While that's a nice soundbite in principal... Klode was incredibly rude on the bug report, didn't communicate with the upstream and (at the time) was seemingly unwilling to budge on the issue.
Actions have consequences and maintainers aren't above basic politeness just because their volunteer their time. This whole kerfuffle could've been avoided if he was just a bit nicer in his communication?
The post wasn't "hey look at this rude asshole" but "rogue Debian maintainer $makes_change." I would bet that most people aware of the story never even clicked through to the GH issue to see the tea.
In fact, I'd go further and say it's exactly the use-case that should be being encouraged. As well as avoiding the issue of clip-board watchers, it also reduces friction and increases the likelihood of ordinary users being willing and able to use it.
Using a hardware key to unlock the database arguably is more of an edge-case, but conversely I'd argue that it's not acceptable to simply break that workflow.
So, IMO, Klode was very much the "computer says no" part of the analogy. He changed the process so the default was to turn away live use-cases.
I feel like he should either stop maintaining the Debian package or block White from contributing in some way. If they want to adhere to said code of conduct, of course... which was made -- first and foremostly -- for and by softies to avoid altercation.
What is a "softie"?
(I don't like the word. Just answering the question without agreeing that anyone should be called a softie.)
As I understand it, White is not a Debian contributor, and the discussions did not happen on a Debian mailing list.
So I'm not sure what Debian's code of conduct has to do with anything?
-- comment by Klode
IMHO, calling software someone works hard to maintain "crappy" is a personal attack. So Klode isn't innocent with respect to the code of contact either.
This is a really poor way to look at this.
Using this type of language is probably part of the reason the code of conduct exists.
People that work for free on something don't deserve this. No one deserves this. I'm particularly angered by this type of thing because I deal with horrible colleagues all the time. I'm working on getting away from this situation but the job market is not easy to navigate right now. No one should have to feel like the work they do is negatively impacting their mental health because some random on the internet has forgotten they're talking to another human being.