New FreeBSD Code of Conduct
mail-archive.com
mail-archive.com
The Go one, on the other hand, is atrocious. Hint from a fat person: If your CoC mentions "body size", your CoC sucks.
I'm fat. Know how many times this has mattered in an Open Source project? Zero. How many times I've been discriminated against at a conference? Zero. How many times I've had a patch rejected on that account? Zero.
It's bullshit.
So yes, I agree that no one should ever discriminate in Open Source based on weight. But also, no one should ever discriminate based on eyebrow length. (Mine are a bit weird.) Shall we write that in, too? How about people who tie their shoes with granny knots? How about people with red hair? And on, and on, and on.
None of this has any place in a CoC. And all such are slow acid eating away at the foundations of good will and civil behavior. Fuck that.
Additionally however, I don't understand how including it can be harmful? At the very worst it's a rule that never get's utilised because nobody ended up getting discriminated because of their body. There seem to be only potential upside and no potential downside.
AFAIK there doesn't exist a consistent systemic discrimination of people based on eyebrow length, but if it did, yes, why not write it in?
People in CS tend tot think you can just use universal abstractions to solve human problems the same way you can with programming (giant base class problem non-withstanding). I used to believe this too. Why call out specifics when a general description will do? But what I've learned is that we have to specifically call out any discrimination that is likely to occur. Yes, this is more complicated and certainly less elegant than a simple ”treat everybody well” statement, but the world has very clearly demonstrated that this kind of blanket statements simply don't work. People always think that group X or Y is an exception and that it's acceptable to treat them poorly, and thus you have to specifically call out all the groups that you should actually treat well.
If I provide a list of specific categories, you will tend to think not of the unity of humanity, but of a specific set of historic problems, and tend to rank those you're talking to in terms of those sets. As we're seeing in contemporary culture, this generally makes things worse, not better.
Hi. I mean the following non-offensively. As a formerly obese person, I really doubt this. People discriminate against fat people in social life, in the workplace, and yes even in a career in tech quite a bit. Educated people are good at not making it overt, or maybe they're not aware that they're doing it. But I think there have been various studies on how it affects people in the workplace (spoiler alert: it does). Also, one way I noticed this is the way people treated me before and after losing 100 lbs. It's ironic, because being treated shabbily was stressful; I would say that stress and lack of social recognition re-enforced my weight problem.
I do wonder how weight might surface in a real technical conversation though. I guess it's proper to avoid certain metaphors, like "bloated" code or the "fat binary" (where fat = multi-architecture) concept they used to have on old Macs. I'm typing this on FreeBSD and I note they have "newfs_msdos" and "mount_msdosfs" instead of "FAT".
Very specific and ultra detailed cases are wanted by the current wave of social justice warriors who just want a way to feel offended and vindictive towards whole communities, trying to sink their members.
Notice as an example how state laws are general and encompassing. "don't murder parents of three kids" is already included in "don't commit murder".
[1] https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-con...
The other items in that list are not at all surprising, and I agree that they belong there, but mental ability? That seems like it would be ripe for abuse...
I do not read it as you can't critique ideas because the person is a protected class.
If it's ripe for abuse we ought to discuss particular real or hypothetical cases.
As the saying goes, "If your mind is too open, your brain will fall out."
I have been one of those people disaffected by the previous code of conduct, the "virtual hugs" and "no commenting on lifestyle choices such as eating habits" rubbed me very much the wrong way.
The new one is much more prescriptive on behaviours that are encouraged, much like the hackernews guidelines.
Please don't be disingenuous about the old CoC. You can dislike it or disagree with it, but you're taking that example way out of context[1]:
> Harassment includes but is not limited to:
> ∗ Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g., textual descriptions like "∗hug∗" or "∗backrub∗") without consent or after a request to stop.
It's a problem when people don't want you to be doing it, and you do it to them anyway. Much like it would be a problem in the real world.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200108075747/https://www.freeb...
In the mostly imaginary world of serial virtual huggers it seems reasonable that conduct would fall under say sexual harassment or be fixed by blocking people.
It's actually nothing like real world touching at all.
I understand not wanting a CoC that spells this out, because we're all adults and shouldn't need to be told not to send creepy messages to team members. But I can't understand defending the behavior on the merits.
Hugging someone after they tell you to stop is obviously creepy. Is hugging someone without asking permission first bad too?
Then you watch how people react and modify your behavior accordingly. If you mistakenly thought it was OK and instead of warmth you perceive discomfort or a deer in the headlights look you would abort.
If in doubt just don't do it or ask.
In real context this complexity is simplified by the presence of social cues, body language, facial expressions, the fact that more people are apt to share the same set of social norms. None of these things are available in text. Fortunately typing hug at someone doesn't involve actually touching their body. It provides basically none of the meaningful benefits of actually hugging someone. No real social closeness. No actual meaningful comfort. It also provides none of the risks to the persons safety or their person. This is probably why typing 'hug' is the providence of 12 year old girls and including it in a code of conduct makes projects the subject of ridicule.
Still not something you'd expect to see in a workplace, but most FOSS devel lists haven't historically even attempted to replicate the kind of environment you'd expect in a workplace and I'm not sure that drawing the parallel is useful.
FWIW I'm not trying to say the GP was right whichever reading we go with (and if we assume your reading then it's definitely pretty creepy), I just wanted to point out that a more charitable reading exists.
>> ∗ Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g., textual descriptions like "∗hug∗" or "∗backrub∗") without consent or after a request to stop.
> Much like it would be a problem in the real world.
Operate on an nonsensical category of "simulated physical contact" and the assumption that typing hug is somehow similar in nature to hugging someone. Saying hi and saying the word hug fall into the same category. Written speech. When its transgressive we might better term it harassment or sexual harassment depending on the nature of the transgression. I don't support harassment sexual or otherwise. I shouldn't have to disclaim this because I'm making a critical statement about a code of conduct. Everyone who disagrees isn't a bigot.
Logically a code of conduct could successfully say no to harassment or sexual behavior including unwanted serial huge emoters without specifically calling out virtual hugs. In fact including language that simultaneously
- doesn't forbid any additional creepy behavior not already covered by language forbidding sexual harassment AND - opens the community up to ridicule is a net negative.
I especially find it concerning that one can't point out how ridiculous it is to ban virtual hugs without people trying to lump you in with the creeps
> But I can't understand defending the behavior on the merits.
Where does that come from?
If you consult my statement.
> In the mostly imaginary world of serial virtual huggers it seems reasonable that conduct would fall under say sexual harassment or be fixed by blocking people.
Wherein do you find the defense of harassment?
That's a strawman, the CoC does not ban virtual hugs.
It merely gives an example of behaviours that happen without consent or after a request to stop. The example is good IMO because it is the kind of little things that might look harmless to the person doing it but might be annoying to the one receiving it.
That's why I never did that. You can be anti creep while also being against coc banning virtual hugs. I think we can do better than that. It seems most of the people involved with FreeBSD agree.
I read that statement with the emphasis on without consent meaning I must first gather consent before saying something.
That strikes me as asinine because you can verbally say many things which incite anxiety that aren't at all related to the examples given.
I don't think it's a bad faith interpretation, it's just an interpretation I took- and my interpretation is as valid as yours unless you say that I am somehow less valid than you are, which is hugely offensive.
If I am reading it wrong and at least 35% of others are reading it "wrong" then perhaps the issue is with the words used.
Not sure what exactly the dissatisfaction was about but I’m really glad they went about it with a good level headed process and came out with a solution that satisfies a good majority.
IIRC, their previous CoC was quite controversial when it was introduced. The new one appears to address much of the criticism that I recall, and looks like a big improvement.
Old discussions:
HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16406946
Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/7xapx2/freebsds_ne...
https://old.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/822mri/code_of_con...
https://old.reddit.com/r/BSD/comments/7xjvcr/freebsd_has_a_n...
> 35% were dissatisfied with the code of conduct adopted in 2018, 34% were neutral, and 30% were satisfied.
Even in the best light, more than 1/3 (35%) were not happy with the old CoC. So maybe a good description would be, "it was not unifying and became more of a distraction itself than a tool for avoiding harmful distractions."
> 35% were dissatisfied with the code of conduct adopted in 2018, 34% were neutral, and 30% were satisfied.
I.e., pretty mixed feelings about the old CoC. In the current referendum, the old CoC only got 4% of the total vote. That doesn't mean 96% are satisfied with the new CoC, but it's almost certainly more than 30% from before.
Core is committed to running these annual community surveys to monitor satisfaction and we'll see probably next year how people feel about it.
> Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion.
This sounds like a passive-aggressive remark to me, since it is attributed quite plainly in the CoC.
https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Community_anti-harassmen...
-- LLVM COC
Bold coming from a project that associates with Outreachy, an organization that intentionally and explicitly discriminates people based on their sex, nationality and ethnicity [0].
An important contributor left LLVM a few years ago because of that association, and I totally agree with him. [1]
I would like a clause that says: The project will not discriminate people based on their {sex, ethnicity, etc.} or spend resources in iniciatives that discriminate people based on their {sex, ethnicity, etc}.
[0] https://www.outreachy.org/apply/eligibility/ [1] https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122928.ht...
It's already in there[1]: "Be welcoming. We strive to be a community that welcomes and supports people of all backgrounds and identities. This includes, but is not limited to members of any race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, colour, immigration status, social and economic class, educational level, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, size, family status, political belief, religion or lack thereof, and mental and physical ability."
> or spend resources in iniciatives that discriminate people based on their {sex, ethnicity, etc}.
The FreeBSD project doesn't have any money or resources to spend, so this is kind of moot.
[1]: https://github.com/freebsd/core.10-public-docs/blob/master/C...
"We simply do not care about your race, gender, culture, sex, nationality, ethnicity ... So don't talk about it on our mailing list. We instead care about making great software."