Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Code of conduct

Linus Torvalds apparently had it explained to him that his behavior towards other developers was destructive. So the Linux development community has a new code of conduct.
"In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation."

You noticed too? Political affiliation isn't included. (The covenant is also quite sex-obsessed, taking up almost a third of the factors.) The Contributor Covenant starts off with some explanation about how meritocracy is a very bad thing, but the actual covenant is mostly innocuous--except for the loophole you can run a barge through.

"But you wouldn't want to work with a Nazi or a racist, would you?" No, not really. But unless their beliefs change what they do, how do I really know what they think? I've probably worked with some racists--but if so they were generally quiet about their views of gweilo, so who cares? And Nazis are rare, never mind what google's HR claims. The closest approximation to Nazis around here is antifa, and there aren't a lot of them either. (*)

What matters is not what you do, or even so much what you say, or what people infer about what you believe--but what label they can slap on you.


(*) "Nazi" means something specific not just about attitudes but about plans and actions. Racists of one stripe or another are not hard to find; tribalists who try to arrange the ascendancy of their tribe are ubiquitous--racists who work to destroy other races are much less common. Maybe you're God and can judge them both alike, but I have to evaluate deeds.

1 comment:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

So the nurses can't make jokes about men anymore? Or complain about them?