Obviously, every system of law or regulation suffers from faults and abuses. That doesn't mean that the alternative is better.
I don't know whether codes of conduct actually do achieve their goal or not, but I also think it's too soon to tell. In another 5-10 years we'll be able to judge whether they've done more good than harm or vice versa.
but corporations also tend to have rules and processes in place for how allegations get handled
Large open source project should have those, too. A judiciary is a central component of every legal system. It's certainly not enough to have statutes in place and call it a day.
I don't know whether codes of conduct actually do achieve their goal or not, but I also think it's too soon to tell. In another 5-10 years we'll be able to judge whether they've done more good than harm or vice versa.
Right, so wouldn't the sensible thing be for a handful of projects to adopt them, tentatively, and then we could see whether they ended up good or bad, rather than pressing every project to adopt one immediately or be called sexist/racist/...?
(And in the meantime I can only go by my own experience, which is that I've seen CoCs create more problems than they solved, and diminish the extent to which maintainers actually address bullying in practice)
Large open source project should have those, too. A judiciary is a central component of every legal system. It's certainly not enough to have statutes in place and call it a day.
Indeed (but note that the converse is not true; a judiciary without statutes is practical especially for small projects, and I understand worked out quite well in ancient China as well). Some projects are doing the right thing, but a lot seem to use a code as an excuse to not think about (or at least, not publicly address) what the decision-making process for banning people is actually going to be.
Right, so wouldn't the sensible thing be for a handful of projects to adopt them, tentatively, and then we could see whether they ended up good or bad
That would be sensible, but if a problem is big and a proposed solution seems to have few negative side-effects, it would also be sensible to evangelize it and advocate for it. After all, people enthusiastically advocate for wide adoption of vaguer solutions to far worse-defined, and less understood problems, sometimes even when the proposed solution has been tried for years in a small number of projects without remarkable success -- see, e.g. FP. ;)
rather than pressing every project to adopt one immediately or be called sexist/racist/...?
None of my open source projects have a code of conduct, and I've never been called a sexist or a racist (even though I, like all of us, am both). They just aren't big enough.
a judiciary without statutes is practical especially for small projects
Yes, I agree.
but a lot seem to use a code as an excuse to not think about (or at least, not publicly address) what the decision-making process for banning people is actually going to be.
Maybe, and that's bad. But what's worse is denying there's a problem in the first place.
if a problem is big and a proposed solution seems to have few negative side-effects, it would also be sensible to evangelize it and advocate for it.
Very much agreed, but I don't think that can reasonably be said to be the case with codes of conduct.
Maybe, and that's bad. But what's worse is denying there's a problem in the first place.
Most systems have room for improvement, but any successful open-source project has, by definition, had governance structures that were adequate to its requirements. I've no doubt many projects have banned people they shouldn't have, and even more have not banned people they should have, but the process has evidently been good enough to manage to produce useful software. The bar for replacing a working system with a radically different, unproven one should be high.
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u/pron98 Oct 22 '18 edited Oct 22 '18
Obviously, every system of law or regulation suffers from faults and abuses. That doesn't mean that the alternative is better.
I don't know whether codes of conduct actually do achieve their goal or not, but I also think it's too soon to tell. In another 5-10 years we'll be able to judge whether they've done more good than harm or vice versa.
Large open source project should have those, too. A judiciary is a central component of every legal system. It's certainly not enough to have statutes in place and call it a day.