Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de>]

(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.