On 06/30/2015 12:37 PM, Stefan Reich wrote:
I'm almost tired of criticizing so much, but... I think a "code of conduct"
is evil legalese and should be abandoned.
Like Jesus said: "Love is the only law you need."
Unfortunately, that hasn't worked out for us so far.
A CoC serves several real needs. Publicly stating that we have such an
expectation makes the ASF more welcoming to joiners. It also makes
explicit some of the expectations for people who bull through life
without thinking about their interactions.
Google for 'why we need a code of conduct' and then click on a link at
random and you'll get a more articulate statement of why this is
absolutely critical to an organization like ours that spans cultures,
timezones, projects, and many other borders.
It is simply not the case that people just naturally know the right way
to behave. And it is the case that we need to have given careful thought
to what we're going to do about it when people are jerks.
Even Jesus violently threw people out of the temple when they broke the
code of conduct.
--Rich
Cheers
Stefan
On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 1:01 PM, Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacre...@apache.org
wrote:
Hi,
Someone mentioned to me that they find the first paragraph of
http://www.apache.org/foundation/policies/conduct.html overly broad,
and I tend to agree.
That paragraph says "this code of conduct governs how we behave in any
forum and whenever we will be judged by our actions" which implies
that it also applies outside of "ASF territory" - I don't think that's
appropriate. The next paragraph mentions "spaces managed by the Apache
Software Foundation" which I find much more appropriate, maybe
expanded with "and whenever we represent the ASF".
The reasoning is that we can only speak about our own territory.
As a simple example, putting your hand on someone's shoulder while
talking to them is totally welcome in some cultures while considered
"unwelcome sexual attention" (to reuse the words of that document) in
others. We might ask people to refrain from doing that in our
multi-cultural environment where we need to go down to some common
denominator of acceptable behavior, but we can't blame them for doing
that where it's culturally acceptable and even expected. The same goes
with profanity, where the acceptable level varies immensely between
cultures.
So I think it's good to restrict our code of conduct to our own territory.
I suggest reworking the first few paragraphs as follows, to clarify that:
*** reworked code of conduct intro section ***
This code of conduct applies to all spaces managed by the Apache
Software Foundation, including IRC, all public and private mailing
lists, issue trackers, wikis, blogs, Twitter, and any other
communication channel used by our communities. A code of conduct which
is specific to in-person events (ie., conferences) is codified in the
published ASF anti-harassment policy.
We expect this code of conduct to be honored by everyone who
participates in the Apache community formally or informally, or claims
any affiliation with the Foundation, in any Foundation-related
activities and especially when representing the ASF, in any role.
This code is not exhaustive or complete....(unchanged from here on)
*** reworked code of conduct intro section ***
What do people think?
-Bertrand
--
Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com - @rbowen
http://apachecon.com/ - @apachecon
