[nanomsg] Re: Adopting a CoC

  • From: "Garrett D'Amore" <garrett@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "nanomsg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <nanomsg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 16:52:19 -0800

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 2:35 PM, Bent Cardan <bent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I appreciate Garrett's leadership of the libnanomsg project, but I am -1
on this.

I do not see how arbitrary and probably unenforceable restrictions on the
exchange of communication or ideas carries the potential benefit of
attracting any additional contributors.


That’s the usual gripe with CoCs — how do you enforce etc.. I was hoping
for two things here:

a) an ounce of prevention — tone setting — may help. It probably is
unlikely to deter someone who really wants to be an ass from doing so, but
if it steers some of the trolls elsewhere, that would be worthwhile.

b) the claim has been made by many people that the existence of a CoC is an
attribute that potential contributors look for. Now, me *personally*, I
couldn’t give a crap whether a project has a CoC or not. I don’t think
CoCs are curative at all — they are palliative and to some extent possibly
preventive. Frankly, if someone acts irredeemably toxically in this
project, I won’t feel like I need to have a CoC to justify taking
corrective action — I’ll just take the action. For better or worse, this
project *is* a benevolent dictatorship. I try to make sure I act in the
interests of the common good, but ultimately final decisions rest with me.
I’m not going to be in too huge of a hurry to “fix” that either — consensus
driven decision making in FOSS == disaster in my experience.

So, I’m definitely *not* going to “require” a CoC; if someone acts like an
ass then they can expect me to take some kind of action.

I’m pretty disheartened by the intensely negative response this suggestion
has drawn; as I’ve indicated, I’ve no particular love of CoCs but even if
their value as is just as a placebo, that’s something, and what is their
cost? Do folks really think this is going to turn into some kind of
Orwellian drama?



Also, I thought Martin gave the trademark to nanomsg in this email to the
list:


On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 3:37 AM, Martin Sustrik <sustrik@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

For the record:

Hereby, I grant permission to use 'nanomsg' trademark to the nanomsg
project as hosted at github.com/nanomsg/nanomsg


That’s “license to use” not “ownership”. The two things are very different.

- Garrett




Martin Sustrik



On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 2:32 PM, Marc Balmer <marc@xxxxxxx> wrote:


That CoC is utter bullshit, to be frank.

Am 05.01.2016 um 23:15 schrieb Garrett D'Amore <garrett@xxxxxxxxxx>:

Normally I try to avoid getting mired into political debates, but I’m
currently thinking of adding a standard CoC to the nanomsg source repo.

Basically my proposal is to add this:

http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/3/0/code_of_conduct.md

to the nanomsg repo. (Updated with email addresses of course).

I do have my doubts about the efficacy of CoCs, and I don’t think we have
a problem — but if we did we might not know it — I suspect that all the
current contributors are male.

The concept of setting a stake in the ground for the future, and
presenting our “community” (are we even that big yet?) as welcoming and
inclusive, and setting a standard tone for acceptable behavior, seems like
something we ought to embrace.

The cost to the project is low, at least at this point, since I don’t
think we have any of the toxicity that has plagued other open source
projects. But the potential benefit of attracting additional contributors
seems worth it to me.

Additionally, doing this *now* is something that can be done
non-controversially (I hope). If we later have a problem and don’t have a
CoC, the consequences for the project may be worse (in several dimensions).

That said, Martin has the trademark for nanomsg still. If he strenuously
objects I’ll shelve the proposal. If anyone else has strenuous objections
to this, please let me know privately, with specific rational reasons for
your concerns.

To be clear, there’s been no past need for any kind of enforcement here,
and I hope such will never occur, and any kind of corrective response to
any future misbehavior is something I’d like to limit except in the face of
egregious toxicity.

And I hope the community will hold me to the same standard of
professionalism.

Thanks,

- Garrett



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