Subject: [alpine-devel] Code of Cond

From: 7heo <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 00:49:10 +0200

Hey people,

a few of us have been discussing every now and then the possibility of 
ever needing a CoC.

Following an exchange of opinions with some of the long-time Alpine 
developers today, I decided to come up with a CoC asap, for two reasons:

1. Abuses in the community would have an objective ground to be fought on.
2. Nobody could then come claiming we do not have a CoC and present us 
with a much more harmful and complex alternative (as it has been the 
case in many open source projects already)

Here goes my proposal (followed by explanations for each point), loosely 
based on the proposals from the PostgreSQL mailing list:

Alpine (AKA Alpine-Linux and Alpine-OS) Code of Conduct (CoC)
=============================================================

1. This CoC is to provide community guidelines for creating and 
enforcing a safe, respectful, productive, and collaborative place for 
any person who is willing to contribute in a safe, respectful, 
productive and collaborative way.

2. A safe, respectful, productive and collaborative environment is free 
of personal attacks and disparaging remarks of any kind, including, but 
not limited to, racial, ethnic, gender-related, religious, political, 
sexual-orientation related slur.

3. This CoC is not about being offended, nor giving weapons to so called 
social justice warriors. One should always assume good intentions. As 
with any diverse community, anyone would otherwise eventually get 
offended at something.

4. Any sustained disruption of the collaborative space (mailing lists, 
IRC etc.) or other Alpine events shall be construed as a violation of 
this CoC and appropriate action will be taken by the Alpine community 
moderators.

5. Any amendment made to this CoC should be approved by all Alpine 
developers (i.e. all people who have commit rights on the repositories).

6. The CoC is only about interaction with the Alpine community. Your 
private and public lives outside of the Alpine community are your own. 
Any issue arising outside of the Alpine community and not directly 
technically related with the Alpine maintained software shall neither be 
discussed nor arbitrated within the community.

----

Explanations:

1. Alpine is about contribution first, community second. The community 
only exists for the sole purpose of contributing together to Alpine. Not 
the other way around.

2. Such an contribution-welcoming environment can only happen when 
people leave their personal different at the door. Toxic behavior (like 
personal attacks) have no place in our community. i.e.: "Your work 
sucks" is fine while "you suck" isn't.

3. The FOSS community has recently seen a drastic increase of lobbying 
for exclusion, and censoring attempts, against some contributors, from 
certain groups. Offensive and toxic behavior within the community will 
be dealt with according to point two. Offensive and toxic behavior 
outside of it will be ignored according to point six.

4. As explained in point one, the main and foremost goal of our 
community is to support contribution. Anything threatening or impeding 
contribution is therefore directly harming the primary goal of our 
mailing lists and IRC channels; and has to be prevented.

5. Again, as explained in point one, the goal of the community is 
contribution. This CoC, discussing it, and all the work related to it 
are wasted time in regards to the technical progress. This requirement 
is meant as a discussion deterrent, as it will be pointless to discuss 
any proposal to the CoC as soon as one developer disagrees.

6. We do not care if you torture kittens or beat up puppies outside of 
our community. As long as you are keeping things separated, we will.

----

I hope I made it well enough that we do not have to spend too much time 
discussing it.

Theo.

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From: Shiz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 02:21:11 +0200

Hi Theo,

First, thanks for doing this — I believe that adopting a CoC will help us
provide handles to those in the community who see or are subject to abusive
behaviour to address them in a safe and productive manner.

There’s two (not too fundamental) issues I see with your current proposal:

1) The wording of clause 3. While I understand what you’re trying to say,
   the way it is being said seems far from neutral (and possibly wrong, as
   I’m sure under a lot of circumstances I would be considered a “social
   justice warrior”, as well many people that would want to contribute to
   Alpine), needlessly scaring people off in this especially charged
   political climate. I believe this section could be reworded in a far
   more neutral manner while still preserving its intention, maybe like this:

   “This document is to be used as stated in clause 1 for the health of the
    community, not as a beating stick for other people. Please assume the
    best intentions of people to a reasonable degree, and try to talk out
    differences first — sometimes people simply misunderstand each other.”

   I see William also proposed another variant on IRC that I may like even
   better:

   "Participants may disagree on the methods or opinions of others, but it
    is important to maintain the assumption of good faith.  Alpine is a diverse
    project representing many viewpoints, and as such, disagreements are likely
    to occur.  It should be assumed that all participants are working for the
    advancement of the project.”

   Where I’d possibly append “ and community” to the last sentence.
2) Clause 4 currently lacks examples of appropriate actions that can be taken
   by the community. I think it’s important to at least note the scope of these
   actions, so people realise that it is serious and can lead to more than
   simply a slap on the wrist. Maybe adding an additional clause with something
   like the following text may help elaborate on that:

   “Appropriate measures depend on the nature and severity of the case in
    question and may range from, but are not limited to, official warnings to
    temporary or permanent exclusion from community communication channels and
    removal of developer status or other conferred privileges.”

And a few mostly random, smaller thoughts:
* Maybe clause 2 should be expanded a bit to not just include direct personal
  attacks but also situations like harassment, stalking, and doxxing;
* I’d change the “and” in clause 6 to and or, as harassment behaviour within the
  Alpine community may not directly pertain to Alpine-related software. In my
  opinion it should relate to both the community and the software that arises
  from it.
* Clause 5 nicely defines Alpine developers, but we have no such definition yet
  for Alpine community moderators. Maybe adding a simple one would be helpful
  for people to identify who to address complaints to?

Again, thanks for doing this, and I hope we can have an inclusive but concise
CoC at the end. :)

- Shiz

> On 12 May 2017, at 00:49, 7heo <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hey people,
> 
> a few of us have been discussing every now and then the possibility of ever needing a CoC.
> 
> Following an exchange of opinions with some of the long-time Alpine developers today, I decided to come up with a CoC asap, for two reasons:
> 
> 2. Nobody could then come claiming we do not have a CoC and present us with a much more harmful and complex alternative (as it has been the case in many open source projects already)
> 
> Here goes my proposal (followed by explanations for each point), loosely based on the proposals from the PostgreSQL mailing list:
> 
> 1. This CoC is to provide community guidelines for creating and enforcing a safe, respectful, productive, and collaborative place for any person who is willing to contribute in a safe, respectful, productive and collaborative way.
> 
> 2. A safe, respectful, productive and collaborative environment is free of personal attacks and disparaging remarks of any kind, including, but not limited to, racial, ethnic, gender-related, religious, political, sexual-orientation related slur.
> 
> 3. This CoC is not about being offended, nor giving weapons to so called social justice warriors. One should always assume good intentions. As with any diverse community, anyone would otherwise eventually get offended at something.
> 
> 4. Any sustained disruption of the collaborative space (mailing lists, IRC etc.) or other Alpine events shall be construed as a violation of this CoC and appropriate action will be taken by the Alpine community moderators.
> 
> 5. Any amendment made to this CoC should be approved by all Alpine developers (i.e. all people who have commit rights on the repositories).
> 
> 6. The CoC is only about interaction with the Alpine community. Your private and public lives outside of the Alpine community are your own. Any issue arising outside of the Alpine community and not directly technically related with the Alpine maintained software shall neither be discussed nor arbitrated within the community.
> 
> ----
> 
> Explanations:
> 
> 1. Alpine is about contribution first, community second. The community only exists for the sole purpose of contributing together to Alpine. Not the other way around.
> 
> 2. Such an contribution-welcoming environment can only happen when people leave their personal different at the door. Toxic behavior (like personal attacks) have no place in our community. i.e.: "Your work sucks" is fine while "you suck" isn't.
> 
> 3. The FOSS community has recently seen a drastic increase of lobbying for exclusion, and censoring attempts, against some contributors, from certain groups. Offensive and toxic behavior within the community will be dealt with according to point two. Offensive and toxic behavior outside of it will be ignored according to point six.
> 
> 4. As explained in point one, the main and foremost goal of our community is to support contribution. Anything threatening or impeding contribution is therefore directly harming the primary goal of our mailing lists and IRC channels; and has to be prevented.
> 
> 5. Again, as explained in point one, the goal of the community is contribution. This CoC, discussing it, and all the work related to it are wasted time in regards to the technical progress. This requirement is meant as a discussion deterrent, as it will be pointless to discuss any proposal to the CoC as soon as one developer disagrees.
> 
> 6. We do not care if you torture kittens or beat up puppies outside of our community. As long as you are keeping things separated, we will.
> 
> ----
> 
> I hope I made it well enough that we do not have to spend too much time discussing it.
> 
> Theo.
> 
> 
> ---

---

From: 7heo <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 03:20:38 +0200

Thank you Shiz for taking the time to review and comment on my proposal.

Since you started with clause 3, I will step right in, and say: from the 
feedback I got, it is utterly clear that it completely misses the point. 
So I will entirely rephrase it (not using any of the suggestions because 
they are more a confirmation of step 2 - do not offend others - than 
what was actually meant by - do not get offended).

About step 4, you are right that it is important to explicitly state 
that actions will be taken "with a response appropriately proportional 
to the fault."; but examples are out-of-scope: they call for more 
exhaustive specifications in the CoC, while this is what we want to 
avoid (it will take more time and we, AFAICT, prefer to trust the 
developers as a whole than to write a canonical document that will be 
interpreted according to who shouts louder).

For point two, exactly for the same reason as for point four, we do not 
want explicit listings (and let's not give potential ill-intended people 
a complete todo list), but I will add 'doxing' as it apparently makes 
consensus.

The 'and' in point 6 is very much intentional. It means that we will 
only care about stuff happening outside of the community if it is technical.

Finally, point 5 does not define alpine moderators, because we have no 
other definition for it than the developers. So I guess that will have 
to be an amendment for later on.

----

So here is the new version:

1. This CoC is to provide community guidelines for creating and 
enforcing a safe, respectful, productive, and collaborative place for 
any person who is willing to contribute in a safe, respectful, 
productive and collaborative way. It is especially not meant as an 
exhaustive law, to automate moderation, or to prevent thinking.

2. A safe, respectful, productive and collaborative environment is free 
of personal attacks, doxing, and disparaging remarks of any kind, 
including, but not limited to, racial, ethnic, gender-related, 
religious, political, sexual-orientation related slur.

3. This document is not about censorship or exclusion. Censorship is an 
extreme measure, and shall only happen as a consequence of applicable 
state law. Exclusion should be decided unanimously by the developers (or 
in case of exclusion of a developer, by the developers who are in the 
project for longer than the person to be excluded).

5. Any amendment made to this CoC should be approved unanimously by all 
Alpine developers (i.e. all people who have commit rights on the 
repositories).

---

---

From: 7heo <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 03:36:46 +0200

One small change on the new point 3, mostly to simplify it and not to 
contradict the first sentence with the rest of the point:

3. This CoC does not condone nor excuse censorship; or the exclusion of 
those acting in good faith. Censorship should never happen unless 
required by law.

On 5/12/2017 3:20 AM, 7heo wrote:
>>> 2. Nobody could then come claiming we do not have a CoC and present
>>> us with a much more harmful and complex alternative (as it has been
>>> the case in many open source projects already)
>>>
>>> Here goes my proposal (followed by explanations for each point),
>>> loosely based on the proposals from the PostgreSQL mailing list:
>>>
>>> 2. A safe, respectful, productive and collaborative environment is
>>> free of personal attacks and disparaging remarks of any kind,
>>> 3. This CoC is not about being offended, nor giving weapons to so
>>> called social justice warriors. One should always assume good
>>> intentions. As with any diverse community, anyone would otherwise
>>> eventually get offended at something.
>>>
>>> 4. Any sustained disruption of the collaborative space (mailing
>>> lists, IRC etc.) or other Alpine events shall be construed as a
>>> violation of this CoC and appropriate action will be taken by the
>>> Alpine community moderators.
>>>
>>> private and public lives outside of the Alpine community are your
>>> own. Any issue arising outside of the Alpine community and not
>>> directly technically related with the Alpine maintained software
>>> shall neither be discussed nor arbitrated within the community.
>>>
>>> ----
>>>
>>> Explanations:
>>>
>>> 1. Alpine is about contribution first, community second. The
>>> community only exists for the sole purpose of contributing together
>>> to Alpine. Not the other way around.
>>>
>>> people leave their personal different at the door. Toxic behavior
>>> (like personal attacks) have no place in our community. i.e.: "Your
>>> work sucks" is fine while "you suck" isn't.
>>>
>>> 3. The FOSS community has recently seen a drastic increase of
>>> lobbying for exclusion, and censoring attempts, against some
>>> contributors, from certain groups. Offensive and toxic behavior
>>> within the community will be dealt with according to point two.
>>> Offensive and toxic behavior outside of it will be ignored according
>>> to point six.
>>>
>>> community is to support contribution. Anything threatening or
>>> impeding contribution is therefore directly harming the primary goal
>>> of our mailing lists and IRC channels; and has to be prevented.
>>>
>>> are wasted time in regards to the technical progress. This
>>> requirement is meant as a discussion deterrent, as it will be
>>> pointless to discuss any proposal to the CoC as soon as one developer
>>> disagrees.
>>>
>>> 6. We do not care if you torture kittens or beat up puppies outside
>>> of our community. As long as you are keeping things separated, we will.
>>>
>>> ----
>>>

---

---

From: "Laurent Bercot" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 09:59:44 +0000

Thank you, Theo, for undertaking this.

  I have a small meta point to make: to the best of my knowledge, the 
Alpine
community, although much friendlier than the majority of tech 
communities
out there, is not exactly diverse. We are overwhelmingly white men -
nothing wrong with that, but we have not experienced harassment as other
people have, and I'd be reluctant to endorse a CoC without at least 
having
it reviewed by people who are more likely to be on the receiving end of
online abuse, by people who can bring experience or at least another
perspective on this.

  So, can we please bring women, trans people, non-white people, disabled
people, in the conversation? or at least, if we know such people in 
tech,
can we simply run the CoC drafts by them and see if they notice 
something
that we wouldn't ?

  Thanks,

--
  Laurent

---

---

From: Ed Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 15:58:15 +0100

I am broadly in agreement with this. I especially like that it basically
assumes that we can all be trusted to do the right thing, and that some
broad guidelines of don't personally attack people or be super
unprofessional are clearly enough.

I would probably just drop point number 3 in the hope that we in the
community can be trusted to have some common sense over the issue.  While I
agree with the sentiment, it is likely to attract the wrong sort of
attention from people who would find such words incendiary.   If you want
to keep it, I would suggest dropping the phrase "nor giving weapons to so
called social justice warriors", I can think of more than one person who
would take that the wrong way...

Anyway, thanks for doing this.

Ed

On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 11:49 PM, 7heo <[email-masked]> wrote:

> with a much more harmful and complex alternative (as it has been the case
> in many open source projects already)
>
> 1. This CoC is to provide community guidelines for creating and enforcing
> a safe, respectful, productive, and collaborative place for any person who
> is willing to contribute in a safe, respectful, productive and
> collaborative way.
>
> 2. A safe, respectful, productive and collaborative environment is free of
> personal attacks and disparaging remarks of any kind, including, but not
> limited to, racial, ethnic, gender-related, religious, political,
> social justice warriors. One should always assume good intentions. As with
> any diverse community, anyone would otherwise eventually get offended at
> something.
>
> 4. Any sustained disruption of the collaborative space (mailing lists, IRC
> etc.) or other Alpine events shall be construed as a violation of this CoC
> and appropriate action will be taken by the Alpine community moderators.
>
> private and public lives outside of the Alpine community are your own. Any
> issue arising outside of the Alpine community and not directly technically
> related with the Alpine maintained software shall neither be discussed nor
> arbitrated within the community.
>
> ----
>
> Explanations:
>
> 2. Such an contribution-welcoming environment can only happen when people
> leave their personal different at the door. Toxic behavior (like personal
> attacks) have no place in our community. i.e.: "Your work sucks" is fine
> while "you suck" isn't.
>
> 3. The FOSS community has recently seen a drastic increase of lobbying for
> exclusion, and censoring attempts, against some contributors, from certain
> groups. Offensive and toxic behavior within the community will be dealt
> with according to point two. Offensive and toxic behavior outside of it
> will be ignored according to point six.
>
> 4. As explained in point one, the main and foremost goal of our community
> is to support contribution. Anything threatening or impeding contribution
> is therefore directly harming the primary goal of our mailing lists and IRC
> channels; and has to be prevented.
>
> contribution. This CoC, discussing it, and all the work related to it are
> wasted time in regards to the technical progress. This requirement is meant
> as a discussion deterrent, as it will be pointless to discuss any proposal
> to the CoC as soon as one developer disagrees.
>
> 6. We do not care if you torture kittens or beat up puppies outside of our
> community. As long as you are keeping things separated, we will.
>
> ----
>

---

From: 7heo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 May 2017 19:15:41 +0200

Hey Ed,

Please look at the new version - you've not been the only one requesting 
a change of point 3.

The thread is under a new subject: "Code of Conduct"

Cheers,
Theo.

On 5/12/2017 4:58 PM, Ed Robinson wrote:
> community can be trusted to have some common sense over the issue.
> While I agree with the sentiment, it is likely to attract the wrong sort
> of attention from people who would find such words incendiary.   If you
> want to keep it, I would suggest dropping the phrase "nor giving weapons
> to so called social justice warriors", I can think of more than one
> person who would take that the wrong way...
>
> On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 11:49 PM, 7heo <[email-masked]
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>     Hey people,
>
>     enforcing a safe, respectful, productive, and collaborative place
>     for any person who is willing to contribute in a safe, respectful,
>     contribution. This CoC, discussing it, and all the work related to
>     it are wasted time in regards to the technical progress. This
>     pointless to discuss any proposal to the CoC as soon as one
>     developer disagrees.
>
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>
>     <mailto:[email-masked]>
>     ---
>
>

---

---

From: Breno Leitao <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 15:01:42 -0300

> community can be trusted to have some common sense over the issue.

Regarding number 3, I particularly would like to see, at least, something as
expressed at "One should always assume good intentions".

I like to keep this mainly from a language and background stand point. Not
native English speakers, who usually have a different cultural background,
might use some wrong expression situation that can possible cause some
weirdness at first impression.

I personally suffered from it on my early years, when I said something with a
different/weird meaning, which caused an unnecessary confusion. Assuming good
will on interactions helps the community.

---

---

From: 7heo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 May 2017 19:15:06 +0200

I agree with you,

I will issue a new revision to re-introduce that part.

Thanks,
Theo.

---