On Mo, Mai 29 2023 at 15:29:40 +0000, Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me> wrote:
For me, it's disheartening to hear codices of conduct being proposed everywhere one steps. There's reams upon reams of legal disclaimers, CLAs and things you are supposed to do or not do. Can't people just treat each other decently of their own accord? Do they really need codices of conduct and hall monitors everywhere? And if they do, does it have to be as shoddy a piece of paralegal work with ambiguous language that lends itself to abuse by those in power? These codices of conduct do not work like law at all. There is no precision, there is no presumption of innocence, there is no clear definition of wrongdoing - nothing of the sort.
Yeah, wouldn't it be cool if people treated each other well by default, without assuming malice and accusing each other of following an extreme ideology because they have a set of guidelines on how to behave in a space?
No we have not. Compare
https://web.archive.org/web/20080208093107/https://en.opensuse.org/Code_of_C...
to the monstrosity of pitfalls it has grown into:
https://en.opensuse.org/Code_of_Conduct
The former is a short reminder to treat people decently the way I outlined above. Nothing more, nothing less. The current one is a long list of protected categories that are beyond criticism by virtue of being listed as protected categories, very vaguely defined transgressions that allow for a case to be made from anythin and catchall clauses extending the reach of openSUSE into people's private life such as the
"openSUSE reserves the right to take actions against behaviors that happen in any context, if they are deemed to be relevant to the openSUSE project and its participants."
one. The blame definitely does not lie with Novell. I am not that familiar with the document's history but I can say that much with certainty.
I did intentionally point at Guiding Principles because I know that code of conduct was just one paragraph out of them before. Guiding principles do mention how involved Novell was at that point, you should have a look there (on old-en.opensuse.org since there is an archived version which doesn't require you to go to archive.org). I'm fully aware of what the previous code of conduct looked like though, and how vague it was about everything it mentioned. That vagueness was a great way to justify banning nearly anyone for their "social discrimination" based on whatever that meant for whoever was moderating the platform you were on.
The jury is still out on that. He's doing <something not gainful employment; sorry about being vague here but his life's story is none of the general public's business> right now using up savings. I've offered to put in a good word for him with my employer, but he declined, not wanting to endanger me by referring what might be a bad apple for said employer should he speak out about the things that gall him again. He's not too keen on ending up in an environment just like his previous job again.
And that right there, along with what you said is the core problem. It is awfully hard to be surrounded by people who don't accept you. And harder still to maintain a facade of being like them at all times as seems to be necessary. His facade cracked. He got fired. He's probably right to be worried about dragging me into it. The only difference between us is that he publicly uttered wrongthink (yes, I believe the Orwellian term is quite right here) and may do so again whereas I am careful not to, despite largely sharing his views. Either of these two paths sucks, just in different ways.
The "good" people are causing a lot of grief out there. It's just grief that's never visible because it only affects "bad" people.
I don't really think that the issue lies within the people but rather the systems. Being able to ruin somebody by just firing them is an inexcusable error of the system we live in. People should not end up in a situation where their life is endangered like that, especially in a society that keeps replacing various industries with new ones, creating gaps in the market for people that would have to learn an entirely new thing in order to sustain themselves. It's inhumane. LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/