Subject: Re: [alpine-devel] Code of Conduct

From: "Laurent Bercot" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 11:50:48 +0000

>The human rights were written, to the top of my knowledge, by white men

  Yeah, well, there was no Internet at the time, so it wasn't easy to
communicate with people outside of your main circle. Apples and oranges.

>It's not because we have predominant common factors that we will be 
>unable to comprehend or perceive challenges that others undure.

  It is exactly because we are not exposed to challenges that we may fail
to perceive them. I have experienced this first-hand. Pretending to be
able to foresee everything is just hubris; if we are going to have a CoC
ready for when the community has grown and needs one, I'd rather have it
done right.

>We are all Humans, and the paragraph two is meant as a catch-all for 
>abuses towards Humans (if I remember correctly, awilfox was supporting 
>it, saying something along the lines of "no personal attacks, and 
>you're good"), no matter their individual characteristics.

  Sure, and that's fine with me, too. But is there any harm in running it 
by
people who may have a different perspective, just to be sure?

>Making it more explicit, and detailing each case is a role a refuse to 
>take, as it will exponentially increase the pain of discussing and 
>redacting the CoC;

  That's not what I suggested.
  I know you thought people would make that suggestion and so you felt
compelled to address it, but as it turns out, I didn't. Please react to
what I wrote, not to what you think I would write. And for the record,
I agree with you on that point.

>  In short I'm not against asking around, but please be careful who you 
>ask: if this becomes the kind of long and complicated debate attracting 
>mobs of lobbyists from any side

  That is *also* not what I wrote. As a matter of fact, since it's 
something
that really does endanger open source projects and often flies under the
radar, I am in favor of adding a mention to paragraph 4 that would say
something like: excessive lobbying or engaging the Alpine community on
non-technical matters *is* a disruption of the collaborative space and a
violation of the CoC. (In other words: make it clear that
politics, drama or any other kind of noise => out.)

>Let's make our CoC as we like our software. Simple, reliable, and 
>small.

  Yes. And to me, reliability includes checks from people with more
experience than we have in these matters.

--
  Laurent

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From: 7heo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 May 2017 19:11:28 +0200

Dear Laurent,

I am glad that what I understood from what you wrote wasn't what you 
meant. I am sorry for the misinterpretation.

I couldn't agree more with your suggestion for the addition to point 4.

I will then proceed to ask my friends, and the friends of friends, who 
are (but not only) related, or directly in LGBT groups and minorities.

Here is the most recent draft, with the current additions and redaction:

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

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. Excessive lobbying or continuously engaging the Alpine 
community on non-technical matters is a disruption of the collaborative 
space and also a violation of the CoC.

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).

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.

On 5/12/2017 1:50 PM, Laurent Bercot wrote:
>  Sure, and that's fine with me, too. But is there any harm in running it by
>> ask: if this becomes the kind of long and complicated debate
>> attracting mobs of lobbyists from any side
>
>  That is *also* not what I wrote. As a matter of fact, since it's something
>> Let's make our CoC as we like our software. Simple, reliable, and small.
>

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From: 7heo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 May 2017 19:18:14 +0200

Breno Leitao makes a good point about the language barrier; and I will 
be thinking of a way to re-add the "good faith" point without giving too 
much space for it to be a loophole.

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From: William Pitcock <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2017 01:16:14 -0500

Hi,

On Sat, May 13, 2017 at 12:18 PM, 7heo <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Breno Leitao makes a good point about the language barrier; and I will be
> thinking of a way to re-add the "good faith" point without giving too much
> space for it to be a loophole.

Some sort of "do not assume you are being attacked personally because
your work is being criticized" is important for me to support the CoC.
People who are behaving defensively can become very toxic.

>>> ready for when the community has grown and needs one, I'd rather have it

A CoC is not enough to improve the diversity situation, but is a good start.
We should consider a diversity statement, and perhaps a diversity
subproject to encourage minorities to make Alpine their home base
instead of other distributions.

It is also important to me, personally, that the CoC does not try to
make special nods to minorities: when CoCs do this, it comes off as
"white men" paying lip service -- it's not authentic.

>>> people who may have a different perspective, just to be sure?

I have a different perspective being that I'm not "white" (what is
really meant by "white" is Caucasian).  My family has some immigrants
(and really I do cherish that heritage too) in it, but is largely
native.
>From my perspective: there are *perceived* biases that may or may not
actually be present.
A lot of us are taught to just pretend we're white, as it's "easier that way."
In fact, in America, a lot of tribal citizenship rolls are having to
be reconstructed because their ancestors gave up tribal citizenship in
order to appear more "white."

A Code of Conduct alone cannot solve that, if the goal is to encourage
minorities to be comfortable participating in Alpine, they need to
feel like they will not be "found out."
I do not pretend to know the solution, I just know that we need more
than a Code of Conduct, nor should we attempt to fool ourselves into
believing that a CoC would be an effective vehicle for that kind of
outreach.
Imposter syndrome is quite real and can cause *extra* attrition in
contributions from minorities, and some sort of other solution would
be needed to help resolve that.

In fact, writing the above was very difficult for me because I was
worried about being "found out" and how those facts would be
perceived.
Thankfully, until now, it has not really come up, as FOSS is really
about code first and discourse second.

>>> I agree with you on that point.

As I said above: I don't think it needs to be *explicit*.  The point
that should be communicated is that it is the intent of the Alpine
project to provide a safe collaborative space for *everyone*
(including "white" males).

With that said, I think a secondary document alongside the CoC which
lists some common hypothetical situations (swatting / doxing,
harassment inside and outside of the space originating from some
statement / action in Alpine) is necessary to help interpret the
spirit of the CoC.

For example: if I say I want to switch Alpine to GLIBC and systemd and
somebody else swats me or harasses my boss trying to get me fired,
this should not be allowed behaviour.  Swatting and harrassing my boss
are both technically activities which occur outside of the Alpine
collaborative space, but the actions stem from something that did
occur in that space.  If the CoC has no guidance to address this, then
it is a worthless CoC.  Oh, and this (swatting) has actually happened
to me before working in other spaces, so please do not tell me this is
unnecessary.

>>> politics, drama or any other kind of noise => out.)

I agree with this.

>>> experience than we have in these matters.

I also agree with this.  Hopefully my perspective is insightful.

William

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