GitHub Invites Contributions To 'Open Source Guides' (infoq.com)

An anonymous reader quotes InfoQ: GitHub has recently launched its Open Source Guides, a collection of resources addressing the most common scenarios and best practices for both contributors and maintainers of open source projects. The guides themselves are open source and GitHub is actively inviting developers to participate and share their stories... "Open source is complicated, especially for newcomers. Experienced contributors have learned many lessons about the best way to use, contribute to, and produce open source software. Everyone shouldn't have to learn those lessons the hard way."

Making a successful first contribution is not the exclusive focus of the guides, though, which also strives to make it easier to find users for a project, starting a new project, and building healthy open source communities. Other topics the guides dwell on are best practices, getting financial support, metrics, and legal matters.
GitHub's Head of Open Source says the guides create "the equivalent of a water cooler for the community."

Comments

Not foolproof

[lucm]

So they need Open Source Guides to explain how to get involved in Open Source, and yet they want people to jump into writing those Open Source Open Source Guides without any kind of introduction to Open Source?

If they really want to get this "Open Source water cooler" going, someone should get started on Open Source Open Source Open Source Guides to writing Open Source Open Source Guides about Open Source.

Re:Not foolproof

[FatdogHaiku]

Never send a water cooler to do the job of an open bar...
of course, with an open bar you get unintelligible documentation and comments like "oh swet" and "you se what I di thre?"

Re:Not foolproof

[Dutch Gun]

I see they're recommending a "Code of Conduct" for open source projects. How else could we possibly get along with one another if all the rules of behavior aren't spelled out in the most minute details. Generally speaking, all of those boil down to "Be civil" anyhow, just expressed in a few thousand more words.

Is it really not adequate these days for a project or community to just tell everyone to "be civil", to enforce that civility with common sense, and leave it at that?

Re:Not foolproof

[lucm]

One of the best programmers I know was also a drunk, and without even looking at the commit time I could tell by his code whether he wrote it before or after lunch (when he would down a few pints of beer daily).

I say "was" because he's no longer a good programmer. The booze won.

Re:Not foolproof

[AmiMoJo]

People will disagree about what "be civil" and "common sense" mean. Writing some rules down helps enumerate the worst stuff and set the tone, but even then there will be complaints and conspiracy theories when they are enforced.

I'll give you an example. A guy writes that the can't do the merge this weekend because he is going on a trip with his husband. Someone else complains about having same sex marriage rammed down their throat and claims that common sense requires such couples to hide their "controversial" relationships. In such a case, a written statement of principals really helps.

Re:Not foolproof

[NotInHere]

Just note that in this context, "Code of Conduct" has a different meaning that extends beyond the legitimate rule to be civil. Its one of those SJW phrases that they took hold of and completely skewed in meaning (like "enabler" or "diversity" -- for them, everything SJW is "diverse" but everything even slightly critical of SJW is "bigoted", funny how they turn the terms around by 180 degrees). Their goal is to make you believe that an environment that is toxic towards people who think different from the (SJW) mainstream is just "enforcing good behaviour". Remember, github is the company that threatened to ban an open source project for (humorously) using the word "retard" in its advertisement (just google "github retard" to find out what I mean), and whose "VP of social impact" repeatedly made racist statements: http://www.businessinsider.com... ... probably they think that when its anti white its not racist.

Re:Not foolproof

[Dutch Gun]

I'm not asking people to agree on every contentious issue. Yes, there will be some variance on what "be civil" means, but working in a group also requires a bit of tolerance. That's part of peacefully coexisting in a diverse workforce. No, I'm not talking about tolerating blatantly racist or sexist behavior, but recognizing that, so long as there is no ill intent, we should be willing to forgive minor trespasses or foibles.

My concern with creating a list of all principles, rules, prohibitions, etc, is that it appeals to rules lawyers, and no one else. I'm pretty sure Uber has a big list of these rules and prohibitions, but look at what that place is (allegedly) like, especially for female engineers. In short, it feels a bit to me like a feel-good measure that doesn't actually prevent bullying and backstabbing, and in some cases, even provides the tools for doing so.

I don't actually oppose codes of conduct per se, despite my Devil's advocate position. I just think recently that they've taken on a life of their own, and have gotten too complicated or convoluted, and in the process undermines their purpose. You've probably heard of this line in the Open Code of Conduct:

Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort.

I think it's inappropriate for a code of people to define and divide people into "marginalized people" and "privileged people". Are people surprised then, when the Code of Conduct itself becomes controversial? This line is, by its own admission, quite divisive.

Ubuntu's, on the other hand, reads like this:

Be considerate

Our work will be used by other people, and we in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision we take will affect users and colleagues, and we should consider them when making decisions.

Be respectful

Disagreement is no excuse for poor manners. We work together to resolve conflict, assume good intentions and do our best to act in an empathic fashion. We don't allow frustration to turn into a personal attack. A community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one.

Take responsibility for our words and our actions

We can all make mistakes; when we do, we take responsibility for them. If someone has been harmed or offended, we listen carefully and respectfully, and work to right the wrong.

And then goes on for a few thousand more words... But one thing I appreciate is they try to offer advice on how to achieve technical excellence as well as inter-group harmony, which I think makes sense for an open-source project.

If you feel you must have a Code of Conduct, it seems better to affirm the positive attributes to which community members should strive, rather than listing all the ways one person can be horrible to another person, like the Open Code of Conduct, which defines "harassment" with a litany of examples.

Re:Not foolproof

[Dutch Gun]

Note: to clarify, the Open Code of Contact has very similar positive statements as Ubuntu's. I just feel all the negative examples and definition (which Ubuntu omits) are, if you'll pardon the pun, not a positive thing.

Re:Don't show this to the Linus/Linux Kernel Group

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, it's about enforcing SJW safe spaces into everyone's projects. they hate meritocracy and they seriously said that pull requests from minorities & women should have higher priority over stuff from straight white males.

Re:Open Spruce is Eazy

[Aighearach]

And if you don't want to be a rockstar, instead of trying to offer patches just post insulting bug reports and call the developers names.

Re:Open Spruce is Eazy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey guys I noticed your code was doing some strange things under the following circumstances and it was really bothering me so I spent two weeks of my spare time tracking down the bug and I finally found it and I wrote a patch to fix it and I tested the patch for another two weeks and I am completely sure the patch is correct and it works for me so I think other people would find it helpful if you could please accept my patch."

One month later, "Hello? I fixed a bug."

Two months later, "Guys? Did you try my patch?"

Three months later, "What the hell guys, did you even look at it?"

Four months later, "Come on guys, there's a bug! And I patched it for you!"

Five months later, "What the shit!! You're accepting other patches but not mine!!! What's wrong with it? Did you even test it at all?"

Six months later, "FUCK YOU GUYS! FUCK YOUR FUCKING PROJECT! FUCK OPEN SOURCE!!! I'M NEVER CONTRIBUTING AGAIN!!!! BECAUSE YOU'RE ALL MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!"

a Code of Conduct is a weapon

[lucm]

i think the point of a Code of Conduct is to have a baseline to kick someone out if they're being undesirable. It's similar to having an acceptable internet usage policy at work; the point is not to prevent people from checking Facebook during work hours, it's to give yourself some ammo in case you want to get rid of someone for some other reason. (ex: "On July 6, you broke rule 212.1 by visiting Reddit during work hours, so you're fired - although what we really don't like about you is that you f*cked the CEO's daughter and wiped yourself on his MBA diploma").

That's how they got Martha Stewart, by the way. She didn't go to jail for insider trading, she went to jail for lying to federal officers who were investigating her insider trading activities.

Re:a Code of Conduct is a weapon

[Dutch Gun]

I understand the necessity of a Code of Conduct for a business that hires employees. Because federal laws, and lawsuits, and all that other fun stuff.

I don't understand why a programming language, as a recent example, requires a Code of Conduct. If you want your official forums to be civil, than enforce civility. Why on earth would you write up a multi-page document explicitly listing every little prohibition and affirmation, unless it's just for virtue signalling?

Re:a Code of Conduct is a weapon

[serviscope_minor]

I don't understand why a programming language, as a recent example, requires a Code of Conduct.

A programming language doesn't: such a thing is nonsensical because a language is inanimate and has no agency. The people in the community who contribute, however, do. If you can't see why people need a code of conduct then I can only ask: have you ever met people?

If you want your official forums to be civil, than enforce civility.

Using your personal, unwritten code of civility, I assume, even though it differs from mine?

Re:a Code of Conduct is a weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

Using your personal, unwritten code of civility, I assume, even though it differs from mine?

And this is the killer. If you read many projects codes of conduct are very specific about the classes of discrimination they disallow. Discrimination or attacks on people based on organisational membership or political beliefs, for example, will be allowed. Often this is just due to doing a copy paste of one of the standard CoCs. In some organisations and in some of the very important original CoCs everyone copies, however, it's deliberate because the authors of the CoC want to reserve the right to be "uncivil" to people who have specific views even if they are not expressing those views, let alone attacking anyone over them.

Another dangerous thing is that some codes of conduct may impose a duty of enforcement on the project maintainers even if they themselves believe that it is not appropriate in a given case. Again, normal civil society requires people to be forgiving of mistakes, but some people and some codes of conduct work against this. Even if you just said "be civil or you will be banned", a non English speaker may end up banned over a language misunderstanding.

In a big project that doesn't have a code of conduct you will almost certainly come across a situation soon which will force you to have one. This means that it's worth having a code of conduct but being very careful to ensure that the code of conduct does not make things worse. Do not privilege special classes of people of any kind with protection whilst discriminating against others. Do not allow the code of conduct to force people to do enforcement when they don't think it's the right thing to do. Make sure that the code of conduct is simple and doesn't give opportunity for endless net-lawyering and trolling. Do not allow public punishment and damage to contributors without due process.

Re:I hope they focus on the command line

[Foofoobar]

I HACKZORZ ur APPS W1T my luddite shell

Re:Opinions are routable.

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble with forking at the first sign of trouble is too many forks end up having exactly one user. Nobody collaborates to squash bugs, fix security flaws, add features, or test anything. The resulting plethora of forks becomes unusable by anyone who doesn't want to research every branch of every fork and cherry pick commits.

Re:Don't show this to the Linus/Linux Kernel Group

[lucasnate1]

Do you have any reference for this claim? (I'm not asking to prove you wrong, I'm asking because I am afraid you are saying the truth)

Fuck GitHub

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Fuck GitHub. I refuse to use or support a company that is all about censorship and shutting down "wrongthing" because someone has a different viewpoint than they do. GitHub is a festering pile of shit. Use alternatives.

Re:Don't show this to the Linus/Linux Kernel Group

[Proudrooster]

SJW (Learning a new meme SJW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Don't show this to the Linus/Linux Kernel Group

[serviscope_minor]

Whatever works! :)

It works sufficiently for Linux, but the fact it works at all does not imply that something else couldn't work better. Several high profile kernel devs have left due to the flood of shite. Matthew Garrett is one and he was responsible for a huge amonut of the power saving code which makes Linux actually acceptable on laptops.