Behavioral standards in the free software community

Posted Jun 8, 2006 1:25 UTC (Thu) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link]

I haven't followed this for a long time and never knew the details, but I believe that the GCC developers went through a period of conduct reform many years ago. During the time I read it (after the reform), discourse on the GCC mailing list struck me as more restrained, even diplomatic, than on any other I'd seen. I wonder if there are any lessons there, and whether the experience of GCC--a highly political project with a history of tensions--could guide standards of behavior for other projects (cue JoeBuck).

Posted Jun 8, 2006 3:23 UTC (Thu) by dang (guest, #310) [Link]

Some other thoughts:

One huge key really involves the ability of people to work together and to *want* to help people. I can think of some prominent developers in important projects who gleefully rip people and code in pretty salty terms, but who clearly rip their goofs just as hard, clearly bend over backward to help people, and who do enough heavy lifing in general so that everyone knows that they can bark and sometimes even bite, but they are treasured anyway. Part of the read is "what are they trying to say when they flame?"

On the flip side, a steady stream of even small flames can just wear you down after a while. It is sad when prominent developers just drop off project because life is too short to slog through the crap.

Even for a project where contributers are generally polite and discuss the merits of code not coders, things really can heat up when people are talking past one another or when people are advocating mutually exclusive solutions. In both cases, it helps a lot if someone mediates or makes the call in a way that respects all contributors. Managing frustration levels wins as much as does basic decency.

Posted Jun 8, 2006 5:00 UTC (Thu) by cventers (guest, #31465) [Link]

Sometimes I wonder to what extent the Linux kernel model works only for the Linux kernel. I really assume it should be applicable in many other places (though I think it's clear you need a leader like Linus to make it happen).

I happen to like this observation in Documentation/ManagementStyle:

Most people are idiots, and being a manager means you'll have to deal with it, and perhaps more importantly, that _they_ have to deal with _you_.

It turns out that while it's easy to undo technical mistakes, it's not as easy to undo personality disorders. You just have to live with theirs - and yours.

However, in order to prepare yourself as a kernel manager, it's best to remember not to burn any bridges, bomb any innocent villagers, or alienate too many kernel developers. It turns out that alienating people is fairly easy, and un-alienating them is hard. Thus "alienating" immediately falls under the heading of "not reversible", and becomes a no-no according to Chapter 1.

There's just a few simple rules here:
 (1) don't call people d*ckheads (at least not in public)
 (2) learn how to apologize when you forgot rule (1)

The problem with #1 is that it's very easy to do, since you can say "you're a d*ckhead" in millions of different ways (*), sometimes without even realizing it, and almost always with a white-hot conviction that you are right.

And the more convinced you are that you are right (and let's face it, you can call just about _anybody_ a d*ckhead, and you often _will_ be right), the harder it ends up being to apologize afterwards.

To solve this problem, you really only have two options:
 - get really good at apologies  - spread the "love" out so evenly that nobody really ends up feeling like they get unfairly targeted. Make it inventive enough, and they might even be amused.

The option of being unfailingly polite really doesn't exist. Nobody will trust somebody who is so clearly hiding his true character.

In a community like LKML, it seems that people being mean are either tolerated because of their history and value, or they do a very effective job in isolating themselves and reducing their own value and trust from the community.

Hence I think behavioral codes aren't really necessary. I'm also not a woman, and can't speak for any, but I don't think the lack of a behavioral code has much to do with it.

I watch the mailing list of several projects, and it seems to me that while people like to be passionate from time to time, these issues seem to regulate themselves best when left nicely alone.

Posted Jun 8, 2006 5:22 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link]

They have a point: it has been noted, for example, that female participation in free software projects is often close to zero.

I'll just mention a couple of previously posted articles on the subject:

• HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux
• LWN: Women in Free Software, by Fernanda G. Weiden (Groklaw)

Greg

Posted Jun 8, 2006 7:03 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

The XFree86 project's decision to expel Keith Packard might not have been terribly good for their continued relevance, but it could be argued that it has turned out to be the right decision for all concerned - XFree86 have been allowed to continue up their own cul-de-sac unimpeded, and Keith's work has been allowed to make uninhibited progress. Moreover, without actually knowing anything about what happened, it seems to me that the view that the XFree86 team took of Keith's actions was not a surprising one; revolutions don't tend to start from a premise of civil obedience and submission to authority.

Even if the debate is framed in terms of personal conduct ("being a jerk"), there's the example of the notoriously abrasive Theo de Raadt to consider. NetBSD has continued rather well without him - but he has also turned his efforts to a project which has achieved considerable success and earned its place in the world in its own right. Being a jerk and having a valuable contribution to make are clearly not antithetical.

So perhaps the whole idea of a "code of conduct" shouldn't be phrased in absolutist terms ("behave like this or you're BAD!"), but in terms that reflect the reality of group work - which is that if one individual's views, orientation, or personal conduct threatens the survival of the group, the best solution for all concerned is for that group and that individual to part company, without issuing judgements on either side. Of course, personal opinions will abound, but they will, of necessity, be biased; it's perhaps unfair to give them any more status or weight than "we've reached a point where there's no way we can work together any more". Let disinterested observers make up their own minds as to who was in the right, and why.

Posted Jun 8, 2006 7:10 UTC (Thu) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link]

To anyone who wants to draft such rules, I suggest to have a look at the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct first. Not being an ACM-member myself, I still tell my clients that these are the rules they can expect me to follow.

Posted Jun 8, 2006 8:12 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

You have a choise.

Either you make your rules very general, very much subject to interpretation, very little concrete. ('Dont be a jerk') In which case everyone will agree, but on the other hand nobody agrees where exactly the border of jerkiness lies.

Or you make your rules concrete, precisely defined. In which case nobody agrees with the what exactly the rules should be.

I don't see a benefit in either. I also don't see any evidence that the way we do things currently needs changing. Essentially policing of a set of undefined, unwritten, unspecified, everchanging codes of conduct by the community itself.

It works like this: If you're a jerk, people don't like dealing with you. If people don't like dealing with you, they will avoid dealing with you as much as possible. Which again tends to work as a pretty efficient exclusion-mechanism.

Posted Jun 8, 2006 11:30 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

The way I remember it, Xfree86 died because it adopted a new licence that was both annoying and GPL-incompatible.

Also, about Stallman's comment, while it didn't become the focus of the thread, the small number of replies were either in agreement or were saying that GNOME is already a "free software" project. (The sentence in the article reads strangely, maybe "claimed" and "may" are incompatible - maybe people "note" that something "may" be correct.)

Posted Jun 8, 2006 12:09 UTC (Thu) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link]

Why invent new rules while they seem to mimic laws existing in many countries (at least those respecting human rights)? Maybe we should just try to self-apply rules *already* imposed to us by laws related to diffamation, decency, child protection, discrimination, etc. (including those related to equality between women and men, or people from different races) instead of once again re-inventing the wheel.

Posted Jun 8, 2006 13:20 UTC (Thu) by stevan (guest, #4342) [Link]

Dare I suggest that we don't need codes, we need humanity. The name
Ubuntu and the practice of ubuntu springs to mind - most readers of LWN
will be familiar with the meaning of Ubuntu by now, but the wikipedia
article are there if you are not.

One person's code is another's shackles, but we're all human, and we all
benefit from other humans.

Stevan

PS - a good example human perspective is the "wrong" spelling of
behavioural in the title!

Posted Jun 8, 2006 14:27 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

...and tries to expand beyond its "western white male geek" stereotype...

Hmm, maybe I should be checking the box labeled "other" and writing that in the space provided...

Posted Jun 8, 2006 15:41 UTC (Thu) by wilck (guest, #29844) [Link]

There is a relation between behavior and "social power" in the community. In all social systems, people at the bottom of the hierarchy are more likely to misbehave than people at the top. Reasons for this are (among others)

• lack of education (in the community terms: lack of netiquette experience),
• the feeling not to be heard unless you shout,
• the fact that an action by a well-respected person is less likely to be regarded as misbehavior than the same action by a "nobody".

The free software community has a pretty strong social divide, although the criteria by which people are discriminated are different than in the normal society.

I think that the feeling of being oppressed by someone ranked higher is a frequent reason for misbehavior. From this viewpoint, the attempt to establish general Rules of Conduct can be interpreted as a potential repressive measure against those on the bottom side of the hierarchy. Care should be taken that this impression is avoided.

A bit out of context, I'd like to add that killfiles and filters already offer effective measures against cases of strong misconduct. The question must be asked why these aren't considered good enough any more.

Posted Jun 9, 2006 5:16 UTC (Fri) by paulmfoster (guest, #17313) [Link]

While I run several lists and am a heavy proponent of civilized behavior, I caution against giving in to "political correctness". We've created a world full of people whose job is to be aggrieved over extremely slight offenses, or none at all. The danger of codes of conduct like this is that they may give in too far to the easily aggrieved. It's impolite to make sexist jokes on a list populated by women, but the most they should be owed if someone told a sexist joke is an apology. No more. Continued, constant crude behavior might eventually rate an expulsion.

Unfortunately, hackers skew a bit in the direction of the juvenile and dorky. Goes with the territory. I have some of these guys on my lists. Every once in a while I have to snap at them to get their attention. They get back in line. I rarely find it necessary to expel one, and only do so when it's clear to one and all that they guy just can't live comfortably with other people.

Look at it this way: If we all adopted what might be called "reasonable" codes of conduct, RMS would have been kicked out of this movement long ago.

Posted Jun 16, 2006 22:34 UTC (Fri) by knshaum (guest, #38431) [Link]

You offer Keith Packard's expulsion from XFree86 as an example of how codes of conduct can be harmful, and certainly it was in this case... to XFree86. But notice that the OSS community as a whole, and arguably Keith himself, *benefited* from his expulsion. X development was moribund and is now re-energized, and the community that refused to listen is no longer being listened to itself. The enforcement of the code of conduct turned out to be beneficial, just not in the way intended by those doing the enforcing.

The OSS community already has a mechanism for dealing with bad project management: forking. This places a hard limit on the amount of damage that ill-conceived or badly-enforced codes of conduct, and other bad practices, can do.

Posted Jun 16, 2006 22:44 UTC (Fri) by kfogel (subscriber, #20531) [Link]

It's interesting that the community feels the need to spell out the
code of conduct (or at least some in the community do). My feeling
has always been that, since anyone who's kicked out can take a
copy of the code with them, all that's really happening is that one
group of people is saying they will no longer associate with another
group (perhaps the latter group numbers only 1, but the theory
is, er, fully general). In that circumstance, the question of what fairness
requires becomes more complex. The kicked-out person has not
been deprived of anything except the company of people who, by
definition, don't want his company. Of course, in reality he's lost
something very tangible -- the ability to influence the other developers
directly -- but he lost that because they decided they didn't want his
influence.

Which makes the Keith Packard / XFree86 example interesting: what
happened there was exactly what should have happened, really.
Packard proposed working in a way the others didn't like. They
said no (i.e., kicked him out), he went on to revitalize X.org and now
things there run the way he originally proposed. It's as true that he
kicked out the rest of XFree86 as vice versa, although of course no
one ever puts it that way :-).

So I guess I have to admit I don't see the need for a code of conduct
when sharing a replicable resource. If people aren't behaving well,
talk to them. If they don't change, no code of conduct is going to
make a difference, you just have to decide whether to remain associated
with them, or they with you.

(Of course, a code given as a guideline can be very useful -- "Avoid
personal insults and you'll get a lot more done around here" is great.
But when someone starts making personal insults, the reason to
kick them out then is not that they violated the code that they had
been previously notified of, it's that they're being insulting!)