[Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Olof Johansson]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 8:15 PM John W. Linville <linville at tuxdriver.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 03:51:14AM +1000, James Morris wrote:
> > On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Shuah Khan wrote:
> >
> > > This decision to change the existing "Code of Conflict" signed off by a large number of developers,
> > > has been changed and committed with a few people signing off on it.
> > >
> > > It would be good to know the circumstances that necessitated the decision to include this patch
> > > without the proper review process. if that isn't possible, it is important to follow the review
> > > process now for v2. Also, discussing this in the Maintainer summit and/or kernel summit will not
> > > make the community feel like it is a community approved decision. At least, kernel community should
> > > be given a chance to discuss this change just like any other change.
> >
> > Not speaking on behalf of my employer, I agree with all of the above.
>
> +1
>
> Some number of folks feel (at least indirectly) chided or silenced by
> the new Code of Conduct. Many of those folks have expressed themselves
> ineloquently in a variety of venues. Much as one may disagree with
> some of their expressed sentiments, those expressions of frustration
> represent the feelings of some number of people in the real world.
>
> It seems likely to me that these folks are at least as likely to
> quit the community over their hurt feelings as have been the victims
> of Linus or any other grumpy maintainers. If we really care about
> maximizing the pool of contributors, we need to accomodate even those
> that aren't particularly comfortable with 'playing nice'. Giving them
> some say in establishing the rules seems extremely reasonable to me.

Ah yes, Popper's Paradox. The answer is not that we have to be
tolerant of the intolerant -- or at least not infinitely. We also all
know that people need a bit of time to adjust to new habits and I
think we should focus more on (quick) improvement over time than
absolutes. We're all humans.

I'd like to make a couple of personal opinions clear here (for
whatever it's worth):

1) The CoC was clear that we're using this _from now on_. I.e. let
bygones be bygones even if bad things might have happened (there are
extreme exceptions to this, but let's not go there).

2) Some seem to be focused on worst-case scenarios of the culture
changing to be something completely different from what it is today. I
don't think anyone involved wants this, and we shouldn't implement
something that strict here. I still want people to argue over and care
about code. I still look forward to everybody participating, and we
shouldn't be doing anything along the lines of lowering the quality
bar or prioritizing things differently from today.

However, I hope that when we do have disagreements, we won't reach
shouting in all caps and name-calling stage. If someone gets a bit too
tempered, people should feel free to reach out and talk about it --
and that said people are willing to listen and maybe take a few deep
breaths before considering if it's useful to continue communicating
like they were and tone it down. If we can get that far, that'd make a
huge difference.

The old Code of Conflict said "be excellent to each other", but people
weren't. Hopefully with this change, we can end up a whole lot closer
to that state.


-Olof