One Of LLVM's Top Contributors Quits Development Over CoC, Outreach Program

[onicsis]

I am sorry, that you dont see the ideas behind coc.
I am sorry, that you can also not imagine why bringing somebody from a different region , could help to spread the project of LLVM to also other parts of the world, bring in the end more contributors and more people interested in the project.

No it won't. Or at least no with similiar results having direct contact with (or local representation in) universities, academia, firms or other group or [common] interests that can potentially contribute to LLVM project or something to attract and recruit local talents, in some way similar to what multinational corporation do, spreading in various countries. And with some advertising.BTW competition is already there for a long time, GCC being self promoted - as default compiler - by Linux distros and increasing user base without CoCs or programs like Outreach. In the same time, gaining a huge user base of testers and virtually contributors recommending their future employers to use it. Not from today or yesterday but for a long time thanks to distributions. Linux will always kick BSD ass

[anda_skoa]

Poor Social Injustice Warrior snowflake!
Feels he is entitled to treat other contributors anyway he sees fit just because he has some technical skillz.

Probably also thinks he doesn't have to abide by coding style guidelines because he is so special and doesn't need any code review because his code is always perfect.

[Palu Macil]

I have to disagree because freedom of speech is absolute. What you're talking about is the intent behind the speech, which is not inherently protected under free speech. They are two very different things and it's of outmost importance to recognize the difference.

At first it sounds to me like you're saying freedom of speech is absolute but freedom thought is not. To me speech is the action and the intent is the thought. If this is where you left it, I wouldn't have replied.

For instance you can sometimes hear pretty bad threats being made online. The words formulating the threat are protected under free speech but the intention certainly isn't, so they could still get in trouble for the threat itself, but the words remain protected under free speech. If they weren't then it could be illegal to quote the threat. Or perhaps more relevant today, to store the written text containing the threat temporarily on a communications server.

This fixes my first impression. I still disagree with the idea that freedom of speech is absolute for three reasons:
1. I believe in accepting the Supreme Court's interpretation of free speech protections as the "highest" interpretation of law. If you believe in a natural law or religious law that demands this, then we are probably at an impasse--which is okay for me as a secular humanist, though naturally maybe not for you since my opinion would violate a higher order for you if there indeed is one. The Supreme court does sometimes care about intent but moreso cares a great deal about context. When they've written about freedom of speech, they have focused on the context of who might be hurt, the captivity of an audience, and whether there might be conflict of interests related to political positions.
2. Nothing has ever suggested to me that freedom of speech applies to non-government entities except in very rare cases where there is an important benefit to society--for example, it the small way whistleblower laws are vaguely related to freedom of speech. To suggest that there is anything morally wrong with a non-government organization forbidding or compelling speech is bizarre to me since if, for example, my employer tells me I cannot say something, I can ignore the desire to say such a thing or quit.
3. Where does an absolute freedom come from? More on my thoughts there after the next two quote blocks.

What is happening in the world of academia today is the frightening development of the term "hate speech". This term implies the intent behind the speech can be nothing but malicious no matter the context. As soon as that label is applied the cited collection of words become forever tainted and along with them anyone directly or indirectly associated. The worst part is the social pressure to deal with this so called "hate speech", because if you don't then you are automatically presumed to agree with it. The consequence of that is the social acceptance of another very poisonous concept; "guilt by association".

"Guilt by association" is the idea that if you are guilty of something then anyone you can be associated with is guilty as well. This is in complete conflict with a basic cornerstone in a free society, namely that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. As an American I'm pretty sure you can agree with that one since it's effectively written into the constitutions fifth amendment. The two concepts are simply incompatible on a fundamental level, yet the former seems to be increasingly popular on social networks and propagating into academia.

I don't have a lot to say about that because hate speech to me is about someone's intent and internal thoughts, which I believe is more "sacred" than freedom of speech. Therefore I don't see why punishment should take "hate" into account. I believe the words combined with the context are the action, which again I believe is the way courts have tended to go. For example, publicly calling out, insulting, and showing pictures of a transgender student who made a title 9 complaint (to borrow from recent events in academia, though I do not recall the names and schools) is speech, but it is also in the context of transgender people being common victims of violence and the image being shown in a context where inciting violence or harassment against the person could certainly be implied. The speaker claimed that the *intent* was to talk about disagreement with title 9, and I believe him, but I also believe the *context* provides reason for an academic institution to choose to censor the speaker.

Now the quote is indeed quite deep. To me it represents my inalienable right to express myself just as much as it represents your inalienable right to express yourself. There's nothing I can do to stop you but nor do I want to.

There's also a second quote I'd like to bring up about why censorship is flawed, but I cannot remember the exact quote and my web search skills are failing me. The gist of it is something along the lines of "when you give a liar the ability to freely express himself, he will eventually expose his own ill intentions". In my own experience this is definitely true. If you believe someone is trying to fool you then you let them speak until they fall into their own traps, at which point all you would need to do is to repeat their own words and their plans fall flat.

The quote is different for me. I do not believe in the inalienable right. I believe in the nation and justice system where the people have agreed to a constitution that I believe is one of the best in the world, and I spent 4 years of active duty willing to die defending that nation and structure which I believe is excellent, but to me an inalienable right is a logical fallacy. It's picking a point and saying that this one point is something that can't be argued. If I agreed, then we would have a base to build one, but if we disagree, then it's hard to discuss less foundational things since you have shut down the argument on that topic. And perhaps that more foundational thing is something you'd be interested in discussing more, but I suspect a forum is not the place you'd rather do it as it sounds to me like a better topic to discuss over beer and fries. I say this because I find that when people get to the thing they believe is inalienable or absolute truth, the conversation ceases to be productive unless you have some beer and junk food to connect over. (shrug)

As to your point about the open source community I'd argue that while they are free to put up whatever demands they want, there's no reason why they should be immune to criticism by doing so. What they are trying to do is to impose limits on speech by their contributors, which to me is taking it too far.

I agree that criticizing them is totally fine. However, if criticism is less about "that seems inefficient" or "this could cause people talking about xyz to get in abc trouble" and instead tilts more towards, "this code of conduct is morally or ethically wrong" then that i where I will criticize the criticism.

It's one thing to have guidelines (many projects have previously had those) but a whole other one to have hard rules that could jeopardize your future at any seemingly arbitrary moment.

I'm not sure of the difference between guidelines and hard rules in this case. It sounds like you want less specifics and I prefer things to be encoded more specifically so that the power is less in the hands of someone interpreting a guideline and more enshrined in a readable format.

Again, I can tell you that it's hard to be truly productive in such an environment because of the added mental stress.

The amount of power an open source repo has over me is so little, that I feel zero mental stress. Even if they restricted me from arbitrary topics of zero consequence, I don't think it would bother me.

[cybertraveler]

I'm enjoying the high quality, back and forth between Palu Macil and Djhg2000

[fabtar]

I am sorry, that you dont see the ideas behind coc.
Also in the academic world, if two candidates are for example of similar competence, the female has the priority. And it is good like this, to recover the inbalance.
I would recommend you to read about studies, that show that a group of homogen experts in one domain, can be less productive/innovative at solving problems than a team with people with different backgrounds. I am sorry, that you can also not imagine why bringing somebody from a different region , could help to spread the project of LLVM to also other parts of the world, bring in the end more contributors and more people interested in the project.

Sapere Aude!

I see.. that you mis-understood. I wrote that CoC is not the problem, the problem is the association with a discriminating firm.
To correct one alleged discrimination with another discrimination is so wrong that you have to be blind to not see this.
When you apply pure meritocracy the gender balance will come as far as there are the same number of male/female candidates.
About "studies", please cite the articles. From my experience in research groups only diversity in competence and technical background is good..
But there is a limit to this too: one chemist is simply useless when it comes at designing software architecures.
Because Latin is cool:

amicus omnibus, amicus nemini
(yes this is OT but is COOOL you know)

[microcode]

one engineer is irrelevant.

Note that the people near the top of contributor lists are usually an order of magnitude (or several orders) more productive than those in the middle.

[cipri]

This reply lacks substance and doesn't back up any of those claims or explain what religion would have to do with coding quality. If you'd like your point to be appreciated you would be well off backing up and explaining some of your statements at least.

(This is not hypocritical on my part because I'm not making any claims about what effects CoC has on the project - or on other projects.)

I can back up very well my claims, with very important scientific publications/papers exactly in that kind of domain. If you want a full research pay me my time, and I do it. But you can google it yourself party, about how a group of people with different background can solve problems better than a team all of the same specialists. Different perspectives, have better chances result into something better than the solution of specialists with similar education/background. Reminds me also of one example, where the a problem at a company could not be solved well by the technical team, but a person from another department (i think sales/marketing) heard of the problem and came up with some basic idea how it might be solvable, and with that basic idea, the technical stuff could implement it, and it worked.
My advice is to always have the ears open, especially to people who say something against/different from your point of view.
Where is contradiction and confusion, there is a chance to learn something.

Sapere Aude!

cipri

[cybertraveler]

I can back up very well my claims, with very important scientific publications/papers exactly in that kind of domain. If you want a full research pay me my time, and I do it. But you can google it yourself party, about how a group of people with different background can solve problems better than a team all of the same specialists. Different perspectives, have better chances result into something better than the solution of specialists with similar education/background. Reminds me also of one example, where the a problem at a company could not be solved well by the technical team, but a person from another department (i think sales/marketing) heard of the problem and came up with some basic idea how it might be solvable, and with that basic idea, the technical stuff could implement it, and it worked.
My advice is to always have the ears open, especially to people who say something against/different from your point of view.
Where is contradiction and confusion, there is a chance to learn something.

Sapere Aude!

cipri

cipri

In a meritocratic or competitive environment like a typical open source project or a successful business, those environments will naturally do exactly as you say if those methods yield better results. The great thing is, you don't need heavily advocate for it or push for for policies that enforce it. This is why:

If a business in a relatively free market opts to deliberately hire people from a vast range of different backgrounds, personality types, races and creeds and - as you're suggesting - this yields far superior results to the previous approach (which is more homogeneous and built based on past education, experience and work ethic), then that business will likely produce better products and services at a lower price than the other businesses it is competing against. That business will naturally grow and other business will seek to replicate the aspect of it which are successful.

Obviously it's up to the owners/managers of a business whether they want to experiment with what it is you are suggesting. Owners of successful businesses are often very bright people and the entrepreneurial types are often very open minded too. Considering how widely promoted your ideas are these days, I expect there are businesses experimenting with these ideas right now.

Of course: there is a chance that your approach is inferior to the existing more popular approaches and those businesses that adopt your approach will yield lower quality products/services at a higher price than their competitors. This isn't a big problem though. So long as laws are not being passed to mandate this stuff, then the market will naturally avoid what it is you are proposing.

If the market proves your theories wrong, a reasonable thing to do would be to re-evaluate your stance rather than switch over to a new, alternative reason to support your stance. If you were to jump to a new set of reasons and justifications, one might be led to think that you're not actually out to improve the quality of businesses and projects, but rather you're out to promote and agenda of resource allocation based on victim-status, minority-status, race or sex. You haven't said you're doing that, so for now I will take you at your word and assume that you really do believe that highly diverse environments yield better results.

[wieder]

If you want a full research pay me my time, and I do it.

I'll bite. How much do you charge for 3 hours of research collation to prove that demographic diversity improves team problem solving? I assure you I can follow through.

[fabtar]

I can back up very well my claims, with very important scientific publications/papers exactly in that kind of domain. If you want a full research pay me my time, and I do it. But you can google it yourself party, about how a group of people with different background can solve problems better than a team all of the same specialists. Different perspectives, ...
Where is contradiction and confusion, there is a chance to learn something.

You are not listening:
"Difference" in (technical)perspectives/backgrounds have nothing to do with speaking about "difference" in genders/religions/races. The second case is the issue here, they are speaking about guys pushing the "difference" in gender/religion/race, by not looking at the "person" competence itself but looking at other attributes.
When you make a statement it is your burden to provide the proofs otherwise or, from a scientific point of view, they are just empty words.