An Open Letter to the Open Source Community

[Jan Claeys]

Op donderdag 24-05-2007 om 12:16 uur [tijdzone -0700], schreef Jordan
Mantha:
> I actually feel pretty strongly that we shouldn't mess with the CoC
> here. For me the issue is summed up with:
> 
> "Be respectful. The Ubuntu community and its members treat one another
> with respect."

+1

> If the this code is held up as the standard I don't see much more that
> needs to be added. If somebody messes up the offended person should feel
> it's OK to say "Heah, that hurt." and the offender should apologize in
> public or in person. There should rarely be the need for bans, removals,
> etc.

+1

> We shouldn't feel like we can't say *anything* because we might offend
> somebody, but we should try to avoid it if we can and be quick to
> apologize when we do make a mistake. Being respectful doesn't mean being
>  perfect, it mean caring enough about people that we try to repair hurts
> we've created and strive to avoid them in the first place.

+1

> I also don't think we should change CoC wording because this is a
> general issue and not specific to women. I think women are probably the
> most visible and possibly most affected group, but certainly this type
> of problem is certainly not exclusive to women. I'm a developer in a
> derivative of Kubuntu for Christians and I've received a decent about of
> hate email, negative personal attacks, IRC trolling, etc. because of it.
> It's a big anonymous community out there and this stuff is bound to happen.

Right, but some women actually prefer this anonymity, it seems...

> The thing that seems to be mostly at issue here, from talking with some
> women in the community (please correct me if I'm wrong), isn't so much
> the incidents themselves as the response of community leadership.
> Instead of making changes to the CoC perhaps there could be something in
> the newer Leadership CoC [0] that talks about a leader's role in making
> sure that offenses are dealt with timely and in a satisfactory way. I
> think as long as we recognize that people who have been offended, for
> whatever reason, really have been offended (rather than minimizing it)
> and make sure that the issue is resolved then I think we've gone as far
> as a community should.

I think that it's not (only) a problem with the leadership.

Unwanted and belittling actions towards a _person_ are harmful too (as
opposed to something that's not really intended to hurt anyone, like a
"dirty" folk song (to give an example that some people will recognise)).

> I seriously doubt we want to turn Ubuntu into a police state, but rather
> create a working environment that is safe and comfortable for *all*
> people to participate in. If we do that then I really feel like the
> number of women and other under-represented groups in FLOSS will really
> grow.

+1


-- 
Jan Claeys