in case you haven't seen the new thing github is pushing:
https://github.com/blog/2039-adoptin...ode-of-conduct

before you blindly adopt this nonsense, actually read the text of the CoC and just how oppressing it is.

this guy sums it up well:
http://dancerscode.com/blog/why-the-...t-isnt-for-me/

funnily enough, that above link and all discussion surrounding it has been deleted twice already on reddit, as if the censorship has spread across

I don't see a problem with it. The maintainers of any project have the right to choose who they want to associate with.

All I see is a bunch of people complaining that they will be excluded when they act like jerks and how now they have to live life afraid that acting like a jerk will get them excluded.

No one is forcing you to live your life by their code of conduct.

the feminists and cuckolds rule silicon valley so you got to play by their rules. also m2f transgenders seem to make good developers so its a wise business decision imo.

you're being a jerk with this reply of yours.

i'm offended that you wrote that, so therefore, you're in violation of the code of conduct.

thats the point. its too easy for some butthurt idiot to make ridiculous claims like this, and get protection under these contrived codes.

if you fcuk up and i tell you that you've fcuked up, thats not being a jerk. thats being honest.

That's fine and it's your right to not associate with me and if this was your site your right to ban me.

There are ways to tell someone they've done something wrong without being a jerk. If you can't do that then you're probably a jerk and shouldn't be surprised when groups start shunning you.

Some people in our industry get away with it(Linus, Theo being two of the better known cases) but it doesn't mean it is the best way to deal with the situation.

Yah the grapevine says that management is already writing up the plans for free company hormone treatment, breast and facial surgery for prosperous junior developers.

Seems like an easy fix for lack of the other gender problem.

Piss off.

My problem with people like the guy in the link is that they think dealing with political correctness and having to be nice to people is as big of a problem (if not bigger) as getting sexually harassed and listening to horrible things (like death threats) being said about you.

I'm sympathetic to his point about it's not always your problem if someone is offended by what you say. But that's a tiny part of what's in that code of conduct. And it is your responsibility to think about what you're saying and saying it in an appropriate way.

I don't want my open source communities to be bastions of free speech. I don't want the Government to censor people, but voluntary communities absolutely should. And right now most tech communities are way too far on the side of protecting 'free speech' at the expense of large groups of people.

It has long been the case that the measure of how offensive something is has been how it is perceived by the receiving parties and not how it was intended by the person that delivered it.

I find it pretty laughable this will stifle useful communication. Most people can tell the difference between constructive criticism and ridicule.

The free speech issue is really a puzzle to me, that seems to get taken apart and put together in different piece combinations all the time.

I'm a strong believer that if someone confronts you with their opinion or belief that you disagree with, well you say why you disagree and society will eventually adopt the correct side. It may be your own or the other group or person(s) view but how else are people to progress if no conflict of thoughts meet head on.

Harassment is not free speech and it seems to be difficult for some people to understand the difference. I see it all the time, where people are actually harassing people online, which they would never do in person but since its online, they probably don't even realize they are doing it. I generally believe harassers are morons whom have a small intellect; they cannot comprehend other perceptions of reality a person that is on the other side of the internet seeing x vs their own. They may be skilled in an area and generally believe they must then be an intellectual but we can all think of Hitler as an example.

There is also a dilemma when one person is too edgy compared to a group of people. The edgy person may say things that make random members of one community feel individually wronged by being told conflicting ideas. Psychologically they mentally are tallying it up and building a reason to attack the person without actually thinking about why they're doing it. If you take away free speech and just go with the pack rules, well that edgy person will be killed.

Github code of conduct is really no threat to anyone when all you're doing is programming and its optional.

Thinking more about the technical ability portion, it actually seems pretty reasonable.

For a voluntary open source community when is it necessary to use technical ability in a discussion? A crappy programmer might write bad code or have flawed ideas - but the discussion should centre around the bad code and flawed ideas and not need to resort to calling the programmer crappy.

So how do I handle conflicts of inclusion? How do I include someone who believes same sex relations are morally corrupt and someone who lives in one?
At the end of the day I have a feeling that one applies their own set of (exclusive) morality and picks say the inclusion of "all sexual orientation" over "ultraconservative religious beliefs".
That's always the problem with inclusion. There's conflicting parties and at the end of the day you end up making moral judgements.

The general idea seems good but it's basically a tl;dr version of Kant. The second post linked in OP seems pretty spot on to me.

p.s.: I very strongly believe in free speech including hate speech and other nasty incarnations.

Easily. You don't allow any view to be attacked. I mean, this **** isn't hard.

If someone doesn't want to work with someone else because of who or what they are - that's on them. They can choose to move forward or they can go elsewhere. But if a guy who posts anti-gay rhetoric on his twitter account wants to participate in an open community and keeps those views to himself in that community - then he's meeting those guidelines. If person X says they refuse to work with anti-gay person Y who's abiding by the guidelines above while participating in the community, then that's on X and they can go elsewhere.


So do I - from a personal responsibility point of view. But the ridiculous thing is when people think that they should be free to say whatever they want AND free from other people reacting to it. And that their free speech should be allowed in all private/semi-public settings. I'm fine with it being legally acceptable to make malicious sexist and racist comments. But if you come into my house and do it, I'm going to ask you to leave. And if an open source tech community/company wants my participation they're going to have to enforce the same sort of rules.

There's a huge problem in many tech communities/cultures/companies right now. And its not that people are being stifled. It's that large groups of people are being subjected to unacceptable abuse. Its ridiculous that people of the privileged group think they're the ones being attacked and punished.

Like, let's look at this post:

* "joke Code of Conduct"
* "adopt this nonsense"
* "just hos oppressing it is"
* "the censorship has spread across"

Give me a ****ing break. It's telling people to be respectful. It's telling people to be considerate of others. At worst there is one little flaw in that it should maybe be clearer that its not always a problem if something you say is offensive to others.

But we have people dealing with systematic sexual harassment, violent threats, real life harassment, and generally ****ty environments. Clearly there is a serious problem here - and its not this code of conduct.

Like Greg, please post some concrete things you'd like to post in an open source community that you feel will be stifled by this code of conduct.

The problem is a lot of people think freedom of speech also means freedom from consequences. Which leads to opinions like we're seeing from the parts of the community lashing out against codes of conduct in various communities. Blaming the communities that are reacting to their speech as baddies.

Free speech is extremely important and is a right everyone should have but it also has consequences.

i'm usually a fan of smaller government, less laws, etc. when you decide to implement a strict 'code', you better be damn sure that there is no ambiguity. when things aren't clear and open for interpretation, things quickly get out of hand.

i dont even see why this^ is a point of discussion. i agree with all of that.

all of those things are bad. but the same freedom exists for the targets of the attacks. you don't like it? leave. why would you subject yourself to the idiocy of some bigot who is harassing you? just because some code exists to suppress that person's true feelings, do you really want to be working and collaborating with them? find a new project without asholess at the helm. don't insist on a code of conduct for your protection. how about taking some responsibility for yourself, and gtfo of a bad situation

no one is saying there shouldn't be consequences for having your hate speech. but the free market will handle that already. you wanna spew your hate speech in jjshabado's house? then your consequences will be getting thrown out. no problem with that at all. you wanna act like a douche and condescend people? go ahead. the results will be poor contribution to your community. thats your consequences.

"look, the code you've contributed is bad. you need to be more precise with your commits, you need to follow the guidelines that we've set in place. you're being sloppy and we don't have the time to babysit every pull request you make"

"how dare you talk to me like that! you're implying that i'm a baby? you need to speak to me with more respect. you're in violation of the code of conduct!"

extreme example, but there are people like that. the point remains, the speaker should not need to second guess what he says. i dont give a fcuk if you are offended. it is not my job to 'listen carefully' to your gripe, nor to 'do my best to right the wrong'. either get with the program or get out.

the problem is that it invites more abuse than the problems it aims to solve. sections of this code of conduct puts unnecessary power in the hands of the accuser. i'll go even more extreme and say that rules like this are anti-american. that should rile everyone up even more

i think the onus should be on providing some concrete examples of problems this code solves, and reasons why it is necessary, that wouldn't otherwise be solved by the consequences of the natural law of cause and effect

https://www.facebook.com/humansofnew...9911422416295/

This is exactly what is happening. The people are saying "We don't like it leave". It's their project so they get to tell the other person to fall in line or leave.

Again this is literally the free market handling it by posting a clear indication that they won't work with people like this.

"Your code doesn't currently meet our guidelines."

The rest of your text is basically you wasting time telling someone you don't have time to waste just so your message can be meaner than the root message.

The thing is it's the maintainer who gets to decide what to do and who to exclude so unless the maintainer is the accuser that is two people against you.

I get the feeling from reading your replies that you think Github is forcing this on all projects on Github. That isn't what is happening. They are saying they are implementing this on projects they maintain and encouraging other projects to do the same.

The house is these open source communities, and the code of conduct is a recommendation that should be used. The point is that its telling the guests and members of the house what is and isn't acceptable. Why do you have a problem with that? If you don't want to use their rules for your communties, great. But that's totally different than your OP that made a bunch of ridiculous claims about the code of conduct.



Useless feedback.

Not against the code of conduct.

Useless feedback.

Your example is great precisely because the only things that are 'against' the code of conduct aren't productive.

And, yeah, its not unreasonable in life to expect adults to have to think about what they're saying and how it effects other people.

This is absurd. You have people continuously being threatened with rape. But you having to think about what you say is more abusive

I don't even know what you're talking about. I'm sure we're all on the same page if this was a proposal for what people are legally allowed to say and do. But its not.

If you don't know of concrete examples of the problems of sexism in tech communities you're being purposefully ignorant and clearly don't know enough of the context around why this code of conduct is being put forward.

ok fair enough. from the maintainer's perspective, yes they should have the freedom to dictate whatever rules they want in their communities. if i'm the head of a project, and i see someone blatantly harassing another contributor, then of course i wouldn't want that happening and would not tolerate it. but if someone comes to complain about another contributor treating them bad and claims that that person is not adhering to the conduct, and the claim ends up frivolous, then i'm gonna be even more pissed.

after considering your posts, perhaps you guys are right, and i'm overreacting to this. i'm just sick and tired of seeing stories in the media about how people claim to be "victimized" when there was no harm intended, but simply because some overly-entitled woman/gay/minority took offense to something. my first impression of these codes were disdain towards more of the same political correctness. it just seemed that having an ambiguous code like this opens up the possibility for unjust, libelous accusations at the whim of some self righteous morons

Yes, because a frivolous claim of harassement is clearly worse than actual harassement...

I'm sick and tired of seeing actual abuse where people are victimized. But to each their own I guess.

this code is essentially about verbal 'abuse'. let the person who feels victimized take responsibility for their situation and stop putting up with it and just get themselves out of it. the fact that these people cant or wont take responsibility that is part of their problem. people like you who jump in to rescue them perpetuates their propensity to sit on their ass and complain and do nothing about it

What do they "do" in this situation, aside from being run off?

Why should women feel the need to run away from people sexual harassing them?

I mean, what is wrong with you? That you'd rather protect the harasser than the victim. Furthermore, bringing the harassment to light IS doing something.

Peoples' lives get destroyed in this world over false claims all the time.
I think taking that stance of trying to say one is worse over the other is foolish.

I bet more lives are more adversely affected over actual harassment, by several orders of magnitude.