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@mattskala Oh and what's up with the Contributor Covenant? I looked it up and it seems like a positive thing. Also it's adopted by a ton of projects, including Mastodon, git and the Linux kernel.

@Sandelinos Others doing it is seldom a good reason to do something and especially not for signing onto a political campaign, because "others are doing it!" is used by such campaigns as a dishonest recruitment tactic. If today Kicad joins because Mastodon, git, and the Linux kernel did, then tomorrow Frobozz will be told "Mastodon, git, the Linux kernel, *and Kicad* have joined!" and the day after that it'll be "...and Frobozz!" Soon all projects are in the position of Havel's greengrocer.

@Sandelinos Those particular examples are suspect, too: Mastodon has attempted to colonize the pre-existing federated network with a number of problematic cultural-change campaigns, this being part of that pattern; and git and the Linux kernel were both under duress with blackmail threats aimed at Linus Torvalds.

However, I mention the "others are doing it" point only because you did; it's not a positive argument "against," only to be hesitant about one of the arguments made "for."

@Sandelinos More importantly, signing onto the social justice campaign that the Contributor Covenant represents is not what free software is about, and not a harmless background point either. I don't know if you read the articles by Patterson and Penner I linked to shortly after my Kicad comments, but they are quite relevant, as is this one I wrote myself:

https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/355

@Sandelinos Havel's greengrocer has the luxury, or the excuse, of saying something like "I am just a little guy; I can't overthrow the dictatorship or defy the secret police; I can only reasonably do what I must do because these things must be done if one is to get along in life." But free software can't really do that because we are already political activists; that is what free software is. And we should think twice about signing our activism onto support of something else's.

@Sandelinos It is an important principle that ideas are not responsible for who thinks them; and if the Contributor Covenant is a good or a bad thing we ought to be able to evaluate that on the strength of the document itself, not who wrote it.

However, that general principle cannot be absolute, especially not in the case of evaluating something that is part of an organized political campaign and where our decision on it will be used by that campaign to pressure others.

@Sandelinos So adopting it has consequences beyond just whether it is or isn't a good standard of acceptable behaviour for the one project. We can't escape and shouldn't try to escape from having to think about the context created by adoption; facing those issues head-on is part of free software's job.

And - although this has to be rare and invoked only in the most extreme circumstances - the movement must protect itself. Those who campaign to destroy the movement must be sanctioned, and

@Sandelinos I hope it's clear that I don't say anything like that lightly. The general principle to which it is an exception, is an important and foundational general principle.

Now, all the above is "meta," consisting of reasons to reject the Contributor Covenant because of where it came from or how it's being pushed, rather than anything related to the content of the document itself. I would rather look at the content of the document itself.

@Sandelinos On the content of the document itself, it embeds consequentialist ethics: what is or isn't right is determined by its effect on others rather than the conduct itself. (This point is less true in recent versions of the document than the first versions, but still a problem.) That raises what in AI is called the frame problem: one can never really know the consequences of one's actions.

Real-life law has checks and balances, adopting some consequentialism when necessary but using

@Sandelinos deontology as the fundamental basis instead: the idea that there are rules and what's right and what's wrong is what's according to the rules or not according to the rules. That has problems too, of course, but in the context of *making a code of written rules* it's pretty much absolutely necessary.

This may seem an arcane and abstract way of evaluating a code of conduct but it's really important, and the issue most convincing to me.

@Sandelinos One of the most important minority groups in the software world is the "neurodivergent," that is, autistic people. Who, because this is more or less what autism *is*, have trouble understanding and predicting the reactions of others. Consequentialist ethics based on demanding we all predict others' feelings about our actions, is notably uninclusive to such people.

And the neurodivergent are noticeably not listed in the list of protected groups at the head of the Covenant,

@Sandelinos which is otherwise quite a comprehensive list. At most they might be swept into "invisible disability." Given that they're such an important group in the world of software in particular, not mentioning them specifically when other much less salient groups get individual shout-outs, sends a clear message.

The articles I've already linked (Patterson's in particular) talk about why inclusion of neurodivergent people is especially important for software.

@Sandelinos And, back on the meta train, I don't think this is just a minor oversight or something that could be fixed by adding a couple words to the "Our Pledge" section of the Contributor Covenant, because I believe that this exclusion is actually deliberate and a big part of the activist goal.

@Sandelinos Skipping back a bit, something else I had planned to say about the greengrocer:

At this point, *unlike* the greengrocer who really does have to answer to the secret police, free software still has a choice. It's important not to forfeit that choice lightly, nor to help create a situation where we or others won't have a choice. The default shouldn't be "adopt, to avoid trouble." The default has to be to not adopt, and demand the strongest justification for overriding that default.

@me Indeed, that's why I said it's a point I don't like to raise - individuals shouldn't matter.

Ehmke's attacks on GitHub are a good starting point.

@me The whole subject is distasteful and I hope I'm not pushing you into reading things you'd rather not; but I can't say it's not important too.

@mattskala Honestly, I lack enough information on the subject to form an informed opinion. There's really only one remedy to that.

C'est la vie.