The Linux Kernel Adopts A Code of Conduct

[chags]

Sadly this thread is a prime example of why codes of conduct are necessary in software development circles. A majority of white heterosexual socially and sexually challenged men.

This wouldn't pass the CoC.

harassment-free experience - for everyone, regardless of ... disability ... sex characteristics ... , gender identity and expression ... personal appearance, race ... sexual identity and orientation.
unacceptable behavior - The use of sexualized language ... insulting/derogatory comments ... Public or private harassment ... Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting

Just saying...

[audir8]

1) People need to stop projecting shit onto Linus Torvalds or anyone else, everyone is fallible, look in the mirror.
2) If you disagree with a CoC, your choices are clear, leave and spend your time being productive elsewhere, whining without evidence isn't a very good choice.
3) You don't need to look further than gamergate, and other such malfeasance online to see that online abuse is very real. There are mods on subreddits and any small/mid size site like phoronix, who keep things in check, but when it comes to open source communities (any async communication) it's always better to have set rules everyone can follow. Everyone's comfort level around others varies highly, and saying just be "excellent" might not cut it, hence the need for a few precise ground rules. This is also why It's better to have such rules than to have none, you can always change the rules to fit community needs and set enforcement guidelines.
4) I'm pretty sure gender identity in an opensource project realistically only applies to using the correct pronouns for a person and treating them as such, and little else. If you have a problem with this, see 2) and seek additional help.
5) This CoC is a low bar tbh, it's just spelling out the obvious, so seeing any hysterical responses to it, just makes me think it's need all the more.

[jacob]

yeah, but that's something we already have anyway. There are a lot of people with power around us every day and we always have to check for if they abuse their power or not. Just by giving people power over us, it doesn't mean they immediately abuse it. Linus in its own way also abused his power already by cursing and insulting people, even if this wasn't his intention.

In the end we have to decide on what kind of abuse of power is still "okay" and which isn't okay at all. Power gets abused all the time, all your life is based on this. You can fight some of it, most of it isn't worth fighting against, because you have better things to do.



Which is no problem at all, because you shouldn't care what the other person things of yourself, but if you do care, then _you_ have a problem. Granted, the other persons might also have problems of various kinds, maybe you indeed run into some person who thinks something is wrong with the world because people don't believe or accept something.

Okay let's just assume you are a kernel maintainer and you don't achknowledge the existence of "gender identity", is it still okay to discriminate people who do, allthough they create a usefull contribution? Why would it matter to your work (as a maintainer)?

If you agree to this, you basically agree that based on what the other person thinks you are alloweed to discriminate. And I don't see why that is a good thing. Some people believe in the wrong things, some in the right things. Most of the time I don't know what is the right or wrong thing, because "right" and "wrong" itself are social constructs we use ourself to validate and build our believes on. Some of those can be backed up by facts, some are just "right" because it improves our life and living together with other people and we accepted those as "right" due to this.

Some people treat others like shit and are pure assholes, because we accepted them as people in power and it would be hopeless to fight against those, which, like it or not, could also be "right" thinking in our society, because it stabilizes it, even if it empowers assholes.

All this stuff is seriously hard to understand and to accept, most people don't. And by discrimating other persons based on their believes, you are not helping making others feel comfortable with theirs. You have your believes, others have their own. You don't have to accept those, others don't have to as well.

In the end, all one can do is to not be an asshole to others and others might stop being an asshole towards one.

So this was the "rational point of view". Coming to the "scientific point of view":

It doesn't matter what you think. It only matters what you are able to prove. And we have proof that "gender identitiy" is a problem for some people. Don't make it a bigger one by being assholes towards those. I am not an asshole towards you even though I don't accept your believe, but because I want you to understand why you are wrong, I try explaining it to you, why it is wrong to not respect people based on their believes.

By not respecting people you destroy communication, and by destroying communication you take away your chance to change your position _and_ the chance for others to change theirs, which is fundamental in scientific discussions. Without those, the scientific method wouldn't work. Communication is what all science is based upon. It is used to find flaws in proofs by talking with others about it. Something you might have accepted as a fact, might be wrong, because others are able to proof it is a wrong fact. Maybe their method was faulty and the fact you accepted isn't wrong. All this requires communication.

Believe it or not, but most scientific facts are accepted because others accepted the proofs _not_ because the fact itself holds any weight. The weight of fact is given by _others_ agreeing with you and your proofs. Facts itself are so to speak a "social construct" we use to explain our world and how the world works. We have to verify our facts all the time, because we can never say a fact is true, we can only mark it as true. Facts can only be proven wrong, never proven as true. All we can do is to find proofs for all our facts which are consistent with what we experience and try to find that one proof to prove those wrong.

Coming back to your point: the fact is people have issues with their gender identity. This is something we have a lot of evidence for. What we might not have or do have are hypothesis' or theories about why that is. I didn't read any of those, so I don't know anything about the scientific discussions going on there. But the fact that people have indeed problems with it isn't something even you could not accept, otherwise we wouldn't talk about it.

In the end, if your point of view is, that "gender identity" doesn't exist (and proving something doesn't exist is impossible in the first place), then prove why observations about people having issues with their gender identity are in fact false and that all reports are indeed wrong reports.

So once again, I don't call for any discrimination. No one, I imagine, claims that people suffering from GID, flu or who have a broken limb should not be allowed to participate in Linux development. That would be obviously nonsense. What I strongly object to is the assumption that "gender identity" is an undisputed fact that should simply be taken into account and, by implication, you either acknowledge it as a fact by accepting the CoC as it stands, or you can't take part in the development process. But that's not how the world works. Science is not a safe space, and is not "inclusive" in the sense that anything goes. Yes, some men "feel" that they are women (or vice versa). There are also numerous people who, presumably sincerely, "feel" that they are Jesus reincarned. And while no-one denies that discrimination does exist, and is condemnable, not everyone who "feels" discriminated against actually is. Yes, GID people can really suffer. I will never deny that, having endured myself a different type of psychological trauma certain periods of my life, and I know the misery and pain it can cause. But the answer lies in understanding, kindness, accompaniment and offering solutions to those who wish to take them, not in denying the pathological nature of the situation or trying to force others to proclaim unqualified nonsense.

The point being, "I feel therefore I am" is not a valid postulate on which to build a theory. By virtue of Occam's Razor, those who claim that something that does not fit with standing theories exists must prove it, either by a reproducible empirical experiment, or by proposing a theoretical framework whose validity can be tested, and which encompasses and extends the understanding of prior theories, not one that turns them upside down. The fact is that GID is adequately covered in psychology as it stands today. As such, a hypothetical "gender identity", independent from sex and seen as a legitimate attribute of a person much like the colour of his/her eyes, is unnecessary in order to explain it. It is a purely arbitrary, and thus a priori illegitimate, idea promoted by those who want to deny the "disorder" nature of GID, motivated mainly by politics. In other words, until proven otherwise, the Earth is not flat and does not rest on the shell of a giant turtle, you can't turn lead into gold through an alchemical process, combustion is not caused by phlogiston, the interstellar void is not filled with ether, and humans don't have a "gender identity" other than their biological characteristics called sex.

[jacob]

Have you actually read the comments in this thread? It's everything but sane critique of the actual text of the Linux CoC. I was referring to all the nonsense like this guy's comment (see below). It's the same kind of trolling you see from the actual alt-right (i.e. real white supremacists).

Would you care to show where, specifically, do I advocate for white supremacy? If you can point to it, you can have a full year's subscription to the SJW rag of your choice on me. I'm serious.

[lowflyer]

Apparently there is a minority that cannot behave that forces the rest of us to create codes of conduct. These same people seems to be the ones offended by it.

And I can't for my life see how they could be misused more than what is going on today that they are trying to prevent. Maybe a small minority of people that are incapable of behaving socially *could* be targeted. But if they are truly unable to behave (e.g. have a disorder or something), I'm sure an exception can be made and they could get help or something. Not everyone is as rational as Linus and can admit their incapability or mistakes.

Dear Jukk,
You don't know how wrong you are. First, you imply that I (me, lowflyer) cannot behave and forced the creation of the COC. Prove this please! Second, you contradict yourself in first saying that you can't "see how they could be misused" - and then continue to say that "a small minority of people that are incapable of behaving socially *could* be targeted". Thirdly, you imply that Linus is rational. Well, think over that one again, please. Linus himself found out that this was less the case than what he wished for. (Did you ever read his original post?) I see Linus' retreat more of a function of his age than anything else. Most people accumulate wisdom as they get older.

You know the saying "When the cat's away the mice will play"?

Read the other posts in this thread. This is about power - not about protecting minorities. The world will be different when Linus comes back.

[Machine]

Woah, I'm not going to weigh in too far as I am conflicted. I just wanted to point out, maybe attacking or trying to blame one's child might not be the best course.

[bitnick]

The problem is that the Code of Conduct doesn't say you will not harrass or discriminate against those who believe in "gender identity". It takes "gender identity" as an established, objective FACT and requires participants not to discriminate BASED ON it - which means by abiding by the CoC, you implicitly recognise and accept that it is treated as a fact. I suspect that if the CoC said you will not discriminate against people based on where they live on the Flat Earth, sensible people would take objection against it. And I, for one, don't acknowledge the existence of such a thing as "gender identity" any more that I don't acknowledge flat earth.

Thank you for this post! I read the new Linux CoC and thought that "Ok, it basically says don't be an asshole (although keeping a few lines describing the review process with its multple reject/improve cycles wouldn't have hurt) - so what's the fuss?". But your post makes it a bit clearer.

But it also makes me intrigued. You say you don't "believe" in gender identity. I am a male and I also identify as a male (i.e. I "feel" like a male). I expect most males identify as males, and most women identify as women, but apparently there are those who identify with the opposite sex, or somewhere in between, or with no sex at all. Since you don't believe in gender identity I guess you belong to the latter? But even if you don't have an associated identity, it should not be that hard to imagine that other people consider themselves as male or female, i.e. that they have a gender identity? From that it should not be that big a leap to imagine that people could "feel like" a bit of both?

(Note that this doesn't imply anything about the reasons for people being transgender, homosexual or whatever.)

[bitnick]

[...] No, none of the Linux kernel developers have ever killed someone, but it's a bad thing to do so they should bake a point of it. Utter bullshit.

Well, actually...

And I can understand not feeling comfortable having to work with a known murderer (even if he does write good code) - even moreso if he murdered some fellow programmer (or behaves like an asshole to other contributors in general). So maybe it's not such a far-fetched idea to be able to exclude people who's behaviour is routinely making other contributors feel uncomfortable. That said, it should be a transparent process and the reasons for exclusion should be made public and clear. But as someone else said already, the final decision about what is acceptable or not will always lie with the project owner.

In the end, the decision about what is acceptable behaviour is by nature subjective. Sure, in a perfect world noone would feel disrespected or afraid, but if someone who is clearly biologically male insists on being called a female, that will surely make the <insert-religion-of-your-choice> fundamentalist feel silly and very uncomfortable! IMO, it's OK for someone to be transgender (that's their own business completely), and it's NOT OK to harrass them because of what they are, but it's also not OK to demand that everyone should call them by a different sex!

Likewise, it's OK to be a religious fundamentalist as long as you don't force your views upon anybody else.

[Teggs]

What I understand, from the information in this thread and links from it, is that the 'Contributor's Covenant' was created as a weapon. In effect, it is a plain-text Trojan Horse. And Greg Kroah-Hartman has accepted this 'gift' into the heart of Linux.

[Jeff99]

You're a tri-gender pyrofox aren't you?

no, just a mundane helosexual.