Thread: Code of Conduct plan
Community members: A number of people have contacted the Core Team about taking action regarding a Code of Conduct (CoC) for the project. After some discussion, the plan we have come up with is below. **Please do not reply-all to this email, as we do not wish to generate additional list traffic regarding CoCs** 1. The Core Team will appoint an exploration committee which will look at various proposals (including the one drafted on pgsql-general) for CoCs and discuss them. This committee will include both major community members and less central folks who have hands-on experience with CoCs and community management issues. If you know of PostgreSQL community members who have relevant experience, please nominate them by emailing the core team: pgsql-core@postgresql.org. 2. We will also hire a professional consultant to advise the committee on CoC development, adoption, training, and enforcement. Again, if community members have a consultant to recommend, please email the core team. 3. This committee will post a draft CoC or possibly a selection of draft CoCs by or before late April for community comment. Likely the committee will be publishing drafts more frequently, but that will be up to them to work out. 4. At the pgCon Community Unconference, and again at pgconf.EU, we will have sessions where people can discuss and provide feedback about proposed (or adopted) CoCs. Possibly we will have CoC-related trainings as well. 5. Once a draft is agreed upon, it will be circulated to our various sub-communities for comment. 6. A "final" CoC will be endorsed by the committee and the Core Team shortly after pgConf.EU, unless there is sufficently strong consensus to adopt one before then. Yes, we realize this is a long timeline. The PostgreSQL Project has never been about implementing things in a hurry; our practice has always been to take all of the time required to develop the right feature the right way. Adopting a CoC is no different; if anything, we need to take *more* time in order to get input from community members who do not speak up frequently or assertively. In the meantime, our policy remains: if you have experienced harassment or feel that you are being treated unfairly by other project members, email the Core Team and we will investigate your complaint and take appropriate action. Also, we want to thank Josh Drake for raising the CoC issue and getting it off the TODO list and into process, and devising an initial "seed" CoC. Such things are all too easy to keep postponing. Again, Please DO NOT comment on this plan on-list; one of the pieces of feedback we have received loud and clear is that many community members are unhappy with the amount of list traffic devoted to the subject of CoCs. As such, if you have comments on the plan above, please email the core team instead of replying on-list, or wait for the committee and address comments to them. --Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Core Team
The Code of Conducts basically amount to a "code of wrongthink". This can be best described when some of their advocates, like for example in the Node project make respositories called "mansplain" and "misandry", or when speakers at OSCON are caught with mugs reading "male tears" and using the "#killallmen" hashtag, and are ironically ignored when you report these matters whatsoever.
More importantly many in the industry have taken af "extend, embrace, extinguish" mentality to open source, projects that have been initially open source have become monetized and controlled by organizations, which have no intention of allowing open governance or control over the code base, and use these sort of "code of conducts" to label dissenting opinions as "toxic" or heretical.
I'd also like to mention that blacklisting is generally considered illegal, and I consider the application of sanctioned discrimination, even politically correct forms of it as illegal as well.
"The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the practice of denying employment to screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other American entertainment professionals during the mid-20th century because of their suspected Communist sympathy or membership in the Communist Party."
"John Henry Faulk won his lawsuit in 1962. With this court decision, the private blacklisters and those who used them were put on notice that they were legally liable for the professional and financial damage they caused. This helped to bring an end to publications such as Counterattack"
More importantly many in the industry have taken af "extend, embrace, extinguish" mentality to open source, projects that have been initially open source have become monetized and controlled by organizations, which have no intention of allowing open governance or control over the code base, and use these sort of "code of conducts" to label dissenting opinions as "toxic" or heretical.
I'd also like to mention that blacklisting is generally considered illegal, and I consider the application of sanctioned discrimination, even politically correct forms of it as illegal as well.
"The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the practice of denying employment to screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other American entertainment professionals during the mid-20th century because of their suspected Communist sympathy or membership in the Communist Party."
"John Henry Faulk won his lawsuit in 1962. With this court decision, the private blacklisters and those who used them were put on notice that they were legally liable for the professional and financial damage they caused. This helped to bring an end to publications such as Counterattack"
Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> 1. The Core Team will appoint an exploration committee which will look
> at various proposals (including the one drafted on pgsql-general) for
> CoCs and discuss them.
To follow up on this ...
The Core Team are pleased to announce that Stacey Haysler has accepted
our invitation to chair the exploratory committee on a Postgres Code of
Conduct. Stacey is very well qualified to do this, since she is a well
known member of the Postgres community and has had an extended career in
human resources, including creation and implementation of
anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.
Stacey will be reaching out to potential committee members over the next
few days or weeks. Once the committee is assembled, they will devise
some way (possibly a new mailing list, though I don't want to pre-judge
it) for the wider community to have input into the discussions.
In the meantime, we ask that people continue to refrain from flooding
pgsql-general or other existing PG lists with CoC-related threads.
There will be a time and a place for those discussions, but not yet.
If you have interest or concerns about this process, you can contact
Stacey at shayslerpgx@gmail.com or the Core Team at
pgsql-core@postgresql.org.
regards, tom lane
Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> It's not clear to me that there IS a general consensus here. It looks
> to me like the unelected core team got together and decided to impose
> a vaguely-worded code of conduct on a vaguely-defined group of people
> covering not only their work on PostgreSQL but also their entire life.
There's been quite a lot of input, from quite a lot of people, dating
back at least as far as a well-attended session at PGCon 2016. I find
it quite upsetting to hear accusations that core is imposing this out
of nowhere. From my perspective, we're responding to a real need
voiced by other people, not so much by us.
> However, I also don't think it matters very much.
Yeah, this. The PG community is mostly nice people, AFAICT. I'll be
astonished (and worried) if the CoC committee finds much to do. We're
implementing this mostly to make newcomers to the project feel that
it's a safe space.
It's also worth reminding people that this is v1.0 of the CoC document.
We plan to revisit it in a year or so, and thereafter as needed, to
improve anything that's causing problems or not working well.
regards, tom lane
I must admit that I'm impressed by the huge amount of contributions to this thread and, to be honest, it is the only one I have witnessed that would have deserved a CoC. I had a quick look at the proposal and it sounds to me like the team is trying to handle excesses - as long as no one complains, I would bet that they won't even chime in.
One thing to keep in mind is this simple definition: "One person's freedom ends where another's begins" and all the work should go in this direction. We are all different, have different sensitivities, come from different cultures where we interpret words in a different way - it's a given, no way to escape. But we have in common the love of a great piece of software provided by a very active and efficient community.
Why don't we focus on what unites us, instead of what creates divisions?
Have a peaceful week-end
Olivier
Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> It's not clear to me that there IS a general consensus here. It looks
> to me like the unelected core team got together and decided to impose
> a vaguely-worded code of conduct on a vaguely-defined group of people
> covering not only their work on PostgreSQL but also their entire life.
There's been quite a lot of input, from quite a lot of people, dating
back at least as far as a well-attended session at PGCon 2016. I find
it quite upsetting to hear accusations that core is imposing this out
of nowhere. From my perspective, we're responding to a real need
voiced by other people, not so much by us.
> However, I also don't think it matters very much.
Yeah, this. The PG community is mostly nice people, AFAICT. I'll be
astonished (and worried) if the CoC committee finds much to do. We're
implementing this mostly to make newcomers to the project feel that
it's a safe space.
It's also worth reminding people that this is v1.0 of the CoC document.
We plan to revisit it in a year or so, and thereafter as needed, to
improve anything that's causing problems or not working well.
regards, tom lane
I must admit that I'm impressed by the huge amount of contributions to this thread and, to be honest, it is the only one I have witnessed that would have deserved a CoC. I had a quick look at the proposal and it sounds to me like the team is trying to handle excesses - as long as no one complains, I would bet that they won't even chime in.
One thing to keep in mind is this simple definition: "One person's freedom ends where another's begins" and all the work should go in this direction. We are all different, have different sensitivities, come from different cultures where we interpret words in a different way - it's a given, no way to escape. But we have in common the love of a great piece of software provided by a very active and efficient community.
Why don't we focus on what unites us, instead of what creates divisions?
Have a peaceful week-end
Olivier
Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> It's not clear to me that there IS a general consensus here. It looks
> to me like the unelected core team got together and decided to impose
> a vaguely-worded code of conduct on a vaguely-defined group of people
> covering not only their work on PostgreSQL but also their entire life.
There's been quite a lot of input, from quite a lot of people, dating
back at least as far as a well-attended session at PGCon 2016. I find
it quite upsetting to hear accusations that core is imposing this out
of nowhere. From my perspective, we're responding to a real need
voiced by other people, not so much by us.
> However, I also don't think it matters very much.
Yeah, this. The PG community is mostly nice people, AFAICT. I'll be
astonished (and worried) if the CoC committee finds much to do. We're
implementing this mostly to make newcomers to the project feel that
it's a safe space.
It's also worth reminding people that this is v1.0 of the CoC document.
We plan to revisit it in a year or so, and thereafter as needed, to
improve anything that's causing problems or not working well.
regards, tom lane
I must admit that I'm impressed by the huge amount of contributions to this thread and, to be honest, it is the only one I have witnessed that would have deserved a CoC. I had a quick look at the proposal and it sounds to me like the team is trying to handle excesses - as long as no one complains, I would bet that they won't even chime in.
One thing to keep in mind is this simple definition: "One person's freedom ends where another's begins" and all the work should go in this direction. We are all different, have different sensitivities, come from different cultures where we interpret words in a different way - it's a given, no way to escape. But we have in common the love of a great piece of software provided by a very active and efficient community.
Why don't we focus on what unites us, instead of what creates divisions?
Have a peaceful week-end
Olivier