Re: Code of Conduct final draft?

[Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>]

On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 11:38 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:

> Sorry, I probably should have summarized the previous discussion.
> 
> The idea is to state what we consider acceptable behaviour, in order to
> advertize to newcomers what they can expect when getting involved in
> GNOME, and to reinforce this existing behaviour, so that bad behaviour is
> more clearly unacceptable when it does happen. It says who we are and who
> we want to be and how we'd like people to think of us.

I'm not sure that it would be a good idea to explain who we are, who we
want to be and how we'd like people to think of us. Basically because I
don't think it can be defined by drawing a line somewhere.

GNOME for me is a multicultural organization with not only lots of
people and lots of kinds of people. But also lots of different
personalities and lots of different behaviours. I know I am one of the
people with a non-standard behaviour. I also know I'm not the only one.

I agree and understand the code on that wiki. I would accept cooperating
with somebody who does and who doesn't. It's his/her personality and
his/her behaviour. It's not me (nor GNOME) to judge it. I wouldn't want
to explain somebody who thinks different, that his/her behaviour isn't
acceptable within a GNOME organisation.

When the foundation or another GNOME sub organisation makes a public or
official statement or press release, then I would indeed agree on
utilising such a code (for that statement). But for people themselves,
no.

> It contains no official means of enforcement and there is no plan to use
> this as a weapon. However, I wouldn't be surprised if, for instance,
> mailing list maintainers referred to it sometimes when dealing with
> unpleasant situations, just to save them writing a lot of text themselves.

For specifically mailing list behaviour I would be more likely to agree
on something like this. I would also agree on a code per IRC channel or
any other communication aid.

But I wouldn't agree on a code that tells people how to behave in order
to be accepted as a GNOME member or GNOME contributor.

> This, by the way, is why it's not something that would be forced on
> anyone. It's not new. It's just a tidy statement of an existing consensus.
> In this way, it's a little similar to the release team documents.

I understand it's not something that would be forced. But the suggestion
itself might for some people sound like an enforcement.

> Sorry for the boring process discussion.
> 
> > I can understand Ethics code, but I wouldn't sign this, knowing full
> > well that I'll have bad days, and I call people things worse than nitwit
> > even on a good day.
> 
> As do I. And people should know that's not how we are in general.

If such a code would be agreed on, it should be very clear that it's
indeed not how we really are in general. But rather how we would like to
be on the island GNOME Utopia.


Peace :)

-- 
Philip Van Hoof, software developer at x-tend 
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
work: vanhoof at x-tend dot be 
http://www.pvanhoof.be - http://www.x-tend.be