Messages in this thread | ![/](/images/icornerl.gif) | | From | Edward Cree <> | Subject | Re: Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it. | Date | Wed, 19 Sep 2018 07:00:26 +0100 |
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The new Code of Conduct makes me feel threatened and uncomfortable.
No, really. As a person with (diagnosed) Asperger's, I'm a member of, objectively, a marginalised minority. Effectively (i.e. this is a massive oversimplification), I was born without the hard-wired circuitry for social interactions that is normally a part of the human brain; consequently I have to run a slow and inaccurate software simulation when interacting with 'normal' people.
In nearly all the communities I participate in, this is a constantly limiting factor for me. But there is one world that is blessedly free of such things: the world of open-source software. It is one of the last places where my particular neurodiversity does _not_ mark me out as Other, does _not_ force me to carefully watch what I say and present a falsely constructed façade in place of my real identity. For here, we care not for 'feelings'; either the code is good or it is bad, and in the latter case we say so directly and bluntly. Not only does this mean that I don't have to guard my tongue when critiquing someone else's patch, far more importantly it means I can understand what's being said when _my_ patches are criticised. (Almost all of my best ideas and patches have been born out of someone telling me I'm wrong.)
The Linux kernel community is a place without office politics, without subtle subtexts, without primate dominance dynamics. A place where criticism _can_ be gracefully accepted _without_ having to worry that admitting to being wrong will lower one's status. A place where I, and people like me, can feel at home, and maybe even create something of value.
And the Contributor Covenant looks very much like the camel's nose of an attempt to take that place, that community, away from me. To replace it with an Orwellian nightmare where I must forever second-guess what is safe to say. (First they came for "master/slave replication", and I did not speak up because I was not a DBA.)
I cannot speak for my employer (hence why I am posting this from my personal address), but to the extent that my rôle as a contributor to the networking subsystem, and as co-maintainer of the sfc driver, gives me any standing in a _personal_ capacity, I absolutely cannot sign up to this 'Pledge' nor accept the 'Responsibilities' to police the speech of others that it makes a duty of maintainership, and I urge the project leadership to revert its adoption.
Some elements of the Code are unobjectionable; sexual advances, for instance, have no place on the lkml (though they may at, say, a conference, and not everyone can reliably predict whether they are unwelcome), and the ability of kernel developers to accept constructive criticism is one of the strengths that has made Linux what it is. But far too many of its provisions rely on ill-defined terms, and thus give those charged with interpreting those terms the power to destroy livelihoods. By placing a corporate body (the LF) in the position of arbiter, an avenue is opened for commercial pressure to be applied; and the legalistic phrasing of the Code practically invites rules- lawyering whereby the most abusive may twist it into a weapon to further their abuse.
If the Code were reduced to something more like the old Code of Conflict, reminding people to 'be liberal in what they accept and conservative in what they emit', and clarifying that patch submissions should be judged by the _code_ and not by any characteristics or beliefs of the submitter (I don't think the enumerated list of protected classes is helpful, as a legalistic abuser can always slip into a crack between them), I think the sting would be drawn. Probably the CoConflict would make a better base from which to draft such a document.
(A note for the irony-challenged: where I use Progressive terms-of-art, such as 'marginalised', 'Other' and 'identity', in the above, I am endeavouring to show that this alleged push for 'inclusiveness' fails on its own terms; I am _not_ accepting the theory behind those terms nor suggesting that, in reality, the kernel community owes me any special treatment on account of my 'diversity'.)
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