I too worry that this is opposed to the virtues I expect from the open source software community.

Here's the list of behavior they're targeting. Which one of these do you believe github should have to tolerate against their will?

- Threats of violence

- Hate speech and discrimination

- Bullying and harassment

- Impersonation

- Doxxing and invasion of privacy

- Sexually explicit content

- Active malware or exploits

By and large I agree that none of these things have any relevance to software development. (And Github shouldn't be forced to tolerate anything, not sure where that came from.) But a couple edge cases may be relevant:

> Hate speech and discrimination

Gender as an entry field. People have a variety of views on this one. I imagine that the prevailing view is going to call certain other views "hate speech" no matter how politely expressed. It is up to Github if they want to take this stance on it, but it is understandably going to get them called the "PC Police" should it ever come up.

> Sexually explicit content

I understand not bringing this into discussions for no reason. But what if someone is developing a Leisure Suit Larry clone? I think implementing a NSFW warning for viewing a project is perfectly reasonable by almost anybody's standards. But disallowing it entirely will preclude such projects from Github. But again, totally understandable if Github decides that it's not the place for such things.

Add:

> Active malware or exploits

Metasploit has been hosted at GitHub for few years and they never seemed to have a problem with that. Are they going to kick them now? Why should they care?

This in particular angers me because it's so broad IMO and antithetical to open source and security research. This smells like political pressure and censorship. Like the beginning of the end for GitHub...

Judging by his comment, it doesn't seem he's advocating for forcing a private entity (or at least this particular one) to do anything "against their will". Instead, he's moving his business elsewhere because of a policy he disagrees with -- a non-aggressive response of voting with one's wallet. Do you believe this equates to forcing Github to take actions against their will?

The problem is several of those are completely arbitrary. You define rules which seem nice at first and then get abused for political reasons.

I wouldn't want to be the person deciding where issues like this fits: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

The person who opened that issue to remove an Opal core developer because she didn't like his personal tweets was subsequently hired by Github.

That makes me VERY uncomfortable. To the point I don't even want to talk about it anymore, I'm just going to move away from GitHub.

Someone might link to one of my tweets from 2010 where "I want cloning to be legalized" (that's not me, just same username).

I missed that bit of news. Had I known that I would have canceled my account when they hired her/him/xir.

Most of those are crimes or torts, and should be dealt with by the legal system (the real one, where there are things like rules of evidence, a presumption of innocence, the right to counsel, etc.), not by some kangaroo court made up of the perpetually outraged.

> - Bullying and harassment

It's not the majority of the time, but I've see policies against 'bullying and harassment' used to silence anything but. That might be what is worrying OP.

No matter what the written policy says, they will have to tolerate threats of violence done in the name of political correctness. I remember the huge Twitter outrage from the well-connected social justice activists in the tech community driving policies like this when Twitter banned someone for threatening violence against a celebrity in the name of social justice, the anger that Twitter didn't understand this was important activism, forcing them to back down. It's politically impossible to act otherwise. Even Twitter probably only broke the unspoken rule by accident - a bunch of conservatives subsequently sent the same person threats, and most likely someone didn't bother checking everyone's political affiliation before banning.

Do you anticipate your use of github being affected by these guidelines? Or just the idea of them offends you?

I anticipate someone making a big deal over nothing (like what triggered the whole code of conduct thing in the first place) will trigger one of the clauses and I or the project may be removed.

I anticipate that my account could be removed because of the actions of another contributor on a project, even if I had no involvement.

And a simply don't like the idea of it. They are selling a product, I want to buy the product, I don't want to be forced into their political philosophy for it.

Doesn't HN also have community guidelines and sometimes bans accounts that violate them? What's the difference?

HN is a forum and doesn't host anything I would care about losing, github is (was) a service I paid for. We discuss some contentious subjects on HN but github will be preventing contributions from people with wrongthink, which I don't care about.

You seem to be making some big assumptions about how these guidelines will be enforced. I got a very different sense from reading them.

I see no evidence they will delete your paid accounts because you think or express ideas that are merely contentious or unpopular.

Because I've seen it used in practice to vilify people with different beliefs, even when those beliefs are irrelevant to the work on the project.

Github and some recent hires they've made have a history of this.

>You seem to be making some big assumptions about how these guidelines will be enforced.

Oh please. We all know what kind of rancid and toxic people are spearheading these kinds of seemingly innocuous initiatives.

>I see no evidence they will delete your paid accounts because you think or express ideas that are merely contentious or unpopular.

Yeah. Because I am going to take the risk and potentially disrupt the workflow of three high-volume OSS projects I maintain. The time I assumed benevolence from Github is long over. Time to move my shit to a reliable service like Gitlab.

First they came for those I deemed offensive, and I did not speak out—

Because I did not deem myself offensive.

Then they came for me—

and there was no one left to speak for me.

You seem to have missed that eli was suggesting that you find Guthub's new policies...offensive.

The whole slicing of society into those deemed "offensive" and "acceptable" is a problem in and of itself. These policies are not a solution to them, it's catering to the problem. Niemoller's poem is an example of a divisive society being its own divide-and-conquer downfall.

Illegal behavior is illegal behavior, and if someone's behavior reaches that level, it should be taken up with the police against the perpetrator.

That seems like a good recipe for big government. If society can't trust that private institutions can avoid undesirable behavior, the only recourse is to make everything offensive illegal.

So, conversely, if we don't want to live in that world, it is appropriate and beneficial for private institutions to have some standards of acceptable behavior beyond mere legality.

"the only recourse is to make everything offensive illegal."

Alternatively, you could recognize that there is no right to not be offended.

There are ~7 billion other people out there, a solid majority of whom likely hold one or more views that you would find offensive (and who find one or more of your views offensive in turn).

I don't have a right to not be offended, but I may have an expectation that my source code platform not subject me to death threats from other users. Very few platforms would allow that.

I feel like this is a bit of a strawman. Github didn't say they would take action against anything that might offend anyone. They were pretty specific: no death threats, impersonating other users, etc.

If you're getting credible death threats, your recourse should be to the police. I'm trying to get my head around the idea that the appropriate entity to handle a death threat should be the hosting platform, and I'm failing.

If your platform connects you to arbitrary users worldwide, why wouldn't you expect to get garbage from any joe blow that happens upon your project and feels like saying something stupid? What are these other platforms outside the "very few" that somehow prevent that?

Besides, the best you can do is take action after the fact, not avoid being subjected to it, unless you cut yourself off or have weird vetting barriers between you and others, instead of an open communication platform.

Sure. I have no right to not be offended, I acknowledge that. I do have freedom of association, though, and I absolutely have the right not to associate with those that offend me, patronize businesses that welcome people who offend me, etc. In turn, people who find my views offensive are, of course, free not to associate with me, not to patronize businesses that welcome me, etc., and I steadfastly support their rights to do so!

Or you (and they) could just suck it up and stop demanding that everyone else behave in the way that you, personally, have decided is the "correct" way. If it doesn't actively "pick your pocket or break your leg", why not let it go?

How do you reconcile that with your upstream comment "If society can't trust that private institutions can avoid undesirable behavior, the only recourse is to make everything offensive illegal"?

That statement seems to imply that there is a mandate for 3rd parties to provide systems free of "undesirable behavior" from particular perspectives. Freedom of association means no, there isn't. Demanding private institutions provide freedom from offensiveness implies a perceived right not to be offended.

> eli was suggesting that you find Guthub's new policies...offensive.

eli's right, somebody should suggest adding "community guidelines" to this "offensive" blacklist and see how they resolve the paradox ;)

I would like to better understand your point of view. What in particular about the guidelines inclines you to move? Why do you think GitHub shouldn't be doing it?

I doubt that these were issues, more likely they put these in place to declare some sort of allegiance to certain groups. These groups seem to be more about policing people because the position of moral authority gives them some sort of high than solving actual issues (but that might require expending energy, time and resources so they stick to policing people online).

The fact that there are guidelines. I want my ISP to be a dumb pipe and not a content provider, filterer, etc, In the same way I want github to be a dumb service host.