The Contributor Covenant says nothing of the sort. It is entirely reasonable for developers to believe that the statements in the Covenant are a baseline for professionalism and, at the same time to disagree amongst themselves about whether they should contribute to military projects (or whether they buy into a "post-meritocracy" philosophy).

I was referring to https://postmeritocracy.org/

As per the comment to which I was replying.

Once again: whatever the "post-meritocracy" philosophy is, it has nothing to do with the kernel Code of Conduct.

I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with it. It's not part of the explicit language of the Code of Conduct, but the first few paragraphs of https://www.contributor-covenant.org talk about the same concepts.

I think these attempts at redefining meritocracy are concerning, and I don't blame anyone for questioning the Contributor Covenant as a result, even if the Code of Conduct itself is reasonable and pretty much common sense.

None of those words are in the kernel Code of Conduct.

This rhetorical technique where you pretend not to understand what people are talking about does not reflect well on you. And I normally respect your comments quite a bit.

Your direct reply to DC-3 was fine, if combative. Everything you posted below Ws32ok is ugly.

Everything he's saying to Ws32ok is factual. Nothing ugly about it.

The three comments in question can be argued as technically correct, but they're also deliberately ignoring that people are talking about a different document, and the reasons they are talking about the different document.

It's not useful to repeat that those words are not in the kernel code of conduct when nobody thought they were. It muddies the waters of the conversation. What really bothers me is the statement that it has "nothing to do with" the philosophy. From a certain point of view this is true, but the implied message is that the other person has not even a ghost of an argument because they're mixing up codes. That implication isn't right at all. He's also implying that he doesn't even know what this document is.

But before he made any of those comments, he made a reasonable reply to DC-3 that addresses the argument. His response was very simple, that the code should be treated as separate from its author.

So he clearly understands the argument and read the post explaining what this manifesto is and why it's being discussed.

But he comes in under Ws32ok's comment not to point out the difference between the two documents, but to instead imply that people are confused and accidentally opened the wrong file, and he's never even heard of this file.

I find that ugly.

I’d actually say they should reread the codes of conduct and consider if they are commenting in good faith in accordance with those codes.

And once again, read https://postmeritocracy.org/ and you’ll find the text I quoted verbatim. And my comment still stands in reference to the URL I provided. The wording is quite clear in that manifesto and I responded to that.

But he was explicitly referring to the manifesto and not the Code of Conduct and you jumped all over him anyway.

What's wrong with agreeing not to build military hardware? I have an explicit understanding with my company that I will leave if they take defense contracts and it hasn't affected my employment whatsoever, so clearly it's not an outlandish requirement.

> It eliminates any military, security or even anything useful.

Haha, I love the implicit signaling you're doing. I mean not only is it just not true but your qualifications for "useful" and "not useful" are really stupid.

Are guidance systems on missiles OK or not?

Yes. Despite your attempts at playing philosophically dumb it is okay.

This is the dumbest form of virtue signaling while erecting scare crows I've ever seen in an online forum.

If everyone refused to build guidance systems for missiles, perhaps the missiles would never get built?

I think likely yes, because if the zeitgeist among engineers was strong enough to make it nearly impossible to find one willing to build a missile guidance system, it would also be strong enough to make it impossible to find someone willing to build the actual missile.

To directly answer your question: no, I believe no weapon of war is OK. The reasons are all of the typical pacifist ones but I don't think it's necessary to reiterate verbatim here unless you feel otherwise.

> If everyone refused to build guidance systems for missiles, perhaps the missiles would never get built?

Correct but incomplete.

In that scenario, unguided rockets get built instead of missiles. Rockets, being unguided, will miss their targets more often than missiles. Rockets, being unguided, will also tend to be used in slightly-scattered volleys, so as to increase the chance that at least one rocket hits the target.

Any explosive ordnance that misses its target has some chance of instead killing some civilians.

Do you see the problem here?