Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

the *political* position from a *potential* future contributor about
Contributor Covenant

executive summary: CoCs should never be substitutes for laws, maintainers
should never be substitutes for judges. There is no need to scare
(potential) contributors stating their political positions could be
judged unacceptable behaviour based on a vague statement. There is no
need to assign maintainers the burden of pursuing social justice in the
context of an (*informal*) software community.

by informal I mean: contributors are not employed by a body nor signs a
contract to be part of the community, except possible copyright
assignment (or did I miss something)?

HiPhish <address@hidden> writes:

> I have had two packages merged, which I guess that makes me technically a
> contributor, so here is my takes on the issue.

I'm just a sysadmin planning convert all my infrastructure - present and
future - to GuixSD... and I hope I could contribute back

**Q1** (first question): have the maintainers of Guix or GuixSD ever
faced a  situation that needed not even an enforcement but just a
(private or public) discussion about an unaccepteble behaviour?

*obviously* the decision about what kind of code of conduct to adopt is
up to maintainers and if they decided they can afford to apply and
enforce

   https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/CODE-OF-CONDUCT

they have all the rights to do so

if I was to choose a code of conduct for a project of mine I'd _never
ever_ choose "Contributor Covenant" since it's so vague that - in good
faith - I could never accept to commit to enforce it

please consider CC does _not_ define:

1. the standards of acceptable behavior: it's up to the maintainers to
clarify [1] 

2. specific enforcement policies [2]: if needed (are the default ones
sufficiently defined? IMHO not) maintainers should define enforcement
policies

so it would be mine (as maintainer) responsibility to address this two
issues: no thanks, I do not want to "reinvent the weel" of
"constitutions" 

if I was to choose a code of conduct I'd rather choose GNU Kind
Communication Guidelines since it "Please"s contributors and does not
force maintainers to commit to hard to maintain promises, keeping the
obvious rights associated with project maintainance [3] (IMHO non need
to state the obvious), including contributors banning as an extreem
consequence

...leaving all the civil and criminal investigations to a judge, if
really needed

[...]

> The accused is not even
> allowed to know what the accusation is about (confidentiality clause),

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/CODE-OF-CONDUCT#n68
does not say so, confidentiality is about the reporter, not the
accusation claims (even if knowing the accusation could easily lead to
the accuser, if the accusation is about one single unacceptable
behaviour)

[...]

> There is no clause that allows the accused to defend their position

this should be part of a per-project enforcement policy, defined by
maintainers (point 2 above)

[...]

>> * Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political
>> attacks

the "political attacks" part it's what really scares me: I'd like not to
be judged - as project contributor or even maintainer - based on my
politically *uncorrect* positions

[...]

> If I wanted I could consider it the former and pull the trigger
> metaphorically. I am asking because this is not a hypothetical question, 
> people have been loosing their jobs over these issues for real.

plz do you have any link to the relevant news, I mean of people being
fired for CC enforcement? It would be very useful for my research

any civilized country should have a legislation to address workers being
fired based on their political views (this is discrimination)

[...]

> On the other hand, I have seen enough examples of existing long-time
> contributors being expelled from projects and being harassed, especially by
> proponents of the CC.

plz do you have more examples of contributors being expelled? I need it
for my research purposes

I just know the story on Elia Schito from Opal project [4] back in June
2015 (Elia was _not_ removed prom project) about his tweets about
transgenders [5]

I absolutely do not agree with Elia's political ideas about
transgenders, but propose to define his statements as "unacceptable
behaviour" due to CC it's like denying freedom of speech in the project
community (Opal in this specific case)

...and it's **not** with the Contributor Covenant or other similar
_software_ project policies that we will contribute to solve social
discrimination in our *social community*

> The CC's own author is one of the worst offenders of the
> CC's own terms, going after people's private social media accounts and
> quote-mining them to demand their expulsion or even extort money.

this is a bold accusation, made in pubblic too: plz can you give us the
relevant news on this so you can justify this claim?

[...]

> You have people in this very thread who are afraid of contributing

**Q2**: given there are at least more than 3 people afraid of facing
possible consequences to **their possibility to contribute** due to a
perceived uncertainty of the project code of conduct, don't you feel the
need to specifically address this in
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/contribute/ at least saying "do not be
afraid to contribute"? :-)

...or do you think all this arguments are just FUD? I'll accept if you
just say: yours are just FUD :-D

> and even I was considering leaving my packages just sitting on my local hard
> drive rather than submitting them upstream,

another possibility should be (even personal) forking with no commitment
to become an active contributor... but it would be an uneffective workflow 

[...]

ciao
Giovanni


[1] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/CODE-OF-CONDUCT#n43

[2] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/CODE-OF-CONDUCT#n69

[3] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/CODE-OF-CONDUCT#n47

[4] 
https://web.archive.org/web/20151208143727/https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

[5] 
https://web.archive.org/web/20151105174639/https://twitter.com/krainboltgreene/status/611569515315507200

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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