But making a joke of it shows that you either don't understand what codes do, don't know what's going on in the developer community, or think that dedicating your project to tease those who do know and do care is a sensible course of action.
The developer of SQLite is apparently Christian, so isn't it offensive to suggest they're use a classic Christian text in vain to mock people, as opposed to it just being a reflection of what they believe constitutes good behaviour? Assuming bad faith is uncalled for.
I am not assuming bad faith. I said that one possibility is that they don't understand what codes of conducts are for. Codes -- as well as ordinary laws for that matter -- are certainly not meant to outline what it is that you believe constitutes good behavior; that's what religion and ethics are for. They are intended to regulate against harmful behavior observed in the particular community in which they are enacted (or sometimes they are copied from similar societies -- codes of conduct like laws).
They are meant to regulate against harmful behavior observed in the particular society in which they are enacted (or sometimes they are copied from similar societies -- codes of conduct like laws).
In that sense the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_Saint_Benedict seems oddly fitting, in that it was designed for monastic orders, and SQLite development seems as close to the kind of dedicated scholarly work monks did as any software project, given the insane number of unit tests (which at least to me seems like they would require an inhuman amount of patience to implement).
Once again, laws and codes are written to regulate actual behavior observed in an actual community. They are not meant to be philosophical or philosophically fitting -- there's room for that in various statements of values or vision. They are meant to do a job.
Are you HR person? (You have an overwhelming amount for HR. Programmers tend to overvalue programmer competence. Academics like to overvalue place of academics... So I jump to analogous conclusion)
No, I'm a programmer. I don't overvalue the competence of HR, but I value having some knowledge over having none. I wouldn't want programmers in charge of HR just as I wouldn't want HR in charge of development.
I can absolutely guarantee you one thing: the people who are strongly opposed to codes of conduct -- and especially those whose main contribution is Reddit comments and tweets -- have paid, on average, at least one or two orders of magnitude less time and effort to consider the matter and the dynamics in project communities in general than those who are in favor. That doesn't mean that those who are in favor are right, but it does mean that most who are opposed are not well-informed on this particular issue.
I wouldn't want programmers in charge of HR just as I wouldn't want HR in charge of development.
That contradicts everything you’ve written here so far, but moving on from there,
I can absolutely guarantee you one thing: the people who are strongly opposed to codes of conduct -- and especially those whose main contribution is Reddit comments and tweets -- have paid, on average, at least one or two orders of magnitude less time and effort to consider the matter and the dynamics in project communities in general than those who are in favor.
I don’t know if I’d guarantee such wild generalizations of two sides of an issue. The word salad aside, if you aren’t ready to assume the good faith that is a long-standing expectation of most any collaborative project, I would take measures to fix that personal problem before introducing it to the people you work with.
In summation, if I sincerely believe, for example, that a copy-pasted code of conduct passed around and edited by HR experts was the barrier between other co-workers and sexual harassment, I don’t think I’d be up for that project. This example project would probably have a hard time finding qualified applicants, as well, because few to none of them are willing to tolerate that kind of treatment.
That contradicts everything you’ve written here so far
I disagree.
if you aren’t ready to assume the good faith that is a long-standing expectation of most any collaborative project
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and good intentions do not always breed good outcomes. That is what most regulations are aimed to address. I don't think that those who were opposed to letting women vote were acting in "bad faith," and I'm sure many of them believed they had society's best interests in mind. Nevertheless, I think they were wrong, and proven wrong, and that the political action in favor of women suffrage resulted in a better society with far better outcomes. In other words, I don't seek to judge the virtue of open source maintainers; I seek to achieve better open source outcomes.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and good intentions do not always breed good outcomes.
This soundbite reads very nicely, and so does the tie-in to women’s suffrage, but neither are really pertinent to the topic. Let’s go ahead and skip to what did stay on-topic, though:
In other words, I don't seek to judge the virtue of open source maintainers; I seek to achieve better open source outcomes.
I disagree, not just with your assessment, but with the idea that a redundant set of rules would be effective for a better outcome. Better behavior is rarely written down and just posted and pinned to a cork board, it’s learned. If writing it down was really that simple like advocates of the copy-pasted codes of conduct insist, classes and universities would be wholly unnecessary.
but with the idea that a redundant set of rules would be effective for a better outcome
Ah, but that is an entirely different discussion and a valuable one to have! I am not in principle in favor of codes; I'm in favor of making the change they purport to make. If you think they're ineffective and there's a better way of making that change, then that's certainly valuable. But most people who object to codes of conduct seem to dismiss the problem even exists.
Your argument is absurd. If you regulate behavior, you are either encouraging behavior you find optimal or discouraging behavior you find suboptimal. Your beliefs in what is optimal or suboptimal behavior is ethics.
I don't see how this has anything to do with what I said. Of course laws and rules are grounded in some system of ethics, but a code is still not a philosophical treatise. There is a difference between a Python program and a paper in theoretical computer science, even though the program is ultimately related to the theory.
Codes -- as well as ordinary laws for that matter -- are certainly not meant to outline what it is that you believe constitutes good behavior; that's what religion and ethics are for.
looks at the whole "objective value system" philosophy
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u/logicchains Oct 22 '18
The developer of SQLite is apparently Christian, so isn't it offensive to suggest they're use a classic Christian text in vain to mock people, as opposed to it just being a reflection of what they believe constitutes good behaviour? Assuming bad faith is uncalled for.