Why a Generic Open Source Project Can't Also Be a Successful Civil Rights Project
https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/why-a-generic-open-source-project
good points.
A rule must be clear, otherwise its application can be abused and it becomes a dangerous rule.
Moreover, you can ban in an effective way "sexism", "racism" and "fascism" from a community, specifying that these type of messages are not allowed in the communication channels. They are simply off-topic respect software development.
But it is dangerous if you declare to ban "sexist", "racist" and "fascist" people, because: there can be a "fascist" who is a good contributor and he is not violating the CoC during his interactions in the project; corrupt people can ban someone they don't like, only accusing him to be a "fascist".
French revolution had good ideals, but it created also "The Reign of Terror".
@schmittlauch
if you are physically harmful to other persons, you cannot stay in the same event with them, and there can be also police investigations. So, usually people with accusations are banned from the event, waiting for the trial or quick double-check from the organizers.
There can be also false allegations, and the sad part, it is that often there are no consequences for the false accusers. But this is another story...
But if you are a serial-killer, sending pull-requests from your prison, using a nick-name, then these PR should be reviewed only according the technical details.
If you buy a car, and you are polite, they do not check how you earned the money. In a software project, the currency (i.e. substance) is the code, and the form is how you interact in the community. All other aspects are hard to enforce, and there can be dangerous side-effects.
Penal law focuses on defining 2 things: behavior and consequence. It is written in the format in which it is written for some good reasons.
The proposal of exclusion of people based on their beliefs would be inconstitutional in my country. I honestly think these people wouldn't propose such barbaric things if they ever studied law for a couple of months.
You seem to be rediscovering the principles of penal law. Behaviors can be forbidden. They can then be punished, but only proportionately to the gravity of the offense.
In this case the injustice began at the adjudication of punishments 1) of the wrong people 2) for behaviors that aren't forbidden. After that there was no hope of proportion. Oh, here's an extremely famous principle of criminal law: It is better to let a guilty criminal go, than to punish an innocent person.
Who allowed the injustices to happen? On one side, the community on Zulip – perhaps. But on the other side, certainly, the company behind Nix – the very people who told the community to assemble without goals, which is as useless as a street protest without something being clearly demanded. Both of these things are fake democracy. Let them discuss and scream and participate.
Participate plenty, but ultimately we decide. This is what they did, isn't it.
What were they doing during the discussions? They were absent? Too important to participate themselves, weren't they. Too busy doing other things which, consequently, must be more important and urgent.
By the way, why is it that we don't seriously consider https://guix.gnu.org/ ? Is it simply that their website is worse? I don't know why I've never contemplated it.
@nando
I'm trying to switch from NixOS to GuixSD, mainly because in case of problems I prefer to debug Guile code, than Nix code. There are more tools for Guile than Nix, and it is more elegant.
Guix community has less package, and it is focused more on perfect bootstrapping. So, up to date, for example, it cannot support directly Java Gradle based projects. There are also problems with nodejs packages. Nix instead has no problems in taking shortcuts, and it has an impressive number of packages.
If something works in Guix, usually it works very well. In some cases, also better than Nix. I like it a lot.
@mzan @chrism
> there can be a "fascist" who is a good contributor and he is not violating the CoC during his interactions in the project; corrupt people can ban someone they don't like, only accusing him to be a "fascist".
Community members shall only beat each other up outside the community conference venue to avoid being banned from the event?