FreeBSD's New Code of Conduct (freebsd.org)

FreeBSD has a new code of conduct, which is making several people angry. From the blog post: This code of conduct applies to all spaces used by the FreeBSD Project, including our mailing lists, IRC channels, and social media, both online and off. Anyone who is found to violate this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from FreeBSD Project controlled spaces at the discretion of the FreeBSD Code of Conduct Committee. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules. Harassment includes but is not limited to: Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion. Unwelcome comments regarding a person's lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment. Deliberate misgendering. Deliberate use of "dead" or rejected names. Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they're not appropriate.

Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g., textual descriptions like "hug" or "backrub") without consent or after a request to stop. Threats of violence. Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm. Deliberate intimidation. Stalking or following. Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes. Sustained disruption of discussion. Unwelcome sexual attention. Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others. Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease. Deliberate "outing" of any private aspect of a person's identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse. Publication of non-harassing private communication without consent. Publication of non-harassing private communication with consent but in a way that intentionally misrepresents the communication (e.g., removes context that changes the meaning). Knowingly making harmful false claims about a person.

Comments

I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[sgage]

... but if I did, I would quit. This is over the top. It feels more like a blanket list of vague infractions to have on hand so that they can rid of anyone they feel like.

Re:I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[Snotnose]

This. It actually sounds like something I'd read on the Onion.

Re:I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. Many of the listed infractions will consist of little more than hurt feelings, which anyone can claim and no one can refute. That code becomes a weapon for SJWs to wield against anyone they decide deserves to be hurt. I would be terrified to interact with anyone in a community with such draconian feminist policies.

Re: I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but several projects have had members kicked on accusations alone. A Code of Conduct is just an excuse for social justice activists to impose their will on a project. There was even a case of someone getting kicked from a project for using an eggplant emoji...

Re:I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[AmiMoJo]

It's impossible to create any practical rule governing human behaviour that enumerates every specific bad action. Just look at the law of any country, none of them are very specific.

Re: I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[gbjbaanb]

That's not the point anymore - people who have done nothing wrong have had their careers destroyed by others who use this kind of thing to either promote themselves, their idiotic hate-filled ideology, or generally just like bullying people around under the pretence of progressivism.

the best example was Sir Tim Hunt, who made a pretty ordinary and self-deprecating joke to kick off his lecture, and some SJW (who outright lied to get her job, incidentally, check the controversy over the statements on her CV) sets off a twitter hatemob to attack him.

Re:I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[geekmux]

Your comment was off topic from the discussion, and not accurate with regard to employment law. You should probably become more familiar with terms like at-will employment before you post so you don't remain ignorant.

Off-topic? Here, let me clarify any ignorance:

"At-will employment is a term used in U.S. labor law for contractual relationships in which an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason, and without warning."

In other words (and to quote the parent), they can get rid of anyone they feel like.

In many ways, this Code of Conduct revision is essentially irrelevant because of current employment laws, and the over-the-top theme exists mainly to satisfy the pitchfork-wielding SJW crowd who is hell-bent on creating that zero-tolerance PC-enriched robotic utopia every human is sooooo looking forward to working in. Ah, nothing like demanding perfection from humans. Good thing that false accusations are magically gone too now that we've all but eliminated due process...

Re:I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[Mashiki]

Remember all those people who said the people speaking out against this were crazy that this type of creep was happening? Said it wouldn't happen, that it was only for the "greater good" and so on? Yeah, well buck the fuck up because this type of creep is happening all over the place in the tech world. And it almost always starts with people who have no actual programming/technical ability, who then worm their way into positions of power.

For FreeBSD, this will pretty much drive people out and kill it. It's no different then the people who pushed this crap in Overwatch(game) and people have been fleeing in droves because Blizzard has stated that they'll be looking through your social media to find out if you've been bad.

Re:I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[ArmoredDragon]

It reminded me of one of those prison visitation posters reminding you of everything that's against the law. And WTF is a dead name? Like I can't say my dad's name because he's dead or some shit like that? No really I only just now googled it and it's retarded how like every fucking week there's a new word describing some kind new (completely nonsensical) gender or some new sexual orientation, or some way of identifying properties therein. Too bad the book was already out of date at publication.

Though seriously, this is a really good way to piss off developers and either they become interested in something else, or they just fork it.

Re:I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[ckatko]

It'll only keep happening until a major group completely collapses until the weight of it's own virtue signalling.

Kind of like how neogaf was full SJW pandering and it turned out the owner of the forum was raping women. Oops.

FreeBSD will disappear from any significance it had left and people will learn from it as something to never do. History is already rerouting around social justice. The only people who don't realize this are the ones living in their bubbles.

Any ideology that allows you to oppress and bully people, but "For the greater good" eventually collapses because of all the pain it caused to innocents, and social justice is just another flawed attempt at creating a utopia that crushes innocent people. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Interesting how that phrase is over 800 years old, and yet, social justice is "new" and represents it perfectly.

"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Re: I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[Mashiki]

Or you could turn around and stop being perpetually offended because someone said something you didn't like. And in turn, stop trying to force your rules on everyone else because you were offended by an off-colour joke, that everyone else but you found funny.

Re:I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[ckatko]

CoC falls apart for one fundamental reason: You can't legislate people to RESPECT each other.

And that's what they're trying to codify. You can't make a legal document that solves disputes. For example, I have allergies and someone else in the office has a therapy dog. The RESPECTFUL thing to do, is to keep our offices as far apart as possible and both of US try to be accommodating to each other. But blanket statements of "disability person wins." only creates bitterness ("Why does that person always win?") and when you have a dispute between TWO disabled people, then you have to create a hierarchy of "who is a more disabled person?" (=more value).

None of this actually creates a better working environment. You can't replace respect for each other with a list of rules. It's just another feel good idea by another middle manager with no basis in science.

Re:I don't have anything to do with FreeBSD...

[nctritech]

Well, it's pretty easy to "not have an issue" when you oust people that disagree with you politically and you had a large enough user base to remain open. Drupal is a prime example of the shitstorm that comes with stupid codes of conduct and their enforcement and the inevitable rules lawyering that the CoC pushers engage in that grossly violates the spirit of the rules. Make no mistake, Codes of Conduct are a cancer on open source communities and the adoption of them is a sign of imminent slow decline as identity politics and manufactured bad faith butthurt overrides good faith efforts to make better software. Such projects that succeed do so in spite of the Code, NOT because of it.

Last sentence in the policy.

[CptLoRes]

This Code of Conduct is based on the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki.

I am all for equal rights, but feminism is something else entirely.

Re:Last sentence in the policy.

[DNS-and-BIND]

In my opinion, feminism is actually not a bad thing but it already has done its job in many Western countries. In the western world, it's not needed anymore. Women and men are equal on many terms. If they're not, then the "inequality" is due to biological reasons. Men cannot deliver babies, even if they wanted to. And women cannot get anyone else pregnant because they don't produce sperms. Sportive men are usually stronger and faster than women. That's why a female boxer was almost killed by her transgender opponent. The transgender woman could easily beat the shit out of her because "she" is actually man. You can deny his biological sex as often as you want to but nothing in this world can change the fact that all transgender women are fake women, or as I like calling them, they are just dudes in dresses.ï

But feminism is needed in many Muslim, African, and Asian countries (especially Burma). So, if you want to preach feminism, then go to those countries.ï There is much more good to be done in the advance of equality there. Here, the job is basically finished. It's kind of sad that over here in the West we're beating each other over the head over who's the most oppressed special snowflake, while elsewhere in the world many of the civil rights issues that are long since done away with here are still very much relevant. This is why modern feminism is toxic and detrimental to the rest of us. Its followers tend to prioritize their own interests and hate toward those with a different opinion over what's actually important in the broad scope of social and civil issues worldwide.ï

Re:Last sentence in the policy.

[Mashiki]

Modern feminism acts in a way that's not egalitarian. If you're pushing for "more women in tech" and give massive handouts, and promote people without merit? You're not egalitarian. Feminists aren't lining up to get more miners, or women into trades. They are however fighting to demonize men in female dominated work spaces. The "males are pedophiles" if they want to teach k-6 is a good example of this though the 90's. They're sure not working to deal with specific male issues in family courts, sentencing disparities. They'll actively fight against it claiming that men aren't punished enough. It's not egalitarian to argue for the abolition of prisons for women and using the argument that it's because women are fragile. They've fought to shut down shelters for men, and using the claim that it would "take money away from women" as an argument.

Feminists will line up and screech #metoo, then circle the wagons if a darling feminist has engaged in the exact or worse behavior then what they're accusing a man of. If a male is abused by a female, whether it be harassment, sexual assault, or rape. Many will argue that he's just lucky for all that attention. Say that the 14yr old male teenager was "lucky" to have been having sex with that 30yr old female teacher. But turn around and screech that the 14yr old female teenager was raped/didn't know what she was doing/was being abused/etc by that 30yr old male teacher.

Good for them

[millert]

Free software is all about community. I don't see anything in that list that I would *want* in my community. What's so controversial about having a policy that says you need to not be jerks to each other? This is behavior that would not be tolerated in a workplace or just about anywhere else.

Re:Good for them

[rknop]

Consider this: one person says that they are disappointed that something in the code won't be accepted because it conflicts with something else that needs to be there. A second person says, "*hugs*" as an expression of sympathy in response. That second person is now on warning for violating community standards.

Is THAT something you want in your community?

This policy goes way beyond "don't be a jerk". This is the problem with speech restrictions like this. People point to "don't be a racist" and ask what's so bad about that. Yes, being racist is bad, and expressing it is a good reason for a community to ask you to step away! But that's not the only thing in here-- especially when you realize that terms like "reinforce systematic oppression" are easily interpreted to squelch very broad ranges of speech.

Avoiding offense is a two-way street. It's not just those who speak having to avoid saying outrageous and offensive things. It's also those who listen having enough resilience to not need strict speech codes to avoid being offended, and to be able to put in context what others say to understand that there's no offense there.

Re:Good for them

[stephanruby]

What's so controversial about having a policy that says you need to not be jerks to each other?

Remember the school who suspended a teenager for two days because she was supposedly "inciting violence" with her anti-bullying video criticizing the school. That's what we're talking about here.

With overly vague but very strict written rules, that means the people in charge of an organization are free to interpret and reinterpret the rules however it suits them.

For instance, let's say x number of years from now, a FreeBSD committee chairman/president starts padding his/her expense reports with very large unrelated personal expenses, or holds a new election of board/committee members without telling anyone else about it but for a few of his/her personal friends.

Would the rules below be used to silence / banish the members who are asking too many questions?

Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease.

Publication of non-harassing private communication without consent.

Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes.

Yes, you can bet they will. It's not that those rules necessarily have bad intentions.

I can certainly see them being used against stalkers and bullies. It's just that those rules are so overly vague, they will certainly be abused if/when a bad actor, or bad actors, ever reach power.

Re:I wonder if this will cause a fork?

[rknop]

Conservative and Liberal are insufficient tags nowadays.

If you identify yourself as a liberal, you probably nowadays think of conservative as meaning (perhaps not self-acknowledge) white supremacy and Trumpism.

If you identify yourself as a conservative, you probably nowadays think of liberal as meaning in favor of the kind of identity politics that leads to speech codes and censorship that begins to be reminiscent of Mao's cultural revolution.

The thing is, there are people who would at least have traditionally identified themselves with both labels who aren't either of this, but still actually possess the ability to reason. Sadly, the current climate is allowing the white supremists to come out of the woodwork and go mainstream, and that in turn is convincing people who should otherwise know better to endorse the extremes of identity politics censorship.

At the moment, the national liberal party in the US (the Democratic party) hasn't been caught up in the craziness of the left (i.e. overarching speech policies that consider saying "*hugs*" a form of agression), whereas the Republican party has at least partially been caught up in the craziness of the right (i.e. not recoiling from Trump). If anything, this makes the extremes of identity politics all the more insidious and dangerous. There need to be ways for people to stand up and point to the excesses of that without having to be identified with, or feel that perhaps they even must share a lot of values with, the jingoistic Trumpists of the world.

Re:Are bsd dying? now we got the response

[supremebob]

Yeah, it doesnt say much for the progress of FreeBSD development when they are focusing on the welfare of a handful a transgendered software developers instead of... you know... the actual operating system they are developing.

What I want to know is why an Operating System development mailing list would talk about such subjects? There has to be better forums for that. If I was writing a Code Of Conduct, I think that I would be telling people not to post politically charged content that has nothing to do with OS development, regardless of subject matter.

This is a controlled experiment

[Tokolosh]

FreeBSD obviously feels that this code of conduct, together with the associated concepts of diversity, inclusion and acceptance, will promote the quality, usefulness and innovation of their software.

Let's take the opportunity to run an experiment. In five years, will FreeBSD be strong, admired and above all, be downloaded and used, compared to its less enlightened peers? Which paradigm will prevail?

I propose that we revisit this topic yearly, to assess.

Re:Why would it make people angry

[Megol]

I have a much shorter code of conduct:

Don't be an asshole. If you are behaving as an asshole you are given one chance of behaving like a mature adult, if you don't you can leave.

Re:There's this book...

[xeno]

True but irrelevant. The Necronomicon has nothing to do with the social notion of a "dead name" which roughly translates to "Don't call me by the hated name my inauthentic narcissistic parents gave me, even though I have been too lazy or inconsistent to legally change it, yet I will become enraged and publicly insulting if you do not refer to me by an obtuse nickname I've only told to a handful of people I felt safe disclosing it to."

With respect to the policy overall, it's like an angsty high-school kid exploded on the page, with a convoluted list of serious actual crimes intermixed with imagined slights and vague conditions defined by perception rather than action or intent. The list translates roughly to: "We're having technical difficulties adulting just now. Please leave us alone for a few years while we remove the sideways tampon from our sense of community, and ability to differentiate between criminal acts and mild transgressions that function as social lubricant. It's going to be a minute."

In both cases: "TL;DR: Ignore me."

Re:I wonder if this will cause a fork?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion over regulating these kinds of things is a form of conservatism and close mindness. Let people be people. The way restorative justice [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice] addresses these things is much more constructive. It would be interesting to see it applied to online communities.

Re:Looks like James Damore, Round 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think the shootings happened in Florida. Because leftists like you have taken God out of your lives.

And yet, when that asshole shot up a church in Texas, God did nothing to stop him. That must really confuse you and make you angry at God. Do you own a gun?

Re:Looks like James Damore, Round 2

[wrf3]

You just don't realize that we are laughing at people like you. You, Trump and Damore need to go into the dustbin.

If /. adopted the BSD code of conduct, your comment would be in violation at a minimum of "Unwelcome comments regarding a person's lifestyle choices and practices".

Re:We recently had something like this where I wor

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazingly, those are the only ones that seem to actually do any work.

But maybe that's just because the loudmouth mob of straight white male-hating non-straight white males are giving everybody else such a bad name.

Anyway, that sort of bs would be enough for me to bugger off to greener pa$ture$. No need to wait for the constructive dismissal you just know is coming your way. Do your part in bringing down idiocy and brush up the old CV. And yeah, even google can be brought down that way. They have already lost their ability to innovate.

Re:Looks like James Damore, Round 2

[Hal_Porter]

Funny how you can't remember any of those one liners.

Re:Weasel-worded ham-handed bullshit

[Calydor]

Not only that, but keep in mind what can count as private aspects of a person's identity.

What happens if you ask some guy you know well how his boyfriend's doing, and it turns out he isn't officially out of the closet? Or ask someone you know is in another country if they can do a lookup on a website for you to see if it works from that country?

'Private aspects' can be oh, so many things. Many years ago I was a regular in a chatroom with a bunch of other guys. One of these was absolutely sure no one he hadn't deliberately confided in could find out who he was.

That is, until I pointed out to him that he'd mentioned he worked at a university, he'd mentioned stopping at a specific point on his bike ride to work, he'd mentioned the number of a specific kind of shop at the intersection his apartment sat above, and he once dropped a comment to someone about needing to travel about forty kilometers to cross the border to use a specific currency they were talking about.

He had no idea before then how much private information he was leaking all on his own.

These rules? They're forbidding saying "Hey John, you're in Austria now, right?"

Re:New Fork incoming?

[serviscope_minor]

It is literally impossible to adhere to these restrictions,

If you find it impossible to meet the CoC, you're so useless I'm surprised you can tie your own shoes let alon write software. Let me illustrate by going over every singly bullet point in the code of conduct:

* Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion

How about you talk about code on a code project and don't take the piss out of people.

* Unwelcome comments regarding a person's lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.

It's an OS, talk about the OS. Not hard.

* Deliberate misgendering.

This is incredibly easy to avoid.

* Deliberate use of "dead" or rejected names.

I have always referred to someone by the name they have told me rather than digging ronud to find an old name to use just to be a jerk. Deliberately doing this requires serious effort.

* Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they're not appropriate.

Don't post dick picks to the kernel mailing list. Pretty simple. Don't gram someone's arse at a conference. Those are both things I've manged to not do my entire life with literally no effort.

* Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g., textual descriptions like "*hug*" or "*backrub*") without consent or after a request to stop.

Likewise.

* Threats of violence.

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.

Oops I fucked up on that one.

* Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm.

If you find it literally impossible to not encourage a person to commit suicide, then you are a psychopath.

* Deliberate intimidation.

See two points ago.

* Stalking or following.

Stalking is not just a hobby, it's a calling. Funnily enough if you get lazier it gets easier to not do.

* Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes.

If someone tells you to get the camera out of their face, stop being a glasshole and put it away.

* Sustained disruption of discussion.

IOW don't be a dickhead.

* Unwelcome sexual attention.

Yeah I KNOW you want to bone

Re: Sounds like they need a hug

[Reverend Green]

Theo is actually Chuck Norris incognito. He doesn't NEED a score.

Undoing mod

[Shemmie]

This whole topic is just... it's a fucking mess.

I'd hug you all via text, but it'd be a hate crime.

Re: I wonder if this will cause a fork?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there is a very important third class: people who think you shouldn't be shitty, but yet don't think there should need to be some huge convoluted set of rules about it.

Re: It'll be fine!

[Millennium]

The only ones who won't want to stick around are the ones nobody wanted around in the first place.

Re: It'll be fine!

[aliquis]

Spoken like a true authoritarian communist.