Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Jack Hill <jackhill@jackhill.us>]

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/