Comment by kristjank | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kristjank | Hacker News Reader

I am very much on the observer/user side of FLOSS, but the way Codes of Conduct have been applied since their widespread adoption have seen a lot of very productive developers ostracized for their emotionally unregulated methods of communications. This general regard for ceremony and civility above anything else leads to these NKVD-like committees policing code access where the quality of work delivered is considered only collaterally, if at all.

I am worried that the trend these code of conduct implementations set in the past few years optimize for a future where development environments will be optimized for the prosperity of low-productivity, low-intelligence, high-vulnerability and highly-provocative individuals. This idea that the tone of communication may not be coupled in any way to the frustration of the correspondent is in my opinion extremely misanthropic and allows intense psychological abuse through condescension and/or playing dumb.

Just to be clear, Overstreet wrote an email asking someone to “get their head checked” and “get the fuck out of here with this shit”.

I don’t think it’s the CoC committee overreacting. I would reach to HR advising termination if a member of my team did this to someone in writing. This is straight up illegal in my country. If you write this to someone, you will lose if they sue. A lenient sanction and some probation seems fine for someone with a history of good contribution but doing nothing would be wrong.

I’m not sure comparing that to the NKVD is wise.

Believing that a corporate friendly HR-like body with termination power, is what a community project like linux needs is a part of the current problem.

This mentality will encourage the take-over of FLOSS communities by power-grabbing psychopath types that already thrive in corporate environments.

Not sure why would anyone want that.

The CoC committee was long overdue. The decision here is both lenient - it’s only one release - pragmatic and necessary. We should aspire to more friendless not some weird tolerance for behaviour which would he unacceptable everywhere else.

I don't consider that very extreme considering the persistent harassment by someone who, as far as I could tell by the mailing list archive and Overstreet's Patreon, was wrong about the subject matter and insisted on it multiple times, with ascending levels of agression each iteration.

Personally, I would take such an insult as a signal to step away from the immediate conversation and maybe rethink it after some time, but this (admittedly very flamewar provoking and somewhat rude) way of pressing the RESET button on a conversation is understandably not tolerated in the same capacity as it might have been in the 1990s. The problem is, we haven't really replaced it with anything that's as efficient.

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