outside their narrowly defined rules of propriety. So far, these codes of conduct seem to be most often pushed by zealots, and that makes me distrusful that they will be used in good faith and not as a tool.

The most ironic thing about this SQLite kerfuffle is that the previous code stood unnoticed for most of a year, but within 48 hours of being posted here enough rage was manufactured to demand it be changed.

> With the pressure put on antirez

What pressure?

I'm refering to everything that lead to this Tweet[0] & Blogpost[1] and the subsequent changes to Redis[2].

[0] https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1037809132303208455 [1] http://antirez.com/news/122 [2] https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/5335

>The web was always a rough place, but it was a place that allowed separate cultures with different standards to develop. Lately it feels like this is being actively demolished, where only places of anonymity (4chan f.e.) or banality (Facebook Comments) are used to discuss contrarian opinions.

The web has become mainstream, and the mainstream doesn't 4hcan to be the standard by which every social media platform is measured. That's not a demolition so much as an evolution, as much as some might not like it.

And there are still plenty of places on the web where contrarian opinions are discussed freely. Let's not pretend the entire web is just a few social media silos... even though there is still plenty of contrarian discussion even there.

I never said that everywhere needs to be 4chan, I honestly hope nowhere becomes something similar to it, but this is beside the point entirely.

The web has indeed become mainstream and I'd agree that to some extent what I tried to describe is a direct result of that.

Maybe I was wrong to call it "discuss contrarian opinions", when the more unnerving part to me is simply the fact that ones intentions & opinions can be expected to be taken out of context and misrepresented as much as possible to generate the highest effect for others.

This effect can be something like the "triumph" of pushing someone to change their behaviour or even their work, or even more sinister to change the life circumstances of someone for not conforming to their value system.

I don't want to wake up in 20 years and have an angry mob call my employer because I have made the mistake of injecting my value system that is 40 years old and fallen out of favor in something that is publicly available and attributable to me.

Indeed.

From their new statement:

> While we are not doing so in reaction to any current or ongoing issues, we believe that this will be a helpful part of maintaining the long-term sustainability of the project.

I respect the SQLite team regardless, but I have to feel somewhat cynical about this. I really hope that this wasn't because clients or donors threatened to stop doing business with SQLite.

They are not an "open to contribution" project, and the contribution team unanimously accepted the previous CoC months ago. It's not really clear to me how anyone who complained even had a stake in the outcome. If genuine discrimination were a likely outcome, that would be another matter, but as it stands anyone who read what DRH wrote could plainly see neither he nor his team had any intent to discriminate.

The web is replacing cable TV. Therefore the thought allowed here is being pushed into the same box where it will be as bland, premeditated, and uninteresting as cable tv.

I am genuinely curious how having a COC does something like "foster inclusivity"? I mean, you do realize it is just words right? And not just any words, but words that were forced upon the maintainer/project leader to include. Anyone have evidence of pull requests being rejected because the author was a woman or someone from the east? Personally I haven't, and I can guarantee some text in a file isn't going to help any.

What we actually have, is the other way around. Time and time again, an author of a project is accused of being racist if they don't have a COC without any evidence at all[0]. How is that OK? Who has the SQLite project offended that warranted people to contact monetary supporters of the SQLite project and try to get them to pull monetary support based on nothing else than they don't have a COC?

We must remember that it is the individual that is sovereign, and not any one group or minority. You can divide a finite group of people an infinite number of ways, but eventually what you end up with is an individual. COC's go against this as they are always pushed by a group with a group agenda that is steeped in tribalism. People need to wake up.

[0]: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/10/exposing-true-face-of-sjw...

> you do realize it is just words right?

Words do things... They can have many possible impacts on the world. If you didn't believe this, you wouldn't have written your comment!

This is sad. It is clear that the SQLite creator's heart was with the previous version of the CoC, and that although the CoC was only obligatory for developers, other people from outside came and forced their politics on the owners of the project.

In what sense? What kind of power do you suppose they had to do this?

As a developer, the old CoC is a pretty massive turn off for me. Even if I was a Christian, I think it I would still find it quite out of place. I can't think of anything that is gained by attempting to proselytize through the development process of a widely used, very general purpose software project. Perhaps viewing it as "proselytizing" is not exactly right, but it is certainly taking some kind of stand.

To be fair, I've never contributed to SQLite. I also don't condone any nasty attacks against the project owners -- that is inexcusable.

I'm sure they didn't have bad intentions. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Except the old CoC only applied to the (closed) group of SQLite contributors, not users of SQLite (including developers using SQLite in a project)

It used to have religious/god related stuff. https://web.archive.org/web/20180315125217/https://sqlite.or...

``` First of all, love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole strength. Then, love your neighbor as yourself. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not covet. Do not bear false witness. Honor all (1 Peter 2:17). Do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself. Deny oneself in order to follow Christ. Chastise the body. Do not become attached to pleasures. Love fasting. Relieve the poor. Clothe the naked. ... ```

Edit: why the downvotes? I am actually providing information on what actually changed. I didn't write the stuff above. This is what used to be on that website.

You omit the most important part:

“The code of conduct for developers of the SQLite project is the 72 "instruments of good works" from the 6th century Rule of St. Benedict, shown below. This code of conduct has proven its mettle in use by many thousands of communities for 1,500 years, and has served as a baseline for many civil law codes since the time of Charlemagne.

The SQLite developers are not monks. None are able to adhere perfectly to this code of conduct. All will fall short. The goal of this code of conduct is not to describe the minimum acceptable behavior below which none transgress, but rather to describe the highest standard of behavior to which all aspire. We grant grace to one another and request forgiveness and promise to amend our ways when we stumble.

This code of conduct applies to the SQLite developers only. Everyone is free to use the SQLite source code, object code, and/or documentation without having to agree with the behavioral standards outlined below. You are encouraged to follow these standards as in doing so you will live a happier, healthier, and more productive life. Nevertheless, this is a choice that you must make for yourself, and is not a precondition for using SQLite.”

As further explained on the mailing list:

“I have tried to make that point clear in the preface to the CoC, that we have no intention of enforcing any particular religious system on anybody, and that everyone is welcomed to participate in the community regardless of ones religious proclivities. The only requirement is that while participating in the SQLite community, your behavior not be in direct conflict with time-tested and centuries-old Christian ethics. Nobody has to adhere to a particular creed. Merely demonstrate professional behavior and all is well.”

As a Founder’s Code of Ethics, I think the Code of St. Benedict works quite well. I’m happy with today’s decision.

I find it noteworthy that a great many comments on social media (and some here) seem to be offensive to the religious nature of the previous CoC and it's creators. And yet many of the CoC that are around prohibit any bad words against a person's religious identity.

It's almost as if they are unaware that their own behaviour would be deemed negative within many progressive CoCs.

No one here is objecting to the SQLite creators' religious identity, only to the relevance or utility of their having added religious language to their software documentation.

To clarify, the previous, and still linked from this page, document is not “some Christian bullshit” that the SQLite founders made up, it is a from a very old Christian text, as explained on the linked page. I do believe that adopting an actual code of conduct is a good move.

Pleased to see this. I was very disappointed by the previous CoC, which seemed not entirely serious and, in any event, did not address any of the things a modern CoC is supposed to address nor provide any mechanism for enforcement. I'm glad they found a way to keep it around as a "Code of Ethics" in tandem with a meaningful Code of Conduct. I'm sure they knew (and some of the comments here demonstrate) that this would not be universally popular.

I really don't care much this way or other way. Either way, I still use this software, and sometimes post bug reports.

And with that another bit of whimsy and individual thought dies in our industry.

People who push CoCs may be effectively silencing people in the short term but resentment is building. I think we need a new collaboration model that has some immunity to interlopers. I just don’t know what that is yet, but it’s coming. My love for technology is as strong as ever but I never want to be part of a “community” with such draconian social rules as what we’ve seen the past 5 years or so.

You're worried about open source projects becoming too welcoming?

There’s nothing welcoming about forcing project maintainers to do things.

Project maintainers are often forced to conform to style practices, run tests, follow rules about commenting, etc.

I don't see why it's so "draconian" to expect maintainers to be civil as well. That used to be considered simple professional courtesy.

> I don't see why it's so "draconian" to expect maintainers to be civil as well.

If only it were just that.

> That used to be considered simple professional courtesy.

And yet, some people are demanding projects adopt codified sets of rules on what is acceptable, what is unacceptable, what will be tolerated, what will not be tolerated, even what will obligate maintainers to take action or face repercussions themselves.

Some CoC activists (especially the "Contributor Covenant" and "Post-Meritocracy Manifesto" people) have themselves acted in ways beyond incivility, sometimes even emphatically and proudly, that would violate the very sets of rules they were trying to push on projects.

This is a political movement (and I'm not saying that that's bad) that is quite far removed from just asking projects to ask people to be civil, courteous, and professional.

Well, CoC can go much further than just civility in a project, since the CoC cover interaction outside of it. So if you have an unpopular opinion and say it on twitter, it can be used against you in the project.

Maintainers don't need to be welcomed, they are already there! But it's true that maintainers need to do real work and expend real effort if they want to ensure their project is welcoming to newcomers.

> Maintainers don't need to be welcomed, they are already there!

They are already there, and since they did all of the hard work of getting there and people are using their software for free, they should be treated with the utmost respect. People shouldn't come into their "homes" and start making demands. Also, how do you think we get more maintainers? I assure you it's not by abusing the ones we have.

> But it's true that maintainers need to do real work and expend real effort if they want to ensure their project is welcoming to newcomers.

If you want to start a project and make this a goal, more power to you. There is a large portion of devs that see this as a non-goal (SQLite doesn't have "newcomer" contributors for instance), and that's totally within their rights and something that should be respected.

Why do you think anyone was forced? What possible threat could someone make against SQLite or Linux?

Go on Twitter and check out the lynch mob that came for Hipp. He was absolutely forced into retracting his original CoC.

And what does he have to fear from a Twitter mob, exactly—people who don’t matter to his business on a service he basically never uses?

It was a mob consisting of people from our industry saying the didn't want to use SQLite anymore (among other things).

But that's just not going to happen. SQLite is ubiquitous. There's basically no comparable product. It's embedded in several OSes. People aren't going to drop SQLite just because a parody CoC was posted half a year go, no matter what some loud people on Twitter say.

I agree with you. I'm wasn't on the receiving end of it though, so I'm not going to judge him for changing his position based on what he saw as real pressure.

EDIT:

HN won't let me reply to this thread anymore but, I don't think he changed his mind given his own words on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/DRichardHipp/status/1054901364181159941

"Giving in" seems more accurate than changing his mind.

My point is: don't you think it's possible that he was simply convinced to change his mind? Linus straight-out said that this was the reason for giving Linux a CoC, and I don't see why the same couldn't be the case for SQLite.

Thanks for that link!

Hipp:

> ... also learned that apparently no one feels the need to help novice CoC writers feel welcomed or safe.

Apparently! Good to see he's still got a sense of humor.

Then, a very enlightening response from a Social Justice Entrepreneur:

> There are folks who you could have hired to help you write and implement a code of conduct.

Hey, it's a living!

I just wish we could keep software free of politics. If anyone honestly thinks this is a harmless little text they're incredible naive. There is less and less software left without these heavy agendas. It's a sad day

I guess i cannot use SQlite anymore :)

Why is that? Do you feel oppressed by not being allowed to harass other people based on gender/race/religion etc. when contributing to SQLite? Or is it having to be respectful in general?

The original CoC never allowed such things to begin with:

> Do not bear false witness.

> Honor all.

> Do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself.

> Do not forsake charity.

and so on.

Who is being "oppressed"? And since when does some text in a file have any bearing on one's conscious?

I'm glad that they removed the god bullshit.

Have any info on that?

https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html

The original is linked - https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html

Thanks. I remember seeing that, but thought was a joke.

Why? It is quite straightforward.

There was understandable confusion around whether the sentiment of the original CoC was serious or sarcastic. It appears it was serious, based on the new CoC and this tweet: https://twitter.com/drichardhipp/status/1054360847319994368?...

> Love chastity.

> Be not addicted to wine.

> Hate no one.

> Be in dread of hell.

> Fear the Day of Judgment.

> Attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good you see in yourself.

Wow! I had no idea this was part of the original code of conduct

Are the SQLite developers monks and nuns?

Oh, I thought that was added a joke.

I once worked at a software company that once had its offices in an old abbey building. (Before I joined.) Apparently, as a condition of the lease, the nuns could come around and proselytize sometimes.

In this case, I recommend reading the article instead of just the headline and tops comments (a practice of which I’m often all too guilty). From the original CoC:

“The SQLite developers are not monks. None are able to adhere perfectly to this code of conduct. All will fall short. The goal of this code of conduct is not to describe the minimum acceptable behavior below which none transgress, but rather to describe the highest standard of behavior to which all aspire. We grant grace to one another and request forgiveness and promise to amend our ways when we stumble.”

I did 'read the article', and it does not include the original CoC text that you quoted. Furthermore:

> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

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

I inferred context from another comment thread. Here is the link (from another user’s comment above) where I saw the quote text:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180315125217/https://sqlite.or...

Sorry you took my comment as an affront. Not how it was intended.

There is much to admire in the original

https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html

Instead of being against something which has inspired many people for so many years and brought so much good, be for something.

Religious doctrine has no place or purpose in the universe of software documentation.

Such as the religious doctrine that you have just stated?

What religious doctrine? I never mentioned any God or the doctrine of any religion.

But, let me do so... "to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under Heaven."

Software documentation is not the appropriate venue for Christian theology just as a church pulpit wouldn't be the appropriate venue for reading aloud the GPL license.

You have no right to take away my right to put what ever I darn well feel like in MY documentation. And since when does "church" have to be separate to anything else? Just out of spite, I think if I ever give a sermon, I'll mix in a little bit of GPL comparisons just because.

>You have no right to take away my right to put what ever I darn well feel like in MY documentation.

I never claimed any such right, just that purpose and context exist, and that not everything is appropriate for every situation.

You have the right to put whatever nonsense you like into your documentation, but that doesn't make it good documentation. You can add song lyrics to a contract if you want to, but doing so doesn't serve the purpose of a contract.

>And since when does "church" have to be separate to anything else?

Since the Enlightenment, when people began to realize theocracy does more harm than good in the legal, scholarly and scientific realms.

>Just out of spite, I think if I ever give a sermon, I'll mix in a little bit of GPL comparisons just because.

You can recite GPL comparisons at the pulpit if you like, but "spite just because" is a terrible basis for a sermon.

Again, no one is claiming you can't, just that you shouldn't.

And a friendly reminder that people have known how to conduct themselves in a civil manner for at least 1400 years.

That depends on what you call "civil manner". A lot of what is listed there is just puritan dogma that seems completely orthogonal to what I would consider civil/uncivil manners. They're just personal choices (as long as you don't try to impose them to others, then they would become a real problem, and it's kind of the case in my opinion when it becomes the code of conduct of a free software project).

Surely it was not puritan dogma.

I daresay the new CoC will not stand the test of time nearly as well.

I don't understand why you are being downvoted. The previous code of ethics of SQLite was a mess that should have nothing to do with this particular or any free software projects.

Yeah, I too gave information on what the website had previously and am getting downvoted. Not sure why.

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