Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

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

In my opinion Codes of Conduct (or CoCs in short) are one of the worst things
that have happened in recent years to Free and Open Source projects (hold that
though, I will address it soon enough), and the Contributor Covenant (CC in
short) is the worst offender. I will explain shortly why this is, but please
allow me to elaborate first.

There is no problem of harassment in FLOSS, there is a problem of socially
awkward nerds in FLOSS. Harassment presupposes malice, i.e. that the offending
person is intentionally being abusive. If you have never said anything that
made you want to vanish into the ground the moment it came out of your mouth
you are not human. Some people will slip up more often than others, and let's
face it: the people who are more likely to slip up are also more often the 
ones
who are good at programming. Why is it this way? I don't know, I'm not a
psychologist or anthropologist, I just need to know that this is the way 
things
are.

Now here is the important part: for an offensive act to be committed it takes
two sides, the offender and the offended. Part of social competence is knowing
not to slip up, but part of it is also knowing to just let it slide when
someone else slips up. Again, I'm not talking just about online discourse, but
social interaction in general. When someone says something stupid just ignore
that person, and if it keeps happening try to correct them in a friendly
manner. This is how we grow as humans.

This leads me into why the CC is a harmful CoC. The CC presupposes malice by
default, more than half of its content is focused on punitive measures, not on
helping each other. In contrast, the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines (GKCG
in short) explicitly promotes a cooperative two-sided perspective:

> Please assume other participants are posting in good faith, even if you
> disagree with what they say. When people present code or text as their own
> work, please accept it as their work. Please do not criticize people for
> wrongs that you only speculate they may have done; stick to what they
> actually say and actually do.
>
> Please do not take a harsh tone towards other participants, and especially
> don't make personal attacks against them. Go out of your way to show that 
you
> are criticizing a statement, not a person.
>
> Please recognize that criticism of your statements is not a personal attack
> on you. If you feel that someone has attacked you, or offended your personal
> dignity, please don't “hit back” with another personal attack. That tends to
> start a vicious circle of escalating verbal aggression. A private response,
> politely stating your feelings as feelings, and asking for peace, may calm
> things down. Write it, set it aside for hours or a day, revise it to remove
> the anger, and only then send it.

There is nothing like this in the CC, but there is this:

> Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be
> reported by contacting the project team at [INSERT EMAIL ADDRESS]. All
> complaints will be reviewed and investigated and will result in a response
> that is deemed necessary and appropriate to the circumstances. The project
> team is obligated to maintain confidentiality with regard to the reporter of
> an incident. Further details of specific enforcement policies may be posted
> separately.
>
> Project maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct in good
> faith may face temporary or permanent repercussions as determined by other
> members of the project’s leadership.

The CC is claiming to foster "an open and welcoming environment" while at the
same time holding a gun to every maintainer's head. The accused is not even
allowed to know what the accusation is about (confidentiality clause), so how
are they supposed to know what they did was wrong? There is no clause that
allows the accused to defend their position, only punishment is defined. This
applies even to the maintainer, so if they maintainer wants to protect an
unjustly accused person, the maintainer will be on the chopping block. To make
matters worse, the CC never defines what constitutes offensive behaviour.  
Take
a look at the following list:

> * The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention 
or
>   advances
> * Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
> * Public or private harassment
> * Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic
>   address, without explicit permission
> * Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a
>   professional setting

The fourth point is clear, but what exactly constitutes any of the remaining
four? Is "Wow, thank you so much, I could kiss you!" considered "unwelcome
sexual attention" or just an exaggerated expression of joy? Is overhearing
people talking about "dongles" and "forking repos" considered unwanted sexual
attention? 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. Do you think this
makes for a healthy community?

The GKCG does not even attempt to define what qualifies as unacceptable,
because unless you pay a lawyer to write a tens of pages long document which 
no
one will read, you will never have a sufficient definition. Truly money well
spent.

As for the last point, if you really want to remove anything that would be
inappropriate in a professional setting, you have to go all out. No "I could
kiss you", but also no informalities, no emotion, and the project maintainer
will have to sign all his mails not with "Ludo'" or "Ludovic", but as "Mr
Courtès", RMS becomes "Dr. Stallman", Guix becomes "The GNU Guix project", no
Hacker culture jokes and quips the manual, and so on. If this what you want?

As a closing thought, I wish to address my opening statement that CoCs are one
of the worst things to happen in recent years to FLOSS. The argument with 
which
CoCs are "sold" to FLOSS projects is that there is problem of harassment in 
the
community which prevents people from contributing. And yet I have to see any
project where contributions have improved as a result of adopting a CoC, where
people who were previously harassed became contributors. In fact, I have yet 
to
see any actual harassment, and not just socially awkward nerds being socially
awkward. 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. 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. Yet none of
those people end up contributing to the projects they disrupt. Is the damage
you invite really worth it?

Guix is too important of a project, functional package management is the only
proper solution to package management. I believe there are interest groups of
proprietary software companies who would rather want projects like Flatpak
succeed, which are more applicable to proprietary software. Please don't let
them hold a gun to every contributor's head by inviting trouble into the
project. You have people in this very thread who are afraid of contributing,
and even I was considering leaving my packages just sitting on my local hard
drive rather than submitting them upstream, but as the GKCG says: "Please
assume other participants are posting in good faith, even if you disagree with
what they say."

PS: I agree that there is no point in having both the CC and the GKCG at the 
same time

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Gábor Boskovits]

I have a feeling that I might confuse some things, as this thread is
getting rather long, so let me summarize what I have on my mind so
far:

1. There is general consensus that having both CoC and GKCG is pointless.
2. CoC is not welcome by all, mainly because they feel that it
discourages contributions.
3. GKCG seems to be inadequate in the opinion of the maintainers, as:
a. it does not define acceptable behaviour, and
b. it does not define processes.

My conclusion is that neither document really cuts the bill.

I proposed to try to roll our own, essentially based on GKCG,
but have the acceptable behaviour and the processes defined.

Do you think this can/should be done?
Do you think that this could result in a better situation overall?

Best regards,
g_bor

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2018, at 7:33 AM, Gábor Boskovits wrote:
> I proposed to try to roll our own, essentially based on GKCG,
> but have the acceptable behaviour and the processes defined.
> 
> Do you think this can/should be done?
> Do you think that this could result in a better situation overall?

It's tough work to get everything right in a CoC. I think that's probably why the Contributor Covenant was chosen in the first place, but IMO it was a bad choice.

The GKCG is slightly less polished, and only preferable because it does NOT specify processes (making it less important to agree with every word). The processes are where the whole controversy is; nobody objects to behaving compassionately.

If you must spell out consequences for bad behavior, the Debian Code of Conduct is impeccable, I suggest starting with that. Despite the fact that I dislike codes of conduct in principle, I couldn't find a single thing wrong with it.

-- 
Alex Griffin

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 28/10/2018 13.33, Gábor Boskovits wrote:
> 1. There is general consensus that having both CoC and GKCG is pointless.

ACK

> 2. CoC is not welcome by all, mainly because they feel that it
> discourages contributions.

That's a somewhat limited and tame take on it ;)
You may count me as having contributed (little as it was) despite of the 
CC, definitively not because of it.

The association with the primary author makes some people think of the 
... fighting stance of her, the anti-meritocracy thing and her use of 
2nd-hand "quotes" to get people into trouble (trying to keep it short 
here, thus far from exact).

While one may say that the CC can and should be seen on its own, this 
background does turn it into ... unwelcoming language to some.

I take it for some it reads like an invitation to those with little to 
nothing better to do, to report perceived or even made-up misbehavior.

It has run-on sentences and ridiculous lists. Compare, and I can't even 
bring myself to quote from the start of the sentence in the far distance:

"... regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender 
identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic 
status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual 
identity and orientation."

With Debian's:

"No matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we 
welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they 
interact constructively with our community."


How does one manage to separate gender identity and expression from 
sexual identity and orientation? Maybe one must take gender studies ... 
and biology? Disability is listed, not (level of) ability. Body size 
couldn't be be subsumed by (personal (what other kind could it be?)) 
appearance?
Trying so hard to be political correct, but than using the loaded term 
"race".


This one is too "funny":
"The project team is obligated to maintain confidentiality with regard 
to the reporter of an incident."

So if Jim reports that Jane threatened him to foobar his baz, then the 
project team has to contact Jane, but must keep it secret that Jim 
reported the issue? While being fair to Jane? Maybe such threats are 
illegal in the countries of both, maybe it's actually one country and 
police and the judicature might get involved?

If the reporter is a 3rd party, sure, but even then an accused person 
may express anger towards the potential victim, via assuming that the 
potential victim reported personally.

Now there may be cases where protecting a reporter is important and 
just, but this "protecting any accuser, always" stance seems problematic.


> 3. GKCG seems to be inadequate in the opinion of the maintainers, as:
> a. it does not define acceptable behaviour, and
> b. it does not define processes.
> 
> My conclusion is that neither document really cuts the bill.
> 
> I proposed to try to roll our own, essentially based on GKCG,
> but have the acceptable behaviour and the processes defined.
> 
> Do you think this can/should be done?
> Do you think that this could result in a better situation overall?

Yes and yes, though I'm not sure how much of a GKCG-alike it should 
become, as I think it's important to have something short that people 
can read and agree with (or not).


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Thorsten Wilms writes:

> On 28/10/2018 13.33, Gábor Boskovits wrote:
>> 1. There is general consensus that having both CoC and GKCG is pointless.
>
> ACK
>
>> 2. CoC is not welcome by all, mainly because they feel that it
>> discourages contributions.
>
> That's a somewhat limited and tame take on it ;)
> You may count me as having contributed (little as it was) despite of
> the CC, definitively not because of it.

I for one am very glad you decided to contribute!

> The association with the primary author makes some people think of the
> ... fighting stance of her, the anti-meritocracy thing and her use of
> 2nd-hand "quotes" to get people into trouble (trying to keep it short
> here, thus far from exact).

I think if you make these assertions you might want to bring context.
As it stands it reads a little like "poisoning the well": you seem to
imply the CC is bad because allegedly the author has done bad things in
the past.

> While one may say that the CC can and should be seen on its own, this
> background does turn it into ... unwelcoming language to some.
>
> I take it for some it reads like an invitation to those with little to
> nothing better to do, to report perceived or even made-up misbehavior.

And that assumption by those people would be, to the best of my
knowledge of the actual facts, incorrect.

> It has run-on sentences and ridiculous lists. Compare, and I can't
> even bring myself to quote from the start of the sentence in the far
> distance:
>
> "... regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender
> identity and expression, level of experience, education,
> socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race,
> religion, or sexual identity and orientation."
>
> With Debian's:
>
> "No matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we
> welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they
> interact constructively with our community."
>
>
> How does one manage to separate gender identity and expression from
> sexual identity and orientation? Maybe one must take gender studies
> ...

Just to clarify, gender identity and expression refers to who you (feel
like you) are.  Sexual identity & orientation is about who you are
attracted to.

> and biology? Disability is listed, not (level of) ability. Body size
> couldn't be be subsumed by (personal (what other kind could it be?))
> appearance?  Trying so hard to be political correct, but than using
> the loaded term "race".
>
>
> This one is too "funny":
> "The project team is obligated to maintain confidentiality with regard
> to the reporter of an incident."

This is not uncommon in the context of harassment cases.

> So if Jim reports that Jane threatened him to foobar his baz, then the
> project team has to contact Jane, but must keep it secret that Jim
> reported the issue? While being fair to Jane? Maybe such threats are
> illegal in the countries of both, maybe it's actually one country and
> police and the judicature might get involved?
>
> If the reporter is a 3rd party, sure, but even then an accused person
> may express anger towards the potential victim, via assuming that the
> potential victim reported personally.
>
> Now there may be cases where protecting a reporter is important and
> just, but this "protecting any accuser, always" stance seems
> problematic.

This reads like hyperbole.  If somenoe makes a complaint about me, I
will be contacted by the maintainers.  They will discuss the nature of
the allegation with me, and hopefully I will be able to say "Shit, I had
no idea what I did had this impact on someone else in the community.
Thanks for bringing this to me.  Any idea how I can avoid this in
future?".

I don't see where the problem is there?

>> 3. GKCG seems to be inadequate in the opinion of the maintainers, as:
>> a. it does not define acceptable behaviour, and
>> b. it does not define processes.
>>
>> My conclusion is that neither document really cuts the bill.
>>
>> I proposed to try to roll our own, essentially based on GKCG,
>> but have the acceptable behaviour and the processes defined.
>>
>> Do you think this can/should be done?
>> Do you think that this could result in a better situation overall?
>
> Yes and yes, though I'm not sure how much of a GKCG-alike it should
> become, as I think it's important to have something short that people
> can read and agree with (or not).

Alex

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 29/10/2018 12.27, Alex Sassmannshausen wrote:

>> The association with the primary author makes some people think of the
>> ... fighting stance of her, the anti-meritocracy thing and her use of
>> 2nd-hand "quotes" to get people into trouble (trying to keep it short
>> here, thus far from exact).
> 
> I think if you make these assertions you might want to bring context.
> As it stands it reads a little like "poisoning the well": you seem to
> imply the CC is bad because allegedly the author has done bad things in
> the past.

No, I'm saying that some opposition is motivated by the desire to have 
nothing to do with her, whatsoever. In order to not go off-topic, I 
tried to outline where the intensity might come from in short form.

Of course the rational thing is to separate the CoC from its primary 
author. But then CoC supporters like to explain how offense depends on 
the feeling of those offended, so maybe you might not want to declare 
this aspect of it to be meaningless.

Discussions regarding the CoC and Ehmke tend to attract problematic 
comments, but the start of this seems reasonable enough:
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/974038-why-the-linux-coc-is-bad/

Two interesting reactions to attempts to establish the CoC in projects:
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004#note-95
http://paul-m-jones.com/archives/6214


>> I take it for some it reads like an invitation to those with little to
>> nothing better to do, to report perceived or even made-up misbehavior.
> 
> And that assumption by those people would be, to the best of my
> knowledge of the actual facts, incorrect.

This depends solely on whether there are people like that (numerous 
enough to matter).


>> How does one manage to separate gender identity and expression from
>> sexual identity and orientation? Maybe one must take gender studies
>> ...
> 
> Just to clarify, gender identity and expression refers to who you (feel
> like you) are.  Sexual identity & orientation is about who you are
> attracted to.

I get gender identity and expression and orientation, but honestly don't 
understand what sexual identity is supposed to mean in distinction. 
Wikipedia makes it seem to be identical to sexual orientation. 
Biological sex doesn't appear at all!?


>> So if Jim reports that Jane threatened him to foobar his baz, then the
>> project team has to contact Jane, but must keep it secret that Jim
>> reported the issue? While being fair to Jane? Maybe such threats are
>> illegal in the countries of both, maybe it's actually one country and
>> police and the judicature might get involved?
>>
>> If the reporter is a 3rd party, sure, but even then an accused person
>> may express anger towards the potential victim, via assuming that the
>> potential victim reported personally.
>>
>> Now there may be cases where protecting a reporter is important and
>> just, but this "protecting any accuser, always" stance seems
>> problematic.
> 
> This reads like hyperbole.  If somenoe makes a complaint about me, I
> will be contacted by the maintainers.  They will discuss the nature of
> the allegation with me, and hopefully I will be able to say "Shit, I had
> no idea what I did had this impact on someone else in the community.
> Thanks for bringing this to me.  Any idea how I can avoid this in
> future?".
> 
> I don't see where the problem is there?

The problem is you completely ignored the problem of maintaining 
confidentiality while letting the accused know _exactly_ what the 
accusation is about.

The CoC encourages "believe the accuser" and "guilty until proven 
innocent" for the accused.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Thorsten,

> On 29/10/2018 12.27, Alex Sassmannshausen wrote:
>
>>> The association with the primary author makes some people think of the
>>> ... fighting stance of her, the anti-meritocracy thing and her use of
>>> 2nd-hand "quotes" to get people into trouble (trying to keep it short
>>> here, thus far from exact).
>>
>> I think if you make these assertions you might want to bring context.
>> As it stands it reads a little like "poisoning the well": you seem to
>> imply the CC is bad because allegedly the author has done bad things in
>> the past.
>
> No, I'm saying that some opposition is motivated by the desire to have
> nothing to do with her, whatsoever. In order to not go off-topic, I
> tried to outline where the intensity might come from in short form.
>
> Of course the rational thing is to separate the CoC from its primary
> author. But then CoC supporters like to explain how offense depends on
> the feeling of those offended, so maybe you might not want to declare
> this aspect of it to be meaningless.
>
> Discussions regarding the CoC and Ehmke tend to attract problematic
> comments, but the start of this seems reasonable enough:
> https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/974038-why-the-linux-coc-is-bad/
>
> Two interesting reactions to attempts to establish the CoC in projects:
> https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004#note-95
> http://paul-m-jones.com/archives/6214

Please try to avoid redirecting the focus of this thread by referencing
unrelated topics.

The Guix maintainers have used the CoC in the past to investigate and
respond to harassment reports.  I would appreciate it if you didn’t make
assumptions about how this happens when you don’t have that kind of
information and you don’t shoulder this responsibility.  Otherwise
people might easily misunderstand your comments.

--
Ricardo

OF-TOPIC: Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Tonton]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2018 18:00:28 +0100
Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@freenet.de> wrote:

> >> How does one manage to separate gender identity and expression from
> >> sexual identity and orientation? Maybe one must take gender studies
> >> ...  
> > 
> > Just to clarify, gender identity and expression refers to who you (feel
> > like you) are.  Sexual identity & orientation is about who you are
> > attracted to.  
> 
> I get gender identity and expression and orientation, but honestly don't 
> understand what sexual identity is supposed to mean in distinction. 
> Wikipedia makes it seem to be identical to sexual orientation. 
> Biological sex doesn't appear at all!?
> 
Biological sex is what it is, though there are way more than 2. Sexual
identity is about your sexual identity, while orientation is about
attraction.

Recommended:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hmULQc5jIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoUORx0LeIc

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81-FEauK9II
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ9ly4cK9tg

> 
> The CoC encourages "believe the accuser" and "guilty until proven 
> innocent" for the accused.
> 

It encourages believe the accuser (often termed victim). This does not imply
guilt for another part. Very few things are black and white.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hello,

Gábor Boskovits writes:

> I have a feeling that I might confuse some things, as this thread is
> getting rather long, so let me summarize what I have on my mind so
> far:
>
> 1. There is general consensus that having both CoC and GKCG is pointless.
> 2. CoC is not welcome by all, mainly because they feel that it
> discourages contributions.
> 3. GKCG seems to be inadequate in the opinion of the maintainers, as:
> a. it does not define acceptable behaviour, and
> b. it does not define processes.
>
> My conclusion is that neither document really cuts the bill.
>
> I proposed to try to roll our own, essentially based on GKCG,
> but have the acceptable behaviour and the processes defined.
>
> Do you think this can/should be done?
> Do you think that this could result in a better situation overall?

I appreciate the motivation behind this effort.  Personally I think it
is better to stick with a widely used, and fairly robust policy.  In
addition, rolling our own will be a very long, exhausting process, and
we'll likely end up with a document that still doesn't please everyone.

Just my 2¢.

Alex

>
> Best regards,
> g_bor

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Björn Höfling]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 15353 bytes --]

Hi HiPhish,

thank you very much for your insights. Others just said that they are
against the CoC and its politics, you brought up arguments. Thank you.
Though I have a slightly different view on it that I will explain. Note
these are my personal thoughts, I don't know what the Guix maintainers
think about it. I hope it is understandable, as I'm not a native
speaker I had to search for words and hopefully used them right.


On Sun, 28 Oct 2018 12:58:51 +0100
HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de> wrote:

[..]
 
> There is no problem of harassment in FLOSS, there is a problem of
> socially awkward nerds in FLOSS.

I agree in one point with you: In tech, there are so many nerds. People
who are shy. Who don't know how to talk to others. Who focus on
technology. Who are awesomely good in their tech field. And who don't
know how to cope with other human beings and because of that they could
cause irritations or injuries on the other side.

> Harassment presupposes malice, i.e.
> that the offending person is intentionally being abusive. If you have
> never said anything that made you want to vanish into the ground the
> moment it came out of your mouth you are not human. Some people will
> slip up more often than others, and let's face it: the people who are
> more likely to slip up are also more often the ones
> who are good at programming. Why is it this way? I don't know, I'm
> not a psychologist or anthropologist, I just need to know that this
> is the way things
> are.
> 
> Now here is the important part: for an offensive act to be committed
> it takes two sides, the offender and the offended. Part of social
> competence is knowing not to slip up, but part of it is also knowing
> to just let it slide when someone else slips up. Again, I'm not
> talking just about online discourse, but social interaction in
> general. When someone says something stupid just ignore that person,
> and if it keeps happening try to correct them in a friendly manner.
> This is how we grow as humans.

It doesn't matter if harassment stems from malicious intent or just
from foolishness (I believe the biggest nerd currently sits in the
white house and he doesn't know better, but that doesn't make it
better for the people being his target). The only thing that cares is
that the target person feels harassed (To avoid that word and its
blaming/biased sound, I will use the words "actor" and "target" for the
persons involved). And yes, that is totally subjective to the target. If
he/she/they have that feeling, they have it. I will come back to that
point later.

Concerning the target part, you formulated "just let it slide when
someone else slips up": Depending on who said it, how it was said, how
deep it hurt, etc that might be a reaction. Once. Twice (Or at least
that used to be the reaction in the last century?). But every time
you let something hurtful just go through, two things happen:
First you give the acting part the feedback that this behavior is
accepted (and can be repeated). And secondly you bring them in an
acting role and yourself in a re-acting one (if at all, it might be
better described as an "ambient" role, like the room around has [cmp.
women who silently "accept/agree into" sexual abuse]).

Furthermore, there happen to be some portions of humanity that have the
bad luck to be just "slipped upon" more often than others. They might
be intelligent, they might have a diploma [why at all do they need to
justify?!], they have just -- by some random distribution and
"evaluation function" -- the "wrong" skin-color, the "wrong" birth
place, the "wrong" language, the "wrong" sex, the "wrong" non-binary
sexual identity that society cannot cope with or take whatever. Because
they got beaten up more often by random, unimportant features, we call
them minorities.

And for those who are the targets it is no longer "just a joke", "just
once" or whatever. They get harassed, targeted too often.


> This leads me into why the CC is a harmful CoC. The CC presupposes
> malice by default, more than half of its content is focused on
> punitive measures, not on helping each other. In contrast, the GNU
> Kind Communications Guidelines (GKCG in short) explicitly promotes a
> cooperative two-sided perspective:
> 
> > Please assume other participants are posting in good faith, even if
> > you disagree with what they say. When people present code or text
> > as their own work, please accept it as their work. Please do not
> > criticize people for wrongs that you only speculate they may have
> > done; stick to what they actually say and actually do.

[..]

For me, "please" is a too relaxed word here. That's why I'm against
the GKCG. It is not at all a pleasure for the target person. It is about
stopping the act that violates target immediately.


> There is nothing like this in the CC, but there is this:
> 
> > Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior
> > may be reported by contacting the project team at [INSERT EMAIL
> > ADDRESS]. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated and will
> > result in a response that is deemed necessary and appropriate to
> > the circumstances. The project team is obligated to maintain
> > confidentiality with regard to the reporter of an incident. Further
> > details of specific enforcement policies may be posted separately.

In my view, this is an unfair quotation/comparison. For reference, I'm
tanking my quotes from the text version:

https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct.txt

I would compare somehow the whole "Please"-series of the GKCG with the
"Our Standards" part of the CoC, where good and bad behavior is
explained (maybe it would have been better to use full sentences here),
quoting the first two positives here:

* Using welcoming and inclusive language
* Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences

To me, the GKCG looks more like rules between equally powerful actors,
be it like in martial arts with the same belts or GNU hackers with the
(more or less) same cultural background and education. "Please guys
[intentionally using the male pronoun here] you know the rules, be
polite and fair to each other. If someone is a bit rude, you know, he
doesn't mean it, you know that, come back to the rules please. Please
calm down guys, no more flamewars, debate about the code like the old
greeks did about philosophy."

It's not meant to protect a minority target from a majority/powerful
actor.


> >
> > Project maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of
> > Conduct in good faith may face temporary or permanent repercussions
> > as determined by other members of the project’s leadership.  
> 
> The CC is claiming to foster "an open and welcoming environment"
> while at the same time holding a gun to every maintainer's head.

The part with the gun feels awkward to me. I would say it differently,
and that word is also used in the CoC: The project maintainers have the
re-sponsibility to (re-)act whenever someone feels to be a target of
harassment, abuse, pressure, uncomfortable behavior, or whatever you
call it. Any incident when someone feels hurt.

It is like an employer has the responsibility for the employees. The
employer has to protect them, from work accidents and from threads from
other employees or customers. And the maintainer is the one who has the
power to do so: Zhe [trying to be as gener-neutral as possible here] can
grant or revoke submitting rights, can block IRC channels, can block on
the majordomo. Zhe can and should use that power to stop violate acts
against a member. That power can be abused of cause, but then we
should deal with that abusage behaviour.


> The
> accused is not even allowed to know what the accusation is about
> (confidentiality clause), so how are they supposed to know what they
> did was wrong? There is no clause that allows the accused to defend
> their position, only punishment is defined. This applies even to the
> maintainer, so if they maintainer wants to protect an unjustly
> accused person, the maintainer will be on the chopping block. 

The important part here is to protect the target/victim. If they must
fear more abuse, more hate we have to protect them and give them our
word that we don't betray them.

If that is assured, we should give as much as possible explanations
what, against whom, why, etc some behavior was wrong.


> To make
> matters worse, the CC never defines what constitutes offensive
> behaviour. Take a look at the following list:
> 
> > * The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual
> > attention   
> or
> >   advances
> > * Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or
> > political attacks
> > * Public or private harassment
> > * Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or
> > electronic address, without explicit permission
> > * Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate
> > in a professional setting  
> 
> The fourth point is clear, but what exactly constitutes any of the
> remaining four? Is "Wow, thank you so much, I could kiss you!"
> considered "unwelcome sexual attention" or just an exaggerated
> expression of joy? Is overhearing people talking about "dongles" and
> "forking repos" considered unwanted sexual attention? 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. Do you think
> this makes for a healthy community?
> 
> The GKCG does not even attempt to define what qualifies as
> unacceptable, because unless you pay a lawyer to write a tens of
> pages long document which no
> one will read, you will never have a sufficient definition. Truly
> money well spent.

As I wrote in the beginning, this is totally subjective what hurts.
Whenever someone felt hurt, it is a fact that this person felt hurt
and asked maintainer for help. That's why it is open, and only with
examples.

The question here -- that society in general has in this debate -- is
how someone who interacts with other persons can assure to do the
"right" thing without feeling restricted in normal life. How to
express ones overwhelming emotions without offending someone,
scandalizing things. How to get the attraction of a person, how to
interact physically with them, even in a job-situation without
getting into trouble. And the nerd wants that to be formalized, to
have a set of rules to obey and then it works.

That's not possible. Low is an attempt to formalize that. A first order
approximation. A trade-off. Law has to balance between the two sides:
The "attacker" and the "attacked" and needs to ensure the freedom
and actionability of both of them. But beyond that there is more, call
it "respectfullness". And
society is currently more focusing on this gray area. And yes, it might
cost someone the job although that person wasn't spoken guilty in a
juridical sense.

We should find a good balance and I think Guix had that balance in the
past. To quickly step into and say that a word, a pronoun, a physical
behavior was inappropriate (for the target, the community) and must be
stopped immediately. Only if that goes on, there should be other
consequences.

 
> As for the last point, if you really want to remove anything that
> would be inappropriate in a professional setting, you have to go all
> out. No "I could kiss you", but also no informalities, no emotion,
> and the project maintainer will have to sign all his mails not with
> "Ludo'" or "Ludovic", but as "Mr Courtès", RMS becomes "Dr.
> Stallman", Guix becomes "The GNU Guix project", no Hacker culture
> jokes and quips the manual, and so on. If this what you want?

Its not about getting more formal or "colder". Emotions, nerdiness,
cool jokes, sarcasm, talking against institutions and persons. All
allowed. Thinking out a short name/pet name for yourself and then being
called by others with that name is totally OK (Calling someone else
with out their consent is not, its getting worse if that name stems
from disabilities, racial membership, etc). With "I would kiss you" I
would be careful. If you know the person personally/physically and that
person likes to be physical (with you), OK. But in an anonymous online
conversation: no. I know at last one person with whom I do not want to
kiss. And where the announcement of that feels ugly. No thanks. Borders
trespassed.


> 
> As a closing thought, I wish to address my opening statement that
> CoCs are one of the worst things to happen in recent years to FLOSS.
> The argument with which
> CoCs are "sold" to FLOSS projects is that there is problem of
> harassment in the
> community which prevents people from contributing. And yet I have to
> see any project where contributions have improved as a result of
> adopting a CoC, where people who were previously harassed became
> contributors. In fact, I have yet to
> see any actual harassment, and not just socially awkward nerds being
> socially awkward.

It is impossible to measure where a project would stay now if a
harassment wouldn't have been there. These harassed people are just not
there and you don't know anything about them, its like dark matter
instead of colorful light. If you look around and search, you will
find plenty examples where people received unrespectful behaviour and
quit. How to evaluate that loss? Wheater you call that "harassment" or
not. Something happend to the victims/target. 

Example: Sage Sharp left the kernel development:

https://sage.thesharps.us/2015/10/05/closing-a-door/

How good would have been the USB 3.0 driver now, or the
community documentation, when he would have continued his work with
passion in a respectful community?


> 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. 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. Yet none of those people
> end up contributing to the projects they disrupt. Is the damage you
> invite really worth it?

I haven't yet read enough about the author of CC to draw my conclusions.
At least what I can say is that the author uses a lot of sarcasm at
places where direct, polite speech would have been more appropriate.

I believe that the Guix community is quite good when it comes to
practical issues with the CoC: They act immediately and try to cool
discussion down quickly. I hope we can hold long term contributors even
if they do mistakes. My impression is that we loose some because prior
to anything happening they somehow feel restricted or observed with a
CoC. That restriction is more in their head than in reality. I would
encourage them to go on, to contribute, and if something crosses
borders, that can be handled.

Thanks again for your discussions,

Björn

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Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 29/10/2018 09.23, Björn Höfling wrote:
> Example: Sage Sharp left the kernel development:
> 
> https://sage.thesharps.us/2015/10/05/closing-a-door/
> 
> How good would have been the USB 3.0 driver now, or the
> community documentation, when he would have continued his work with
> passion in a respectful community?

Sage may feel you mis-gendered them, as they prefer they/them. Please be 
respectful ;)

Sage advocates the CoC and called an opponent a "rape apologist", based 
on not just a mean spirited interpretation, but rather factually wrong. 
I think this qualifies as slander.

https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1042769399596437504
using as reference:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Rape_apology_on_LCA_mailing_list

This is a prime example of what may make one suspicious of CoCs and the 
Covenant in particular, when people who want them do things like that. 
It looks like war, with the usual effects on truth and fairness.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hi Thorsten,

Thorsten Wilms writes:

> On 29/10/2018 09.23, Björn Höfling wrote:
>> Example: Sage Sharp left the kernel development:
>>
>> https://sage.thesharps.us/2015/10/05/closing-a-door/
>>
>> How good would have been the USB 3.0 driver now, or the
>> community documentation, when he would have continued his work with
>> passion in a respectful community?
>
> Sage may feel you mis-gendered them, as they prefer they/them. Please
> be respectful ;)

Thank you for letting us know; I certainly would aim want to respect
their preference.

> Sage advocates the CoC and called an opponent a "rape apologist",
> based on not just a mean spirited interpretation, but rather factually
> wrong. I think this qualifies as slander.
>
> https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1042769399596437504
> using as reference:
> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Rape_apology_on_LCA_mailing_list

I'm sorry, I'm not clear on where the factual incorrectness was in the
things you linked to above.  I did not follow the original debate in
detail so am going on the links you provide.

> This is a prime example of what may make one suspicious of CoCs and
> the Covenant in particular, when people who want them do things like
> that. It looks like war, with the usual effects on truth and fairness.

I'm not seeing this from what you linked to.

Best wishes,

Alex

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 29/10/2018 12.13, Alex Sassmannshausen wrote:

>> https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1042769399596437504
>> using as reference:
>> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Rape_apology_on_LCA_mailing_list
> 
> I'm sorry, I'm not clear on where the factual incorrectness was in the
> things you linked to above.  I did not follow the original debate in
> detail so am going on the links you provide.

If you read what was quoted from Theodore Tso's email and now think that 
calling him a rape apologist is warranted, then, as the very least, I 
have to doubt your reading comprehension.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Thorsten,

I’m replying to your email, but this message is also a general comment
about this discussion.

> On 29/10/2018 12.13, Alex Sassmannshausen wrote:
>
>>> https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1042769399596437504
>>> using as reference:
>>> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Rape_apology_on_LCA_mailing_list
>>
>> I'm sorry, I'm not clear on where the factual incorrectness was in the
>> things you linked to above.  I did not follow the original debate in
>> detail so am going on the links you provide.
>
> If you read what was quoted from Theodore Tso's email and now think
> that calling him a rape apologist is warranted, then, as the very
> least, I have to doubt your reading comprehension.

Please let’s not go down tangents like this.  Sage and Theodore Ts’o are
not contributors to Guix, nor is Coraline Ada Ehmke, so I would not want
to discuss their activities in the context of this discussion.

This community has been using the Code of Conduct for quite some time
now, and I think we’ve been doing pretty well so far.  If you would like
to improve the text of the Code of Conduct to clarify it, I would like
to encourage you to submit a patch draft here:

    https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant

The text has undergone a series of revisions that demonstrate that the
exact wording is not set in stone and that communities are willing to
update the text to reduce misunderstandings.

Discussing this here on this mailing list is likely not going to have
the effect that you may be hoping for as the CoC is a tool that the
maintainers have decided to adopt.

If you have concrete suggestions to improve the text in the context of
Guix and you think that it would not be applicable to the text that our
CoC is based on, then please contact the maintainers: ludo@gnu.org and
rekado@elephly.net.

Thank you!

--
Ricardo

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Björn Höfling]

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On Mon, 29 Oct 2018 11:10:42 +0100
Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@freenet.de> wrote:

> On 29/10/2018 09.23, Björn Höfling wrote:
> > Example: Sage Sharp left the kernel development:
> > 
> > https://sage.thesharps.us/2015/10/05/closing-a-door/
> > 
> > How good would have been the USB 3.0 driver now, or the
> > community documentation, when he would have continued his work with
> > passion in a respectful community?  
> 
> Sage may feel you mis-gendered them, as they prefer they/them. Please
> be respectful ;)

I'm sorry. I will more focus on my pronouns next time. Thanks for
reminding me.

Björn

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Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hello,

I strongly support the CC and a specific CoC. Just to put my cards on
the table.

HiPhish writes:

> I have had two packages merged, which I guess that makes me technically a
> contributor, so here is my takes on the issue.
>
> In my opinion Codes of Conduct (or CoCs in short) are one of the worst things
> that have happened in recent years to Free and Open Source projects (hold that
> though, I will address it soon enough), and the Contributor Covenant (CC in
> short) is the worst offender. I will explain shortly why this is, but please
> allow me to elaborate first.
>
> There is no problem of harassment in FLOSS, there is a problem of socially
> awkward nerds in FLOSS.

I think you a have burden of proof here, given that our culture at large
has serious issues with harassment.  Why would you think FLOSS community
is somehow different from the wider community?

> Harassment presupposes malice, i.e. that the offending person is
> intentionally being abusive.

You can harass someone whilst believing your acting positively.  E.g. an
ex-partner that "just wants to show how much they love the person that
spurned them".  And ends up stalking them.

> If you have never said anything that made you want to vanish into the
> ground the moment it came out of your mouth you are not human. Some
> people will slip up more often than others, and let's face it: the
> people who are more likely to slip up are also more often the ones who
> are good at programming. Why is it this way? I don't know, I'm not a
> psychologist or anthropologist, I just need to know that this is the
> way things are.
>
> Now here is the important part: for an offensive act to be committed it takes
> two sides, the offender and the offended. Part of social competence is knowing
> not to slip up, but part of it is also knowing to just let it slide when
> someone else slips up.

You're conflating harassment and offense here.  It is one thing to be
offended by individuals using the wrong cutlery for the entrée; it is
another entirely for someone to, e.g. use crass racist caricatures.

> Again, I'm not talking just about online discourse, but social
> interaction in general. When someone says something stupid just ignore
> that person, and if it keeps happening try to correct them in a
> friendly manner. This is how we grow as humans.
>
> This leads me into why the CC is a harmful CoC. The CC presupposes malice by
> default, more than half of its content is focused on punitive measures, not on
> helping each other. In contrast, the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines (GKCG
> in short) explicitly promotes a cooperative two-sided perspective:
>
>> Please assume other participants are posting in good faith, even if you
>> disagree with what they say. When people present code or text as their own
>> work, please accept it as their work. Please do not criticize people for
>> wrongs that you only speculate they may have done; stick to what they
>> actually say and actually do.
>>
>> Please do not take a harsh tone towards other participants, and especially
>> don't make personal attacks against them. Go out of your way to show that
> you
>> are criticizing a statement, not a person.
>>
>> Please recognize that criticism of your statements is not a personal attack
>> on you. If you feel that someone has attacked you, or offended your personal
>> dignity, please don't “hit back” with another personal attack. That tends to
>> start a vicious circle of escalating verbal aggression. A private response,
>> politely stating your feelings as feelings, and asking for peace, may calm
>> things down. Write it, set it aside for hours or a day, revise it to remove
>> the anger, and only then send it.
>
> There is nothing like this in the CC, but there is this:
>
>> Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be
>> reported by contacting the project team at [INSERT EMAIL ADDRESS]. All
>> complaints will be reviewed and investigated and will result in a response
>> that is deemed necessary and appropriate to the circumstances. The project
>> team is obligated to maintain confidentiality with regard to the reporter of
>> an incident. Further details of specific enforcement policies may be posted
>> separately.
>>
>> Project maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct in good
>> faith may face temporary or permanent repercussions as determined by other
>> members of the project’s leadership.
>
> The CC is claiming to foster "an open and welcoming environment" while at the
> same time holding a gun to every maintainer's head. The accused is not even
> allowed to know what the accusation is about (confidentiality clause), so how
> are they supposed to know what they did was wrong? There is no clause that
> allows the accused to defend their position, only punishment is defined. This
> applies even to the maintainer, so if they maintainer wants to protect an
> unjustly accused person, the maintainer will be on the chopping block. To make
> matters worse, the CC never defines what constitutes offensive behaviour.
> Take
> a look at the following list:
>
>> * The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention
> or
>>   advances
>> * Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
>> * Public or private harassment
>> * Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic
>>   address, without explicit permission
>> * Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a
>>   professional setting
>
> The fourth point is clear, but what exactly constitutes any of the remaining
> four? Is "Wow, thank you so much, I could kiss you!" considered "unwelcome
> sexual attention" or just an exaggerated expression of joy? Is overhearing
> people talking about "dongles" and "forking repos" considered unwanted sexual
> attention? 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. Do you think this
> makes for a healthy community?
>
> The GKCG does not even attempt to define what qualifies as unacceptable,
> because unless you pay a lawyer to write a tens of pages long document which
> no
> one will read, you will never have a sufficient definition. Truly money well
> spent.
>
> As for the last point, if you really want to remove anything that would be
> inappropriate in a professional setting, you have to go all out. No "I could
> kiss you", but also no informalities, no emotion, and the project maintainer
> will have to sign all his mails not with "Ludo'" or "Ludovic", but as "Mr
> Courtès", RMS becomes "Dr. Stallman", Guix becomes "The GNU Guix project", no
> Hacker culture jokes and quips the manual, and so on. If this what you want?
>
> As a closing thought, I wish to address my opening statement that CoCs are one
> of the worst things to happen in recent years to FLOSS. The argument with
> which
> CoCs are "sold" to FLOSS projects is that there is problem of harassment in
> the
> community which prevents people from contributing. And yet I have to see any
> project where contributions have improved as a result of adopting a CoC, where
> people who were previously harassed became contributors. In fact, I have yet
> to
> see any actual harassment, and not just socially awkward nerds being socially
> awkward. 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. 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. Yet none of
> those people end up contributing to the projects they disrupt. Is the damage
> you invite really worth it?

I personally am not aware of such behaviour.  I think if you bring these
accusations into this thread it might be worth having some evidence
perhaps?

Dunno.

> Guix is too important of a project, functional package management is the only
> proper solution to package management.

All the more important we do everything we can to minimise the existing
barriers to contributions from all walks of life.

> I believe there are interest groups of proprietary software companies
> who would rather want projects like Flatpak succeed, which are more
> applicable to proprietary software. Please don't let them hold a gun
> to every contributor's head by inviting trouble into the project.

This reads hyperbolic, if not somewhat conspiratorial to me.  No guns
are being held to anyone's head, no life's endangered or violence even
threatened.  I also disagree with the implication that harassment
complaints might be weapons used by a nefarious competing party.

> You have people in this very thread who are afraid of contributing,
> and even I was considering leaving my packages just sitting on my
> local hard drive rather than submitting them upstream, but as the GKCG
> says: "Please assume other participants are posting in good faith,
> even if you disagree with what they say."

If you don't mind me asking, what are you afraid of?

Best wishes,

Alex

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

On Monday, 29 October 2018 12:08:56 CET you wrote:
> I think you a have burden of proof here, given that our culture at large
> has serious issues with harassment.  Why would you think FLOSS community
> is somehow different from the wider community?
No, you have a burden of proof that "our" culture (whatever this "our" is 
supposed to mean, I have no idea where you live and you have no idea where I 
live) has a serious issue with harassment.

> You can harass someone whilst believing your acting positively.  E.g. an
> ex-partner that "just wants to show how much they love the person that
> spurned them".  And ends up stalking them.
You cannot accidentally stalk someone. Stalkers who are not aware they are 
harassing have a mental disorder. Calling them harassers is against the terms 
of the CC because it is discrimination by disability. See how easy it is to 
break the terms of the CC?

> You're conflating harassment and offense here.  It is one thing to be
> offended by individuals using the wrong cutlery for the entrée; it is
> another entirely for someone to, e.g. use crass racist caricatures.
You intentionally chose the most extreme examples.

> All the more important we do everything we can to minimise the existing
> barriers to contributions from all walks of life.
By pointing a gun at the people most likely to contribute?

> This reads hyperbolic, if not somewhat conspiratorial to me.  No guns
> are being held to anyone's head, no life's endangered or violence even
> threatened.  I also disagree with the implication that harassment
> complaints might be weapons used by a nefarious competing party.
People are putting their careers on the line even by having this discussion in 
the first place. There is a reason why I am using a pseudonym. I have provided 
links to the other guy of people who had their jobs ruined under the pretense 
of a CoC. The people who made the accusations never ended up filling the void 
themselves, they only go around destroying.

> If you don't mind me asking, what are you afraid of?
See above.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Tonton]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2018 19:50:05 +0100
HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de> wrote:

> On Monday, 29 October 2018 12:08:56 CET you wrote:
> > I think you a have burden of proof here, given that our culture at large
> > has serious issues with harassment.  Why would you think FLOSS community
> > is somehow different from the wider community?  
> No, you have a burden of proof that "our" culture (whatever this "our" is 
> supposed to mean, I have no idea where you live and you have no idea where
> I live) has a serious issue with harassment.

You, me, Alex and the rest of Guix share a culture. I'm assuming that is the
culture Alex refers to, not the cultures of our distinct offline locale.

Also, the burden of proof really is with HiPhish. Harassment in tech, and
FLOSS especially has been well documented. See for example:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/FLOSS
https://lwn.net/Articles/417952/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/05/open_source_developer_survey_2017/
for a start.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

On Tuesday, 30 October 2018 00:54:54 CET you wrote:> 
> You, me, Alex and the rest of Guix share a culture. I'm assuming that is the
> culture Alex refers to, not the cultures of our distinct offline locale.
What culture am I sharing with you? I am not a hacker, I only care about code 
quality, just as only care about the plumbing of my toilet and not plumber 
culture. I also care about software Freedom because I have been bitten in the 
behind often enough by proprietary software to know that it is wrong. I care 
about Guix because functional package management is the only sane way of 
package management. What is the alternative to Guix? Flatpak and other opaque 
systems suitable for bundling proprietary software?

> Also, the burden of proof really is with HiPhish. Harassment in tech, and
> FLOSS especially has been well documented. See for example:
> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/FLOSS
> https://lwn.net/Articles/417952/
> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/05/open_source_developer_survey_2017/
> for a start.
I asked for proof, not "she said, he said". Except this is just "she said". 
What if that "groping" as some guy brushing at her butt in a crowd by 
accident? I have a really hard time believing that there is an epidemic of 
serial gropers at tech conferences. Does that mean no one gets groped? Of 
course not, even I had my butt slapped in the past by girls, but so what?

Here is a question for you: why are you taking these reports for granted? Do 
you not consider the possibility that isolated issues are being blown out of 
proportion by malicious agents? The incidents don't even have to be fake, the 
offender might be a malicious agent as well. Free and Open Source projects are 
a problem for proprietary software companies and any means to disrupt the 
projects is acceptable. Why do you think the CC is so focused on punishment 
and not healing?

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Nils Gillmann]

What HiPhish and some people in the threads are doing starts to
look like strawmen argumentations, and not just today.

For once take a look at the surprisingly LOW amount of times
the CoC had to be refered to in our 5 years, where the CoC
existed 3 years of them.
Yes, it it not perfect, some people left but it had different
reasons. Start reading into the past before you judge the
present of a project. Even without the CoC, most of us share
the view to create a welcoming community.
Can we just move on? No one seems to get to a new point
here, everyone moves in circles. If that's what you want
it's okay but move it to another mailinglist.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hello,

I agree with Ricardo's email that really we should be discussing the CoC
in relation to specific patches against it, to avoid circular debate.
So I will only respond to the specific bit directly asking me to provide
evidence.

HiPhish writes:

> On Monday, 29 October 2018 12:08:56 CET you wrote:
>> I think you a have burden of proof here, given that our culture at large
>> has serious issues with harassment.  Why would you think FLOSS community
>> is somehow different from the wider community?
> No, you have a burden of proof that "our" culture (whatever this "our" is
> supposed to mean, I have no idea where you live and you have no idea where I
> live) has a serious issue with harassment.

[I apologise for the narrow focus on sexual / gender / sex based focus
of the stats below; it's what I'm most familiar with.]

"According to a TUC/Everyday Sexism study on sexual harassment, 52% of
women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and 80% did
not report it to their employer."
[https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=9127932a-455f-4d0c-909d-3563c17dc7c5,
available from
https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace]

"In 2014, SSH commissioned a 2,000-person national survey in the USA with
surveying firm GfK. The survey found that 65% of all women had
experienced street harassment. Among all women, 23% had been sexually
touched, 20% had been followed, and 9% had been forced to do something
sexual. Among men, 25% had been street harassed (a higher percentage of
LGBT-identified men than heterosexual men reported this) and their most
common form of harassment was homophobic or transphobic slurs (9%)."
http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/resources/statistics/

"Almost fully one third of the approximately 90,000 charges received by
EEOC in fiscal year 2015 included an allegation of workplace
harassment. This includes, among other things, charges of unlawful
harassment on the basis of sex (including sexual orientation, gender
identity, and pregnancy), race, disability, age, ethnicity/national
origin, color, and religion." and "Roughly three out of four individuals
who experienced harassment never even talked to a supervisor, manager,
or union representative about the harassing conduct."
[from https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/task_force/harassment/report_summary.cfm]

In 2012, in Belgium, the film Femme de la Rue directly influenced the
passing of legislation to make street harassment
illegal. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/03/belgium-film-street-harassment-sofie-peeters]
It also helped kick-start movements in Belgium and France where street
harassment is fairly common.  In london, UK, 4 in 10 women between ages
of 18 and 34 experienced street harassment in 2011 alone
[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/may/25/four-10-women-sexually-harassed].

"54% (272) had experienced some form of workplace sexual harassment."
This is from a 2008 study in Singapore
[http://www.aware.org.sg/training/wsh-site/14-statistics/].

The stats bear out 2 things: a) harassment is very prevalent; b) if
anything, harassment is underreported, not overreported.

Of course the above are all related to a relatively narrow geographic
domain.  I would be very surprised indeed if there was a place that
conducted similar studies, where the picture would not be roughly the
same or worse.

You are correct that I don't know where you're from, but it kind of
doesn't matter, because harassment, especially that on the basis of
gender, sex or sexuality, is a global phenomenon.

Best wishes,

Alex

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

There is a common pattern in all the links you provided: 1) only feminists are 
seeing this supposed issue, 2) it does not go into the exact nature of the 
supposed harassment.

With regards to the first point: Feminist group have vested interests in 
furthering conflicts. Even if there is no conflict they will try to create one 
and then sell you the solution, so please excuse my scepticism. Feminists are 
proven to keep fabricating issues, like the supposed wage gap. So yes, I am 
really doubting the veracity of those claims.

You know what? When you go into a field filled with awkward nerds that's you 
occupational hazard. In other occupations you have other hazards: joint 
injuries from standing at an assembly line, getting your fingers crushed in a 
machine, falling off a construction site, contracting a disease in health 
care, having to dig through sewage in plumbing, being shot in law enforcement, 
or getting into legal problems in nursing. And don't get me started on clients 
with planet-sized egos holding back payment. I think when it comes to 
occupational hazards getting hit on by an awkward nerd is pretty harmless. 
It's certainly much less of an occupational hazard than for the people who are 
on the receiving end of an accusation and can lose their livelihood in an 
instant.

So please excuse me when I don't fall for the crocodile tears. We are talking 
about grown-up women here, not children.

> According to a TUC/Everyday Sexism study on sexual harassment, 52% of
> women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and 80% did
> not report it to their employer.
I am singling out this one as an example of data manipulation. Let's for the 
sake of simplicity assume that the data is 100% correct and has not been 
tampered with. Put yourself now in the shoes of an average woman: The question 
is "Have you experienced instances of sexual harassment in the workplace in 
the past?". You think a bit and remember Steve who made a dumb joke about your 
breasts during coffee break last month. So you answer with yes of course. Then 
the second question is "If so, did you report the incident to your employer?". 
Considering Steve is a shy guy, it was during coffee break, no one else joined 
in and after you gave him a stern look he got the message, you of course 
didn't consider it worth anyone's time to start office drama over pretty much 
nothing. So you answer with "no". And now your answer gets twisted into "Don't 
you see all these serious issues going unreported out of fear? You should hire 
our advocacy agency for sensibility training and diversity counseling. You 
have a nice business going here, it would be a shame is someone were to call 
it sexist".

> In 2012, in Belgium, the film Femme de la Rue directly influenced the
> passing of legislation to make street harassment
> illegal.
> [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/03/belgium-film-street-harassme
> nt-sofie-peeters] It also helped kick-start movements in Belgium and France
> where street harassment is fairly common.  In london, UK, 4 in 10 women
> between ages of 18 and 34 experienced street harassment in 2011 alone
> [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/may/25/four-10-women-sexually
> -harassed].
Don't you consider it kind of... problematic that the video only shows people 
from a, let's call it "diverse" background? Why doesn't she show us all the 
serial catcallers in the less diverse parts of Belgium? It couldn't be that 
she intentionally picked the bad part of town, now could it? I feel deeply 
offended by the implication of this video that people of colour are the 
primary source of sexual harassment.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

After this email I'm done with the conversation.  I have tried to
provide you with evidence.  You make it clear you have a bone to pick
with people concerned with gender equality.  This will go around in
circles.

HiPhish writes:

> There is a common pattern in all the links you provided: 1) only feminists are
> seeing this supposed issue, 2) it does not go into the exact nature of the
> supposed harassment.

The TUC is the trade union congress.  They are not a feminist
organisation.  The Belgian government is not a feminist organization.
The Guardian is a newspaper and the EEOC is a US government office.

> With regards to the first point: Feminist group have vested interests in
> furthering conflicts. Even if there is no conflict they will try to create one
> and then sell you the solution, so please excuse my scepticism. Feminists are
> proven to keep fabricating issues, like the supposed wage gap. So yes, I am
> really doubting the veracity of those claims.

Pff.  I won't even engage with this horse crap.

> You know what? When you go into a field filled with awkward nerds
> that's you occupational hazard.

My line of argument above was precisely that this does not only happen
in a field with "awkward nerds".  Also I find your assertion that
"nerds" are unable to behave decently to other people an insult to
myself and "nerds" as a whole.

> So please excuse me when I don't fall for the crocodile tears. We are
> talking about grown-up women here, not children.

I find it shocking you are basically telling people who are being
mis-treated by others to just suck it up.

It's because of these attitudes I'm glad we have a code of conduct.

>> According to a TUC/Everyday Sexism study on sexual harassment, 52% of
>> women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and 80% did
>> not report it to their employer.
> I am singling out this one as an example of data manipulation. Let's for the
> sake of simplicity assume that the data is 100% correct and has not been
> tampered with. Put yourself now in the shoes of an average woman: The question
> is "Have you experienced instances of sexual harassment in the workplace in
> the past?". You think a bit and remember Steve who made a dumb joke about your
> breasts during coffee break last month. So you answer with yes of course. Then
> the second question is "If so, did you report the incident to your employer?".
> Considering Steve is a shy guy, it was during coffee break, no one else joined
> in and after you gave him a stern look he got the message, you of course
> didn't consider it worth anyone's time to start office drama over pretty much
> nothing. So you answer with "no". And now your answer gets twisted into "Don't
> you see all these serious issues going unreported out of fear? You should hire
> our advocacy agency for sensibility training and diversity counseling. You
> have a nice business going here, it would be a shame is someone were to call
> it sexist".

Here's the problem with your argument.  These findings are reproduced
over and over: women are disproportionately affected by harassment,
especially of a gendered kind.  Even if you find an issue with a
specific study, the consensus of virtually all these studies find the
same thing.

You might have better results if you actually pointed to studies that
overturned the consensus.  Good luck with that.

>> In 2012, in Belgium, the film Femme de la Rue directly influenced the
>> passing of legislation to make street harassment
>> illegal.
>> [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/03/belgium-film-street-harassme
>> nt-sofie-peeters] It also helped kick-start movements in Belgium and France
>> where street harassment is fairly common.  In london, UK, 4 in 10 women
>> between ages of 18 and 34 experienced street harassment in 2011 alone
>> [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/may/25/four-10-women-sexually
>> -harassed].
> Don't you consider it kind of... problematic that the video only shows people
> from a, let's call it "diverse" background? Why doesn't she show us all the
> serial catcallers in the less diverse parts of Belgium? It couldn't be that
> she intentionally picked the bad part of town, now could it? I feel deeply
> offended by the implication of this video that people of colour are the
> primary source of sexual harassment.

Come on.  Get out of here with your manufactured concern.  Whatever the
specific cases in this video were, the overall point, and the conclusion
of the overall debate is that street harassment is a widespread issue,
wherever you go.  It disproportinately affects women and is
disproportinately carried out by men.

I'm done here. Have a nice day.

Alex

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

If you don't want to continue the discussion then so be it, but I cannot leave 
my points misrepresented. When I say "you" I don't necessarily mean you 
personally, but rather the larger discussion. You don't have to respond if you 
don't want to, I believe we have both made our points and it's up to the 
readers to draw their conclusions.

On Wednesday, 31 October 2018 13:46:49 CET you wrote:
> After this email I'm done with the conversation.  I have tried to
> provide you with evidence.  You make it clear you have a bone to pick
> with people concerned with gender equality.  This will go around in
> circles.
I have no issue with gender equality, but this is not what feminism is doing. 
Let's do an analogy: strong nations are good, fascism promotes strong nations, 
therefore if you believe in a strong nation you are naturally a fascist. Oh, 
those death camps? Well, that's not *real* fascism, that was just Nazism. And 
now we have reached Godwin's law. You presuppose that feminism is acting for a 
good cause (gender equality), so therefore the actions of feminists must be 
good. There is your problem: never listen to what people say, always look at 
what they do (this is a rule for life in general, not just this issue). Of 
course comparing fascism and feminism is a hyperbole, the point is not to look 
at the labels of a group, but at their actions.

> The TUC is the trade union congress.  They are not a feminist
> organisation.  The Belgian government is not a feminist organization.
> The Guardian is a newspaper and the EEOC is a US government office.
You can have a strong political bias and still not be an activist group. 
Organizations cooperate, their members can be friends with one another. 
Happens all the time in all areas.

> My line of argument above was precisely that this does not only happen
> in a field with "awkward nerds".  Also I find your assertion that
> "nerds" are unable to behave decently to other people an insult to
> myself and "nerds" as a whole.
Anyone can behave, but anyone can also slip up. And some people slip up more 
often than others. Why? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist, I just know 
that's they way it is. Again, this is not limited to the issue at hand. 
Everyone knows that hitting people is wrong, but some people are more prone to 
losing their tamper then others. Why? Again, I don't know, all I know is that 
you are less likely to be slapped on the head at a university than at a trade 
job.

> I find it shocking you are basically telling people who are being
> mis-treated by others to just suck it up.
> 
> It's because of these attitudes I'm glad we have a code of conduct.
Everyone has hardships to put up with. It's about the severity of hardships. 
This is like looking at workplace accidents and putting a papercut right next 
to a cut to the bone as if they were comparable. If you have a papercut you 
suck it up, put a band aid on it so you don't bleed over the papers and get 
back to work. But if you have a cut to the bone you need the wound to get 
disinfected and stitched up. It would be absurd to say that an office job is 
more hazardous than a construction site job because people in the office suffer 
paper cuts more often. I would rather suffer a hundred paper cuts than one cut 
to the bone.

> Here's the problem with your argument.  These findings are reproduced
> over and over: women are disproportionately affected by harassment,
> especially of a gendered kind.  Even if you find an issue with a
> specific study, the consensus of virtually all these studies find the
> same thing.
> 
> You might have better results if you actually pointed to studies that
> overturned the consensus.  Good luck with that.
I am not saying these studies cannot be reproduced, I am doubting the severity 
of the issue. If we suppose that certain people tend to slip up more often 
(which I did above) then of course you will find these patterns more often. But 
again, how severe of a problem is Steve making a stupid joke at coffee break?

> Come on.  Get out of here with your manufactured concern.  Whatever the
> specific cases in this video were, the overall point, and the conclusion
> of the overall debate is that street harassment is a widespread issue,
> wherever you go.  It disproportinately affects women and is
> disproportinately carried out by men.
You just went on about reproducibility. OK, then why don't they reproduce that 
video in areas where the ethnic makeup is closer to the Belgian average? Or in 
areas with a higher standard of living? After all, this happens wherever you 
go, even though these street harassment video are always shot in the same kind 
of area for some reason. Doesn't that strike you as odd?

This is the sort of data manipulation I mean, you go through the bad part of 
town, people do bad things. But you conveniently ignore all the other bad 
things that would happen in that area. I am sure no one gets mugged in the 
ghetto after dark. No, street harassment is the only issue here.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Jelle Licht]

Hello!


HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de> writes:

> If you don't want to continue the discussion then so be it, but I cannot leave
> my points misrepresented. When I say "you" I don't necessarily mean you
> personally, but rather the larger discussion. You don't have to respond if you
> don't want to, I believe we have both made our points and it's up to the
> readers to draw their conclusions.
>
> On Wednesday, 31 October 2018 13:46:49 CET you wrote:
>> After this email I'm done with the conversation.  I have tried to
>> provide you with evidence.  You make it clear you have a bone to pick
>> with people concerned with gender equality.  This will go around in
>> circles.
> I have no issue with gender equality, but this is not what feminism is doing.

                       ^^^^^^
   Good to hear that! I think you can leave debates about the actual or
   intended goals of any feminism movements to mailing lists or other
   platforms devoted to that topic though.


> Let's do an analogy: strong nations are good, fascism promotes strong nations,

  Let's not, as the points that are being are discussed are specific,
  not abstract and quite real. Analogies have a time and place for being
  useful, but this is not one of them.

> therefore if you believe in a strong nation you are naturally a fascist. Oh,
> those death camps? Well, that's not *real* fascism, that was just Nazism. And
> now we have reached Godwin's law. You presuppose that feminism is acting for a
> good cause (gender equality), so therefore the actions of feminists must be
> good. There is your problem: never listen to what people say, always look at
> what they do (this is a rule for life in general, not just this issue). Of
> course comparing fascism and feminism is a hyperbole, the point is not to look
> at the labels of a group, but at their actions.
>
>> The TUC is the trade union congress.  They are not a feminist
>> organisation.  The Belgian government is not a feminist organization.
>> The Guardian is a newspaper and the EEOC is a US government office.
> You can have a strong political bias and still not be an activist group.
> Organizations cooperate, their members can be friends with one another.
> Happens all the time in all areas.

This confused me. You mean collectives of people are made up of people,
and therefore associate with other people?

>
>> My line of argument above was precisely that this does not only happen
>> in a field with "awkward nerds".  Also I find your assertion that
>> "nerds" are unable to behave decently to other people an insult to
>> myself and "nerds" as a whole.
> Anyone can behave, but anyone can also slip up. And some people slip up more
> often than others. Why? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist, I just know
> that's they way it is. Again, this is not limited to the issue at hand.
> Everyone knows that hitting people is wrong, but some people are more prone to
> losing their tamper then others. Why? Again, I don't know, all I know is that
> you are less likely to be slapped on the head at a university than at a trade
> job.
>
>> I find it shocking you are basically telling people who are being
>> mis-treated by others to just suck it up.
>>
>> It's because of these attitudes I'm glad we have a code of conduct.
> Everyone has hardships to put up with. It's about the severity of hardships.
> This is like looking at workplace accidents and putting a papercut right next
> to a cut to the bone as if they were comparable. If you have a papercut you
> suck it up, put a band aid on it so you don't bleed over the papers and get
> back to work. But if you have a cut to the bone you need the wound to get
> disinfected and stitched up. It would be absurd to say that an office job is
> more hazardous than a construction site job because people in the office suffer
> paper cuts more often. I would rather suffer a hundred paper cuts than one cut
> to the bone.
>
>> Here's the problem with your argument.  These findings are reproduced
>> over and over: women are disproportionately affected by harassment,
>> especially of a gendered kind.  Even if you find an issue with a
>> specific study, the consensus of virtually all these studies find the
>> same thing.
>>
>> You might have better results if you actually pointed to studies that
>> overturned the consensus.  Good luck with that.
> I am not saying these studies cannot be reproduced, I am doubting the severity
> of the issue. If we suppose that certain people tend to slip up more often
> (which I did above) then of course you will find these patterns more often. But
> again, how severe of a problem is Steve making a stupid joke at coffee break?

The problem is not only Steve making a stupid joke; the problem is the
environment that led to Steve thinking it is okay to make statements
like these in the first place. The only way to 'fix' this problem is to
change the environment so that people are less likely to slip up, and to
keep each other honest about (tiny) mistakes that everyone inevitably
makes. To be honest, your recurring statement about people being more or
less likely to slip up is not really coherent; I think we can all agree
that every on slips up sometimes.

>
>> Come on.  Get out of here with your manufactured concern.  Whatever the
>> specific cases in this video were, the overall point, and the conclusion
>> of the overall debate is that street harassment is a widespread issue,
>> wherever you go.  It disproportinately affects women and is
>> disproportinately carried out by men.
> You just went on about reproducibility. OK, then why don't they reproduce that
> video in areas where the ethnic makeup is closer to the Belgian average? Or in

This seems like a question to ask the researchers, but because you have
a concern regarding methodology does not invalidate the by now seemingly
irrefutable clues that these issues do exist.

> areas with a higher standard of living? After all, this happens wherever you
> go, even though these street harassment video are always shot in the same kind
> of area for some reason. Doesn't that strike you as odd?
>
> This is the sort of data manipulation I mean, you go through the bad part of
> town, people do bad things. But you conveniently ignore all the other bad
> things that would happen in that area. I am sure no one gets mugged in the
> ghetto after dark. No, street harassment is the only issue here.

Your text seemingly goes from `ethnically diverse' -> `[lower] standard
of living' -> `bad part of town' -> `ghetto'. I will assume you acted,
and will continue acting in good faith, but I implore you to critically
have a look at your thought processes and see how incredibly rude this
might come across. If this was not your intention at all, then I
apologize and hope you can still take my comments as a constructive
critical note on parts of your writing style.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

On Wednesday, 31 October 2018 15:14:53 CET you wrote:
> This confused me. You mean collectives of people are made up of people,
> and therefore associate with other people?
More like "I scratch your back, you scratch my back" or "oh, I know just the 
right guy for the job". You let that happen often enough and you end up with 
several groups all being "in bed with each other" so to speak. This is not 
limited to feminism, it happens in all areas of life of course.

> The problem is not only Steve making a stupid joke; the problem is the
> environment that led to Steve thinking it is okay to make statements
> like these in the first place. The only way to 'fix' this problem is to
> change the environment so that people are less likely to slip up, and to
> keep each other honest about (tiny) mistakes that everyone inevitably
> makes. To be honest, your recurring statement about people being more or
> less likely to slip up is not really coherent; I think we can all agree
> that every on slips up sometimes.
Agreed, but the punishment should also fit the crime. You can have a quick talk 
with Steve and then everyone shakes hands and is friends again. The problem is 
that there exist groups who want to exploit Steve's slip-up for their own 
gains by blowing it issue out of proportion. They cannot justify their 
existence and their bills if the issue can be sorted out with a short 
conversation, so Steve has to be punished properly.

> This seems like a question to ask the researchers, but because you have
> a concern regarding methodology does not invalidate the by now seemingly
> irrefutable clues that these issues do exist.
The issue exists, but how prevalent is it? Remember "manspreading"? Take a 
photo of a man taking up three seats in an almost empty subway, crop the photo 
so you cannot see that the subway is mostly empty, write an academic paper on 
the issue you created, sell the solution in the form of an awareness campaign, 
finance it with taxpayer money, and in the end people even get arrested because 
no matter how dumb the rules are, they have to be enforced. When my sister 
told me about manspreading she couldn't stop laughing, because even she sits 
like that when there is enough space. And why wouldn't she?

I view the catcalling issue the same way: go through the bad part of town, 
make an issue out of it, sell the solution. I am confident if you were to do 
this experiment in an area closer to Belgian standard of living none of this 
would happen.

> Your text seemingly goes from `ethnically diverse' -> `[lower] standard
> of living' -> `bad part of town' -> `ghetto'. I will assume you acted,
> and will continue acting in good faith, but I implore you to critically
> have a look at your thought processes and see how incredibly rude this
> might come across. If this was not your intention at all, then I
> apologize and hope you can still take my comments as a constructive
> critical note on parts of your writing style.
I got carried away, I was not controlling my emotions enough I guess :) My 
problem is when people like Mr Sassmannshausen take accusations at face-value 
without any shred of scepticism. People have had their lives ruined by false 
accusations and this sort of injustice is what makes my blood boil. Listening 
and believing benefits neither the innocent nor the real victims, it only 
drives a wedge between people. Who profits? Those who thrive on conflict, 
creating problems and selling solutions. (I had a much more polemic response 
to the previous mail, but I deleted it, so I guess I still had some emotional 
control)

Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Pjotr Prins]

I suggest to end this thread. HiPhish, come and discuss your points at
FOSDEM. We'll set up a working group for those who care about these
things.

Pj.

Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Leo Famulari]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 383 bytes --]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 04:41:53PM +0100, Pjotr Prins wrote:
> I suggest to end this thread. HiPhish, come and discuss your points at
> FOSDEM. We'll set up a working group for those who care about these
> things.

I agree. The subject has been discussed ad nauseam across the internet,
and even offline, and we are not going to achieve a breakthrough here on
the Guix mailing list.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]

Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:

> On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 04:41:53PM +0100, Pjotr Prins wrote:
>> I suggest to end this thread. HiPhish, come and discuss your points at
>> FOSDEM. We'll set up a working group for those who care about these
>> things.
>
> I agree. The subject has been discussed ad nauseam across the internet,
> and even offline, and we are not going to achieve a breakthrough here on
> the Guix mailing list.

+1.

Furthermore, this project, like any other, has its license, its rules,
etc.  Of course we can discuss these things together, it’s what makes a
project healthy.  However, when joining the project, one agrees to
follow these rules—it would seem unreasonable to join and at the same
time push for a change of rules that have long been established by
members of the group.

Ludo’.

Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

On Thu, Nov 1, 2018, at 9:40 AM, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> it would seem unreasonable to join and at the same
> time push for a change of rules that have long been established by
> members of the group.

Agreed, that's why I left the project without making a fuss and waited over 15 months for someone else to bring it up first. At least for my part I only wanted people to understand my perspective, whether or not you make any changes is up to the people who actually have a stake in the project.

-- 
Alex Griffin

Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi Ludovic,

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 04:41:53PM +0100, Pjotr Prins wrote:
>>> I suggest to end this thread. HiPhish, come and discuss your points at
>>> FOSDEM. We'll set up a working group for those who care about these
>>> things.
>>
>> I agree. The subject has been discussed ad nauseam across the internet,
>> and even offline, and we are not going to achieve a breakthrough here on
>> the Guix mailing list.
>
> +1.

I'm unable to travel to FOSDEM this year, so moving the discussion there
would effectively exclude me from participating in it.

> Furthermore, this project, like any other, has its license, its rules,
> etc.  Of course we can discuss these things together, it’s what makes a
> project healthy.

Agreed.

> However, when joining the project, one agrees to follow these rules

While I generally agree with the policies outlined in our CoC, and I
support the practice of enforcing those policies through our control
over our infrastructure and communications channels, I strongly oppose
requiring or presuming that all participants "agree" with our policies,
which I take to mean "declaring that they share the same opinions and
goals".

Some participants may disagree with our policies, and that's okay.
We don't need their agreement to enforce our policies.

Forcing people to declare their agreement with our policies as a
prerequisite for participation, or worse, _presuming_ that they agree
based on their having sent a patch or posted a message, is needlessly
alienating to those who don't share our views.

I'm still waiting for someone to explain why it's important for us to
obtain "agreement" with our policies from all participants.

It would be like a restaurant asking every customer to sign an agreement
before entering, forcing them to agree in advance to a list of rules,
e.g. that they won't harass the other customers.  There's no need for
it, and it's needlessly alienating.  It's more than enough to simply
have a list of rules posted in public view, and to enforce the rules as
the need arises.

      Mark

Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi,

I've decided to withdraw my objections to the policy of requiring that
project participants agree to our CoC.

I read the language of the CoC again more carefully, looking to produce
a realistic scenario of a person with legitimate but unpopular political
views being discriminated against by this requirement.  Ultimately, I
failed to find any realistic example that I wish to defend.

I no longer believe that agreeing to our CoC implies declaring agreement
with it.  I think I jumped to conclusions too quickly here, partly based
on an unusually strong interpretation of the word "agree".

I've also been worrying about possible abuses that I now suspect (hope?)
would be unlikely to hold up in a court.  For example, I worried that if
participation in the project is taken to imply agreement with our CoC,
that by a natural extrapolation, someone who contributes a single fix
but is otherwise uninvolved with the project could be legally held to be
bound by our CoC.  That's thinking like a mathematician, where I should
have been trying to think like a lawyer.

So, I'm withdrawing my objections.  Sorry for the stress.

       Mark

Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

I think "agree" in this context means to agree to follow the rules of that 
setting, not necessarily that you endorse those rules in general. For example, 
if you are a smoker in a non-smoking area you agree not to smoke while in that 
area, but you do not agree not to smoke at all. Or if you are in a vegan 
restaurant you will agree to eat vegan, but that does not make you actually a 
vegan yourself.

On Sunday, 4 November 2018 10:15:58 CET Mark H Weaver wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've decided to withdraw my objections to the policy of requiring that
> project participants agree to our CoC.
> 
> I read the language of the CoC again more carefully, looking to produce
> a realistic scenario of a person with legitimate but unpopular political
> views being discriminated against by this requirement.  Ultimately, I
> failed to find any realistic example that I wish to defend.
> 
> I no longer believe that agreeing to our CoC implies declaring agreement
> with it.  I think I jumped to conclusions too quickly here, partly based
> on an unusually strong interpretation of the word "agree".
> 
> I've also been worrying about possible abuses that I now suspect (hope?)
> would be unlikely to hold up in a court.  For example, I worried that if
> participation in the project is taken to imply agreement with our CoC,
> that by a natural extrapolation, someone who contributes a single fix
> but is otherwise uninvolved with the project could be legally held to be
> bound by our CoC.  That's thinking like a mathematician, where I should
> have been trying to think like a lawyer.
> 
> So, I'm withdrawing my objections.  Sorry for the stress.
> 
>        Mark

Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 04/11/2018 10.15, Mark H Weaver wrote:

> I've decided to withdraw my objections to the policy of requiring that
> project participants agree to our CoC.

I though of Mark as the only "insider" who understood what my prime 
issue with the CoC is. Now it seems that wasn't the case and surely 
isn't now.

Here's a pledge: This shall be my last email about this specific issue, 
on any Guix list, unless the text does get changed either in the 
Covenant project or here, or if I'm asked a question.

Maybe someone here still has the patience to help me understand where my 
interpretation would be unreasonable:

"In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as 
contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our 
project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, 
regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and 
expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, 
nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and 
orientation."

Contains the statement that "contributors" make a "pledge", i.e. give a 
promise, as outlined in the rest of the sentence.

I take "contributors" to be the group of people who ever contributed 
anything to the project. At the very least everyone who submitted code 
that is part of the current tree.

Hence, I see included a claim that the very people who walked away 
because of the CoC still make that pledge.


One may ask: who would object to pledging to not harass people, 
regardless of who and how they are? Sure, but as I see it, the "pledge" 
claim doesn't stop there. The first sentence establishes that "we" and 
"our" is supposed to mean "maintainers" and "contributors". Because of 
this, everything in "Our Standards" is an extension of the pledge. As is 
"Scope", quite literally being the scope of the pledge.

I assume the core maintainers may update/edit the CoC as they see fit, 
which in principal might change standards and scope. The CoC would then 
include the claim that all past and current contributors now suddenly 
pledged according to those new standards, perhaps with a wider scope. It 
is their right to set the rules, but they should not imply that "we" 
chose the rules.

Aside of that, a false statement about people is still a false 
statement, even if it says that the people promised to be nice.


Off-list, I have been asked, more or less, to not take the word "pledge" 
so seriously. Well, if I don't, at the very least, the promise regarding 
a harassment-free environment falls out of the CoC, which surely is not 
what anyone meant. If one assumes, not without reason, that the "we" of 
the CoC doesn't actually exist", then what is left?


Anyway, I may still opt to (try to) contribute, as nobody would gain 
anything from my withholding a package or whatever it may be.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Mark,

Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skribis:

> I'm unable to travel to FOSDEM this year, so moving the discussion there
> would effectively exclude me from participating in it.

In my view, in-person communication for free software projects can help
understand each other better and build consensus, but on-line discussion
with all those who could not be there physically is still necessary.  No
argument here.

>> Furthermore, this project, like any other, has its license, its rules,
>> etc.  Of course we can discuss these things together, it’s what makes a
>> project healthy.
>
> Agreed.
>
>> However, when joining the project, one agrees to follow these rules
>
> While I generally agree with the policies outlined in our CoC, […]

Just to clarify: all I wanted to say is that, in general, you can’t join
a group and right from the start ask for significant changes in the
group rules.

As for the code of conduct, we maintainers ask people to follow it on
the project’s communication channels, which are primarily the mailing
lists and IRC channel.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Marius Bakke]

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Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> writes:

> While I generally agree with the policies outlined in our CoC, and I
> support the practice of enforcing those policies through our control
> over our infrastructure and communications channels, I strongly oppose
> requiring or presuming that all participants "agree" with our policies,
> which I take to mean "declaring that they share the same opinions and
> goals".
>
> Some participants may disagree with our policies, and that's okay.
> We don't need their agreement to enforce our policies.
>
> Forcing people to declare their agreement with our policies as a
> prerequisite for participation, or worse, _presuming_ that they agree
> based on their having sent a patch or posted a message, is needlessly
> alienating to those who don't share our views.

Thank you Mark for succinctly pointing out these flaws in our current
CoC.  I agree that the language is overreaching, and think that these
discussions will continue to crop up as long as this wording is
included.

Our usage of the Contributor Covenant have deterred at least three
contributors.  I hope it has attracted and retained more than that; in
any case I think we can do better.

Also thanks to Thorsten for filing
<https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/issues/624>.
Getting this fixed upstream will benefit much more than the Guix project.

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Re: Stop it. Formerly - Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

I think you are focusing too much on the "pledge" part. Submitting a patch is 
an informal process and I doubt anyone is going to hold it up against you in a 
court. This is just an instance of using fancy words to sound important. 

People's real grievances with the CC are that it polices people outside the 
project as well (simply abiding by the rules on the mailing list and IRC is 
not enough, according to the terms of the CC), its focus on punishment, 
presumption of malice and of course the author of the CC and the surrounding 
culture. Getting hung up on details like the word "pledge" is just going to 
burn people out, but will not resolve anything.

On Tuesday, 6 November 2018 18:23:40 CET Marius Bakke wrote:
> Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> writes:
> > While I generally agree with the policies outlined in our CoC, and I
> > support the practice of enforcing those policies through our control
> > over our infrastructure and communications channels, I strongly oppose
> > requiring or presuming that all participants "agree" with our policies,
> > which I take to mean "declaring that they share the same opinions and
> > goals".
> > 
> > Some participants may disagree with our policies, and that's okay.
> > We don't need their agreement to enforce our policies.
> > 
> > Forcing people to declare their agreement with our policies as a
> > prerequisite for participation, or worse, _presuming_ that they agree
> > based on their having sent a patch or posted a message, is needlessly
> > alienating to those who don't share our views.
> 
> Thank you Mark for succinctly pointing out these flaws in our current
> CoC.  I agree that the language is overreaching, and think that these
> discussions will continue to crop up as long as this wording is
> included.
> 
> Our usage of the Contributor Covenant have deterred at least three
> contributors.  I hope it has attracted and retained more than that; in
> any case I think we can do better.
> 
> Also thanks to Thorsten for filing
> <https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/issues/624>.
> Getting this fixed upstream will benefit much more than the Guix project.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

I am really trying to understand the other side here, so please help me out on 
this one. Let's say you have two people for the sake of simplicity, we can 
call them Alice and Bob. Alice and Bob hate each other's guts, Alice is 
unwilling to work on the team if Bob stays on the team, but Bob is willing to 
work on the team regardless of Alice. Furthermore, Bob has already worthwhile 
contributions under his belt, whereas Alice has done nothing yet, but she 
might if Bob were to be remove.

And your choice would be to remove Bob from the team. Am I correct so far? 
What sense does it make to remove someone who 1) has already a proven track-
record and 2) has shown that he is willing to control his emotions to focus on 
the task, all in the hopes that 3) the other person might perhaps fill in the 
void and 4) already has show to let emotions override work duty, and 5) has a 
track-record of wanting people remove from the project?

Please explain to me how kicking Bob out of the team is supposed to improve 
the project. I am really trying hard to wrap my head around the issue, but 
this logic is entirely alien to me. Wouldn't it make more sense to just tell 
people to keep any personal grudges out of the workplace and carry on? It is 
not that the project management is preventing Alice from joining, she refuses 
out of her own volition.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Jelle Licht]

Hello,

HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de> writes:

> I am really trying to understand the other side here, so please help me out on

Without attributing malice to your statement here, I think it is
disingenuous to talk about "the other side". We are all part of
communities we interact with, there is no need for any additional
"othering" here :).

> this one. Let's say you have two people for the sake of simplicity, we can
> call them Alice and Bob. Alice and Bob hate each other's guts, Alice is
> unwilling to work on the team if Bob stays on the team, but Bob is willing to
> work on the team regardless of Alice. Furthermore, Bob has already worthwhile
> contributions under his belt, whereas Alice has done nothing yet, but she
> might if Bob were to be remove.
>
Again, while some people might be calling out for these cases to happen,
this is not what the discussion is about; _any_ document that describes
our norms and policies is intended to create a welcoming environment,
where anyone can decide to become an active member of the community.

That the means through which this can happen, at its most extreme,
involves actively removing potentially harmful elements from the
community is in that sense a means to achieve these goals.

> And your choice would be to remove Bob from the team. Am I correct so far?

You are correct in the sense that what you state is not really false,
but at the same time also far removed from the actuality of any
realistic social setting.

To me it seems that you only consider what one might call the
"worst-case", and I'd rather state that any community pledge/policy
document is first of all intended to prevent these situations from
arising in the first place, and give the often-powerless some semblance
of equal opportunity to become active participants, while still offering
a safety net if push comes to shove.


> What sense does it make to remove someone who 1) has already a proven track-
> record and 2) has shown that he is willing to control his emotions to
> focus on

Again, if part of this "proven track-record" includes something that
could reasonably be seen as being in direct opposition of our norms as a
community, it would make sense to have an honest and direct dialogue in
order to resolve this situation. In extreme cases, it might still make
sense to exclude harmful elements of the community, even if they are
otherwise considered productive/effective/efficient. Nobody is above the
rules we set ourselves as a community.


> the task, all in the hopes that 3) the other person might perhaps fill in the
> void and 4) already has show to let emotions override work duty, and 5) has a
> track-record of wanting people remove from the project?

If we are going to play an open hand here, number 3 is literally the
goal of having this discussion in the first place: We want *anyone* to
feel like they could fill a perceived void in our community, if they so
choose.

Number 4 seems a very weird point to make. We all have emotions, and
some of us are more in touch with them then others, but somehow
insinuating that having emotions influence you is a bad thing is
confusing me. For me, most of the projects I undertake are labours of
love.

The rudest point I will make; number 5 comes across to me as an almost
hostile way of viewing any critique. If "wanting people removed from the
project" is done for legitimate reasons (after careful consideration),
this is IMHO a good thing. If this does not apply, the people should not
be removed in the first place, so I do not feel the problem for opening
each of our own behaviour up to criticism.

>
> Please explain to me how kicking Bob out of the team is supposed to improve
> the project. I am really trying hard to wrap my head around the issue, but
> this logic is entirely alien to me. Wouldn't it make more sense to just tell
> people to keep any personal grudges out of the workplace and carry on? It is
> not that the project management is preventing Alice from joining, she refuses
> out of her own volition.

I appreciate you writing up your thoughts in a concise and clear
manner. I would advise you to consider less of this a cold and reasoned
logic, and look more into the community building aspects.


* Collaboration is about community.

* Communities are about people, so telling them to leave their "personal
  grudges" at the door is wholly unreasonable.

* Fostering welcoming, productive and even fun environments to do work
  in is an active and on-going task. Just look at most of human history
  to see what happens if this is not an actively sough-after goal.

Kind regards,

Jelle

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

On Wednesday, 31 October 2018 14:48:18 CET you wrote:
> Without attributing malice to your statement here, I think it is
> disingenuous to talk about "the other side". We are all part of
> communities we interact with, there is no need for any additional
> "othering" here :).
Sure, but communities can still be split on issues, like which CoC to adopt :)

> Again, while some people might be calling out for these cases to happen,
> this is not what the discussion is about; _any_ document that describes
> our norms and policies is intended to create a welcoming environment,
> where anyone can decide to become an active member of the community.
> 
> That the means through which this can happen, at its most extreme,
> involves actively removing potentially harmful elements from the
> community is in that sense a means to achieve these goals.
This is fine by me, and I don't think anyone here agrees that we would need 
someone around who just sits in the mailing list and throws around insults. 
But where do you draw the line? The CC, which is the issue at hand, allows for 
abuse by 1) being vary vague on what constitutes a break of rules, and 2) 
requiring punishment without offering any chance of clearing things up. If the 
maintainers fail to punish they themselves are open for punishment.

This is why I made that example of Alice and Bob where one party wants the 
other to be removed.

> You are correct in the sense that what you state is not really false,
> but at the same time also far removed from the actuality of any
> realistic social setting.
> 
> To me it seems that you only consider what one might call the
> "worst-case", and I'd rather state that any community pledge/policy
> document is first of all intended to prevent these situations from
> arising in the first place, and give the often-powerless some semblance
> of equal opportunity to become active participants, while still offering
> a safety net if push comes to shove.
And in my opinion the GKCG is perfectly adequate for this purpose without any 
of the potential of abuse. The GNU project was started in 1984, it's over 30 
years old, and it has produced fantastic results without the need for 
overbearing policing. The communities have been fairly good at keeping 
everyone on track, even if someone might slip from time to time. There was no 
need for the type of harsh policing that the CC mandates.

Note that the CC mandates the formation of an judicative-executive branch 
which will both judge and carry out punishments. If the maintainers are 
unwilling to do the work (which would not be surprising if they are busy 
maintaining the project) they will have to appoint people for this role. And 
my fear is that the people they put into position will be of the worst kind.

> Again, if part of this "proven track-record" includes something that
> could reasonably be seen as being in direct opposition of our norms as a
> community, it would make sense to have an honest and direct dialogue in
> order to resolve this situation. In extreme cases, it might still make
> sense to exclude harmful elements of the community, even if they are
> otherwise considered productive/effective/efficient. Nobody is above the
> rules we set ourselves as a community.
The CC does not provide room for honest and direct dialogue.

> If we are going to play an open hand here, number 3 is literally the
> goal of having this discussion in the first place: We want *anyone* to
> feel like they could fill a perceived void in our community, if they so
> choose.
Let's say I promise you that I have fifty patches in the pipeline, but person X 
makes me feel uncomfortable. So you kick out person X and I submit 50 
individual typo fixes in the manual and then never come back. Don't you think 
that is a net loss for the project? See, this is the issue I am afraid of can 
happen. I mean, if Bob starts calling Alice a "dumb bitch" over the mailing 
list, yeah that is another issue, but Alice wanting Bob removed from the 
project because he re-tweeted pictures of bikini modesl should be a no-go, 
even if the CC allows for it. Can we agree on this one?

> Number 4 seems a very weird point to make. We all have emotions, and
> some of us are more in touch with them then others, but somehow
> insinuating that having emotions influence you is a bad thing is
> confusing me. For me, most of the projects I undertake are labours of
> love.
Of course we have emotions, but we also need to learn to control them. 
Example: you are with a client and the client starts making unreasonable 
demands, you cannot just tell the client "if you know so much, then do your 
shit yourself", you have to maintain composure and explain why that demand is 
unreasonable within the technical of financial framework. Because if you have 
an outburst you will drag down the entire project. The same goes for 
contributors in a FLOSS project, you cannot just demand that everyone drops 
everything because someone upset you outside the project.

> The rudest point I will make; number 5 comes across to me as an almost
> hostile way of viewing any critique. If "wanting people removed from the
> project" is done for legitimate reasons (after careful consideration),
> this is IMHO a good thing. If this does not apply, the people should not
> be removed in the first place, so I do not feel the problem for opening
> each of our own behaviour up to criticism.
The issue of the CC is that it does not define clearly what a good reason is, 
it does not require the issue to be disclosed (because that might compromise 
the anonymity clause) and if the maintainers fail to remove the accused they 
themselves can be removed.

> I appreciate you writing up your thoughts in a concise and clear
> manner. I would advise you to consider less of this a cold and reasoned
> logic, and look more into the community building aspects.
> 
> 
> * Collaboration is about community.
> 
> * Communities are about people, so telling them to leave their "personal
>   grudges" at the door is wholly unreasonable.
> 
> * Fostering welcoming, productive and even fun environments to do work
>   in is an active and on-going task. Just look at most of human history
>   to see what happens if this is not an actively sough-after goal.
We might have different priorities. To me GNU is about creating a Free 
operating system, the community aspect is something that exists only because 
you need somehow to coordinate the work, manage issues and so on. GNU is not a 
reason for socialising for me, so the community is just something that's along 
for a ride. If all the work could be done by moneys on a typewriter I couldn't 
care less.

For this reason the survival of the project is the most important to me. If we 
can have a good time along the way that's just an added bonus. The computer 
does not care about the community, so neither does the end user of our 
software. I view the CC as harmful to the project, which is why I support 
switching to the GKCG.

Now don't understand me wrong, having a community that goes along is great, 
but if I was given a choice between sacrificing the Guix community or the Guix 
project, I would pick the community. Maybe this is because I came here 
primarily because of Guix and not because I wanted to make friends, so my 
views might be different from someone who came here because of the people and 
found Guix to be nice as well.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 31/10/2018 15.55, HiPhish wrote:
> The CC does not provide room for honest and direct dialogue.

Sheesh, you are so bad at arguing against this CoC that I, decidedly not 
a fan,  feel compelled to counter ;)

"Project maintainers are responsible for clarifying the standards of 
acceptable behavior and are expected to take appropriate and fair 
corrective action in response to any instances of unacceptable behavior."

Note "clarify", "appropriate" and "fair".

The confidentiality clause may result in a conflict with fairness, but 
that's still a far cry from  no "room ...".


> but Alice wanting Bob removed from the
> project because he re-tweeted pictures of bikini modesl should be a no-go,
> even if the CC allows for it. Can we agree on this one?

See "Scope". Personal Twitter is not a channel that belongs to this 
project and Bob is unlikely to represent the project or community within 
that act of retweeting.

I have to give you that there is the somewhat weasely "Representation of 
a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers".

Past acts of certain CoC advocates suggest that they would like to go 
beyond that, but here it's up to Ricardo and Ludovic.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Mark H Weaver]

HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de> writes:

> On Wednesday, 31 October 2018 14:48:18 CET you wrote:
>> Without attributing malice to your statement here, I think it is
>> disingenuous to talk about "the other side". We are all part of
>> communities we interact with, there is no need for any additional
>> "othering" here :).
> Sure, but communities can still be split on issues, like which CoC to adopt :)
>
>> Again, while some people might be calling out for these cases to happen,
>> this is not what the discussion is about; _any_ document that describes
>> our norms and policies is intended to create a welcoming environment,
>> where anyone can decide to become an active member of the community.
>> 
>> That the means through which this can happen, at its most extreme,
>> involves actively removing potentially harmful elements from the
>> community is in that sense a means to achieve these goals.
> This is fine by me, and I don't think anyone here agrees that we would need 
> someone around who just sits in the mailing list and throws around insults. 
> But where do you draw the line? The CC, which is the issue at hand, allows for 
> abuse by 1) being vary vague on what constitutes a break of rules,

The CoC is not a legal document, and is not intended to be normative.

If it were law, I would agree with you that the vagueness would be quite
worrisome.  A vague law is dangerous because laws enable authorities to
make enforcement actions that they otherwise couldn't, and a vague law
can be abused.

The CoC is fundamentally different.  The key difference is that the CoC
does not grant any powers to the maintainers that they didn't already
have.  That's worth repeating.  The CoC makes *no* change to their
powers.

The function of the CoC is to document the policies that the maintainers
have chosen to enforce, for the sake of transparency.  Roughly the same
policies were enforced before we had a CoC, but they weren't documented.

Also, it's a mistake to expect a CoC to cover every possible case and
include all relevant factors.  It would be a fools errand to try.
Ultimately, every case will depend on the specific details, and on the
maintainers' best judgement.

> and 2) 
> requiring punishment without offering any chance of clearing things up.

It would depend on the details, but I see nothing in the CoC to justify
this claim.  On the contrary, our maintainers have shown themselves to
be quite explempary in their handling of conflicts without resort to
punishment, and I see no reason why that should change.  I have
confidence that they will continue to exercise their powers judiciously,
and only as a last resort after diplomatic efforts have been exhausted.

Do you have reason to believe otherwise?

      Mark

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Thomas Danckaert]

I may come as a surprise to some, but you *can* contribute to Guix 
without joining the queer or feminist movement (you can even get by 
without using singular they or zhe ;-) ).  In practice, just send 
your patches, be civil and respect all other contributors.  I can't 
remember any occasion where people were banned.  One or two people 
left when they were asked to respect people's choice of pronouns, and 
decided they'd rather leave, but nobody told them to leave...

For sure, this touches on many philosophical and political issues and 
while I respect your deep insight in these matters, and your concern 
for ethnic minorities, I don't think guix-devel is the place to 
discuss them.

Thank you for your time,

Thomas

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018, at 8:48 AM, Thomas Danckaert wrote:
> In practice, just send 
> your patches, be civil and respect all other contributors.  I can't 
> remember any occasion where people were banned.

Yes, even feminists and anti-feminists should be able to get along despite their disagreements.

> One or two people 
> left when they were asked to respect people's choice of pronouns, and 
> decided they'd rather leave, but nobody told them to leave...

This case sounds trickier to me, because you may be asking them to say something they don't believe. I suspect that most of the world believes there is only male and female, and that it's fixed at birth. A simple correction or educational link is probably not going to be enough to convince many of them otherwise. If someone's insistence on the wrong pronoun is not accompanied by other harassing behavior then I hope there's another way to get along.

-- 
Alex Griffin

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

Oh sure, I would have no issue working with people I disagree with, but the 
topic here is adopting the GKCG over the CC. The CC allows the maintainers to 
remove me from contributing, which is the part I and others are taking issue 
with. This can be abused to sabotage the project; even if I am not an 
important contributor right now, others are, and even I might grow over time 
to become one one day.

If people can simply put their disagreements away and take arguments out of 
the mailing list, that would be fine by me. I mean, I agree on much of what 
Stallman says, but as long as he can keep it out of GNU I am fine by that.

On Wednesday, 31 October 2018 14:48:49 CET you wrote:
> I may come as a surprise to some, but you *can* contribute to Guix
> without joining the queer or feminist movement (you can even get by
> without using singular they or zhe ;-) ).  In practice, just send
> your patches, be civil and respect all other contributors.  I can't
> remember any occasion where people were banned.  One or two people
> left when they were asked to respect people's choice of pronouns, and
> decided they'd rather leave, but nobody told them to leave...
> 
> For sure, this touches on many philosophical and political issues and
> while I respect your deep insight in these matters, and your concern
> for ethnic minorities, I don't think guix-devel is the place to
> discuss them.
> 
> Thank you for your time,
> 
> Thomas

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 31/10/2018 15.55, HiPhish wrote:
> The CC allows the maintainers to
> remove me from contributing

The maintainers (in the sense of the project initiators and/or current 
owners) could reject any contribution and moderate and ban you as they 
see fit with no CoC in place.

With this specific CoC they promise to apply some restrictions on doing 
so. (The one way where the CoC as pledge seems OK to me, being placed 
there by them).


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Mark H Weaver]

HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de> writes:

> Oh sure, I would have no issue working with people I disagree with, but the 
> topic here is adopting the GKCG over the CC. The CC allows the maintainers to 
> remove me from contributing, which is the part I and others are taking issue 
> with.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, this is nothing new, and in fact it's
true of *every* free software project, whether it has a CoC or not.

There's always someone who owns the domains and controls the
infrastructure, and who will remove problematic participants if they
cross a certain line.  Where that line is depends on the project, but
every project has one.

I don't see any way to avoid this and still have a functional project
when the trolls arrive.

> This can be abused to sabotage the project

Are you suggesting that Ludovic and Ricardo might sabotage Guix?

Okay, let's think that through.  If Ludovic and Ricardo started to abuse
their power and become problematic, we could fork Guix and move to new
infrastructure.  That's the beauty of free software.

      Mark

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Mark H Weaver]

HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de> writes:

> I am really trying to understand the other side here, so please help me out on 
> this one. Let's say you have two people for the sake of simplicity, we can 
> call them Alice and Bob. Alice and Bob hate each other's guts, Alice is 
> unwilling to work on the team if Bob stays on the team, but Bob is willing to 
> work on the team regardless of Alice. Furthermore, Bob has already worthwhile 
> contributions under his belt, whereas Alice has done nothing yet, but she 
> might if Bob were to be remove.
>
> And your choice would be to remove Bob from the team. Am I correct so far? 

Based on what you've written above, certainly not.  I see no mention of
any CoC violations by Bob in this hypothetical scenario, so I'm not sure
why you think the CoC would apply here.

Do you see anything in our CoC to suggest that Bob should be ejected
from Guix simply because Alice hates Bob?  If so, can you point out the
relevant excerpts?

       Mark

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Steffen Schulz]

One could also argue that there is a oversensible victim "culture" which 
leads to "stats" such as these, as people tend overexaggarate quite 
easily in those matters.

I am sorry. I'm absolutely sick of these kinds of discussions in mailing 
lists like this.

On 10/31/18 10:27 AM, Alex Sassmannshausen wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I agree with Ricardo's email that really we should be discussing the CoC
> in relation to specific patches against it, to avoid circular debate.
> So I will only respond to the specific bit directly asking me to provide
> evidence.
>
> HiPhish writes:
>
>> On Monday, 29 October 2018 12:08:56 CET you wrote:
>>> I think you a have burden of proof here, given that our culture at large
>>> has serious issues with harassment. Why would you think FLOSS community
>>> is somehow different from the wider community?
>> No, you have a burden of proof that "our" culture (whatever this "our" is
>> supposed to mean, I have no idea where you live and you have no idea 
>> where I
>> live) has a serious issue with harassment.
> [I apologise for the narrow focus on sexual / gender / sex based focus
> of the stats below; it's what I'm most familiar with.]
>
> "According to a TUC/Everyday Sexism study on sexual harassment, 52% of
> women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and 80% did
> not report it to their employer."
> [https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=9127932a-455f-4d0c-909d-3563c17dc7c5,
> available from
> https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace]
>
> "In 2014, SSH commissioned a 2,000-person national survey in the USA with
> surveying firm GfK. The survey found that 65% of all women had
> experienced street harassment. Among all women, 23% had been sexually
> touched, 20% had been followed, and 9% had been forced to do something
> sexual. Among men, 25% had been street harassed (a higher percentage of
> LGBT-identified men than heterosexual men reported this) and their most
> common form of harassment was homophobic or transphobic slurs (9%)."
> http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/resources/statistics/
>
> "Almost fully one third of the approximately 90,000 charges received by
> EEOC in fiscal year 2015 included an allegation of workplace
> harassment. This includes, among other things, charges of unlawful
> harassment on the basis of sex (including sexual orientation, gender
> identity, and pregnancy), race, disability, age, ethnicity/national
> origin, color, and religion." and "Roughly three out of four individuals
> who experienced harassment never even talked to a supervisor, manager,
> or union representative about the harassing conduct."
> [from https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/task_force/harassment/report_summary.cfm]
>
> In 2012, in Belgium, the film Femme de la Rue directly influenced the
> passing of legislation to make street harassment
> illegal. 
> [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/03/belgium-film-street-harassment-sofie-peeters]
> It also helped kick-start movements in Belgium and France where street
> harassment is fairly common. In london, UK, 4 in 10 women between ages
> of 18 and 34 experienced street harassment in 2011 alone
> [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/may/25/four-10-women-sexually-harassed].
>
> "54% (272) had experienced some form of workplace sexual harassment."
> This is from a 2008 study in Singapore
> [http://www.aware.org.sg/training/wsh-site/14-statistics/].
>
> The stats bear out 2 things: a) harassment is very prevalent; b) if
> anything, harassment is underreported, not overreported.
>
> Of course the above are all related to a relatively narrow geographic
> domain. I would be very surprised indeed if there was a place that
> conducted similar studies, where the picture would not be roughly the
> same or worse.
>
> You are correct that I don't know where you're from, but it kind of
> doesn't matter, because harassment, especially that on the basis of
> gender, sex or sexuality, is a global phenomenon.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Alex
>

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines? (-> convivenza)

[Nils Gillmann]

I have followed most of the breaking threads, and I will keep
my contribution to simply stating what a friend wrote:

https://mobile.twitter.com/lynXintl/status/1055146900100390913

In essence this refers to convivenza, which in my opinion
is a much better suited framework for this than what
has been brought up so far:
https://structure.pages.de/convivenza

Interested groups can contract the structure work group
(https://structure.pages.de/) and work out implementations.

I don't want any follow-ups directed at myself, I don't
have the time to deal with circular discussions wrt this.
Take it as a statement of recommendation.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines? (-> convivenza)

[Nils Gillmann]

Nils Gillmann transcribed 634 bytes:
> I have followed most of the breaking threads, and I will keep
> my contribution to simply stating what a friend wrote:
> 
> https://mobile.twitter.com/lynXintl/status/1055146900100390913
> 
> In essence this refers to convivenza, which in my opinion
> is a much better suited framework for this than what
> has been brought up so far:
> https://structure.pages.de/convivenza
> 
> Interested groups can contract the structure work group

Of course I meant "contact". Now I'm out of here.

> (https://structure.pages.de/) and work out implementations.
> 
> I don't want any follow-ups directed at myself, I don't
> have the time to deal with circular discussions wrt this.
> Take it as a statement of recommendation.
> 

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines? (-> convivenza)

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hello,

Nils Gillmann writes:

> I have followed most of the breaking threads, and I will keep
> my contribution to simply stating what a friend wrote:
>
> https://mobile.twitter.com/lynXintl/status/1055146900100390913
>
> In essence this refers to convivenza, which in my opinion
> is a much better suited framework for this than what
> has been brought up so far:
> https://structure.pages.de/convivenza
>
> Interested groups can contract the structure work group
> (https://structure.pages.de/) and work out implementations.
>
> I don't want any follow-ups directed at myself, I don't
> have the time to deal with circular discussions wrt this.
> Take it as a statement of recommendation.

I found this a very interesting text, thanks for sharing.

Personally I will be thinking about it for a while :-)

Alex

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

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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 <hiphish@posteo.de> 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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Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

(I forgot to CC this message to the mailing list, sorry if you get it twice)

On Monday, 29 October 2018 19:34:47 CET you wrote:
> On Monday, 29 October 2018 13:48:24 CET Giovanni Biscuolo wrote:
> > 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"
> 
> This sort of thing is also why a Free license is not allowed to contain
> clauses like "the software may not be used for evil purpose". Are you really
> competent to judge what constitutes "evil"? The CC is just vague enough to
> allow any malicious person to move the goalposts as they see fit.
> 
> > > 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)
> 
> That's the thing, you have just found the loophole. The accused can be
> denied any right to defense under the pretense that presenting the
> accusation could compromise the identity of the accuser, thus breaking the
> rules of the CC. You as an accused are at the complete mercy of an
> arbitrary judgment.
> 
> > > 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)
> 
> Companies don't generally disclose the reason for firing employees, but the
> two most prominent cases are that of James Damore and the incident known as
> "Donglegate".
> 
> In the case of Damore, he wrote an internal memo at Google, criticising the
> unfair treatment between the sexes. The memo got leaked, blow up by the
> media into a full-fledged "manifesto" of a cabal of women-haters and Damore
> lost his job.
> 
> "Donglegate" as about a woman overhearing a conversation of two men during
> PyCon 2013, where the talked about "dongles" and "forking repos". The
> conversation was not addressed at her, she was eavesdropping, took their
> photos without consent, uploaded them to Twitter and used the PyCon Code of
> Conduct as a justification. At least one of the men has been fired
> subsequently. The only reason why we know of this incident is because the
> woman could not contain the joy of destroying a family-man's livelihood.
> 
> Both of those incidents are well-known, so you can read up on them if you
> want to. The man from Donglegate has since found employment at an all-male
> company and he prefers it that way. Here is a question to anyone who thinks
> CoCs are a good thing: do you really think that driving such a wedge
> between men a women makes for a healthy and safe environment? How do you
> think his wife felt? Do you think she was happy that the family's income
> was now gone?
> 
> > plz do you have more examples of contributors being expelled? I need it
> > for my research purposes
> 
> Take the case of this Drupal maintainer:
> https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing
> 
> He was kicked out of the project because he has a maledom fetish (BDSM where
> the man is the dominant part). That's right, he was removed from the
> project because what he did in his bedroom was not politically correct. Not
> because of abuse, rape, or anything, just because people took issues with
> what he did in private.
> 
> > > 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?
> 
> I don't have a list of links at hand, but you already mentioned the Opal
> maintainer.
> https://web.archive.org/web/20160227000631/https://github.com/opal/opal/
> issues/941
> There is also this interesting Ruby thread:
> https://web.archive.org/web/20160128191532/https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues
> / 12004
> As you can see from Ehmke's comments, there is no interest in becoming a
> member of these communities, only installing a CoC that defines punishment.
> No other CoC is acceptable to Ehmke. I also remember a Tweet saying
> something along a lines of "This person said XYZ, he should donate money to
> a transgender charity of my choice", but I don't have a link, so take it
> for what it's worth. If this is not defamation and money extortion, they I
> don't know what is.
> 
> > > 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
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by FUD. Adding a "don't be afraid to contribute"
> does not mean anything. If someone is holding a gun at you and says "just
> stay calm", would you feel comfortable?
> 
> > > 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
> 
> Yes, but this does not benefit anyone. I mean, I could also make my packages
> proprietary, but what would be the point? Hacker culture was always about
> people tinkering and sharing, but we cannot have that if there is a group
> actively antagonizing anyone who wants to join.