Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Hello,

Following the announcement made by RMS regarding the new GNU Kind
Communication Guidelines (GKCG) [1], I would like to know if the Guix
developpers in particular its maintainers would agree to adopt it in
place of the current Code of Conduct (CoC)?

Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people (like
me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in contributing to
any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the politics
of its authors [2][3].

Thanks.

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-10/msg00001.html
[2] https://www.contributor-covenant.org/
[3] https://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy

-- 
Mathieu Lirzin
GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761  070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

Hullo Mathieu!

Mathieu Lirzin wrote:
> Following the announcement made by RMS regarding the new GNU 
> Kind
> Communication Guidelines (GKCG) [1], I would like to know if the 
> Guix
> developpers in particular its maintainers would agree to adopt 
> it in
> place of the current Code of Conduct (CoC)?

They seem reasonable (a tad reactionary, but hey, it's rms) but 
orthogonal to our CoC.

> Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people 
> (like
> me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
> encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in 
> contributing to
> any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the 
> politics
> of its authors [2][3].

I've (re-)read the links you've provided (thanks). I guess it's 
supposed to be obvious what you find disagreeable about them, but 
if one doesn't disagree, it's not that obvious. :-)

(TBH that's the only reason I replied at all: I'd like to learn 
more about the different perspectives on this issue. The 'debate' 
dividing other projects is entirely unenlightening and tedious. I 
hope we can do better.)

That said, I hope we can address any perceived lack of merit in 
(our copy of) the CoC without resorting to its original 
authors. The resulting irony blast would level multiple city 
blocks.

Kind regards,

T G-R

> [1] 
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-10/msg00001.html
> [2] https://www.contributor-covenant.org/
> [3] https://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Hello Tobias,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> writes:

> I've (re-)read the links you've provided (thanks). I guess it's
> supposed to be obvious what you find disagreeable about them, but if
> one doesn't disagree, it's not that obvious. :-)

IMO Discussing what I find disagreeable with the particular form of
Feminism advocated by the links I have provided is off topic.

Without direspecting those who agrees with those ideas, I think it is
reasonably obvious that not everybody supporting Free Software, supports
those unrelated political ideas.

> That said, I hope we can address any perceived lack of merit in (our
> copy of) the CoC without resorting to its original authors. The
> resulting irony blast would level multiple city blocks.

I don't understand the last sentence.  Can you explain it with
simpler words?

>> [1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-10/msg00001.html
>> [2] https://www.contributor-covenant.org/
>> [3] https://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy

Thanks.

-- 
Mathieu Lirzin
GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761  070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 01:15:23PM +0200, Mathieu Lirzin wrote:
> Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people (like
> me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
> encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in contributing to
> any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the politics
> of its authors [2][3].

FWIW once I noticed that Guix had adopted the Contributor Covenant, it 
factored strongly into my decision to stop contributing to the project 
last year.

I can't say for sure that I would contribute again if the CoC were gone, 
but I would very much welcome this change.  

-- 
Alex Griffin

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Jack Hill]

Alex,

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018, Alex Griffin wrote:

> FWIW once I noticed that Guix had adopted the Contributor Covenant, it
> factored strongly into my decision to stop contributing to the project
> last year.

Interesting. I too am eager understand your thinking on this.

When thinking about this issue today, I remembered some of Sage Sharp's 
writings [0][1]. What struck me about those writings is that it is not 
just about the language in our policies, but about how we use the policies 
when conducting ourselves as a community. In particular, it is about more 
than just how we communicate. It is about who is included and empowered in 
the community, and how we handle problems that arise. Getting all of this 
right is hard work, and I am happy to take all the advice I can get from 
people who have done more thinking and had more real world experience in 
this area, whether that be the Contributor Covenant, the GNU Kind 
Communication Guidelines, or other writings about community building (even 
those not specific to software).

When embarking on the hard work or community building (like the hard work 
of promoting software freedom), I find it helpful to see where we are 
heading. In Guix the Free Software Distribution Guidelines did this for 
the software freedom issues, and, while perhaps imperfect, the CoC did 
this for the community building issues. Regardless of how we sort out the 
details of implementation, I hope that we set, document, and communicate a 
high goal for our community building work.

Best,
Jack

P.S. Apologies if guix-devel is not the right place to be having this 
conversation. I like Guix a lot and am interested in it being a just 
community.

[0] http://sage.thesharps.us/2016/01/25/code-of-conducts-warning-signs/
[1] http://sage.thesharps.us/2015/10/06/what-makes-a-good-community/

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Jack Hill <jackhill@jackhill.us> skribis:

> On Tue, 23 Oct 2018, Alex Griffin wrote:
>
>> FWIW once I noticed that Guix had adopted the Contributor Covenant, it
>> factored strongly into my decision to stop contributing to the project
>> last year.
>
> Interesting. I too am eager understand your thinking on this.

Same here.  For the record, the code of conduct was adopted in Guix
in Dec. 2015.

Ludo’.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello Mathieu,

Good to see you here!

Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:

> Following the announcement made by RMS regarding the new GNU Kind
> Communication Guidelines (GKCG) [1], I would like to know if the Guix
> developpers in particular its maintainers would agree to adopt it in
> place of the current Code of Conduct (CoC)?

Speaking for myself: no.  I think the GKCG fails to address important
issues, such as defining what’s acceptable and what’s not as well as
clear processes to address this.

> Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people (like
> me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
> encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in contributing to
> any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the politics
> of its authors [2][3].

Codes of conduct codify acceptable behavior and formalize processes:
what can I do as a contributor if I’m a victim bad behavior or
harassment?  What are the group communication rules?  What if I
knowingly break those rules?

By adopting the code of conduct, we maintainers committed to spend our
time as needed to so your experience contributing to Guix won’t be a
source of stress or worse, as is too often the case in on-line
communities.

The GKCG do not do that.  Problems will be dealt with in an ad hoc
fashion (as they already are in groups that have not codified rules), if
they are addressed at all.

I hope this answers your question.

Happy hacking!

Ludo’.

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

Jack Hill <jackhill@jackhill.us> skribis:
>
> Interesting. I too am eager understand your thinking on this.

I am skeptical of codes of conduct in FLOSS projects because they often 
come bundled with a certain (non-software-related) political orthodoxy.

The Contributor Covenant is the worst offender in this regard, having 
been created specifically for that purpose [1]. Although most of the 
offending text has now been removed from the document itself, the same 
spirit still follows behind it to projects that adopt the CC.

(It is also baffling to me that programmers would want to recreate an 
imitation HR department in their time off from the corporate world, but 
I'll put that aside.)

On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 12:02:37PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>
> Same here.  For the record, the code of conduct was adopted in Guix
> in Dec. 2015.

I hadn't noticed when I first started contributing. A bad code of 
conduct can still work out fine with good project leadership in place, 
which is why the Contributor Covenant was only one of several factors 
influencing my decision to move away from Guix.

I hope it is evident that I don't oppose the CoC out of a desire to 
behave badly. Please forgive some vagueness as well; I tried very hard 
not to provoke unnecessary controversy. As a result much of this email 
was edited out before sending.

-- 
Alex Griffin

[1]: https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1041465346656530432

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Hello Ludo,

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:
>
>> Following the announcement made by RMS regarding the new GNU Kind
>> Communication Guidelines (GKCG) [1], I would like to know if the Guix
>> developpers in particular its maintainers would agree to adopt it in
>> place of the current Code of Conduct (CoC)?
>
> Speaking for myself: no.  I think the GKCG fails to address important
> issues, such as defining what’s acceptable and what’s not as well as
> clear processes to address this.

I am sad that you feels that the GKCG is not sufficient for defining the
acceptable behavior of the members of a Free Software community.

>> Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people (like
>> me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
>> encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in contributing to
>> any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the politics
>> of its authors [2][3].
>
> Codes of conduct codify acceptable behavior and formalize processes:
> what can I do as a contributor if I’m a victim bad behavior or
> harassment?  What are the group communication rules?  What if I
> knowingly break those rules?
>
> By adopting the code of conduct, we maintainers committed to spend our
> time as needed to so your experience contributing to Guix won’t be a
> source of stress or worse, as is too often the case in on-line
> communities.
>
> The GKCG do not do that.  Problems will be dealt with in an ad hoc
> fashion (as they already are in groups that have not codified rules), if
> they are addressed at all.
>
> I hope this answers your question.

Yes it does perfectly.

I personnaly think dealing with such issues in an ad hoc fashion is the
right approach when acceptable behaviors are the norm, which IME has
been the case.

Anyway I still hope that the Guix community will eventually accept the
GKCG as an acceptable tradeoff in the CoC debate.

Thanks.

-- 
Mathieu Lirzin
GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761  070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hello Mathieu,

> Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:
>
>> Following the announcement made by RMS regarding the new GNU Kind
>> Communication Guidelines (GKCG) [1], I would like to know if the Guix
>> developpers in particular its maintainers would agree to adopt it in
>> place of the current Code of Conduct (CoC)?
>
> Speaking for myself: no.  I think the GKCG fails to address important
> issues, such as defining what’s acceptable and what’s not as well as
> clear processes to address this.

[Apologies for the delay; I’m currently traveling.]

Adding to what Ludovic wrote, I also would not want to replace the
current proven Contributor Covenant with the recently emerged GKCG.
Using *both* of them would not be useful, I think, as I find our current
CoC to be sufficient; using *only* the GKCG and dropping the existing
CoC would be a mistake in my opinion, as our CoC describes a process
which the GKCG does not.

Committing to a process to deal with grievances is a very desirable
feature of our current CoC that I don’t want to give up.  As one of the
people who shares responsibility for dealing with incidents of
harassment or misunderstandings, this helps me do a better job.

Even so, I encourage people to continue to engage in fostering kind
communication in the channels of the Guix project, something that this
community by and large does very well.

>> Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people (like
>> me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
>> encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in contributing to
>> any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the politics
>> of its authors [2][3].

To me the politics of the author(s) of the original or current version
of the Contributor Covenant don’t play much of a role in prefering it as
a practical guiding document for this community.  (I don’t know the
author.)

I think I see how it could be seen as “punitive”, but I don’t share this
assessment.  We all want what’s best for the project and the people who
currently work on or consider working on it — to me the emergence of the
GKCG is more evidence that this is true.  I hope that seeing these
similarities in intent more than the differences in implementation will
allow you to overcome your feeling of reluctance to contribute to Guix
(and other projects that have decided to adopt a CoC).

--
Ricardo

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Hello Ricardo,

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

>> Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:
>>
>>> Following the announcement made by RMS regarding the new GNU Kind
>>> Communication Guidelines (GKCG) [1], I would like to know if the Guix
>>> developpers in particular its maintainers would agree to adopt it in
>>> place of the current Code of Conduct (CoC)?
>>
>> Speaking for myself: no.  I think the GKCG fails to address important
>> issues, such as defining what’s acceptable and what’s not as well as
>> clear processes to address this.
>
> [Apologies for the delay; I’m currently traveling.]

No need to apology, your response is still prompt. :-)

> Adding to what Ludovic wrote, I also would not want to replace the
> current proven Contributor Covenant with the recently emerged GKCG.
> Using *both* of them would not be useful, I think, as I find our current
> CoC to be sufficient; using *only* the GKCG and dropping the existing
> CoC would be a mistake in my opinion, as our CoC describes a process
> which the GKCG does not.

AIUI the GKCG is an attempt to reconcile people of the GNU hackers
community which is has been fragmented by the CoC debate.

In order to reconcile, each “camp” has to make some tradeoffs.  Since
you are a CoC proponent, it is normal that you feel that the GKCG is not
as “good” as the CoC.  However I would really appreciate if you (and
Ludo) could seriously consider the GKCG “downsides” as an acceptable
tradeoff to help uniting GNU Hackers and move the GNU project as a whole
(not just the Guix project) towards what you consider the “right”
direction in the “harassment free” path.

>>> Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people
>>> (like me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
>>> encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in contributing
>>> to any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the
>>> politics of its authors [2][3].
>
> To me the politics of the author(s) of the original or current version
> of the Contributor Covenant don’t play much of a role in prefering it as
> a practical guiding document for this community.  (I don’t know the
> author.)

Have you consider that it doesn't play a role because you basically
share similar political ideas as the author(s) without knowing/caring?
This is not intended as a critic, but just as an opportunity for you to
consider that your own political bias (which we humans all have) is not
universal and that maybe other “respectable” persons might not share it.

> I think I see how it could be seen as “punitive”, but I don’t share this
> assessment.  We all want what’s best for the project and the people who
> currently work on or consider working on it — to me the emergence of the
> GKCG is more evidence that this is true.  I hope that seeing these
> similarities in intent more than the differences in implementation will
> allow you to overcome your feeling of reluctance to contribute to Guix
> (and other projects that have decided to adopt a CoC).

As explain above, I don't think the CoC and GKCG has the same intent.
If it were the case that Guix choose to ignore this opportunity to
reconcile, I am sorry to say that my reluctance to contribute to Guix
would not diminish.

Thanks for you answer.

-- 
Mathieu Lirzin
GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761  070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[George Clemmer]

Hello

Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:

> Hello Mathieu,
>
>> Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:
>>
>>> Following the announcement made by RMS regarding the new GNU Kind
>>> Communication Guidelines (GKCG) [1], I would like to know if the Guix
>>> developpers in particular its maintainers would agree to adopt it in
>>> place of the current Code of Conduct (CoC)?
>>
>> Speaking for myself: no.  I think the GKCG fails to address important
>> issues, such as defining what’s acceptable and what’s not as well as
>> clear processes to address this.
>
> [Apologies for the delay; I’m currently traveling.]
>
> Adding to what Ludovic wrote, I also would not want to replace the
> current proven Contributor Covenant with the recently emerged GKCG.
> Using *both* of them would not be useful, I think, as I find our current
> CoC to be sufficient; using *only* the GKCG and dropping the existing
> CoC would be a mistake in my opinion, as our CoC describes a process
> which the GKCG does not.
>
> Committing to a process to deal with grievances is a very desirable
> feature of our current CoC that I don’t want to give up.  As one of the
> people who shares responsibility for dealing with incidents of
> harassment or misunderstandings, this helps me do a better job.
>
> Even so, I encourage people to continue to engage in fostering kind
> communication in the channels of the Guix project, something that this
> community by and large does very well.
>
>>> Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people (like
>>> me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
>>> encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in contributing to
>>> any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the politics
>>> of its authors [2][3].
>
> To me the politics of the author(s) of the original or current version
> of the Contributor Covenant don’t play much of a role in prefering it as
> a practical guiding document for this community.  (I don’t know the
> author.)
>
> I think I see how it could be seen as “punitive”, but I don’t share this
> assessment.  We all want what’s best for the project and the people who
> currently work on or consider working on it — to me the emergence of the
> GKCG is more evidence that this is true.  I hope that seeing these
> similarities in intent more than the differences in implementation will
> allow you to overcome your feeling of reluctance to contribute to Guix
> (and other projects that have decided to adopt a CoC).

The responses above seem consistent with why CoC mightq appeal to
maintainers. But as a Guix user and occasional contributor, I find GKCG
more welcoming and more useful. For me, RMS' rationale is compelling:

    The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start
    guiding people towards kinder communication at a point well before
    one would even think of saying, "You are breaking the rules."  The
    way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is
    try to help people learn to make their communication more kind.

It is really the either-or situation implied by the discussion above?

What would be wrong with adding GKCG and keeping CoC?

- George

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Gábor Boskovits]

Hello

George Clemmer <myglc2@gmail.com> ezt írta (időpont: 2018. okt. 26., P, 1:04):
>
> Hello
>
> Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:
>
> > Hello Mathieu,
> >
> >> Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:
> >>
> >>> Following the announcement made by RMS regarding the new GNU Kind
> >>> Communication Guidelines (GKCG) [1], I would like to know if the Guix
> >>> developpers in particular its maintainers would agree to adopt it in
> >>> place of the current Code of Conduct (CoC)?
> >>
> >> Speaking for myself: no.  I think the GKCG fails to address important
> >> issues, such as defining what’s acceptable and what’s not as well as
> >> clear processes to address this.
> >
> > [Apologies for the delay; I’m currently traveling.]
> >
> > Adding to what Ludovic wrote, I also would not want to replace the
> > current proven Contributor Covenant with the recently emerged GKCG.
> > Using *both* of them would not be useful, I think, as I find our current
> > CoC to be sufficient; using *only* the GKCG and dropping the existing
> > CoC would be a mistake in my opinion, as our CoC describes a process
> > which the GKCG does not.

I belive that if there are voices who would like to have them both, there is
actually no problem with using both. The current CoC is in fact sufficient, but
if having the GKCG also makes people feel better I am not opposed to adopt it.

> >
> > Committing to a process to deal with grievances is a very desirable
> > feature of our current CoC that I don’t want to give up.  As one of the
> > people who shares responsibility for dealing with incidents of
> > harassment or misunderstandings, this helps me do a better job.
> >
> > Even so, I encourage people to continue to engage in fostering kind
> > communication in the channels of the Guix project, something that this
> > community by and large does very well.
> >
> >>> Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people (like
> >>> me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
> >>> encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in contributing to
> >>> any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the politics
> >>> of its authors [2][3].
> >
> > To me the politics of the author(s) of the original or current version
> > of the Contributor Covenant don’t play much of a role in prefering it as
> > a practical guiding document for this community.  (I don’t know the
> > author.)
> >
> > I think I see how it could be seen as “punitive”, but I don’t share this
> > assessment.  We all want what’s best for the project and the people who
> > currently work on or consider working on it — to me the emergence of the
> > GKCG is more evidence that this is true.  I hope that seeing these
> > similarities in intent more than the differences in implementation will
> > allow you to overcome your feeling of reluctance to contribute to Guix
> > (and other projects that have decided to adopt a CoC).
>
> The responses above seem consistent with why CoC mightq appeal to
> maintainers. But as a Guix user and occasional contributor, I find GKCG
> more welcoming and more useful. For me, RMS' rationale is compelling:
>
>     The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start
>     guiding people towards kinder communication at a point well before
>     one would even think of saying, "You are breaking the rules."  The
>     way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is
>     try to help people learn to make their communication more kind.
>
> It is really the either-or situation implied by the discussion above?
>
> What would be wrong with adding GKCG and keeping CoC?
>

I think this can be done, I feel nothing wrong with it.

> - George
>

It is also quite obvious what the maintainers feel missing from
GKCG, so it also might be possible to improve on the current
GKCG and make some of the features of CoC available, like:
1. Explicitly defining acceptable and not acceptable behaviour
(maybe by providing a liked document for that for flexibility and
easier adoptation)
2. Explicitly define a process to deal with issues
(this can also be a linked doument)
One way to do this easily would be to provide the current CoC as the
linked document
defining these. Later we could improve on this.
WDYT?

Best regards,
g_bor

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

Adopting both actually does nothing for those who take issue with the CoC, since between the 2 documents the stricter one must take precedence in order to mean anything at all.

-- 
Alex Griffin

On Thu, Oct 25, 2018, at 9:43 PM, Gábor Boskovits wrote:
> Hello
> 
> George Clemmer <myglc2@gmail.com> ezt írta (időpont: 2018. okt. 26., P, 1:04):
> >
> > Hello
> >
> > Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:
> >
> > > Hello Mathieu,
> > >
> > >> Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:
> > >>
> > >>> Following the announcement made by RMS regarding the new GNU Kind
> > >>> Communication Guidelines (GKCG) [1], I would like to know if the Guix
> > >>> developpers in particular its maintainers would agree to adopt it in
> > >>> place of the current Code of Conduct (CoC)?
> > >>
> > >> Speaking for myself: no.  I think the GKCG fails to address important
> > >> issues, such as defining what’s acceptable and what’s not as well as
> > >> clear processes to address this.
> > >
> > > [Apologies for the delay; I’m currently traveling.]
> > >
> > > Adding to what Ludovic wrote, I also would not want to replace the
> > > current proven Contributor Covenant with the recently emerged GKCG.
> > > Using *both* of them would not be useful, I think, as I find our current
> > > CoC to be sufficient; using *only* the GKCG and dropping the existing
> > > CoC would be a mistake in my opinion, as our CoC describes a process
> > > which the GKCG does not.
> 
> I belive that if there are voices who would like to have them both, there is
> actually no problem with using both. The current CoC is in fact sufficient, but
> if having the GKCG also makes people feel better I am not opposed to adopt it.
> 
> > >
> > > Committing to a process to deal with grievances is a very desirable
> > > feature of our current CoC that I don’t want to give up.  As one of the
> > > people who shares responsibility for dealing with incidents of
> > > harassment or misunderstandings, this helps me do a better job.
> > >
> > > Even so, I encourage people to continue to engage in fostering kind
> > > communication in the channels of the Guix project, something that this
> > > community by and large does very well.
> > >
> > >>> Adopting the GKCG instead of a CoC would help attracting people (like
> > >>> me) who agree to use a welcoming and respectful language which
> > >>> encourages everyone to contribute but are reluctant in contributing to
> > >>> any project following a CoC due to its punitive nature and the politics
> > >>> of its authors [2][3].
> > >
> > > To me the politics of the author(s) of the original or current version
> > > of the Contributor Covenant don’t play much of a role in prefering it as
> > > a practical guiding document for this community.  (I don’t know the
> > > author.)
> > >
> > > I think I see how it could be seen as “punitive”, but I don’t share this
> > > assessment.  We all want what’s best for the project and the people who
> > > currently work on or consider working on it — to me the emergence of the
> > > GKCG is more evidence that this is true.  I hope that seeing these
> > > similarities in intent more than the differences in implementation will
> > > allow you to overcome your feeling of reluctance to contribute to Guix
> > > (and other projects that have decided to adopt a CoC).
> >
> > The responses above seem consistent with why CoC mightq appeal to
> > maintainers. But as a Guix user and occasional contributor, I find GKCG
> > more welcoming and more useful. For me, RMS' rationale is compelling:
> >
> >     The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start
> >     guiding people towards kinder communication at a point well before
> >     one would even think of saying, "You are breaking the rules."  The
> >     way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is
> >     try to help people learn to make their communication more kind.
> >
> > It is really the either-or situation implied by the discussion above?
> >
> > What would be wrong with adding GKCG and keeping CoC?
> >
> 
> I think this can be done, I feel nothing wrong with it.
> 
> > - George
> >
> 
> It is also quite obvious what the maintainers feel missing from
> GKCG, so it also might be possible to improve on the current
> GKCG and make some of the features of CoC available, like:
> 1. Explicitly defining acceptable and not acceptable behaviour
> (maybe by providing a liked document for that for flexibility and
> easier adoptation)
> 2. Explicitly define a process to deal with issues
> (this can also be a linked doument)
> One way to do this easily would be to provide the current CoC as the
> linked document
> defining these. Later we could improve on this.
> WDYT?
> 
> Best regards,
> g_bor
> 

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Tonton]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2018 09:21:16 -0500
Alex Griffin <a@ajgrf.com> wrote:

> Jack Hill <jackhill@jackhill.us> skribis:
> >
> > Interesting. I too am eager understand your thinking on this.  
> 
> I am skeptical of codes of conduct in FLOSS projects because they often 
> come bundled with a certain (non-software-related) political orthodoxy.
> 
> The Contributor Covenant is the worst offender in this regard, having 
> been created specifically for that purpose [1]. Although most of the 
> offending text has now been removed from the document itself, the same 
> spirit still follows behind it to projects that adopt the CC.

CoC's are most definitely political, just like the GKCG. Orthodoxy in this
context I think is mostly meaningless - as most sides of this debate are as
orthodox as the others. There's also this:

> "I don’t agree with Coraline Ada Ehmke’s politics. Should I avoid this code
> of conduct?
> 
> If you’re a meritocracy fan, you already abide by the principle of
> separating the person from the contribution. And even if you’re not,
> adopting the Contributor Covenant does not imply any political or social
> orientation aside from the (unfortunately politicized) goal of making your
> project welcoming and inclusive to people of all backgrounds."
- https://www.contributor-covenant.org/faq

While I do agree that CoC's should be redundant and unneeded, our current
culture in FLOSS is sadly not there yet. Harrasment is - at least as far as I
have observed - way to common. An interesting element here is that many of the
harrassers don't seem to understand that they are harrassing.

This is the reason why, as has been discussed before on this list, I (I think
we/Guix) try to tell people kindly. It is after all normal to make mistakes,
it is also the way we learn. Usually nudging people to use inclusive language
and reminding ourselves when we slip is enough - and it encourages a much
nicer, and I'd argue productive, community. I see this in my day to day
situation also.


I have to admit I'm surprised at how good the GKCGs are. But, as has already
bin pointed out, it is lacking some important elements like process and
acceptable and unacceptable.


As some have come up and stated they quit Guix because of the CoC; I'm at the
opposite end of the spectrum. I run Guix with or without the community, but I
choose to participate in Guix because it has a good CoC that is held with
kindness by many in the community.

I look forward to winter, when I have more time for programming... :)

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

> An interesting element here is that many of the
> harrassers don't seem to understand that they are harrassing.

I'm so glad you brought this up, because it seems equally plausible to me that the other party could be reacting  overly sensitively.

This is precisely why it is a bad idea to set up an authority for people to appeal to. In many cases it's not clear which party is the unreasonable one, and it must be worked through with dialogue.

If people don't have to work things out among themselves, and disputes are instead handled by a committee of project maintainers, contributors lose the opportunity to better understand each other. Oh, and that committee of maintainers have all agreed according to the Contributor Covenant that they have a responsibility to punish abusers, so they might find it difficult to avoid being biased towards punishing the accused.

Software projects should focus on software. They are not equipped to administer justice.

-- 
Alex Griffin

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?

[Tonton]

On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 17:37:32 -0500
Alex Griffin <a@ajgrf.com> wrote:

> > An interesting element here is that many of the
> > harrassers don't seem to understand that they are harrassing.  
> 
> I'm so glad you brought this up, because it seems equally plausible to me
> that the other party could be reacting  overly sensitively.
> 
> This is precisely why it is a bad idea to set up an authority for people to
> appeal to. In many cases it's not clear which party is the unreasonable
> one, and it must be worked through with dialogue.
> 
> If people don't have to work things out among themselves, and disputes are
> instead handled by a committee of project maintainers, contributors lose
> the opportunity to better understand each other. Oh, and that committee of
> maintainers have all agreed according to the Contributor Covenant that they
> have a responsibility to punish abusers, so they might find it difficult to
> avoid being biased towards punishing the accused.

It seems to me you are making punishment way bigger than it actually is.
Great big lumps of shit has to hit someones fan before punishment is talked
about. The harshest I've seen here has been once when a core maintainer asked
a community member to take a break and rethink; in this case the person
being asked to take a break was claiming to be a victim (the whole thing
seemed to me a lot of grey scale and misunderstandings). Most of what I see
and participate in are friendly, inclusive dialogues - including the ones
where we work through grievances and misunderstandings.

Now, for issues that are of a difficult character it makes sense to not have
an open dialogue with all parties involved. There are many reasons for this
and I encourage everyone interested to read up on trauma, anxiety, depression
and other similar psycho-social issues, especially from the point of view of
those affected. The process should not be a one sided - the decision makers
should talk, and in these cases all parties should be reached out to for an
explanation. But I don't know if this is the current Guix process.

> 
> Software projects should focus on software. They are not equipped to
> administer justice.
> 

I think software projects should focus on building software, and to do that
you need someone to build it. Programming is an incredibly social activity -
even for me, here I sit alone and mostly work on stuff that only I will ever
see or use. So we focus on building an inclusive awesome community, because
that is one of the best ways to get awesome software. To build a community we
need to build a culture. To build a culture you need to have some way of
creating glue - cohesiveness. Either you auto-disassociate anyone not "tough
enough" or you use something like a CoC and someone enforcing it (or you find
other ways of reaching these goals; but AFAIK the two above are the main ones
used in FLOSS today).

Remember the CoC is only true for some communities/cultures, it does not
influence your legal entity outside of your interactions with the community
(unless the issues are severe enough to have broken an actual law where one
of the parties are).

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2018, at 1:42 PM, Tonton wrote:
> It seems to me you are making punishment way bigger than it actually is.

The CoC actually says that maintainers have a responsibility to remove 
offenders or risk being removed themselves. In contrast the Debian Code 
of Conduct says:

> While this code of conduct should be adhered to by participants, we 
> recognize that sometimes people may have a bad day, or be unaware of 
> some of the guidelines in this code of conduct. When that happens, you 
> may reply to them and point out this code of conduct. Such messages 
> may be in public or in private, whatever is most appropriate. However, 
> regardless of whether the message is public or not, it should still 
> adhere to the relevant parts of this code of conduct; in particular, 
> it should not be abusive or disrespectful. Assume good faith; it is 
> more likely that participants are unaware of their bad behaviour than 
> that they intentionally try to degrade the quality of the discussion.

The difference is like night and day.

> Remember the CoC is only true for some communities/cultures, it does not
> influence your legal entity outside of your interactions with the community

To enter into a covenant, or agree to be bound by a code, means to stake 
your word on it. The words themselves actually carry weight, and not 
just as rules to follow, which is why the tiniest details of these 
documents receive so much scrutiny.

From sentence 1 of the Contributor Covenant:
> In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as 
> contributors and maintainers pledge to [...]

This snippet right here is a problem even before we get to the meat and 
potatoes. I don't appreciate the presumption that my mere participation 
indicates my agreement with this document. It rubs me the wrong way even 
when I'm only reporting a bug (which does fall under its scope, because 
'issues', as found in an issue tracker, are explicitly mentioned further 
down).

-- 
Alex Griffin

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

In a sense, the Debian Code of Conduct is a code in name only. It's really just 6 guidelines for kind communication and resolving conflicts peacefully, and finally a method for seeking recourse either as a last resort or in serious cases. The Contributor Covenant is actually a real covenant.
-- 
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?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 28/10/2018 20.50, Alex Griffin wrote:
>  From sentence 1 of the Contributor Covenant:
>> In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as
>> contributors and maintainers pledge to [...]
> This snippet right here is a problem even before we get to the meat and
> potatoes. I don't appreciate the presumption that my mere participation
> indicates my agreement with this document.

Especially as it's easily possible to contribute a patch without being 
aware of the CC.

It says it's a pledge. How does it mean anything just sitting there? 
Must there not be an act of making/joining the pledge?

Seems to me either that language must go, or in future, contributions 
(at least those ending up in the tree) can only be accepted from people 
who explicitly made/joined/signed the pledge (AKA read and sign this 
EULA before contributing even the tiniest bug-fix).


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

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

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2018, at 1:42 PM, Tonton wrote:
> It seems to me you are making punishment way bigger than it actually is.

Think about it this way. The Contributor Covenant goes on about the many different ways that a disagreement might escalate, while the Debian CoC spends almost all of its time modeling how to de-escalate a disagreement.

-- 
Alex Griffin

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2018, at 7:33 AM, Gábor Boskovits wrote:
> 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.

To be honest, neither does the CC really. It throws out a vague list, but 
never goes into any detail. I believe this is intentional, if you never define 
what the goalposts are, then you can move them around as much as you want and 
apply punishment as you see fit.

The same goes for due process, it does not define how to apply punishment, just 
that the punishment can range from a warning to getting completely banned. 
Also the accused has no right to defense, the accusation does not need to be 
disclosed and if any maintainer disagrees they can be removed from the project 
as well. This is just a kangaroo court system.

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

I am not totally opposed to it, but it's like writing your own license: other 
people have already put thought into it, so just use what they have written. 
The GKCG has the added bonus that it is an official GNU guideline, so it would 
be nice to have it throughout the GNU projects. The Debian CoC seems fine, and 
KDE has a decent one as well.
https://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct/

> Do you think that this could result in a better situation overall?

Improve in regards to what exactly? Are the maintainers afraid that the 
mailing list will turn into 4chan if there is no CoC in place?

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?

[Björn Höfling]

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On Sun, 28 Oct 2018 14:50:54 -0500
Alex Griffin <a@ajgrf.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 28, 2018, at 1:42 PM, Tonton wrote:

> >From sentence 1 of the Contributor Covenant:
> > In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we
> > as contributors and maintainers pledge to [...]  
> 
> This snippet right here is a problem even before we get to the meat
> and potatoes. I don't appreciate the presumption that my mere
> participation indicates my agreement with this document. It rubs me
> the wrong way even when I'm only reporting a bug (which does fall
> under its scope, because 'issues', as found in an issue tracker, are
> explicitly mentioned further down).
> 

You can harass in just one bug report: "Module foo does not work for
me. [Normal bug report things here] This beast is written in
such a bad way, the bug is more its contributor Bar, he/she/zhe is so
[inappropriate phrase here], get rid of him/her/zhe immediately and the
problem is resolved."

Nobody asked about reporting, nobody asked to sign a CoC or anything,
yet this is harassment and the project (maintainer) should take
immediate steps to protect Bar.

The same harassment can pretty well be packed in a patch.

In law, there is the term of "conduct implying an intent". So even not
signing anything you could argue that by sending a bug or a patch you
silently agree with the community guidelines, CoC, etc. You enter the
community be interacting the first time. And will be judged by their
guidelines. 

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?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 29/10/2018 09.59, Björn Höfling wrote:
> In law, there is the term of "conduct implying an intent". So even not
> signing anything you could argue that by sending a bug or a patch you
> silently agree with the community guidelines, CoC, etc. You enter the
> community be interacting the first time. And will be judged by their
> guidelines.

It used to be that you could pick a Free Software project and send a patch.

Now sending a patch is supposed to imply agreeing to the equivalent of 
an EULA? Everyone is expected to welcome that as progress?

Again "... we as contributors and maintainers pledge ..." is bullshit. I 
pledged nothing. More pragmatic and truthful would be:

"The project owners expect everyone who contributes to the project by 
any means, or who communicates via any of the means that belong to the 
project, to stick to the rules below. Breaking the rules may lead to any 
of: a warning, rejection of contributions, a ban where and as far as 
possible."

-- 
Thorsten Wilms

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[Alex Griffin]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 11:49:23AM +0100, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> bullshit. I pledged nothing. More pragmatic and truthful would be:
> 
> "The project owners expect everyone who contributes to [...]

Exactly. I would actually have less of a problem with it if it were 
presented as moderation rules come down from on high. They still might 
be bad rules that I disagreed with (or not), but at least there would 
only be a problem if I broke a rule.

When the CoC actually purports to speak for me, then there's a problem 
even if no one ever invokes the CoC. I view the Contributor Covenant in 
particular as pushing identity politics on the free software world and 
manufacturing consent for that agenda. That's why the website proudly 
lists all the projects that agreed to it, and why they go push newer 
projects to adopt it.

I mean don't you think it's odd that the net effect of CoCs is to cause 
drama and divide communities, when they're supposed to be about 
welcoming everybody? Even if you can't understand why it shakes out like 
that, that alone should throw up red flags in your mind.

-- 
Alex Griffin

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?

[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?

[Christopher Lemmer Webber]

Thorsten Wilms writes:

> On 29/10/2018 09.59, Björn Höfling wrote:
>> In law, there is the term of "conduct implying an intent". So even not
>> signing anything you could argue that by sending a bug or a patch you
>> silently agree with the community guidelines, CoC, etc. You enter the
>> community be interacting the first time. And will be judged by their
>> guidelines.
>
> It used to be that you could pick a Free Software project and send a patch.
>
> Now sending a patch is supposed to imply agreeing to the equivalent of
> an EULA? Everyone is expected to welcome that as progress?

Submitting code to a project under a copyleft license is also agreeing
to policy.

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

RE: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Cook, Malcolm]

This so very well said - thank you Alex - were there a vote to recast mine flows thusly:

> I'm so glad you brought this up, because it seems equally plausible to me
 > that the other party could be reacting  overly sensitively.
 > 
 > This is precisely why it is a bad idea to set up an authority for people to
 > appeal to. In many cases it's not clear which party is the unreasonable one,
 > and it must be worked through with dialogue.
 > 
 > If people don't have to work things out among themselves, and disputes are
 > instead handled by a committee of project maintainers, contributors lose
 > the opportunity to better understand each other. Oh, and that committee
 > of maintainers have all agreed according to the Contributor Covenant that
 > they have a responsibility to punish abusers, so they might find it difficult to
 > avoid being biased towards punishing the accused.
 > 
 > Software projects should focus on software. They are not equipped to
 > administer justice.

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.

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?

[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?

[Tonton]

On Sun, 28 Oct 2018 14:50:54 -0500
Alex Griffin <a@ajgrf.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 28, 2018, at 1:42 PM, Tonton wrote:
> > It seems to me you are making punishment way bigger than it actually is.  
> 
> The CoC actually says that maintainers have a responsibility to remove 
> offenders or risk being removed themselves. ...

I'm assuming you are referring to this passage:

> 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 risk of maintainers being removed is slight, the text here talks about
misconduct and other maintainers have to make a decision on a case by case
basis - just like they would have to in relation to any other accusation of
breach. As far as I understand this paragraf is explicitly saying that
maintainers are within the scope of the CoC and they have some extra
responsiblity to it.

> > Remember the CoC is only true for some communities/cultures, it does not
> > influence your legal entity outside of your interactions with the
> > community  
> 
> To enter into a covenant, or agree to be bound by a code, means to stake 
> your word on it. The words themselves actually carry weight, and not 
> just as rules to follow, which is why the tiniest details of these 
> documents receive so much scrutiny.

There are limits though. The CC pledges you to abide by it's rules in
relation to a certain community. Outside of this you are not pledged to it.
but see below.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "The words themselves actually
carry weight, and not just as rules to follow" How do they carry weight
outside of setting rules? I'm a bit intrigued by how much weight you put in
your words though. Do you never blow with the wind and dance with the stars
because of this bondage to words?

	:)

> 
> From sentence 1 of the Contributor Covenant:
> > In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as 
> > contributors and maintainers pledge to [...]  
> 
> This snippet right here is a problem even before we get to the meat and 
> potatoes. I don't appreciate the presumption that my mere participation 
> indicates my agreement with this document. It rubs me the wrong way even 
> when I'm only reporting a bug (which does fall under its scope, because 
> 'issues', as found in an issue tracker, are explicitly mentioned further 
> down).
> 

This is kind of like the Law of Cardamom[1]. The CC and most other CoC's I've
seen in FLOSS assume you are acting in good faith and that we are kind to
each other. I too spent some time mulling that one over, but seeing as it
asks you to pledge what I see as a low standard of communication I found no
problem with it. The fact that it gives some of us pause is probably enough
to warrant a change though.

So I skimmed over debians CoC[2] and find it to be mostly similar to the CC,
though with a more positive and welcoming language (which also skips mention
of negative behaviour). There's a few things I miss from it like process -
which is alluded to, but not present as far as I could see. Looks good to me
with a few additions.

Let's see what comes of the discussion.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Robbers_Came_to_Cardamom_Town#Law
[2]: https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct

On Sun, 28 Oct 2018 16:26:58 -0500
Alex Griffin <a@ajgrf.com> wrote:
> Think about it this way. The Contributor Covenant goes on about the many
> different ways that a disagreement might escalate, while the Debian CoC
> spends almost all of its time modeling how to de-escalate a disagreement.

I wonder if we are reading the same document. I'm assuming it's this one:
https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct
As far as I can see it spends equal time on positive and negative behaviour
and then defines responsibilities, scope and process. Debians spend time
encouraging positive behaviour, and alludes to process - it misses
responsibility and properly talking about process.

Debians also misses defining negative behaviour, which leaves it up to
potential contributors to investigate what is allowed and not in the
community. This is enough for some to not bother trying, and that is one of
the important points. I (we) want to include them.

On Sun, 28 Oct 2018 15:25:01 -0500
Alex Griffin <a@ajgrf.com> wrote:
> In a sense, the Debian Code of Conduct is a code in name only. It's really
> just 6 guidelines for kind communication and resolving conflicts
> peacefully, and finally a method for seeking recourse either as a last
> resort or in serious cases. The Contributor Covenant is actually a real
> covenant.

that's the same thing. :) I encourage reading the tao of pooh - this is
completely off topic.

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?

[Alex Griffin]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018, at 5:58 PM, Tonton wrote:
> There are limits though. The CC pledges you to abide by it's rules in
> relation to a certain community. Outside of this you are not pledged to it.
> but see below.

I know, but my point is that pledging yourself to the CoC is way different than just entering a space with established rules or norms that you should follow.

> I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "The words themselves actually
> carry weight, and not just as rules to follow" How do they carry weight
> outside of setting rules? I'm a bit intrigued by how much weight you put in
> your words though. Do you never blow with the wind and dance with the stars
> because of this bondage to words?

The words "covenant" or "code" in this sense of the word are far more weighty than guidelines or even rules. Obviously I do speak casually most of the time but not when discussing statements of value.

> I too spent some time mulling that one over, but seeing as it
> asks you to pledge what I see as a low standard of communication I found no
> problem with it. The fact that it gives some of us pause is probably enough
> to warrant a change though.

It's not *just* a low standard of communication. The same sentence goes on to list a whole slew of categories you might use to put people into groups, which I don't agree with because it encourages treating people as members of a group rather than as individuals.

> Debians spend time
> encouraging positive behaviour, and alludes to process - it misses
> responsibility and properly talking about process.

Both documents barely address responsibility at all, and to properly address it would veer this discussion far down the philosophical rabbit hole.

> Debians also misses defining negative behaviour, which leaves it up to
> potential contributors to investigate what is allowed and not in the
> community. This is enough for some to not bother trying, and that is one of
> the important points. I (we) want to include them.

Behavior which causes conficts qualifies as *potentially* negative, to be negotiated as it occurs, except possibly in very serious cases.

> Alex Griffin <a@ajgrf.com> wrote:
> > In a sense, the Debian Code of Conduct is a code in name only. It's really
> > just 6 guidelines for kind communication and resolving conflicts
> > peacefully, and finally a method for seeking recourse either as a last
> > resort or in serious cases. The Contributor Covenant is actually a real
> > covenant.
> 
> that's the same thing. :) I encourage reading the tao of pooh - this is
> completely off topic.

They're not the same thing at all. A covenant is something you pledge yourself to, a code in this sense of the word might otherwise be called a creed. A code might also just be a plain old list of rules, which the Debian CoC still wouldn't qualify for.

-- 
Alex Griffin

Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Alex Griffin]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018, at 7:46 PM, Alex Griffin wrote:
> It's not *just* a low standard of communication. The same sentence goes 
> on to list a whole slew of categories you might use to put people into 
> groups, which I don't agree with because it encourages treating people 
> as members of a group rather than as individuals.

I know someone will argue this, so I'll get ahead of it. This is probably a confusing statement, because the literal meaning of the words is that you should treat people as individuals. The problem is that if that's what you really want then it's a bad idea to remind people of all the ways they're divided.

-- 
Alex Griffin

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.

Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Mark H Weaver]

Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:

> Thorsten Wilms writes:
>
>> On 29/10/2018 09.59, Björn Höfling wrote:
>>> In law, there is the term of "conduct implying an intent". So even not
>>> signing anything you could argue that by sending a bug or a patch you
>>> silently agree with the community guidelines, CoC, etc. You enter the
>>> community be interacting the first time. And will be judged by their
>>> guidelines.
>>
>> It used to be that you could pick a Free Software project and send a patch.
>>
>> Now sending a patch is supposed to imply agreeing to the equivalent of
>> an EULA? Everyone is expected to welcome that as progress?
>
> Submitting code to a project under a copyleft license is also agreeing
> to policy.

What is the basis for this claim?

While I'm generally in favor of the CoC, I strongly oppose the idea that
submitting a patch or communicating with us implies automatic agreement
to our policies.

We should not claim that someone has "agreed" to anything without their
conscious knowledge and consent.  Even if the law would allow us to make
such a claim, we should not do it because it would be unjust.

Please, it is enough to make our policies clear and highly visible, to
encourage people to read them, and to give the lead project maintainers
the authority to issue warnings, and if deemed necessary, to ban people
from our communication channels who repeatedly or severely violate our
CoC.  I support that practice, as long as it's used judiciously, and I
have every confidence in Ludovic and Ricardo to do so.

We do _not_ need to extract promises from contributors ahead of time
that they will follow our policies, and I think it's a bad idea to ask
them to.  It's a worse idea to claim that they've done so implicitly
without their knowledge or consent.

      Mark

Re: Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Christopher Lemmer Webber]

Mark H Weaver writes:

> Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:
>
>> Thorsten Wilms writes:
>>
>>> On 29/10/2018 09.59, Björn Höfling wrote:
>>>> In law, there is the term of "conduct implying an intent". So even not
>>>> signing anything you could argue that by sending a bug or a patch you
>>>> silently agree with the community guidelines, CoC, etc. You enter the
>>>> community be interacting the first time. And will be judged by their
>>>> guidelines.
>>>
>>> It used to be that you could pick a Free Software project and send a patch.
>>>
>>> Now sending a patch is supposed to imply agreeing to the equivalent of
>>> an EULA? Everyone is expected to welcome that as progress?
>>
>> Submitting code to a project under a copyleft license is also agreeing
>> to policy.
>
> What is the basis for this claim?
>
> While I'm generally in favor of the CoC, I strongly oppose the idea that
> submitting a patch or communicating with us implies automatic agreement
> to our policies.
>
> We should not claim that someone has "agreed" to anything without their
> conscious knowledge and consent.  Even if the law would allow us to make
> such a claim, we should not do it because it would be unjust.
>
> Please, it is enough to make our policies clear and highly visible, to
> encourage people to read them, and to give the lead project maintainers
> the authority to issue warnings, and if deemed necessary, to ban people
> from our communication channels who repeatedly or severely violate our
> CoC.  I support that practice, as long as it's used judiciously, and I
> have every confidence in Ludovic and Ricardo to do so.
>
> We do _not_ need to extract promises from contributors ahead of time
> that they will follow our policies, and I think it's a bad idea to ask
> them to.  It's a worse idea to claim that they've done so implicitly
> without their knowledge or consent.
>
>       Mark

I suspect we do not disagree Mark, but the way in which you replied to
me makes it sound like we do, so let me clarify. :)  My short reply was
because I was trying to demonstrate, in few words, that the message I
was replying to was introducing an inaccuracy.  I did not clarify what
that was, but I will below.

We accept many patches from users where the user does not sign an actual
document, but their patch and their name applied on the top is
considered sufficient evidence that they have declared their code to be
licensed under the GPL.

But I should clarify the claim I was making, since I was not trying to
say that the legal or mechanistic aspects of this were equivalent.  Let
me quote what was I was replying to:

>>> It used to be that you could pick a Free Software project and send a patch.
>>>
>>> Now sending a patch is supposed to imply agreeing to the equivalent of
>>> an EULA? Everyone is expected to welcome that as progress?

The statement above makes it sound like the Code of Conduct is
dramatically new.  My claim here was that in both cases, there is a
policy the community has adopted.  One is legal and copyleft, the other
is behavioral and a code of conduct.  In both cases, your participation
in this community is dependent on your willingness to agree to respect
the policies and norms that the group upholds.

What's interesting to me is that this isn't new at all, it's just
codified for some specific things.  The Code of Conduct is not a legal
document, it is a set of policies about community norms.  Many of these
norms already existed, and the same process (speak to the person, ask
them to change their behavior, if we can't fix it, yes they may be
banned) has existed for a long time in free software circles.  What is
new from the code of conduct perspective is making explicit what some of
those norms are, and what participants can expect if they are not
upheld.

I have seen some accusations that this is censorship or an overreach or
equivalent to an EULA to have these norms enforced.  And yet the free
software community, and especially GNU projects, have long been
enforcing of policies.  Copyleft is a mechanism for enforcement of
policies by law, but even beyond that, I think most of the members of
this group would find it perfectly acceptable to ban someone who began
to post patches to the list under a license that was incompatible with
the GPL and which "poisoned" our ability to use them upon seeing them.
The former is a legal agreement, the latter is a norms agreement, but
they are both policy, and by participating in our group in general you
have an understanding that these policies exist.  The code of conduct
does not provide a legal enforcement mechanism, so the EULA comment in
that sense does not hold up; this is just a codification of some of the
norms that we have.  But someone made the EULA comment, and the extent
that it *did* make sense (that there are policies, in some way), I
wanted to reply to it.

The free software community has always had policies, has always asked
people to respect language, has always had the expectation that if you
participate in our community, you are expected to abide by certain
norms.  Having those norms even be explicit is not new; there are norms
posted all over the GNU website, and participants are frequently asked
to abide by them.  Internet forums of all kinds have expressed rules and
policies.  That is not new.

Let's be clear about what the difference is then about adding a code of
conduct: we are extending and making explicit the norm-policies of
requirement to participate in our community to extend to various forms
of respect for others.  For a long time, many such norms were even
implicit rather than explicit.  We are choosing to make explicit some
norms that encourage good behavior and respectful treatment amongst
participants in the group.  We are also explicitly requiring respecting
the well being of participants who have long had difficulty
participating due to reasons that are largely culturally systemic.

It is this last sentence that most people objecting to a code of conduct
seem suspicious of, but I feel like much of the conversation around code
of conducts beats around the bush that many of the skeptics simply don't
believe that last sentence is true.  Well, it turns out the code of
conduct is a useful document whether you believe that last sentence is
true, but I believe it sticks in the craw of people who believe that our
society does not have unequal distributions of justice, and that is the
source of almost all objections.

Every community provides some sort of governance.  Having policies,
whether legal (copyleft) or norms (all the other things we expect), is
not new, and I hope I have demonstrated that.  So a code of conduct is
not any more like adding an EULA for all participants than other policy
traditions are.

All the best,
 - Chris

Re: Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Thorsten Wilms]

Thanks to Mark H Weaver for writing ... how to say .. the mirror 
perspective of what I wish I would have written as sole input so far :)


On 30/10/2018 14.28, Christopher Lemmer Webber wrote:

>>>> It used to be that you could pick a Free Software project and send a patch.
>>>>
>>>> Now sending a patch is supposed to imply agreeing to the equivalent of
>>>> an EULA? Everyone is expected to welcome that as progress?
> 
> The statement above makes it sound like the Code of Conduct is
> dramatically new.

It is based on the fact that there are many projects that existed for 
some time before adopting a CoC. The EULA comparison is only about CoCs 
with "covenant" and "we contributors pledge" type of language.

While benefiting from and accepting a copyleft license is pretty much a 
precondition for a patch, that is not the case for a CoC that tries to 
bind one on contribution.


> My claim here was that in both cases, there is a
> policy the community has adopted.  One is legal and copyleft, the other
> is behavioral and a code of conduct.  In both cases, your participation
> in this community is dependent on your willingness to agree to respect
> the policies and norms that the group upholds.

Submitting a patch might involve only the most minimal interaction with 
one maintainer. Staying within a very narrow subset of rules that a 
group might uphold should suffice to cause no harm to anyone while 
allowing people to benefit from the work.

The group is not clearly delineated. The actual norms are only shown in 
how the maintainers and regulars act.


> The code of conduct
> does not provide a legal enforcement mechanism, so the EULA comment in
> that sense does not hold up; this is just a codification of some of the
> norms that we have.  But someone made the EULA comment, and the extent
> that it *did* make sense (that there are policies, in some way), I
> wanted to reply to it.

What I had in mind is: Unpacking an old-school software that has a 
shrink-wrap EULA is meant to imply acceptance of the license.

Likewise, contributing to Guix is apparently meant to imply that one 
makes the pledge as outlined in that CoC.

In both cases, you are meant to not get one without the other. It 
happened that one could not read the EULA in advance and it happened 
that I contributed before reading the CoC carefully. I distrust it's 
origin and I'm not happy about a few details, though they most likely 
will never matter. So I could almost, but not quite make such a promise, 
but I cannot be made to make such a promise. Especially retroactively. 
Even less can I be made to make a promise that might change:

I assume that Ricardo and Ludovic want to have the option of editing the 
CoC without asking every single contributor. Well, people should better 
know what the current state of their pledge is.

Not that I think the two would introduce a nasty surprise, it's just 
that the "covenant" and "we as contributors ... pledge" language is 
dishonest.

Reject a contribution, talk to me, warn me, set an ultimatum, ban me if 
I did wrong by your norms as you see fit, that's all fine and expected 
with or without CoC anyway, but please don't try to make me say: those 
norms are mine (independent on whether they could be).

If I sound like a drama royal person ... so be it! ;)


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

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

Re: Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hi Thorsten,

Thorsten Wilms writes:
> [...]
>
> Likewise, contributing to Guix is apparently meant to imply that one
> makes the pledge as outlined in that CoC.
>
> In both cases, you are meant to not get one without the other. It
> happened that one could not read the EULA in advance and it happened
> that I contributed before reading the CoC carefully. I distrust it's
> origin and I'm not happy about a few details, though they most likely
> will never matter. So I could almost, but not quite make such a
> promise, but I cannot be made to make such a promise. Especially
> retroactively. Even less can I be made to make a promise that might
> change:
>
> I assume that Ricardo and Ludovic want to have the option of editing
> the CoC without asking every single contributor. Well, people should
> better know what the current state of their pledge is.
>
> Not that I think the two would introduce a nasty surprise, it's just
> that the "covenant" and "we as contributors ... pledge" language is
> dishonest.

Out of curiosity, would you personally feel better about the CoC if it
used terms such as "This community commits to" or "This community
pledges to" insteead of "We as contributors commit to"?

I ask because one of the positives about the CC wording from my
perspective is that it specifically makes it a collective responsibility
to uphold certain norms, and not just the responsibility of the
"projec authorities".  It is understood that there are specific channels
for dealing with violations of those norms, but the community as a whole
stands behind that.

Alex

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: Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi Chris,

Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:

> Mark H Weaver writes:
>
>> Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:
>>
>>> Thorsten Wilms writes:
>>>
>>>> On 29/10/2018 09.59, Björn Höfling wrote:
>>>>> In law, there is the term of "conduct implying an intent". So even not
>>>>> signing anything you could argue that by sending a bug or a patch you
>>>>> silently agree with the community guidelines, CoC, etc. You enter the
>>>>> community be interacting the first time. And will be judged by their
>>>>> guidelines.
>>>>
>>>> It used to be that you could pick a Free Software project and send a patch.
>>>>
>>>> Now sending a patch is supposed to imply agreeing to the equivalent of
>>>> an EULA? Everyone is expected to welcome that as progress?
>>>
>>> Submitting code to a project under a copyleft license is also agreeing
>>> to policy.
>>
>> What is the basis for this claim?
>>
>> While I'm generally in favor of the CoC, I strongly oppose the idea that
>> submitting a patch or communicating with us implies automatic agreement
>> to our policies.
>>
>> We should not claim that someone has "agreed" to anything without their
>> conscious knowledge and consent.  Even if the law would allow us to make
>> such a claim, we should not do it because it would be unjust.
>>
>> Please, it is enough to make our policies clear and highly visible, to
>> encourage people to read them, and to give the lead project maintainers
>> the authority to issue warnings, and if deemed necessary, to ban people
>> from our communication channels who repeatedly or severely violate our
>> CoC.  I support that practice, as long as it's used judiciously, and I
>> have every confidence in Ludovic and Ricardo to do so.
>>
>> We do _not_ need to extract promises from contributors ahead of time
>> that they will follow our policies, and I think it's a bad idea to ask
>> them to.  It's a worse idea to claim that they've done so implicitly
>> without their knowledge or consent.
>>
>>       Mark
>
> I suspect we do not disagree Mark, but the way in which you replied to
> me makes it sound like we do, so let me clarify. :)  My short reply was
> because I was trying to demonstrate, in few words, that the message I
> was replying to was introducing an inaccuracy.  I did not clarify what
> that was, but I will below.
>
> We accept many patches from users where the user does not sign an actual
> document, but their patch and their name applied on the top is
> considered sufficient evidence that they have declared their code to be
> licensed under the GPL.
>
> But I should clarify the claim I was making, since I was not trying to
> say that the legal or mechanistic aspects of this were equivalent.  Let
> me quote what was I was replying to:
>
>>>> It used to be that you could pick a Free Software project and send a patch.
>>>>
>>>> Now sending a patch is supposed to imply agreeing to the equivalent of
>>>> an EULA? Everyone is expected to welcome that as progress?
>
> The statement above makes it sound like the Code of Conduct is
> dramatically new.  My claim here was that in both cases, there is a
> policy the community has adopted.  One is legal and copyleft, the other
> is behavioral and a code of conduct.  In both cases, your participation
> in this community is dependent on your willingness to agree to respect
> the policies and norms that the group upholds.

These two cases are fundamentally different, in my view.

Contrary to what you wrote above, I assert that submitting code to a
project under licensed under the GNU GPL does _not_ require my agreement
to any policy.

All that can be reasonably expected of me, as a contributor to free
software projects, is that I'm being honest about the copyright status
of my contributions.  This is not an instance of agreeing to project
policy, but simply of not committing fraud.  It is obvious, and
therefore unsurprising and unobjectionable.

In contrast, I would be *very* surprised to learn that my contribution
to a project had been construed to imply agreement with that project's
policies, and I've been contributing to various free software projects
for about 25 years now.

I see no compelling need for Guix contributors to agree with our CoC.
It is enough for the project maintainers to agree, and for the lead
maintainers to possess the technical means to enforce the CoC through
their control over our communication channels.

> What's interesting to me is that this isn't new at all, it's just
> codified for some specific things.  The Code of Conduct is not a legal
> document, it is a set of policies about community norms.  Many of these
> norms already existed, and the same process (speak to the person, ask
> them to change their behavior, if we can't fix it, yes they may be
> banned) has existed for a long time in free software circles.  What is
> new from the code of conduct perspective is making explicit what some of
> those norms are, and what participants can expect if they are not
> upheld.
>
> I have seen some accusations that this is censorship or an overreach or
> equivalent to an EULA to have these norms enforced.  And yet the free
> software community, and especially GNU projects, have long been
> enforcing of policies.  Copyleft is a mechanism for enforcement of
> policies by law, but even beyond that, I think most of the members of
> this group would find it perfectly acceptable to ban someone who began
> to post patches to the list under a license that was incompatible with
> the GPL and which "poisoned" our ability to use them upon seeing them.

Agreed.

> The former is a legal agreement, the latter is a norms agreement, but
> they are both policy, and by participating in our group in general you
> have an understanding that these policies exist.

Again, I think these cases are fundamentally different.  I do _not_
think it's reasonable to expect that all Guix project participants will
be familiar with the policies outlined in our CoC.

Incidentally, I agree that it would be _desireable_ for project
participants to be familiar with our policies and to agree with them.
However, I don't think it should be required.

>                                                   The code of conduct
> does not provide a legal enforcement mechanism, so the EULA comment in
> that sense does not hold up; this is just a codification of some of the
> norms that we have.  But someone made the EULA comment, and the extent
> that it *did* make sense (that there are policies, in some way), I
> wanted to reply to it.

I agree that the lack of a legal enforcement mechanism in our CoC is a
very significant difference with EULAs.  Whereas EULAs are backed by the
full force of the law with all that entails, the most that will happen
if you violate our CoC is that we might deny you write access to our
project infrastructure.

That said, I also see at least two similarities between EULAs and your
suggestion that participation implies agreement with our policies: (1)
in both cases, there is the presumption that someone has agreed to terms
without making explicit statement to that effect, and (2) in both cases,
agreement to the terms is a prerequisite for participation.

> The free software community has always had policies, has always asked
> people to respect language, has always had the expectation that if you
> participate in our community, you are expected to abide by certain
> norms.  Having those norms even be explicit is not new; there are norms
> posted all over the GNU website, and participants are frequently asked
> to abide by them.  Internet forums of all kinds have expressed rules and
> policies.  That is not new.

I agree, it's not new.

However, if we were to start requiring people to agree with our policy
as a prequisite to their participation, or worse, to presume that they
have implicitly agreed, that _would_ be new.  Let's not do that please.

> Let's be clear about what the difference is then about adding a code of
> conduct: we are extending and making explicit the norm-policies of
> requirement to participate in our community to extend to various forms
> of respect for others.  For a long time, many such norms were even
> implicit rather than explicit.  We are choosing to make explicit some
> norms that encourage good behavior and respectful treatment amongst
> participants in the group.  We are also explicitly requiring respecting
> the well being of participants who have long had difficulty
> participating due to reasons that are largely culturally systemic.
>
> It is this last sentence that most people objecting to a code of conduct
> seem suspicious of, but I feel like much of the conversation around code
> of conducts beats around the bush that many of the skeptics simply don't
> believe that last sentence is true.  Well, it turns out the code of
> conduct is a useful document whether you believe that last sentence is
> true, but I believe it sticks in the craw of people who believe that our
> society does not have unequal distributions of justice, and that is the
> source of almost all objections.

I agree with all of this.

It seems to me that our only point of disagreement here is on the
question of whether to require/assume that all participants agree with
our policies.

      Regards,
        Mark

Re: Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 31/10/2018 09.58, Alex Sassmannshausen wrote:
> Out of curiosity, would you personally feel better about the CoC if it
> used terms such as "This community commits to" or "This community
> pledges to" insteead of "We as contributors commit to"?

In as far as contributing doesn't make one part of the community ... it 
would be a slight improvement. On the other hand, it's just vaguer about 
whom it puts words into their mouths.


> I ask because one of the positives about the CC wording from my
> perspective is that it specifically makes it a collective responsibility
> to uphold certain norms, and not just the responsibility of the
> "projec authorities".  It is understood that there are specific channels
> for dealing with violations of those norms, but the community as a whole
> stands behind that.

Yeah, that's the positive reading. A negative is that it is an attempt 
to push people to declare a mixed bag as their own, with no voice in the 
process (other than take it or leave it). One that contains 
hard-to-argue-with aspects, but also questionable and vague parts.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

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

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?

[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?

[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: Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Thanks for your answers.  I'm glad to hear that there might be room for
some form of dialogue on wording.

Cheers!

Alex

Thorsten Wilms writes:

> On 31/10/2018 09.58, Alex Sassmannshausen wrote:
>> Out of curiosity, would you personally feel better about the CoC if it
>> used terms such as "This community commits to" or "This community
>> pledges to" insteead of "We as contributors commit to"?
>
> In as far as contributing doesn't make one part of the community
> ... it would be a slight improvement. On the other hand, it's just
> vaguer about whom it puts words into their mouths.
>
>
>> I ask because one of the positives about the CC wording from my
>> perspective is that it specifically makes it a collective responsibility
>> to uphold certain norms, and not just the responsibility of the
>> "projec authorities".  It is understood that there are specific channels
>> for dealing with violations of those norms, but the community as a whole
>> stands behind that.
>
> Yeah, that's the positive reading. A negative is that it is an attempt
> to push people to declare a mixed bag as their own, with no voice in
> the process (other than take it or leave it). One that contains
> hard-to-argue-with aspects, but also questionable and vague parts.

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:

> 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?

[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?

[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]

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?

[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)

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 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?

[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: Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 30/10/2018 08.48, Mark H Weaver wrote:

> While I'm generally in favor of the CoC, I strongly oppose the idea that
> submitting a patch or communicating with us implies automatic agreement
> to our policies.

Quoting from the other thread:
On 29/10/2018 18.43, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:>

 > 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

Not a draft, just an issue to see if there's a chance to change the 
"pledge" issue at the root:
https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/issues/624

Just in case anyone here feels like showing some support there.


-- 
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: Patch submission should not imply agreement to policy (was Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?)

[Mark H Weaver]

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

> Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:
>
>> The free software community has always had policies, has always asked
>> people to respect language, has always had the expectation that if you
>> participate in our community, you are expected to abide by certain
>> norms.  Having those norms even be explicit is not new; there are norms
>> posted all over the GNU website, and participants are frequently asked
>> to abide by them.  Internet forums of all kinds have expressed rules and
>> policies.  That is not new.
>
> I agree, it's not new.
>
> However, if we were to start requiring people to agree with our policy
> as a prequisite to their participation, or worse, to presume that they
> have implicitly agreed, that _would_ be new.  Let's not do that please.

My response here was not sufficient.  Let me try again.

To my mind, there's an important but subtle distinction between:

(1) Posting policies and rules that apply to project participants, and
(2) Requiring that participants "agree" to the policies and rules.

In the first case, we are making the participants aware of the rules,
and of the possible consequences for breaking those rules.  Note that
this doesn't require participants to make any promises or to hold a
particular set of political beliefs.  I have no problem with this, and
moreover I fully support it.

In the second case, we are essentially demanding that participants make
promises about their future behavior, and declare themselves to share
the beliefs and goals encoded in the CoC.

The first case is analogous to the national and local laws that we all
must live under.

The second case is analogous to being asked by my government to sign an
endorsement and pledge of allegiance to those laws.

Do you see the difference?

      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?

[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?

[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