[Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Shuah Khan]

I have been trying to follow various threads on this topic and none of them address
the review of this patch that went in. There is no mistake in the title of this topic.
I do consider this topic to be more general than limited to Maintainer Summit. Hence,
the choice of a wider Technical designation.

So I am kicking off a thread to do the review with my comments. I am in general
agreement with the spirit of this change to the existing "Code of Conflict".

Now specific concerns and comments:

I am concerned about the added responsibilities as a maintainer. I have to not only
worry about the quality of code and technical aspects, but also be responsible for
behavior of individuals I might not have any control or sway over. That said, I am
hopeful that this will help all of us in the community, maintainers and contributors
alike to think a bit more about how their response will be received and would they like
it if they are at the receiving end of that kind of message, before hitting that send
button. When we see a response that is offensive and/or hurtful, there is usually silence
on such threads. So maybe that will change with this CoC and at least some of us will say,
let's use a firm and polite message as opposed to offensive/hurtful message.

I also have a concern that what is hurtful can be somewhat subjective. What a maintainer
considers isn't hurtful, could be perceived as hurtful by the individual at the receiving
end.

What is offensive is a bit more clear. It will be learning curve for us as a community and
I do think we will get there. I believe our kernel community at large is respectful and helpful.

This decision to change the existing "Code of Conflict" signed off by a large number of developers,
has been changed and committed with a few people signing off on it.

It would be good to know the circumstances that necessitated the decision to include this patch
without the proper review process. if that isn't possible, it is important to follow the review
process now for v2. Also, discussing this in the Maintainer summit and/or kernel summit will not
make the community feel like it is a community approved decision. At least, kernel community should
be given a chance to discuss this change just like any other change.

thanks,
-- Shuah

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[James Morris]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Shuah Khan wrote:

> This decision to change the existing "Code of Conflict" signed off by a large number of developers,
> has been changed and committed with a few people signing off on it.
> 
> It would be good to know the circumstances that necessitated the decision to include this patch
> without the proper review process. if that isn't possible, it is important to follow the review
> process now for v2. Also, discussing this in the Maintainer summit and/or kernel summit will not
> make the community feel like it is a community approved decision. At least, kernel community should
> be given a chance to discuss this change just like any other change.

Not speaking on behalf of my employer, I agree with all of the above.

-- 
James Morris
<jmorris@namei.org>

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[John W. Linville]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 03:51:14AM +1000, James Morris wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Shuah Khan wrote:
> 
> > This decision to change the existing "Code of Conflict" signed off by a large number of developers,
> > has been changed and committed with a few people signing off on it.
> > 
> > It would be good to know the circumstances that necessitated the decision to include this patch
> > without the proper review process. if that isn't possible, it is important to follow the review
> > process now for v2. Also, discussing this in the Maintainer summit and/or kernel summit will not
> > make the community feel like it is a community approved decision. At least, kernel community should
> > be given a chance to discuss this change just like any other change.
> 
> Not speaking on behalf of my employer, I agree with all of the above.

+1

Some number of folks feel (at least indirectly) chided or silenced by
the new Code of Conduct. Many of those folks have expressed themselves
ineloquently in a variety of venues. Much as one may disagree with
some of their expressed sentiments, those expressions of frustration
represent the feelings of some number of people in the real world.

It seems likely to me that these folks are at least as likely to
quit the community over their hurt feelings as have been the victims
of Linus or any other grumpy maintainers. If we really care about
maximizing the pool of contributors, we need to accomodate even those
that aren't particularly comfortable with 'playing nice'. Giving them
some say in establishing the rules seems extremely reasonable to me.

Just my $0.02...

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville@tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Jason Cooper]

All,

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 08:24:07AM -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
> I have been trying to follow various threads on this topic and none of them address
> the review of this patch that went in. There is no mistake in the title of this topic.
> I do consider this topic to be more general than limited to Maintainer Summit. Hence,
> the choice of a wider Technical designation.

fwiw, I agree with the insufficient scope, and the lack of public
mailinglist discussion.

I'd like to make a drive-by observation (or two), if I may.  The kernel
community is *huge* and *active* in comparison to most other projects.
It also has a lot more history than most others.  That history isn't
stored in a database, only to be accessed through a web page, accepting
the single database as canonical.  Rather, the history is stored in many
places, accessible by many different methods, and verifiable against
other remote copies of the history.

This difference is an understated advantage of the kernel development
process.  Once you say "it", you can never refute that you said it.  The
history itself provides a conscious check.  As a result, I don't think a
CoC in any form is going to cause any sort of material change in anyones
behavior.  Rather, it'll just push away valuable and scarce talent.

The second observation is that trying to adopt a single CoC for the
_entire_ Linux development community is an exercise in futility.  As
Daniel Vetter has mentioned many times in these recent discussions, dri
has been happily living under their own CoC for quite some time.  So we
can gather a) it works for them, and b) it doesn't bother any other
subsystems.

So why are we trying to apply a single CoC to everyone?  Why not let
each subsystem / sub-community adopt their own and see how it goes?  A/B
test it.  It could either be a footer link for the respective
mailinglist, or a link in MAINTAINERS.  Any community not specifying one
defaults to the Code of Conflict.

I'd like to assume the backdoor method the CoC was introduced was purely
to avoid a never-ending bikeshed.  And the subsequent threads are
evidence that it didn't take a prognosticator to predict the mess.

Perhaps that's an indicator that it shouldn't be done that way.  Maybe
approaching the problem on a per-sub-community will work better.  I
dunno.

Just my 2 cents.


Thanks,

Jason.

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Josh Triplett]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 02:11:39PM -0400, John W. Linville wrote:
> Some number of folks feel (at least indirectly) chided or silenced by
> the new Code of Conduct.

Such folks would do well to consider what *actual* behavior they're
engaged in would be affected, and how that behavior affects others.

> It seems likely to me that these folks are at least as likely to
> quit the community over their hurt feelings as have been the victims
> of Linus or any other grumpy maintainers.

I rather expect the number willing to complain to be quite different
from the number willing to leave rather than treat others decently. I'd
expect the latter to be vanishingly small. And ultimately, that's the
tradeoff here. You can't accommodate people who want to be treated
decently and people who refuse to treat others decently in the same
community. (You *can*, however, accommodate folks who grumble about
being required to treat others decently but nonetheless do so anyway.)

> If we really care about maximizing the pool of contributors, we need
> to accomodate even those that aren't particularly comfortable with
> 'playing nice'.

We really don't, any more than we need to accommodate those who insist
on not following the kernel coding style, or any other norm of the
kernel community. It doesn't have to be their *preferred* mode of
operation, just the one they use when interacting with the kernel
community.

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Olof Johansson]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 8:15 PM John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 03:51:14AM +1000, James Morris wrote:
> > On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Shuah Khan wrote:
> >
> > > This decision to change the existing "Code of Conflict" signed off by a large number of developers,
> > > has been changed and committed with a few people signing off on it.
> > >
> > > It would be good to know the circumstances that necessitated the decision to include this patch
> > > without the proper review process. if that isn't possible, it is important to follow the review
> > > process now for v2. Also, discussing this in the Maintainer summit and/or kernel summit will not
> > > make the community feel like it is a community approved decision. At least, kernel community should
> > > be given a chance to discuss this change just like any other change.
> >
> > Not speaking on behalf of my employer, I agree with all of the above.
>
> +1
>
> Some number of folks feel (at least indirectly) chided or silenced by
> the new Code of Conduct. Many of those folks have expressed themselves
> ineloquently in a variety of venues. Much as one may disagree with
> some of their expressed sentiments, those expressions of frustration
> represent the feelings of some number of people in the real world.
>
> It seems likely to me that these folks are at least as likely to
> quit the community over their hurt feelings as have been the victims
> of Linus or any other grumpy maintainers. If we really care about
> maximizing the pool of contributors, we need to accomodate even those
> that aren't particularly comfortable with 'playing nice'. Giving them
> some say in establishing the rules seems extremely reasonable to me.

Ah yes, Popper's Paradox. The answer is not that we have to be
tolerant of the intolerant -- or at least not infinitely. We also all
know that people need a bit of time to adjust to new habits and I
think we should focus more on (quick) improvement over time than
absolutes. We're all humans.

I'd like to make a couple of personal opinions clear here (for
whatever it's worth):

1) The CoC was clear that we're using this _from now on_. I.e. let
bygones be bygones even if bad things might have happened (there are
extreme exceptions to this, but let's not go there).

2) Some seem to be focused on worst-case scenarios of the culture
changing to be something completely different from what it is today. I
don't think anyone involved wants this, and we shouldn't implement
something that strict here. I still want people to argue over and care
about code. I still look forward to everybody participating, and we
shouldn't be doing anything along the lines of lowering the quality
bar or prioritizing things differently from today.

However, I hope that when we do have disagreements, we won't reach
shouting in all caps and name-calling stage. If someone gets a bit too
tempered, people should feel free to reach out and talk about it --
and that said people are willing to listen and maybe take a few deep
breaths before considering if it's useful to continue communicating
like they were and tone it down. If we can get that far, that'd make a
huge difference.

The old Code of Conflict said "be excellent to each other", but people
weren't. Hopefully with this change, we can end up a whole lot closer
to that state.


-Olof

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Olof Johansson wrote:
> Ah yes, Popper's Paradox. The answer is not that we have to be
> tolerant of the intolerant -- or at least not infinitely. We also all
> know that people need a bit of time to adjust to new habits and I
> think we should focus more on (quick) improvement over time than
> absolutes. We're all humans.

That's the important point here: we are _all_ humans. That includes those
who occasionally lose their temper (I know what I'm talking about and I
know for sure that it is a life long struggle to control it).

If someone puts that person in his place, that's absolutely correct and
necessary. Most people immediately react, regret and apologize and they
mean it.

Now if someone gets put in his place and the person who does that then goes
one step further and asks (privately) what's wrong and what caused that
pointless explosion, in other words deeply cares about the other person who
failed, then a way deeper change happens than just using the Code of
Conflict/Conduct as a one edged sword.

Then 'be excellent to each other' becomes what it's really meant to be.

Thanks,

	Thomas

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[James Bottomley]

On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 08:24 -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
> I have been trying to follow various threads on this topic and none
> of them address the review of this patch that went in. There is no
> mistake in the title of this topic. I do consider this topic to be
> more general than limited to Maintainer Summit. Hence, the choice of
> a wider Technical designation.
> 
> So I am kicking off a thread to do the review with my comments. I am
> in general agreement with the spirit of this change to the existing
> "Code of Conflict".

I'm also on record in a precious thread of saying I don't think the new
code of conduct covers the behaviours we actually want to control and
the advice we'd like to give about list (and other) interactions.

> Now specific concerns and comments:
> 
> I am concerned about the added responsibilities as a maintainer. I
> have to not only worry about the quality of code and technical
> aspects, but also be responsible for behavior of individuals I might
> not have any control or sway over. That said, I am hopeful that this
> will help all of us in the community, maintainers and contributors
> alike to think a bit more about how their response will be received
> and would they like it if they are at the receiving end of that kind
> of message, before hitting that send button. When we see a response
> that is offensive and/or hurtful, there is usually silence
> on such threads. So maybe that will change with this CoC and at least
> some of us will say, let's use a firm and polite message as opposed
> to offensive/hurtful message.
> 
> I also have a concern that what is hurtful can be somewhat
> subjective. What a maintainer considers isn't hurtful, could be
> perceived as hurtful by the individual at the receiving end.
> 
> What is offensive is a bit more clear. It will be learning curve for
> us as a community and I do think we will get there. I believe our
> kernel community at large is respectful and helpful.

Actually, reading the above and agreeing with it I think the main
problem is that what we're discussing as a Code of Conduct isn't one at
all; it's really an anti Harassment policy.  That's why I think it
doesn't cover the email reviews and things very well and why we're all
concerned that it gives maintainers a load of responsibilities they
can't really police.

Perhaps we could do with finding a middle ground between the previous
code of conflict, which was fairly tailored to our environment but
lacked some specifics and the new code of conduct which doesn't seem to
be well tailored at all for us.

Perhaps what we're looking for as the middle ground is something based
on the Debian code of conduct (obviously with modifications for us):

https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct

It seems to keep their discussions (even on debian-legal) within the
bounds of civility.

Perhaps the one thing lacking in the Debian CoC is the actual
responsibilities of a maintainer, so perhaps that's the bit we should
concentrate on.

To try to kick off: as a maintainer, I'm happy to try to police
civility by calling adverse behaviours out on the list and trying to
get people to see each other's point of view in an argument (it's
basically what the SCSI maintainers already do).  I do think we also
have the ultimate sanction of asking for a ban of people who prove
incorrigible (we've done that before on vger), but we should use it
very sparingly.

> This decision to change the existing "Code of Conflict" signed off by
> a large number of developers, has been changed and committed with a
> few people signing off on it.
> 
> It would be good to know the circumstances that necessitated the
> decision to include this patch without the proper review process. if
> that isn't possible, it is important to follow the review
> process now for v2. Also, discussing this in the Maintainer summit
> and/or kernel summit will not make the community feel like it is a
> community approved decision. At least, kernel community should
> be given a chance to discuss this change just like any other change.

I think a lot of people have pieces but very few know the whole.  I
also trust Jon who said he'd try to put it together for us and lwn.net
so hopefully by the time even the maintainers' summit rolls around this
won't be such a big issue.

James

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Joe Perches]

On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 16:15 -0700, James Bottomley wrote:
> as a maintainer, I'm happy to try to police
> civility by calling adverse behaviours out on the list

Good for you, but that's not necessarily something others
might want to do.  Nor should have to.

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Daniel Vetter]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1780 bytes --]

Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> schrieb am Di., 25. Sep. 2018, 00:22:

> On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Olof Johansson wrote:
> > Ah yes, Popper's Paradox. The answer is not that we have to be
> > tolerant of the intolerant -- or at least not infinitely. We also all
> > know that people need a bit of time to adjust to new habits and I
> > think we should focus more on (quick) improvement over time than
> > absolutes. We're all humans.
>
> That's the important point here: we are _all_ humans. That includes those
> who occasionally lose their temper (I know what I'm talking about and I
> know for sure that it is a life long struggle to control it).
>
> If someone puts that person in his place, that's absolutely correct and
> necessary. Most people immediately react, regret and apologize and they
> mean it.
>
> Now if someone gets put in his place and the person who does that then goes
> one step further and asks (privately) what's wrong and what caused that
> pointless explosion, in other words deeply cares about the other person who
> failed, then a way deeper change happens than just using the Code of
> Conflict/Conduct as a one edged sword.
>


All this coc asks you to do is stop putting yourself first and start
considering others. Instead of lashing out and then expecting your
recipients to also handle the fallout for, plus showing deep empathy for
the harassment they just received.

>
> Then 'be excellent to each other' becomes what it's really meant to be.

Seems rather one way instead of mutual, what you have in mind.
-Daniel

>
> Thanks,
>
>         Thomas
> _______________________________________________
> Ksummit-discuss mailing list
> Ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ksummit-discuss
>

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Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Olof Johansson]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 6:26 AM Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch> wrote:
>
> Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> schrieb am Di., 25. Sep. 2018, 00:22:
>>
>> On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Olof Johansson wrote:
>> > Ah yes, Popper's Paradox. The answer is not that we have to be
>> > tolerant of the intolerant -- or at least not infinitely. We also all
>> > know that people need a bit of time to adjust to new habits and I
>> > think we should focus more on (quick) improvement over time than
>> > absolutes. We're all humans.
>>
>> That's the important point here: we are _all_ humans. That includes those
>> who occasionally lose their temper (I know what I'm talking about and I
>> know for sure that it is a life long struggle to control it).
>>
>> If someone puts that person in his place, that's absolutely correct and
>> necessary. Most people immediately react, regret and apologize and they
>> mean it.

Minor note: "put in place" can be interpreted as someone standing up
and yelling even louder back at the person who's already aggravated.
That's not how things should have to work.

>>
>> Now if someone gets put in his place and the person who does that then goes
>> one step further and asks (privately) what's wrong and what caused that
>> pointless explosion, in other words deeply cares about the other person who
>> failed, then a way deeper change happens than just using the Code of
>> Conflict/Conduct as a one edged sword.
>
>
>
> All this coc asks you to do is stop putting yourself first and start considering others. Instead of lashing out and then expecting your recipients to also handle the fallout for, plus showing deep empathy for the harassment they just received.
>>
>>
>> Then 'be excellent to each other' becomes what it's really meant to be.
>
> Seems rather one way instead of mutual, what you have in mind.

I don't think anyone is in disagreement about the base case: That
everybody will work on changing, and that it's considered OK and
expected to call out when someone is starting to get out of line. Also
that we're all expecting things to converge on "excellent to each
other" very quickly even if there ends up being a couple of stumbles
along the way. Nobody gets free passes.

The second part I think there are two ways to interpret, and I read it
differently than you (but I might be the one who missed Thomas'
intention):

Reaching out to the one who's misbehaving I see more as something
friends will do to each other, not what the community as such is
expected to do. I.e. if I enjoy having Thomas around (I do, but I'm
also looking forward to him not blowing up ever so often), it's worth
checking in to see if everything is OK and if there's anything I can
do to help. Not before someone has checked in with the person at the
receiving end, and I definitely would never expect that person to be
the one checking in with Thomas.


-Olof

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Dan Williams]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 9:29 PM Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch> wrote:
>
>
>
> Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> schrieb am Di., 25. Sep. 2018, 00:22:
>>
>> On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Olof Johansson wrote:
>> > Ah yes, Popper's Paradox. The answer is not that we have to be
>> > tolerant of the intolerant -- or at least not infinitely. We also all
>> > know that people need a bit of time to adjust to new habits and I
>> > think we should focus more on (quick) improvement over time than
>> > absolutes. We're all humans.
>>
>> That's the important point here: we are _all_ humans. That includes those
>> who occasionally lose their temper (I know what I'm talking about and I
>> know for sure that it is a life long struggle to control it).
>>
>> If someone puts that person in his place, that's absolutely correct and
>> necessary. Most people immediately react, regret and apologize and they
>> mean it.
>>
>> Now if someone gets put in his place and the person who does that then goes
>> one step further and asks (privately) what's wrong and what caused that
>> pointless explosion, in other words deeply cares about the other person who
>> failed, then a way deeper change happens than just using the Code of
>> Conflict/Conduct as a one edged sword.
>
>
>
> All this coc asks you to do is stop putting yourself first and start considering others. Instead of lashing out and then expecting your recipients to also handle the fallout for, plus showing deep empathy for the harassment they just received.
>>
>>
>> Then 'be excellent to each other' becomes what it's really meant to be.
>
> Seems rather one way instead of mutual, what you have in mind.

Speaking only for myself, I didn't read it that way. I read it that
empathy is a 2-way street and there has to be room for accountability
and forgiveness in both directions otherwise the conversation does not
move forward.

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2018, Olof Johansson wrote:
> Reaching out to the one who's misbehaving I see more as something
> friends will do to each other, not what the community as such is
> expected to do. I.e. if I enjoy having Thomas around (I do, but I'm
> also looking forward to him not blowing up ever so often), it's worth
> checking in to see if everything is OK and if there's anything I can
> do to help. Not before someone has checked in with the person at the
> receiving end, and I definitely would never expect that person to be
> the one checking in with Thomas.

Let me put that straight.

Surely everyone has to work on himself and I'm not expecting that the
person who got attacked reaches out to the one misbehaving. Obviously it
has to be the other way round and the one who misbehaved needs to reach
out.

For me it's part of true excellence when the one who told me to stop it, or
a third person, reaches out to me as well.  John Stultz did that to me some
time ago, and I really appreciated it. It made a huge difference for me and
talking to him about it surely made me reflect deeper and helped me to see
where my own defense against my temper broke.

There is a - not completely unjustified - fear in the wider community that
the CoC could be turned into thought policing. Especially those who grew up
in the eastern part of Europe or under any other form of repressive state,
those who have second hand experience through relatives and friends and
those have been exposed to that in some other context, are very sensitive
to this and sentences like:

 "- we crack down hard on anything that might drive away contributors."

certainly do not make them more comfortable. Adding the unclarified
provisions of the CoC to it doesn't help either.

We're all human and it is part of human nature to fail. Repression does not
make that go away. Quite the contrary.

Thanks,

	tglx

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Jani Nikula]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org> wrote:
> This decision to change the existing "Code of Conflict" signed off by
> a large number of developers, has been changed and committed with a
> few people signing off on it.

While I support the change itself, this does bother me as well.

Is the implication that further discussion on this is futile?

Fire-and-forget is not exactly the best approach for rolling out a code
of conduct.


BR,
Jani.


-- 
Jani Nikula, Intel Open Source Graphics Center

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Jonathan Corbet]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:56:04 +0300
Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com> wrote:

> Is the implication that further discussion on this is futile?
> 
> Fire-and-forget is not exactly the best approach for rolling out a code
> of conduct.

I doubt anybody is going to forget! :)

This is only my opinion, but I don't believe that the current CoC is set
in stone and immune to further changes.  It is something to start with.
I expect we will end up evolving it, like we evolve our other code.  We
will need to figure out how to do that, though; that discussion has not
yet even begun.

jon

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Shuah Khan]

On 09/25/2018 07:38 AM, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:56:04 +0300
> Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com> wrote:
> 
>> Is the implication that further discussion on this is futile?
>>
>> Fire-and-forget is not exactly the best approach for rolling out a code
>> of conduct.
> 
> I doubt anybody is going to forget! :)

It is disappointing that it had to be committed without following the usual
process. That said, I do support the direction and stating the expectations.

> 
> This is only my opinion, but I don't believe that the current CoC is set
> in stone and immune to further changes.  It is something to start with.
> I expect we will end up evolving it, like we evolve our other code.  We
> will need to figure out how to do that, though; that discussion has not
> yet even begun.
> 

One of the reasons for starting this thread is to get a clear understanding
of the intent for next steps and the next steps for involving the community
and evolving  the CoC. I hope a concrete plan or some plan emerges out of this
discussion.

Since the way it currently reads, it adds to maintainer responsibilities,
it is important to open it up for review by all maintainers as opposed to
participants of just the Maintainer Summit which is a very small group.

thanks,
-- Shuah (I am speaking for myself)

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Daniel Vetter]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 10:45 AM Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Sep 2018, Olof Johansson wrote:
> > Reaching out to the one who's misbehaving I see more as something
> > friends will do to each other, not what the community as such is
> > expected to do. I.e. if I enjoy having Thomas around (I do, but I'm
> > also looking forward to him not blowing up ever so often), it's worth
> > checking in to see if everything is OK and if there's anything I can
> > do to help. Not before someone has checked in with the person at the
> > receiving end, and I definitely would never expect that person to be
> > the one checking in with Thomas.
>
> Let me put that straight.
>
> Surely everyone has to work on himself and I'm not expecting that the
> person who got attacked reaches out to the one misbehaving. Obviously it
> has to be the other way round and the one who misbehaved needs to reach
> out.
>
> For me it's part of true excellence when the one who told me to stop it, or
> a third person, reaches out to me as well.  John Stultz did that to me some
> time ago, and I really appreciated it. It made a huge difference for me and
> talking to him about it surely made me reflect deeper and helped me to see
> where my own defense against my temper broke.

Fully agreed, having someone you can confide in and work through a
complicated situation together in private helps greatly in
understanding and improving long term. What really worried me here is
that we brought this up in the context of a code of conduct -
codifying the expectation that this should happen doesn't seem a good
idea to me. The cleanups-after-explosions I've helped with were
already tons of work, with typing a very carefully edited response in
public (don't want to make it accidentally worse) and then lots
chatting with recipients to make sure they're not running away.
Loading up even more is not something I want to force on anyway. It's
great though if it happens, maybe as some sort of informal peer
maintainers group, since that's how we improve as a community.

Aside on the carefully edited response letter, and why that one is so
hard to get right, and so much exhausting work to type: Showing
understanding for where someone is coming from is crucial, or your
mail won't be received. Doing that while still making it crystal clear
what's not acceptable, while not opening up into an endless argument,
or legitimizing the offending behaviour through the back door, is very
often a zero margin balancing act.

> There is a - not completely unjustified - fear in the wider community that
> the CoC could be turned into thought policing. Especially those who grew up
> in the eastern part of Europe or under any other form of repressive state,
> those who have second hand experience through relatives and friends and
> those have been exposed to that in some other context, are very sensitive
> to this and sentences like:
>
>  "- we crack down hard on anything that might drive away contributors."
>
> certainly do not make them more comfortable. Adding the unclarified
> provisions of the CoC to it doesn't help either.
>
> We're all human and it is part of human nature to fail. Repression does not
> make that go away. Quite the contrary.

Yeah this was a bit too much over the top. In practice it involves
lots and lots of me talking with people in private - I think I
explained a bunch of that in other, even earlier mails (the thread got
a bit long at that point, and my attempt at a summary fell somewhat
short). My empathy stops though when people blame others for the
consequences of their own actions and expect others to clean up the
mess they made. Not anywhere here on ksummit-discuss, but I did
unfortunately run into cases where that baseline understanding
necessary to work through a situation was entirely missing. If someone
is consistently refusing to entertain other people's vantage point
there's not much you can do that both puts a stop to it and doesn't
involve force of some sorts, like a temporary suspension. But it is,
and needs to be, a measure of last resort.

Cheers, Daniel
--
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Tim.Bird]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shuah Khan
> 
> On 09/25/2018 07:38 AM, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> > On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:56:04 +0300
> > Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Is the implication that further discussion on this is futile?
> >>
> >> Fire-and-forget is not exactly the best approach for rolling out a code
> >> of conduct.
> >
> > I doubt anybody is going to forget! :)
> 
> It is disappointing that it had to be committed without following the usual
> process. That said, I do support the direction and stating the expectations.
> 
> >
> > This is only my opinion, but I don't believe that the current CoC is set
> > in stone and immune to further changes.  It is something to start with.
> > I expect we will end up evolving it, like we evolve our other code.  We
> > will need to figure out how to do that, though; that discussion has not
> > yet even begun.
> >
> 
> One of the reasons for starting this thread is to get a clear understanding
> of the intent for next steps and the next steps for involving the community
> and evolving  the CoC. I hope a concrete plan or some plan emerges out of
> this
> discussion.
> 
> Since the way it currently reads, it adds to maintainer responsibilities,
> it is important to open it up for review by all maintainers as opposed to
> participants of just the Maintainer Summit which is a very small group.

I am speaking only for myself, but I couldn't agree more, on all points. 

I think Mauro raised some very good points about aspects of the CoC
being a better fit for a github-style project as opposed to a widely
distributed e-mail based project.  And certainly the ambiguity regarding the
treatment of published e-mails as private information needs to be
resolved.  So I think it's unquestionable that the CoC will need to change.

But I still don't know what the process for that is, and I hope that
we'll see some suggestions at Maintainers Summit, that can be discussed
as a wider community.  I agree that the Maintainer Summit and Plumbers
doesn't represent all affected community members, and that should
definitely be taken into account.
 -- Tim

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Shuah Khan]

On 09/25/2018 10:42 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 10:45 AM Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:
>> On Tue, 25 Sep 2018, Olof Johansson wrote:
>>> Reaching out to the one who's misbehaving I see more as something
>>> friends will do to each other, not what the community as such is
>>> expected to do. I.e. if I enjoy having Thomas around (I do, but I'm
>>> also looking forward to him not blowing up ever so often), it's worth
>>> checking in to see if everything is OK and if there's anything I can
>>> do to help. Not before someone has checked in with the person at the
>>> receiving end, and I definitely would never expect that person to be
>>> the one checking in with Thomas.
>>
>> Let me put that straight.
>>
>> Surely everyone has to work on himself and I'm not expecting that the
>> person who got attacked reaches out to the one misbehaving. Obviously it
>> has to be the other way round and the one who misbehaved needs to reach
>> out.
>>
>> For me it's part of true excellence when the one who told me to stop it, or
>> a third person, reaches out to me as well.  John Stultz did that to me some
>> time ago, and I really appreciated it. It made a huge difference for me and
>> talking to him about it surely made me reflect deeper and helped me to see
>> where my own defense against my temper broke.
> 
> Fully agreed, having someone you can confide in and work through a
> complicated situation together in private helps greatly in
> understanding and improving long term. What really worried me here is
> that we brought this up in the context of a code of conduct -
> codifying the expectation that this should happen doesn't seem a good
> idea to me. The cleanups-after-explosions I've helped with were
> already tons of work, with typing a very carefully edited response in
> public (don't want to make it accidentally worse) and then lots
> chatting with recipients to make sure they're not running away.
> Loading up even more is not something I want to force on anyway. It's
> great though if it happens, maybe as some sort of informal peer
> maintainers group, since that's how we improve as a community.

Right. It would help when a third person points out. In general, what happens
is the receiving party either comes back with neutral tone (which is very tough,
and I have had to do that a few times), things calm down.

I worry about cases where the receiving party retreats and stops participating. I do
think that this CoC might help in those situations and fellow developers and/or
maintainers might be able to send a polite reminder in a private response to the
offending party and/or a polite public one to calm things. A public one could be
helpful in some cases, if it helps stop the hurting party to from retreating.

This is where we all have to be careful not overreact to perceived slights. I think
this is going be a lot harder in a global community such as ours. i.e one person's
joke could be another person's insult. Again, we have to be put some thought in when
responding which we should be doing anyway.

I am sincerely wishing for good outcomes with all of this.

thanks,
-- Shuah

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Jani Nikula]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Joe Perches <joe@perches.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 16:15 -0700, James Bottomley wrote:
>> as a maintainer, I'm happy to try to police
>> civility by calling adverse behaviours out on the list
>
> Good for you, but that's not necessarily something others
> might want to do.  Nor should have to.

I think the only way any code of conduct is ever going to work is
top-down, with maintainers leading by example, both in terms of
following and enforcing the CoC. It's not going to work bottom-up, nor
with everyone always involving the TAB directly. For the most part, it's
just a matter of explicitly asking people to be civil anyway.

This may well be the biggest reason the "code of conlict" did not
succeed, despite the large number of acks.

BR,
Jani.

-- 
Jani Nikula, Intel Open Source Graphics Center

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Laura Abbott]

On 09/25/2018 09:51 AM, Tim.Bird@sony.com wrote:
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Shuah Khan
>>
>> On 09/25/2018 07:38 AM, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
>>> On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:56:04 +0300
>>> Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is the implication that further discussion on this is futile?
>>>>
>>>> Fire-and-forget is not exactly the best approach for rolling out a code
>>>> of conduct.
>>>
>>> I doubt anybody is going to forget! :)
>>
>> It is disappointing that it had to be committed without following the usual
>> process. That said, I do support the direction and stating the expectations.
>>
>>>
>>> This is only my opinion, but I don't believe that the current CoC is set
>>> in stone and immune to further changes.  It is something to start with.
>>> I expect we will end up evolving it, like we evolve our other code.  We
>>> will need to figure out how to do that, though; that discussion has not
>>> yet even begun.
>>>
>>
>> One of the reasons for starting this thread is to get a clear understanding
>> of the intent for next steps and the next steps for involving the community
>> and evolving  the CoC. I hope a concrete plan or some plan emerges out of
>> this
>> discussion.
>>
>> Since the way it currently reads, it adds to maintainer responsibilities,
>> it is important to open it up for review by all maintainers as opposed to
>> participants of just the Maintainer Summit which is a very small group.
> 
> I am speaking only for myself, but I couldn't agree more, on all points.
> 
> I think Mauro raised some very good points about aspects of the CoC
> being a better fit for a github-style project as opposed to a widely
> distributed e-mail based project.  And certainly the ambiguity regarding the
> treatment of published e-mails as private information needs to be
> resolved.  So I think it's unquestionable that the CoC will need to change.
> 

Fedora is going through a similar process to revamp its code of conduct.
It's not fully released yet but from talking to some people involved,
they started from the contributor covenant and made some changes and
amendments. Some of the amendments were to clarify the purpose of the
code of conduct. Given Fedora also has a heavily e-mail based workflow,
I think this is a good indication it should be possible to make
modifications to meet our needs.

Thanks,
Laura

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Jan Kara]

On Wed 26-09-18 09:54:00, Jani Nikula wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Joe Perches <joe@perches.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 16:15 -0700, James Bottomley wrote:
> >> as a maintainer, I'm happy to try to police
> >> civility by calling adverse behaviours out on the list
> >
> > Good for you, but that's not necessarily something others
> > might want to do.  Nor should have to.
> 
> I think the only way any code of conduct is ever going to work is
> top-down, with maintainers leading by example, both in terms of
> following and enforcing the CoC. It's not going to work bottom-up, nor
> with everyone always involving the TAB directly. For the most part, it's
> just a matter of explicitly asking people to be civil anyway.
> 
> This may well be the biggest reason the "code of conlict" did not
> succeed, despite the large number of acks.

One thing I'm missing: Did "code of conflict" really fail? I find the areas
which I follow (filesystems and surroundings) pretty civil but so they were
even before "code of conflict"... So maybe I miss some events?

								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
SUSE Labs, CR

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Hannes Reinecke]

On 9/26/18 11:19 AM, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Wed 26-09-18 09:54:00, Jani Nikula wrote:
>> On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Joe Perches <joe@perches.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 16:15 -0700, James Bottomley wrote:
>>>> as a maintainer, I'm happy to try to police
>>>> civility by calling adverse behaviours out on the list
>>>
>>> Good for you, but that's not necessarily something others
>>> might want to do.  Nor should have to.
>>
>> I think the only way any code of conduct is ever going to work is
>> top-down, with maintainers leading by example, both in terms of
>> following and enforcing the CoC. It's not going to work bottom-up, nor
>> with everyone always involving the TAB directly. For the most part, it's
>> just a matter of explicitly asking people to be civil anyway.
>>
>> This may well be the biggest reason the "code of conlict" did not
>> succeed, despite the large number of acks.
> 
> One thing I'm missing: Did "code of conflict" really fail? I find the areas
> which I follow (filesystems and surroundings) pretty civil but so they were
> even before "code of conflict"... So maybe I miss some events?
> 
I can only agree here.
So far I haven't had any evidence of a massive breakdown of civility, 
and in fact nothing which would warrant extra steps.
Plus it would really help to figure out which _specific_ problem the CoC 
is actually trying to solve; this would help to focus the entire discussion.

Cheers,

Hannes
-- 
Dr. Hannes Reinecke		               zSeries & Storage
hare@suse.com			               +49 911 74053 688
SUSE LINUX GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg
GF: F. Imendörffer, J. Smithard, D. Upmanyu, G. Norton
HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg)

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Em Mon, 24 Sep 2018 16:15:02 -0700
James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> escreveu:

> On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 08:24 -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:

> > What is offensive is a bit more clear. It will be learning curve for
> > us as a community and I do think we will get there. I believe our
> > kernel community at large is respectful and helpful.  
> 
> Actually, reading the above and agreeing with it I think the main
> problem is that what we're discussing as a Code of Conduct isn't one at
> all; it's really an anti Harassment policy.  That's why I think it
> doesn't cover the email reviews and things very well and why we're all
> concerned that it gives maintainers a load of responsibilities they
> can't really police.
> 
> Perhaps we could do with finding a middle ground between the previous
> code of conflict, which was fairly tailored to our environment but
> lacked some specifics and the new code of conduct which doesn't seem to
> be well tailored at all for us.

Agreed.

> Perhaps what we're looking for as the middle ground is something based
> on the Debian code of conduct (obviously with modifications for us):
> 
> https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct

Interesting! They have a separate CoC for mailing lists:

	https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct

With contain things that really matter to our workflow: don't send
SPAM, don't send OOT emails, use 80 chars, use English[1], etc.

[1] Out of curiosity, opening it here, their CoC was translated to
    my locale language. IMHO, this is a very good way of welcoming
    people that aren't native English speakers.

    At the Portuguese translation, it also mentions an specific
    mailing list for the ones that want to send messages using
    the Portuguese language (debian-user-portuguese).

    Obviously, this won't work for a CoC inside the git tree, but 
    perhaps some sort of automation could be done at the Sphinx
    html output in order to provide a translated version of it,
    if available on other languages.

> It seems to keep their discussions (even on debian-legal) within the
> bounds of civility.
> 
> Perhaps the one thing lacking in the Debian CoC is the actual
> responsibilities of a maintainer, so perhaps that's the bit we should
> concentrate on.
> 
> To try to kick off: as a maintainer, I'm happy to try to police
> civility by calling adverse behaviours out on the list and trying to
> get people to see each other's point of view in an argument (it's
> basically what the SCSI maintainers already do).  I do think we also
> have the ultimate sanction of asking for a ban of people who prove
> incorrigible (we've done that before on vger), but we should use it
> very sparingly.

I suspect that the way to handle to bad conduct may be different
along subsystems (and it depends on the actual situation). From my 
experience, at least at the media ML, usually silently ignoring
offensive emails work a way better than replying.

Usually, all people want when they put offensive text on emails
is attention. Not giving them attention is usually the best
punishment[2].

[2] One thing that perhaps could be done would be to add some CoC-aware
    anti-spam-kind-of-filtering heuristics at VGER (no idea if VGER infra
    would actually support it without introducing high delays). If a 
    message contain some wording that could fit into an offensive pattern,
    it could discard the message, replying to the sender an automatic
    message - with some fallback mechanism like notifying someone, in order 
    to cover false-positive cases. It may even have some temporary auto-ban
    feature, if the abusive behavior happens more than <x> times during
    a certain period of time. For sure that won't cover all cases, but
    it could be effective on obvious abusive cases.

We did have to ban once or twice incorrigible people via vger,
but, IMO this is a last resort, as the troll may resurrect using
a different email account (that actually happened once on media ML
too).

Thanks,
Mauro

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Em Wed, 26 Sep 2018 11:58:35 +0200
Hannes Reinecke <hare@suse.com> escreveu:

> On 9/26/18 11:19 AM, Jan Kara wrote:
> > On Wed 26-09-18 09:54:00, Jani Nikula wrote:  
> >> On Mon, 24 Sep 2018, Joe Perches <joe@perches.com> wrote:  
> >>> On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 16:15 -0700, James Bottomley wrote:  
> >>>> as a maintainer, I'm happy to try to police
> >>>> civility by calling adverse behaviours out on the list  
> >>>
> >>> Good for you, but that's not necessarily something others
> >>> might want to do.  Nor should have to.  
> >>
> >> I think the only way any code of conduct is ever going to work is
> >> top-down, with maintainers leading by example, both in terms of
> >> following and enforcing the CoC. It's not going to work bottom-up, nor
> >> with everyone always involving the TAB directly. For the most part, it's
> >> just a matter of explicitly asking people to be civil anyway.
> >>
> >> This may well be the biggest reason the "code of conlict" did not
> >> succeed, despite the large number of acks.  
> > 
> > One thing I'm missing: Did "code of conflict" really fail? I find the areas
> > which I follow (filesystems and surroundings) pretty civil but so they were
> > even before "code of conflict"... So maybe I miss some events?
> >   
> I can only agree here.
> So far I haven't had any evidence of a massive breakdown of civility, 
> and in fact nothing which would warrant extra steps.
> Plus it would really help to figure out which _specific_ problem the CoC 
> is actually trying to solve; this would help to focus the entire discussion.

+1.

I'm not aware of any big thing at the media ML those days that caused
me a major concern (we used to have a lot in the past). My feeling is
that things have been improved.

Ok, LKML is a different beast, but who actually read all messages
there those days?

Thanks,
Mauro

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 2:35 PM Mauro Carvalho Chehab
<mchehab+samsung@kernel.org> wrote:
> [2] One thing that perhaps could be done would be to add some CoC-aware
>     anti-spam-kind-of-filtering heuristics at VGER (no idea if VGER infra
>     would actually support it without introducing high delays). If a
>     message contain some wording that could fit into an offensive pattern,
>     it could discard the message, replying to the sender an automatic
>     message - with some fallback mechanism like notifying someone, in order
>     to cover false-positive cases. It may even have some temporary auto-ban
>     feature, if the abusive behavior happens more than <x> times during
>     a certain period of time. For sure that won't cover all cases, but
>     it could be effective on obvious abusive cases.

At least it would have the benefit of maintainers no longer having to deal
manually with people sending patches to remove offensive words from the
source code comments ;-)

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Shuah Khan]

On 09/26/2018 06:30 AM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> Em Mon, 24 Sep 2018 16:15:02 -0700
> James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> escreveu:
> 
>> On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 08:24 -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
> 
>>> What is offensive is a bit more clear. It will be learning curve for
>>> us as a community and I do think we will get there. I believe our
>>> kernel community at large is respectful and helpful.  
>>
>> Actually, reading the above and agreeing with it I think the main
>> problem is that what we're discussing as a Code of Conduct isn't one at
>> all; it's really an anti Harassment policy.  That's why I think it
>> doesn't cover the email reviews and things very well and why we're all
>> concerned that it gives maintainers a load of responsibilities they
>> can't really police.
>>
>> Perhaps we could do with finding a middle ground between the previous
>> code of conflict, which was fairly tailored to our environment but
>> lacked some specifics and the new code of conduct which doesn't seem to
>> be well tailored at all for us.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
>> Perhaps what we're looking for as the middle ground is something based
>> on the Debian code of conduct (obviously with modifications for us):
>>
>> https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct
> 

Debian code of conduct is to the point and outlines what is expected very
clearly and uses positive language. "Assume good faith" and "Be open"
especially stood out for me as striking the positive and inclusive tone.

> Interesting! They have a separate CoC for mailing lists:
> 
> 	https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct
> 

Thanks for finding this. This looks good and summarizes "what to do" and "what
not do" that would help us. Probably will need some tweaks to customize it to
suit better for our environment.

thanks,
-- Shuah

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Theodore Y. Ts'o]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 01:04:30AM -0700, Laura Abbott wrote:
> 
> Fedora is going through a similar process to revamp its code of conduct.
> It's not fully released yet but from talking to some people involved,
> they started from the contributor covenant and made some changes and
> amendments. Some of the amendments were to clarify the purpose of the
> code of conduct. Given Fedora also has a heavily e-mail based workflow,
> I think this is a good indication it should be possible to make
> modifications to meet our needs.

Is there someone from the Fedora community who is working on this who
might be willing to share some private comments, suggestions,
reflections, etc. with the TAB?  I imagine Fedora is working on this
on their own schedule, and it might not be done before the
Maintainer's Summit, but if there is any wisdom, potential pitfalls,
concerns, etc., that they might be willing share, I'm sure it would be
most helpful.

(Speakinig only for myself.)

Thanks,

						- Ted

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Mark Brown]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 983 bytes --]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 11:19:51AM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Wed 26-09-18 09:54:00, Jani Nikula wrote:

> > This may well be the biggest reason the "code of conlict" did not
> > succeed, despite the large number of acks.

> One thing I'm missing: Did "code of conflict" really fail? I find the areas
> which I follow (filesystems and surroundings) pretty civil but so they were
> even before "code of conflict"... So maybe I miss some events?

There's a few things there.  One is that the name doesn't really convey
the idea that this is a particularly serious document, and the content
of the document doesn't do a lot of things that are considered good
practices for codes of conduct.  A big part of the goal with codes of
conduct is to send a signal to people outside the community that these
issues are taken seriously and that they will get backup if there's a
problem and this stuff meant that it didn't really have those effects,
people externally didn't take it seriously.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 488 bytes --]

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Tim.Bird]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Brown
> 
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 11:19:51AM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> > On Wed 26-09-18 09:54:00, Jani Nikula wrote:
> 
> > > This may well be the biggest reason the "code of conlict" did not
> > > succeed, despite the large number of acks.
> 
> > One thing I'm missing: Did "code of conflict" really fail? I find the areas
> > which I follow (filesystems and surroundings) pretty civil but so they were
> > even before "code of conflict"... So maybe I miss some events?
> 
> There's a few things there.  One is that the name doesn't really convey
> the idea that this is a particularly serious document, and the content
> of the document doesn't do a lot of things that are considered good
> practices for codes of conduct.  A big part of the goal with codes of
> conduct is to send a signal to people outside the community that these
> issues are taken seriously and that they will get backup if there's a
> problem and this stuff meant that it didn't really have those effects,
> people externally didn't take it seriously.

+1
That's why using a "standard" CoC (even as just for a base) has value.
I've heard Greg KH say that people didn't read the Code of Conflict carefully,
and misinterpreted it as encouraging conflict.

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Em Mon, 24 Sep 2018 19:31:07 +0000
Jason Cooper <jason@lakedaemon.net> escreveu:

> All,
> 
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 08:24:07AM -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
> > I have been trying to follow various threads on this topic and none of them address
> > the review of this patch that went in. There is no mistake in the title of this topic.
> > I do consider this topic to be more general than limited to Maintainer Summit. Hence,
> > the choice of a wider Technical designation.  
> 
> fwiw, I agree with the insufficient scope, and the lack of public
> mailinglist discussion.
> 
> I'd like to make a drive-by observation (or two), if I may.  The kernel
> community is *huge* and *active* in comparison to most other projects.
> It also has a lot more history than most others.  That history isn't
> stored in a database, only to be accessed through a web page, accepting
> the single database as canonical.  Rather, the history is stored in many
> places, accessible by many different methods, and verifiable against
> other remote copies of the history.
> 
> This difference is an understated advantage of the kernel development
> process.  Once you say "it", you can never refute that you said it.  The
> history itself provides a conscious check.  As a result, I don't think a
> CoC in any form is going to cause any sort of material change in anyones
> behavior.  Rather, it'll just push away valuable and scarce talent.
> 
> The second observation is that trying to adopt a single CoC for the
> _entire_ Linux development community is an exercise in futility.  As
> Daniel Vetter has mentioned many times in these recent discussions, dri
> has been happily living under their own CoC for quite some time.  So we
> can gather a) it works for them, and b) it doesn't bother any other
> subsystems.
> 
> So why are we trying to apply a single CoC to everyone?  Why not let
> each subsystem / sub-community adopt their own and see how it goes?  A/B
> test it.  It could either be a footer link for the respective
> mailinglist, or a link in MAINTAINERS.  Any community not specifying one
> defaults to the Code of Conflict.

Well, we have a privacy policy for media development that touches some
of the items covered by the CoC:

	https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/LinuxTVWiki:Privacy_policy

The rationale behind it is very different than the one for the CoC...
it was added mainly to comply to the new EU legislation.

It is based on Wikipedia privacy policy (with some amendments), as the
main thing that we host there (where maintainers don't have control) are
wiki pages.

Yet, while not a CoC, it says things like:

   "LinuxTV is collaborative, with users writing most of the policies and selecting from amongst themselves people to hold certain administrative rights. These rights may include access to limited amounts of otherwise nonpublic information about recent contributions and activity by other users. They use this access to help protect against vandalism and abuse, fight harassment of other users, and generally try to minimize disruptive behavior on the sites."

In other words, it crosses some lines with this CoC. It also explicitly
says that:

	"Any information you post publicly on the Wiki or send via e-mail to a discussion list is just that – public. For example, if you put your mailing address on your talk page, that is public, and not protected by this Policy. And if you edit without registering or logging into your account, your IP address will be seen publicly. Please think carefully about your desired level of anonymity before you disclose personal information on your user page or elsewhere."

That's said, I like the concept of global CoC, but you touched an
interesting point: it may conflict with already-existing CoC and similar
documents.

> I'd like to assume the backdoor method the CoC was introduced was purely
> to avoid a never-ending bikeshed.  And the subsequent threads are
> evidence that it didn't take a prognosticator to predict the mess.
> 
> Perhaps that's an indicator that it shouldn't be done that way.  Maybe
> approaching the problem on a per-sub-community will work better.  I
> dunno.
> 
> Just my 2 cents.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jason.
> _______________________________________________
> Ksummit-discuss mailing list
> Ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ksummit-discuss



Thanks,
Mauro

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Laura Abbott]

On 09/26/2018 07:47 AM, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 01:04:30AM -0700, Laura Abbott wrote:
>>
>> Fedora is going through a similar process to revamp its code of conduct.
>> It's not fully released yet but from talking to some people involved,
>> they started from the contributor covenant and made some changes and
>> amendments. Some of the amendments were to clarify the purpose of the
>> code of conduct. Given Fedora also has a heavily e-mail based workflow,
>> I think this is a good indication it should be possible to make
>> modifications to meet our needs.
> 
> Is there someone from the Fedora community who is working on this who
> might be willing to share some private comments, suggestions,
> reflections, etc. with the TAB?  I imagine Fedora is working on this
> on their own schedule, and it might not be done before the
> Maintainer's Summit, but if there is any wisdom, potential pitfalls,
> concerns, etc., that they might be willing share, I'm sure it would be
> most helpful.
> 
> (Speakinig only for myself.)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 						- Ted
> 

I'll reach out to several of the people involved to see if they
would be willing to share their insights. In the meantime,
https://pagure.io/Fedora-Council/tickets/issues?status=Open&tags=code-of-conduct
is the public tracker if anyone is interested in the types of
issues Fedora has/is thinking about. In particular, I think
https://pagure.io/Fedora-Council/tickets/issue/105
provides a nice summary.

Thanks,
Laura

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[James Bottomley]

On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 08:24 -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
> I have been trying to follow various threads on this topic and none
> of them address the review of this patch that went in. There is no
> mistake in the title of this topic. I do consider this topic to be
> more general than limited to Maintainer Summit. Hence, the choice of
> a wider Technical designation.
> 
> So I am kicking off a thread to do the review with my comments. I am
> in general agreement with the spirit of this change to the existing
> "Code of Conflict".

Just as an FYI, the Zephyr project recently included the contributor
covenant CoC minus the enforcement clause.  They did a standard github
PR for this:

https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/pull/10356

They note that they may add more enforcement details when the community
agrees on them.

James

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Shuah Khan]

On 10/04/2018 10:27 AM, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 08:24 -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
>> I have been trying to follow various threads on this topic and none
>> of them address the review of this patch that went in. There is no
>> mistake in the title of this topic. I do consider this topic to be
>> more general than limited to Maintainer Summit. Hence, the choice of
>> a wider Technical designation.
>>
>> So I am kicking off a thread to do the review with my comments. I am
>> in general agreement with the spirit of this change to the existing
>> "Code of Conflict".
> 
> Just as an FYI, the Zephyr project recently included the contributor
> covenant CoC minus the enforcement clause.  They did a standard github
> PR for this:
> 
> https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/pull/10356
> 
> They note that they may add more enforcement details when the community
> agrees on them.
> 

Thanks for the link. It is almost identical to the Code of Conduct that
went into Linux 4.19-rc4 minus the enforcement section.

It would make sense to remove the enforcement section and discuss and
add enforcement after the usual patch review process we already have
in place.

I personally would prefer amending the CoC in Linux 4.19 removing the
enforcement details over waiting to discuss at the Maintainer and/or
Kernel summit and releasing Linux 4.19 with the CoC v1 as it reads now.

thanks,
-- Shuah

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[James Bottomley]

On Fri, 2018-10-05 at 12:10 -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
> On 10/04/2018 10:27 AM, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 08:24 -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
> > > I have been trying to follow various threads on this topic and
> > > none of them address the review of this patch that went in. There
> > > is no mistake in the title of this topic. I do consider this
> > > topic to be more general than limited to Maintainer Summit.
> > > Hence, the choice of a wider Technical designation.
> > > 
> > > So I am kicking off a thread to do the review with my comments. I
> > > am in general agreement with the spirit of this change to the
> > > existing "Code of Conflict".
> > 
> > Just as an FYI, the Zephyr project recently included the
> > contributor covenant CoC minus the enforcement clause.  They did a
> > standard github PR for this:
> > 
> > https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/pull/10356
> > 
> > They note that they may add more enforcement details when the
> > community agrees on them.
> > 
> 
> Thanks for the link. It is almost identical to the Code of Conduct
> that went into Linux 4.19-rc4 minus the enforcement section.
> 
> It would make sense to remove the enforcement section and discuss and
> add enforcement after the usual patch review process we already have
> in place.
> 
> I personally would prefer amending the CoC in Linux 4.19 removing the
> enforcement details over waiting to discuss at the Maintainer and/or
> Kernel summit and releasing Linux 4.19 with the CoC v1 as it reads
> now.

OK, I took this suggestion and posted it as a concrete patch set to see
how it flies.

James

Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH-TOPIC] Review - Code of Conduct: Let's revamp it.

[Shuah Khan]

On 10/06/2018 03:39 PM, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Fri, 2018-10-05 at 12:10 -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
>> On 10/04/2018 10:27 AM, James Bottomley wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2018-09-24 at 08:24 -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
>>>> I have been trying to follow various threads on this topic and
>>>> none of them address the review of this patch that went in. There
>>>> is no mistake in the title of this topic. I do consider this
>>>> topic to be more general than limited to Maintainer Summit.
>>>> Hence, the choice of a wider Technical designation.
>>>>
>>>> So I am kicking off a thread to do the review with my comments. I
>>>> am in general agreement with the spirit of this change to the
>>>> existing "Code of Conflict".
>>>
>>> Just as an FYI, the Zephyr project recently included the
>>> contributor covenant CoC minus the enforcement clause.  They did a
>>> standard github PR for this:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/pull/10356
>>>
>>> They note that they may add more enforcement details when the
>>> community agrees on them.
>>>
>>
>> Thanks for the link. It is almost identical to the Code of Conduct
>> that went into Linux 4.19-rc4 minus the enforcement section.
>>
>> It would make sense to remove the enforcement section and discuss and
>> add enforcement after the usual patch review process we already have
>> in place.
>>
>> I personally would prefer amending the CoC in Linux 4.19 removing the
>> enforcement details over waiting to discuss at the Maintainer and/or
>> Kernel summit and releasing Linux 4.19 with the CoC v1 as it reads
>> now.
> 
> OK, I took this suggestion and posted it as a concrete patch set to see
> how it flies.
> 

Thanks for sending the patches.

-- Shuah