Re:New FreeBSD Code of Conduct
by codemusings on Sunday February 18, 2018 @02:40PM
(#16407833)
Open source software is as much a social endeavor as it is a technical one. As such it is important for people to get along if a project wants to get anywhere. There are far too many developers that use their technical prowess as an excuse for their lack of basic social skills. Unfortunately the same group of developers is also almost entirely comprised of men.
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FreeBSD's new CoC wouldn't ban a sexist comment like this, because of the odd "oppressed group" language. Hopefully it was just a copy/paste mistake from the Geek Feminism code.
There's no place in a software project for insulting someone's gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. just because it's a more typical one. There are certain toxic community members who use well-intended rules like this a shield while they proceed to insult certain groups or stereotype them.
Better to avoid that type of discussion entirely. It's a software project, not a place to discuss politics or race relations. Hopefully they take a look into this and adopt a more neutral CoC like LLVM's: https://llvm.org/docs/CodeOfConduct.html
FreeBSD wouldn't sanction the poster for that comment for several reasons:
1. The CoC committee acts on reports -- someone has to be bothered by it.
2. It isn't an insult.
3. It isn't sexist.
"Unfortunately the [group engaging in negative activity] is also almost entirely comprised of [x]." where x is some immutable or deeply personal characteristic, is advancing an offensive stereotype.